Sadly, I probably only liked this because I lowered my expectations after coming across so many mixed reactions to it, and I lowered them enough where the film still managed to exceed them. It was nice seeing some of the old staples back: the opening down-the-barrel shot, ridiculous stunt work, an evil lair, gadgets (though still limited admittedly), evil organization with plans of world domination, pretty badass henchman (Bautista was visually one of the more intimidating looking henchmen in recent memory), and so on. I also must admit that, as a Bond fan, I sported a big grin when
the white cat makes its first appearance.
The story was certainly a mess. I was following along with it but the last act was all over the place, and all of the "twists" weren't really at all surprising. How they tried to tie the previous Bond films together, and also how they tried to combine Quantum and Spectre, didn't entirely work, either. For the latter I'm sure it's related to the legal issues with McClory's estate at the time (they couldn't use the Spectre name so they called the organization Quantum) but I'm sure there was a less convoluted way to tie everything together.
The opening was really impressive and one of the more elaborately shot sequences in the franchise. I agree with others that visually the film is striking, but despite the fact that the opening is pretty cool (and it may be one of my favourite Bond openings) visually nothing in this reaches the level of the fight scene in the Hong Kong high rise in
Skyfall.
Coming out I liked what I saw and enjoyed it, but there is one aspect that probably came pretty close to ruining it for me, and it's such a small part of the film:
Blofeld has daddy issues!? Talk about turning one of the coolest supervillans in film history into one of the biggest cry-babies in film history.