Are the two organizations connected?
It’s fairly obvious when watching Quantum of Solace that the filmmakers desperately wanted the Quantum organization to be the new SPECTRE. Unfortunately, at the time they weren’t able to use the classic Bond syndicate due to a rights despite that has gone back decades. As of 2013, however, the IP of SPECTRE and Blofeld are not back in the hands of the current Bond producers.
So, of course, they made a movie about them. A new trailer was released today, for which we have done a rather detailed analysis.
What about Quantum?
Well, Quantum of Solace is kind of the black sheep of the Craig films. Unfortunately, the 2007 – 2008 writer’s strike forced the producers to shoot the movie off a first draft, leading to the film not having the best script. It received lukewarm critical response and generally unfavorable responses from moviegoers. So, plans to continue the Quantum storyline were dropped. In fact, there was an alternate ending for Quantum of Solace they never used that was going to set up another sequel involving more Quantum, but they decided not to use it. And thus Skyfall became a fairly stand-alone story.
Or so we thought.
How does Quantum fit into SPECTRE?
Well, we don’t know for certain, but there are a fair amount of clues in both trailers presented thus far. First and foremost, Mr. White from the first two Craig films is back… though he doesn’t seem to be a villain this time. He does, however, seem to have a fair amount of knowledge regarding another organization: SPECTRE.
A high ranking member of SPECTRE, Christoph Waltz’s Franz Oberhauser also seems to know a great deal about Bond and his past. The trailers have implied several things, such as Oberhauser being a figure from Bond’s childhood and him having a hand in all the misfortunes Bond has suffered… including those from the first three films of the Craig era.
There are a few conclusions we may be able to draw. The first is that SPECTRE is an offshoot of Quantum that rose from the ashes of that organization’s destruction. The second conclusion is that Quantum was never really that big of a deal, instead being a small branch of the greater SPECTRE infrastructure.
The third possibility is that SPECTRE was a competitor of Quantum, and with the latter syndicate out of the way SPECTRE flourished into something beastly. There’s a lot of potential for great drama here, especially with Bond facing guilt and consequences for getting his revenge (and doing what he thought was the right thing) and handing the world to SPECTRE on a silver plate in the process.
If it is option two or three, we wouldn’t discount Oberhauser to make a joke at Quantum’s expense. Probably something about how SPECTRE would never bother with something as small time as controlling the water supply of Bolivia.
