Spectre is a bad James Bond movie. Let’s break it down…

Pre-Title Sequence (8/10): We get a long, continuous shot, which is not worth the time or budget required. A bad guy in a White Suit is established. A building blows up. A helicopter fight ensues. That’s all good stuff.

Unfortunately, the helicopter fight is where cracks begin to show. White Suit is established as Bond’s life-or-death challenge. Filmmakers must follow through on that setup. Instead, Bond hops in the helicopter, throws White Suit to his death and begins his life-or-death challenge with the helicopter pilot, who we just met and don’t care about.

White Suit should have gotten in the front seat and ordered the pilot to get Bond. Bond then tosses the pilot and engages with White Suit in the life-or-death challenge.

The caliber of filmmakers working on a Bond film should not make these types of storytelling mistakes, yet they happen throughout Spectre.

Theme song (4/10): Overly-maudlin and puts me to sleep until the fingernails-on-chalkboard refrain. “How do I love? How do I breathe? When you’re not here, I’m suffocating…”

Egad, James Bond doesn’t ask questions like that.

Even if you went back in time, pushed aside my acne-covered, doofus self and searched under my bed for poems I wrote to girls (but never shared with them), not even in those poems would you find such wishy-washy lines. My lines merely bordered on pathetic (if I could hold your hand, puberty might finally come from my pituitary gland…).

Bond (7/10): Daniel Craig does a solid to amazing job as Bond. His Casino Royale Bond may be my favorite Bond ever, which is another reason Spectre frustrates. It wastes Craig’s Bond time with over-thought messages to what should be simple entertainment.

The ending of Spectre is a good example of this — Bond leaving Blofeld to the authorities as some sort of life lesson.

I have plenty of great moral teachers. I don’t need James Bond to teach me life lessons (in this very special episode of James Bond, Bond learns that true beauty comes from within).

Bond should do something like drop Blofeld down an industrial chimney from a helicopter (For Your Eyes Only). That is entertainment AND has a solid moral message — evil loses, badly.

Bond Girl (5/10): The character is sullen…and that’s about all she contributes to things, although she did manage to look EXTRA sullen when they did that obligatory woman-deftly-handles-a-gun scene.

Even Christmas Jones at least had life to her and engaged in things. And Sullen Bond Girl is so amazing that Bond is willing to leave everything behind for her? No. Sullen Bond Girl is nowhere close to great Bond loves like Tracey di Vicenzo and Vesper Lynd.

Villains (5/10): They gave Blofeld a groaner backstory and made him boring onscreen. Traitor Villain, who is played by Andrew Scott, is also boring and dilutes the villain presence. Mr. White has charisma, but like Blofeld and Traitor Villain, his main activity is exposition.

All of them need to be more personal threats, even if it is within their limitations.

Like when Bond tracks down Mr. White, so the movie can slam on its brakes for exposition, jazz it up. Mr. White looked all technological. Give him a drone with a DIY gun attachment. It attacks Bond as he nears the cabin, maybe while still in the boat. Bond cleverly defeats it and enters the cabin to see Mr. White can’t do anything in his weakened state but fly a drone. Mr. White is still a threat but remains true to the state of his character.

Hinx had potential to be a decent henchman yet is ultimately wasted. Nice introduction, but his two car chases are some of the most lifeless put on film. Train fight is solid, but Hinx doesn’t even get to use his metal fingernails and then, poof, like Keyser Soze, gone.

I expected Hinx to show up (and he should have shown up) to challenge Bond during the climatic rescue of Sullen Girl. Instead, the filmmakers made Bond’s only challenge in that to be the Ticking Clock Trope.

Plot: 5/10: I can’t remember the plot, beyond the distracting side adventures of M, Q and Moneypenny.

I don’t want to watch M have a confrontation with the Traitor Villain (that seems to be the only reason Traitor Villain existed — they used an A-list actor as M, so by gum, by gosh, they mean to use him!).

I don’t care what Moneypenny’s apartment looks like, but it must have been SUPER important. After all, the movie cut away from a car chase to watch her rummage in her refrigerator.

I don’t care about Q doing anything other than giving Bond gadgets. I’m there for a James Bond movie, not a James Bond and His Amazing Friends movie.

These asides threw off the pace of Spectre, and the only suspense they added to the proceedings was making me wonder if I could make it to the end of a 2.5-hour movie before my bladder exploded.

Action: 5/10: Spectre contained some of the dullest action scenes in a Bond movie.

The car chase in Rome was somnolent.

The airplane/car chase was ridiculous. First, the idea was wonky. Second, the opponents were too far apart to make the action resonate.

You know what would have been cool? How about Bond hops on a snowmobile? Then he is zipping in and out of the convoy as they all rush down the mountain, shooting at people, people shooting at him, etc.

And that boat/helicopter chase at the end…again, dull, lifeless and with the opponents worlds apart. Such impotent action scenes are inexcusable in a Bond movie.

X-factor (8/10): I will give this a higher mark for making Blofeld Bond’s stepbrother. It is silly, but I guess it is a legitimate X-factor.

In general, I don’t like giving famous movie villains emotion-based backstories. Understanding villains like Blofeld, Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch take away from their threat. Make them a serious menace that we want to see defeated and leave it at that.

Villains can be that simple AND more at the same time. Take Hans Gruber for example. Would he have been better if we learned that he was doing it all to pay for an operation for his sick wife?

Overall, I am comfortable making the case that Spectre is possibly the worst Bond ever. I find things to love about every James Bond film, warts and all, but seeing Spectre twice was a chore. Even the lower-tier Bonds manage some fun at least, but Spectre is a dour, slow and scattered affair.

For comparison sake, subjectively my top five Bond films are Casino Royale, Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me. Objectively, I put Goldfinger at number one, though. Guiltiest Pleasure Bond: A View To A Kill (watching the Golden Gate Bridge finale always gives me vertigo).

Conclusion: Spectre may achieve average as a general film, but as a Bond film, it doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of making the grade.