Spoilers for the plot of Spectre below.
As I noted in my review of Spectre, some are taking the film’s plot—which revolves around a genius master criminal, who heads an international empire in charge of everything from importing fake HIV drugs into Africa to smuggling prostitutes around the world, attempting to initiate a global surveillance program with the help of the world’s nine biggest countries—as a "pro-Snowden" tract. Think of it like Winter Soldier, but with more Brits.
If that was the intent of the filmmakers, however, they have failed quite badly. Spectre’s biggest problem is that the central scheme perpetrated by the devious Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) never really makes much sense.
To recap: Bond (Daniel Craig) is on the trail of a secret international criminal ring that M (Judi Dench) was trying to crack before her untimely demise in Skyfall. While he’s off causing havoc in Mexico and Rome and Austria and Tangiers, the new head of British intel (Andrew Scott) is hard at work decommissioning the Double O program. He envisions a world in which every bit of data—every phone call, every email, every text, every gchat—is captured, analyzed for threats, and stored away for later use. As he puts it, there’s nothing James Bond can do that a drone strike can’t.
There’s a nugget of an interesting idea here, one revolving around the tension between data collection and privacy, collateral damage and safety at home, past and present and future. Frankly, it’s one I’m not entirely unsympathetic to: there are things a Bond can do that a drone can’t. Our current predilection for blowing up terrorists rather than capturing and interrogating and warehousing them has its drawbacks.
Unfortunately, director Sam Mendes and Spectre’s four (credited) screenwriters don’t seem to quite understand how to work this tension into the plot of the film in an organic, interesting way. Instead we’re presented with a series of people who are committing terrorist attacks in order to install a new surveillance regime because … well, because they’re evil, basically, and because surveillance is itself evil. There’s some vague notion that gaining access to the streams of data will aid Blofeld's organization in its evil businesses, though it’s never really made clear how, or why. It’s just kind of assumed.
However, it seems to me that the filmmakers could’ve very easily tied together Blofeld’s various motivations and given the triumph (and evil) of the surveillance state a personal, as well as ideological, stake.
Blofeld’s goal throughout the film—indeed, throughout all four of Craig's entries—has been to destroy James Bond, who we learn lived with the madman and his father after Bond’s parents were killed. Blofeld’s dad came to care for Bond, love him more than his own son, even. So the son killed the father, and ever since he has been tormenting Bond. "It was me, James, the author of all your pain," Blofeld gleefully hisses. Every time Bond took down one of his pawns like Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) or Silva (Javier Bardem), Blofeld took a queen* from the board: Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and M were made to suffer because Blofeld’s daddy didn’t love him.
So why not give the rise of the surveillance state a similarly personal quality? Why not have Blofeld’s devious plan be about stripping his nemesis James of his entire reason for being? Bond has no one who loves him and he has lost everyone close to him. The only thing left to take from him is his license to kill. That would be thing to break Bond. Spectre is not a particularly subtle movie and Waltz is not a particularly subtle actor: it would’ve made for a delightful Evil Villain Speech. "Oh, sure, James: Building the surveillance state is good business. But it’s all quite personal, too. You are nothing now. I have taken it all." (Or, you know, something along those lines. I’m not William Goldman.)
Then, after the requisite torture—I mean, what's a Bond villain without some pointless torture—Blofeld should have ... let James go. (After using his Evil Internet Skillz to wipe out his bank accounts and have all his vehicles repossessed and evict him from his posh apartment, naturally.) "Don't worry James, I'll be watching you," he could say, nodding to one of the numerous screens in his evil lair, one designated "Bond." "I'll be watching you. And seeing who you talk to. I assure you, their fate will be far more cruel than yours if you try to enlist their aid in regaining your status or trying to bring me down." Having succumbed to the classic flaw of hubris, Blofeld will, of course, be bested in the end—but by a Bond who uses classic spycraft to defeat the surveillance state, proving to the audience once and for all that a secret agent is better than a secret network. Throw in a scene in which Q (Ben Whishaw) hacks Blofeld's system to prove that C and Blofeld have been working together this whole time—the watchmen being watched by their own system, mon dieu—and you've got a perfect ending.
In the end, Spectre's critique of the surveillance state fails because it is just kind of taken for granted that increased surveillance is an evil unto itself. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but if you don’t share this prior the plot kind of falls apart. The stakes are impersonal and ideological. We are given no real reason to care.
*Yes, I know, there's only one queen on a chessboard. Imagine he pulled off a pawn conversion sometime between the end of Casino Royale and the end of Skyfall, okay?