YMMV / Spectre

• Accidental Innuendo: "Touch it. You can touch it if you want to." This is Oberhauser to Bond and Madeleine, referring to the meteorite, but it produced some sniggering in theaters.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The Arc Welding creates a great deal of this for past films, Skyfall especially. While it's pretty simple to see the villains of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace working for Spectre, it's questionable not only how closely Silva was connected to Spectre, but how much control even they'd be able to exert over a completely suicidal madman with nothing left to lose, so one has to assume Spectre just gave him his resources, and he went completely bonkers from there. Or that in the years between his captivity and striking against M he worked as a contractor of sorts for Spectre (since Skyfall suggested he's a terrorist/hacker for hire). Then again, it's not like Spectre did not benefit immensely from the actions of Silva in that movie (blowing up MI6 and killing its head made it possible for C to maneuver himself to take over, after all) so arguably it actually makes sense that he worked for them and the fact that he already had a murderous grudge against M was just a lucky coincidence on both of their parts. For the record, the movie explicitly calls him a member of Spectre.
  • Additionally, how much involvement did Blofeld have in the villains' plots in previous movies? Perhaps he was involved in the conception and planning but not the actual execution of the plots of those movies, which would still make him responsible for what happened; the fact that Bond was involved in these events could just be a happy accident due to his need for revenge.
  • Indeed, is Franz Oberhauser a Diabolical Mastermind Manipulative Bastard or a Smug Snake who took over the world's most powerful criminal organization and turned it from a group which altered the fate of nations into just another sex-trafficking ring? Are any of his claims of revenge against James Bond true or is he just screwing with our hero? Also, could Blofeld simply be a narcissist who gleefully brags about all of the horrible crimes he has committed? In his backstory, he mentions that he murdered his father because he was jealous of the attention that Bond received after they had taken him in as a foster child. Narcissists generally feel a strong need for attention, and the fact that Blofeld explicitly states that his father's lack of attention was what motivated him to kill him could just be his warped and twisted justification for committing murder. Blofeld also gladly takes credit for all of the pain Spectre has caused Bond over the years, which could just be him exaggerating his actual involvement in those plots. While he may be a criminal mastermind, he couldn't possibly have foreseen everything that happened in the previous movies.
• Aluminium Christmas Trees: The "Nine Eyes" intelligence sharing agreement is presented as a game-changing development. The Five Eyes agreement not only already does this, it has been operational for decades.
• Americans Hate Tingle: British critics were generally quite positive about the film, if not to quite the same extent as they were with Skyfall. American critics on the other hand were far harsher, with more than a few even going so far as to call it the worst Bond film since Craig took the mantle, and at least one declaring it the worst since A View to a Kill, 30 years prior.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Due to his Non-Action Big Bad status, Blofeld goes down very easily when Bond shoots down his chopper with a few shots from his Walther PPK. Bond also spares Blofeld and leaves him to be arrested by M.
• Ass Pull:
  • Blofeld is "the author" of Bond's "pain", but it's never explained how he orchestrated the events of the three previous films, most notably Skyfall which seemed like an independent revenge plot which didn't factor in Bond to begin with. The first two films stated that there was a larger organization at work, and Le Chiffe and Greene had more concrete objectives. (Disaster capitalism.) But it's later chalked up to Oberhauser wanting to troll Bond.
  • Oberhauser gives detailed descriptions of what his needle torture will do to Bond. Neither of them actually work, the film makes no attempt to explain it.
  • Mr White stating that he turned against Blofeld as 'women and children' were getting hurt only works if you ignore that he had no such objections to working with Le Chiffre in Casino Royale who financed international terrorism. White having a daughter was also never mentioned before and Dr Swan only seems to be his daughter to ensure Bond would go to her next in the script.
• Award Snub: Given Javier Bardem's 2013 MTV Movie Award nomination for Skyfall, it was surprising that Christoph Waltz didn't also receive a Best Villain nomination in 2016–when there were six slots available at that too.
• Broken Base
  • Fans and critics are split over whether giving Blofeld a personal connection to Bond was a good idea or not. One side argues that it adds more depth to his character and sets him apart from being another generic Bond villain. The other side argues that it actually makes him shallower, portraying him as ultimately a spoiled brat with no clear motives other than to spite Bond and losing all the mystique and charm of the original Blofeld. Then there's also the issue of this reaching high levels of Narm because the Austin Powers movies did this same reveal as a gag.
  • The theme song, "Writing's on the Wall" by Sam Smith, has split opinions ''very widely''. Even it winning the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Original Song (like its predecessor) hasn't done much to sway the opinions of those who dislike it. The fact that he beat out Lady Gaga's "Till it Happens to You" from The Hunting Ground, a song about standing in solidarity with rape victims, didn't help.
