Some (But Not All) Questions I’d Like Answered After Viewing ‘SPECTRE’

This article is comprised of more questions than answers, but some of those questions contain spoilers.

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In Mexico, Bond changes from his spooky skeleton suit into his non-skeleton suit in about three seconds, the suggestion being, I suppose, that Bond was wearing a tear-away spooky skeleton suit. This does not feel like something that can be purchased off the rack. Given that this was a rogue mission, he didn’t get the tear away spooky skeleton suit from MI6, which suggests that he made it himself. So I guess my question is: why would Bond take the time to make a tear-away spooky skeleton suit that only had the purpose of briefly confusing a lady who he would never see again?

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Follow up question: Cursory internet research suggests that the easiest way to make a tear-away suit (spooky skeleton or otherwise) is to use velcro. So when he took it off, did he make the sexy noise of someone opening a Rip Curl wallet?

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This whole thing started when Dame Judi Dench left him a message that said, ‘Find Marco Sciarra, kill him and go to his funeral’. This seems risky. Is Marco Sciarra such an uncommon name? And if not, how many innocent Marco Sciarras had Bond thrown off hovercrafts and in front of vans before he found the right one?

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On that, what did Dame Judi Dench want Bond to do at the funeral? Was her plan literally just for Bond to find the widow, bang her and hope she tells him about a secret meeting that is happening that night? This is a gross and dumb plan, Dame Judi Dench.

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Why is Q so cryptic about giving Bond an explosive watch? He just says ‘the alarm is quite loud if you understand what I mean’. What if Bond didn’t? If you’re going to give someone a bomb that they are going to strap to their arm, you should be very specific about what it is and how it works.

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There seem to be a lot of people at the secret SPECTRE meeting. Like, more than would be manageable for a group that had managed to avoid the detection of MI6 until now. They can’t all be Le Chiffre, so what could the roles of all these people possibly be? Is Jenny from accounts at this secret meeting? If that’s the case, this seems like an incredibly wasteful use of SPECTRE funds, as Jenny from accounts would well know.

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It feels unfair that they just let Dave Bautista gouge that guy’s eyes out. If ‘ability to avoid eye-gouging from eye-gouging man’ is a KPI for SPECTRE, it seems like most people in that room would lose their jobs.

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Bond finds Mr White, who is being slowly poisoned for leaving SPECTRE, hiding out in Austria. Why did SPECTRE decide to kill him slowly? They were happy to immediately bump off the widow of someone who left the organisation by dying; why let a guy who actually quit your secret organisation hang around for so long?

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What the fuck kind of sick rehab clinic puts a fake bar in the middle of the building?

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Q finds digital information about SPECTRE members in Sciarra’s SPECTRE ring. Why does SPECTRE give this information to every member to wear on their finger? Given (as discussed) how many members there seem to be in SPECTRE, isn’t this a massive risk? What if Jenny from accounts takes it off to go swimming and it gets sucked into a pool filter (for example)

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Bond had to punch down a wall to get into Madeleine’s parents secret SPECTRE and family photo room at L’Americain. Is that the only way in? It does seem like the only way in. Did Madeleine’s parents have to knock out a wall every time they wanted to do SPECTRE stuff or look at a picture of Madeleine?

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Did they re-plaster it themselves each time? Or did they get a contractor to do this? Presumably they would either have to get a special SPECTRE carpenter in, or they’d have to get a regular one and then kill them afterwards. Once again, this seems like a waste of SPECTRE resources.

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Were there any repercussions for Bond after he ruined a train? None of the train staff know who Bond is, or who Dave Bautista is. From their perspective, an overdressed man ruined their nice train and then had sex in it.

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How long was Blofeld waiting in the dark in his meteorite room? Was he just standing there waiting for Bond, hoping he’d say something rude about his meteorite so he could embarrass them about it later?

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Also, why was Bond so unimpressed by the meteorite? Seems like a pretty cool meteorite, in any case much cooler than Bond’s meteorite (Bond does not have a meteorite).

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Why does Blofeld have a torture/memory-erasing machine that he clearly doesn’t know how to operate?

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Also, why does Blofeld want to erase Bond’s memory? Isn’t his whole thing making Bond sad? Erasing his memory of all the mean things you’ve done to him won’t make him sad.

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This is a question that can be asked of basically anyone in the film, but what motivates Blofeld to do anything he does? Because it really does seem like he is blowing up a lot of the world just because his father took James Bond skiing.

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Back in the old MI6 building, Bond finds big photographs of himself and people significant to him plastered all over the walls. When did Blofeld have time to do this? Did he have to run to the nearest Kinkos with a USB? This, once again, seems like a pretty bad use of SPECTRE time/money.

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Given all of the above, why did I still enjoy this movie so much?

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SPECTRE is in cinemas now. For a proper review of it, head here.

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Ben Jenkins is a Sydney-based writer. He tweets from @bencjenkins