Am I the only one already tired by the notion of yet another slog trying to piece together the dark, shadowy organisation of SPECTRE/Quantum? At this point I just want Bond to be handed a straight-up mission from M, a plot that doesn't clumsily and retroactively subvert the plots from the previous Craig films. It's not so much that building upon the established cannon is an inherently misjudged idea, it's just that it was handled so poorly and almost without care. The way the writers needlessly tied Blofeld to Silva, the way Blofeld had seemingly spent his entire life crafting a dastardly plan to orchestrate the death of whichever woman (Vesper) Bond happened to fall in love with.

I feel like if the producers are set on continuing down this path, then the lore will become so ridiculously byzantine in its silliness, suspension of disbelief won't even be on the cards. Moore era Bond worked because it was knowingly absurd; a wink and a nudge, or the raise of Roger's eyebrow, those films knew exactly what they were, and that was pure escapism. However, since Casino Royale graced our screens back in 2006, Bond began taking itself seriously again; a great idea considering it was such an intelligently crafted thriller and deserving of its accolades. The same cannot be said of Spectre, a movie which expects its audience to treat it with the same believability, artistic value and emotional weight of Casino Royale, when it comes across as insulting in its melodrama and Austin Powers inspired plot twist. It especially pissed me off namedropping Vesper, a relationship and character that was an utterly credible love interest of Bond, a character that we were led to believe had such a giant impact on who Bond becomes that she deserved her very own revenge-driven sequel. Fast forward to Spectre and here we have Madeleine Swann, a character so wooden and devoid of personality, you want to hide in your cringe cave when she utters those unspeakable three little words, only to come out when Bond 25 gets it's darn act together!