    • The news that Radiohead had also written a rejected theme song has further split opinions between those who prefer the Radiohead song, those who prefer the Sam Smith one and those who think neither were fitting for a Bond movie.
    • The fact that "Writing's on the Wall" is one of the very few Bond themes to feature auto-tuning, especially fairly obvious auto-tuning, probably didn't help matters either.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • So... there's a newly introduced MI6 agent who's hellbent on shutting down the 00 program, and also plans to set up a worldwide surveillance network that would make it possible to spy on the entire world as once. And said agent also happens to be played by the actor best known for playing Moriarty on Sherlock. And we're outright told that the villain organization, Spectre, has agents planted everywhere. Yeah... the plot twist that C is in cahoots with Blofeld and Spectre is so obvious that it couldn't possibly be an actual twist. But, alas, it is.
  • Oberhauser finally turning out to be Blofeld, and the film playing it as a twist, was predictably met with a great deal of eye-rolling from even positive reviews, with many critics comparing it to Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan and Marion Cotillard as Talia al Ghul. Of course, the twist of Blofeld being a character of the movie is spoiled by the mere title.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Contested Sequel: Some fans state Spectre dilutes the impact of the previous entries, especially Casino Royale (Vesper Lynd has lost most of her significance — see Strangled by the Red String) and Skyfall (Raoul Silva's villainy is reduced because he turned out to be a lackey of Spectre, and it cheapens M's death as Blofeld had arranged it just to torment Bond). Others like this movie's old-school approach because it's the first entry in the Craig era that feels like a "traditional" James Bond film (at least the one ticking the highest number of gimmicky boxes that have become associated with the notion). It's become contested even more with the release of No Time to Die, as even its critics have to admit that whatever flaws it may have, it at least has a happier ending than its follow up.
• Ending Fatigue: Nope, Morocco's not the end of the film. We've still got a return to London ahead of us.
• Genius Bonus: A man nicknamed "C" being the leader of an intelligence agency (and an Evil Counterpart of M) may be a nod to real life British intelligence agencies. C is an actual alias used by Secret Intelligence Service (the real life official name of MI6), which in real life refers to its chief (M's counterpart).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The fact that some reinforced surveillance laws in the wake of the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks were voted on the very day of the November attacks didn't help and had a particularly eerie resonance, considering the "Nine Eyes" global surveillance merging program in the film.
  • As Bond enters the ruins of the previous MI6 building, his name is spray-painted on the memorial wall. By the end of No Time to Die, it likely is again, though properly engraved this time.
• He's Just Hiding: Many people have assumed this about Hinx, due to his previous resilience that showed him capable of surviving what would be otherwise fatal incidents before, as well as the fact that he was never actually shown crashing to his death after Bond knocked him out of the train.
• It Was His Sled: Despite the actor's initial claims otherwise, Franz Oberhauser is Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Bond naturally thinks that he has successfully killed Blofeld in the base explosion. Anyone who has seen the films in the series from the late 60s knows how unlikely it is that the man would die at all, let alone with that much running time left in the film. Even the film gets in on that action: As Bond flies away in one direction away from the burning base, the camera clearly shows a motorcade leaving the base in the background; Bond just wasn't looking in the right direction.
• Memetic Mutation: Oberhauser's iconic "author of all your pain" quote, which gained popularity after it appeared in the trailer. Fans have often gleefully taken the line out of context to have it refer a bestselling book, 'All Your Pain', with Oberhauser as the author.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Driven by Envy, Oberhauser/Blofeld crossed it 20 years ago when he committed patricide out of the jealousy and resentment he harbored against an orphaned Bond received after Franz's father took him in. He only got worse from there by staging all the tragedies Bond faced since Casino Royale, even to the point of rubbing 007's failures in his face and trying to kidnap Madeleine Swann as part of his plan to psychologically weaken Bond's morale.
  • If betraying the British government and joining Spectre wasn't enough, then C staging false flag terrorist attacks at countries who won't join the "Nine Eyes" intelligence program on behalf of Blofeld, who is bankrolling the project so it'll enable Spectre to permanently stay ahead of their enemies, certainly counts.
• Narm:
  • Daniel Craig's inexplicable bellowed delivery of the line "Of course, Mr. White!"
  • This line was widely mocked:
  Moneypenny: You've got a secret. Something you can't tell anyone, because you don't trust anyone.
  • Blofeld being revealed to be Bond's foster brother can be incredibly hard to take seriously because if you've seen the Austin Powers movies, whose third movie revealed Austin and Dr. Evil to be actual brothers.
  • Blofeld taunts Bond as he searches through the abandoned MI5 headquarters... by sticking printouts of various people from his past on the walls, not helped by the fact that the pictures are fairly obviously cropped stills from previous films. The moment comes of less as a tense moment of psychological warfare, and more like Blofeld decided to mess around with Google Images and a printer.
