As we’re big Bond fans here at CultBox, here’s 10 things we’d love to see when SPECTRE is released on 6 November 2015…

 

Some actual spying

Technically James Bond isn’t a spy: he’s a government assassin. He’s sent to solve a situation, usually by killing the person or persons responsible for that situation, and then making a quip over their warm corpse. Nothing wrong with that; two hours of watching him sit at his desk and do paperwork would not a good film make.

But something a little more Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy wouldn’t be unwelcome. And with the synopsis telling us that M ‘will be battling political forces to keep the secret service alive’, we might just get some of that.

 

More of Bond’s past

For 50 years and 22 movies we never ventured near James Bond’s past. We knew his parents were dead, but little else. You could argue that’s because we didn’t need to know, but as the franchise ages it’s important to keep the character interesting.

One of the reasons Skyfall succeeded was because it folded Bond’s past into the plot, adding some man to the myth and giving us the kind of insight into the character that the books often had but the movies missed.

From the synopsis for SPECTRE it looks like something similar will be done again, and that can only be a good thing.

 

Blofeld

Despite the Internet whispers, there is no confirmation that Blofeld will feature in SPECTRE, and director Sam Mendes and the cast are keeping tight-lipped. Of course, as its Octopus logo reminds us, the terrorist organisation is a many-tentacled being, and it’s not unlikely that 007 could tangle with an arm of it without ever meeting Number 1, aka Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

It’s possible Christoph Waltz’s character Oberhauser is secretly Blofeld. It’s possible Monica Bellucci’s Lucia Sciarra is Blofeld. It’s possible that, in homage to Thunderball, Blofeld may be little more than a glimpsed cameo by an actor who hasn’t been announced.

Undoubtedly, whoever it is, there’ll be updating and tweaking to the character. But we’d be lying if we said that we didn’t want to see a chair swivel round to reveal Christoph Waltz sitting there, ideally with a cat on his lap.

 

Return of the cat

Yes, a cat.

Like Bond without a Martini, you can’t have Blofeld without his moggy, even if it is now something of a pop-culture gag. No cats made an appearance at the SPECTRE press conference. Perhaps they’re still auditioning.

 

A global threat

SPECTRE defined a very specific age in the Bond franchise. It was the gloved hand that could upset the anxious balance of power during the Cold War. With nukes primed, in the Connery years SPECTRE really felt like it had the world at its mercy in a way no other Bond villain has quite achieved.

Thunderball and You Only Live Twice still feel like movies about saving the world, rather than a small patch of it (arguably the last time a Bond film had global stakes was 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies).

Now geopolitics are even more unstable, so it would be great to see SPECTRE causing/capitalising on the global chaos, and once again holding the planet to ransom as they did way back when it was all rockets and volcano bases.

Craig’s Bond has been rather small scale – he’s saved himself, the Bolivian water supply, and, err, himself again (but not his house or his boss) – so with SPECTRE on the scene there’s the chance to really challenge 007. Make him earn that victory Martini.

 

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Are you looking forward to SPECTRE? Let us know below…