REBOOTS & SEQUELS

Bond is back.

I didn't get very far through the trailer before I just stopped watching. What's that all about? Helicopters were blowing up, Bond was in trouble with M for some reason, an evil villain was sneering over a chess set and a beautiful woman was being delicately unzipped. Is it weird that I just have no desire to watch it?

I thought teasers and trailers were supposed to have the opposite effect - to make you salivate for more as they flash images, story points and hints of a twist at you. Not the trailer for Spectre - I was just bored by it.

Bond will be on some personal mission that puts him at odds with the government - only, it won't really because at the end he'll solve it, kill the villain with a lucky gadget hack, make a quip and then jet off with the girl he just met. There'll be guns, explosions, probably shots of him swirling a glass of some liquid, maybe a tuxedo or two and definitely some shenanigans with a femme-fatale and then the credits will roll and we'll all sit there while the lights come up. There you go: there are my predictions. How do I know?

Because (bar the inclusion of parachutes, fancy cars and some jet skis or something) all of these films are the same - roughly the same plot, roughly the same villain (with some mad impractical idea to match his mad impractical hair), roughly the same hanky panky and roughly the same Bond, oh and almost always the same outcome. Britain saves the day. Hip hip! Down with terrorism. Hurray! Up with casual sexism, desensitized violence and 1970s-style misogyny! Um... Good work, 007, pride of the civil service. Now get on with your paperwork.

I probably ought to stop watching movie trailers. I think I'm just bored of movies in general. I've got no desire to see the same old stories play out time and time again with dull explosions and predictable plot lines.

Oh and while we're here, I see they're making a 'sequel' to Jurassic World. A what now? Yep, a 'sequel' to a film that is more of a sequel to the original movie than either of its two actual sequels. I read an article where Jurassic World was referred to as a 'Jurassic Park reboot' (presumably to justify giving it a sequel) - which it clearly isn't, is it? A reboot tells the same story over again; a sequel follows on from the last episode. Anyone with any idea of how words work should be able to see that!

Of course, that means that every single James Bond film (with the possible exception of the last three) is probably a reboot. And now, with Daniel Craig pointing a revolver with a steely-eyed stare for a fourth time, they're off again with this interminable old nonsense.

I should probably point out that it's raining outside and I'm stuck in the office on my lunch break, which is possibly the reason I'm ranting about Bond and the money-grabbing studio behind Jurassic World II. Oh, I can probably predict that one too - idiots try to rebuild the park because it's a money-spinner but just as the lead character points out that it's a bad idea, all the money-spinners suddenly realise it's a bad idea when they're all chased and eaten by the gigantic, impossible, prehistoric monsters they created and thought that they could control. Our heroes just escape with their lives, hoping that they won't ever have to go through anything like that again.

Just like me at the end of another boring Bond film... or sitting through a rainy lunch break at my desk, I suppose.