007: Spectre

I'm kind of embarrassed to write this, but I have never seen a Bond movie. There was a time when all of them where showing on an Estonian channel, once a week and I was pretty determined to check them out and I did start watching them, but I am not sure that I ever got all the way with any of them. Not because they were boring or unbearable to watch - they seemed okay, but something always came up. So now I decided to finally go ahead and see one - to be honest it was mostly because I found out Andrew Scott was in it.

But I did think I should maybe love it. I've always liked detectives, secret agents, that kind of thing. I know about Bond, I know the characters, I know some of the names of the movies, I know the tropes. I even know (and love) some of the soundtracks so obviously this wasn't some hugely unexpected experience for me even if I haven't seen any Bond films. In fact it was pretty much what I expected.

It was okay. I didn't hate it, didn't love it, didn't even really like it that much, for instance I liked Kingsman much better, but this left me with very little feeling and I began to wonder why and eventually came to a conclusion: Maybe I don't like spy movies, maybe I just like films about the sort of friendships these films have. Bond is a loner. Yes, he has a team - Q and M and Moneypenny, but they don't go on cases with him and in that particular movie at least he was kind of a jerk taking advantage of all of their friendships, just using them. Bringing a Sherlock Holmes parallel (cause I'm good at those) It's a bit like Sherlock with Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, but without Watson. Every cool agent or any character I've liked always has at least one close friendship and yes - Bond has Bond girls, but I have a problem with them too. Those relationships are shallow. I get it. They are Bond girls, they are meant to fall into James's arms, but that doesn't make them any more realistic. I actually expected to like the Bond girl in this one, because she seemed to independent and not just about to fall into Bond's arms. Aaand then she did. Just. like. that. "What are we going to do now? Make out? Oh okay."  This is just how it went and honestly the whole romance just felt fake.

Things I did like - Q. He seemed like a cute underrated character. I also liked C. It was hard to see it as anything else than Moriarty in a Bond movie, but they I liked that too.