• Older Than They Think: No pun intended. Although Monica Belluci became the oldest actress to appear as a Bond Girl, she wasn't the first to be older than the actor playing Bond. Eunice Gayson, who played Sylvia Trench, the first-ever Bond Girl in Dr. No and From Russia with Love, was 2 years older than Sean Connery; Honor Blackman, who starred as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, was 5 years older than Connery; and Diana Rigg, who starred as Tracy di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, was 1 year older than George Lazenby.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • She may only have five minutes of screen time, but Monica Bellucci makes the most out of them. Grief, resignation, anger, passion, all played to perfection.
  • Jesper Christensen as Mr. White. In just a couple minutes, the film transforms him from the smug Quantum leader he was in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to a broken father desperate to save his daughter.
• Retroactive Recognition: Tenoch Huerta has a very minor role as a man in a lift in Mexico City, three years before his role as Rafael Caro Quintero in Narcos: Mexico and seven years before playing lead antagonist Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The third trailer has a freaking helicopter do several barrel rolls over the skies of Mexico City. What's more, the stunt was pulled off by Chuck Aaron, one of the only helicopter pilots on the face of the planet trained to pull off such a feat safely.
  • To a lesser degree, The Reveal that the Aston Martin DB10 is also a Weaponized Car equipped with a rear mounted flamethrower.
• So Okay, It's Average: One of the two "okay" Daniel Craig Bond adventures, the other being Quantum of Solace. It's not one of the worst films in the franchise as it does have strong points, but it also has a slightly lower Rotten Tomatoes score than Quantum and is a major step down from Skyfall due to the film's Troubled Production.
• Spiritual Successor: "Writing's on the Wall" to "Skyfall". Dark, moody, melodramatic ballads that sounds as though they're from the perspective of one of the main characters. To top it off, the former has followed in the latter's footsteps as far as accolades, netting the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Original Song.
• Strangled by the Red String: Compared to Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, Bond's relationship with Dr. Swann is underdeveloped, so their romance (which is supposedly a meaningful one) feels forced and contrived. It also doesn't help that a lot of critics and fans don't see much chemistry between Craig and Seydoux. Bond apparently being in love with Madeleine diminishes Vesper's importance in retrospect because Vesper was presented as the love of his life, a woman he was so enamoured with that he was willing to abandon his career for her. The audience was led to believe that Vesper's betrayal and death broke Bond's heart permanently, but those wounds now appear to be suddenly healed because he once again leaves MI6 to start a new life with Dr. Swann.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The enmity between Bond and Blofeld is given a Freudian Excuse.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!:
  • A lot of people have accused the plot, from the hero's struggling to find his relevance in the modern era to the bad guy's use of mass surveillance to Take Over the World, of being ripped off from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  • Many have noted that the twist that Blofeld is Bond's brother was done first in Austin Powers in Goldmember.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Lucia Sciarra is the widow of a Spectre member and is now being targeted by the organization, which Bond bears some responsibility for. They made a big deal about Monica Bellucci being the oldest Bond girl and how this was so important in subverting conventions and Hollywood age-shaming. She spends about 5 minutes in the movie and only exists so Bond can sleep with the widow of his most recent kill, and her fate is never addressed afterwards. Gee, they sure opened the door for mature actresses with that role. Many fans even go as far as to believe that she should have taken Madeleine's role in the film, citing how she had much better chemistry with Craig in those five minutes of screen time than he does with Lea Seydoux for the majority of the movie.
  • While many viewers enjoyed Dave Bautista's turn as the villainous Mr. Hinx, many others felt he was poorly utilized and more could have been done with him. Throughout the movie, he spoke only a single word, scored only a single kill (the only time his presumed "signature" technique- eye-gouging metal thumb spikes- is used is in his debut and a brief moment during the train fight), and dies at the end of the 2nd act. While fans compare him favourably to the likes of Jaws or Oddjob, very few argue that he was on their level, and were he not played by a famous wrestler the character may have been entirely generic.
  • And of course, the Nehru jacket-wearing elephant in the room. Waltz's talents are wasted on this version of Blofeld, who established Spectre just to toy with Bond? Blofeld is Bond's adopted brother? He became Blofeld due to daddy issues? That was a punchline when Austin Powers did it. Bond seemed to escape rather easily while picking off dudes left and right, whereas Blofeld's henchmen had Stormtrooper training. Spectre wasn't as menacing and awe-inspiring as fans were led to believe.
  • In a narratively posthumous example, the film neglects to ever mention or show Rene Mathis who was one of Bond's closest allies in the first two films and died during Quantum Of Solace.
• Vindicated by History: Following the release of No Time to Die, this movie's fans are quick to emphasize that this one has a happier ending, something even its critics have to admit.

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