Despite the fact that Spectre - the 24th big screen James Bond adventure – isn’t coming out until the last few weeks of the year, we’ve already gotten to see a surprising amount from the movie. We’ve not only seen two behind-the-scenes featurettes, but the blockbuster has even debuted its first teaser trailer already. This may seem like a lot so early in the game, but apparently the production is very excited to show off footage from the movie – which is why we got a very special preview of the movie tonight at CinemaCon.
Sony Pictures held their big presentation at the aforementioned theaters owners convention tonight in Las Vegas, and while the company showed off footage from almost their entire upcoming slate, they saved a brand new Spectre clip for the very end as a cherry on top. Playing out a full scene from early in the movie, the footage featured two of the film’s key characters and gave us some interesting information about the plot.
The extended clip began with James Bond (Daniel Craig) – out of his suit jacket but still wearing a shoulder holster – standing in his dimly lit apartment and staring out the window. A ringing sound starts and 007 makes his way over to the door, where he finds Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) standing in the hallway with a box. She calls the mysterious parcel "your delivery," hands it over to Bond, and follows him into his apartment. Though she says that she can’t stay long, it quickly becomes clear that she’s not only there to hand over a package.
Moneypenny’s voice gets much more dramatic as she asks what is going on with Bond, and while he plays dumb, she explains that everyone at MI6 is talking about what went down in Mexico (though it’s never explicitly explained exactly what happened). Rather than believing that he’s finished as a spy, however, she instead tells him that she thinks he’s just getting started, and that he has a secret that he has been keeping from everyone – including those closest to him. It’s at this point that Bond turns on a television and begins playing a video message – and while I won’t give away who is featured on the tape due to potential spoilers, I will say that it gives Bond explicit orders to perform an assassination.
The super spy then reveals that he has been tracking his target for a while, but has found his movements limited by the clandestine organization of which he is a part. He then asks Moneypenny to operate as a mole for him within MI6, specifically to do a bit of research about a name that he heard in Mexico: The Pale King. She questions why Bond would actually trust her with this job, to which 007 has a one word response: "Instinct."
It wasn’t exactly the most action-packed footage that I’ve seen thus far at CinemaCon – with that honor really belonging to Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation - but the clip from Spectre most certainly possessed the atmosphere of a James Bond movie, and at the same time presented some interesting information about the film’s plot that made me very curious without really giving too much away. Surely we will continue to learn a lot more about the blockbuster as the months pass and we see more marketing materials from the feature, but at this point November 6th can’t come soon enough.
