Spectre is as absurd as it is enjoyable, even given the high standard that everyone holds James Bond movies to. The cinematography goes to new heights, featuring bigger explosions and wilder stunts than ever before. The native marketing does too, where every scene plugs some alcohol, watch, car, exotic destination, or clothing. Further, there’s the more subliminal message that it’s plausible to do any of the things Bond does while intoxicated, motion-limited by tight (and expensive) clothes, in extreme weather, in old and unreliable cars, et cetera. The storyline also tries its hand at one-upmanship, attempting to weave together the disparate prior plots of Daniel Craig’s James Bond. In doing so, Spectre positions itself as the magnum opus of the era and maximally silly: that in the whole life of a psychopathic spy, in the background has been a would-be brother plotting to both make Bond suffer as much as possible and run a supranational surveillance program (all without thinking maybe you could just kill James Bond). Having said that, the plot is virtuous in that it makes a villain out of the globalist surveillance state. Spectre has all the right elements in all the right doses, but the genre needs to go deeper than the whole “James Bond is an outdated view on the world” self-referential plot. Rather than espionage and villains being outdated, it’s the campy and sexist antics of the 60s that are outdated. The James Bond franchise blew the potential of a dark, gritty reboot, analyzing the ethics of espionage and depicting a plausible version of Ian Flemings character. Maybe I’m being too harsh, because I enjoyed almost every minute of Spectre.