Bond is back in ‘Spectre,’ but do we care?

Spectre has Daniel Craig’s James Bond still threatened with extinction. The government continues the push to shut down MI6.

Ignoring the threat, Bond goes after a bad guy, whom Judi Dench’s now dead M, via a video, told him to kill.

He turns out to be Christoph Waltz’s Oberhauser, and he’s behind a push to control all of the spy intelligence communication in the world.

A villain in charge of something like that is no surprise in a movie full of no surprises.

There is a plus: Craig is the best Bond since Sean Connery, and director Sam Mendes and his experienced writers push their 2:28 film at a breakneck speed. It is, however — like every Bond film since Goldfinger — overly complex and contrived.

What’s disappointing and missing since Telly Savalas did Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, is a fun villain. Waltz has won two Oscars and two Golden Globes for his excellence in villainy. He has skills and I was hoping for a performance equal to Bond’s best ever villain, Gert Frobe’s Goldfinger. It doesn’t happen.

Heavy sigh.

Spectre ends saying Bond will be back. Oh, I was so worried this multibillion dollar making franchise wasn’t going to bore us one more time. In case you misunderstand, the last sentence is delivered dripping with sarcasm.

Spectre continues the theme that the British government finds the 00 agents and MI6 are no longer necessary, and sometimes their actions — like those of Bond in Mexico that opens the movie — are embarrassing to the government.

These days, and after 24 movies, and with 21 of them looking like each other, it’s hard to not agree.

Craig is supported by the lovely but uninteresting Lea Seydoux as the latest Bond babe; Ralph Fiennes takes over as M, Ben Whishaw gives Spectre nice comic relief.

Oberhauser’s version of Odd Job (he’s from Goldfinger if you don’t remember) is former WWE superstar and Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista who has a blast chasing Bond about the globe.

Too bad the rest of the cast doesn’t have the fun Whishaw and Bautista have. The series has lost the tongue-in-cheekwriting and scenes that made Bond fun in the 1960s and early 1970s.

That leads me back to where this review started. Ending the series is a great idea. James Bond and the whole movie concept began wrapped around the Cold War between Russia and the Iron Curtain and the West, including Britain and the U.S. Packed with a hero who used his brains and marvelous gadgets, it worked beautifully. But after 24 movies, Bond no longer relies on either and has become boring.

Even worse, though he’s the original secret agent hero, Bond movies now look pretty much like the worn Mission: Impossible movies and the Bourne films. It’s all formula, and it’s as predicable as the actions of the villains who threaten the world in each movie.

Bond — these days — while still action-packed and fun, has become an old hat, and it’s hard not to disagree with British government officials who want to shut down the program.

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Bond is back in ‘Spectre,’ but do we care?."