We went to see Casino Royale on the weekend, which was pretty awesome. Now, I’m an unrepentant Pierce Brosnan fan, mostly (actually, entirely) on the viewing of GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. Tomorrow Never Dies was a bit ‘meh’, and Die Another Day was fifty percent excellent, and fifty percent trash – although the trash was not Mr Brosnan’s fault, for the most part.
I’m not going to say that Daniel Craig was a better Bond than Brosnan, or Connery. He’s certainly a different Bond to Brosnan, although he treads on many of the same toes that Connery did, albeit in a darker fashion only made possible by the intervention of forty-ish years on Hollywood. Craig is definitely good, though. While Chris puts this down to the film makers wanting to go back to the original novels, I would suggest that the success of films such as The Bourne Identity have influenced Bond as much as Bond influenced them. Inversely, the lack of critical success of dross such as xXx (and it’s incredibly inferior sequel) have also influenced Bond’s new direction, ironically by copying Bond at its worst and showing MGM and Barbara Brocolli exactly what was wrong with their precious franchise.
Interestingly, Casino Royale shares a director with GoldenEye, which was till now the least ‘Hollywood Bond’ of the entire run, in my view.
Cinematical have put together a series of posts about Bond in general. A pick of the best:
Interview with all concerned in Casino Royal.
The opening shots.
The Bond opening credits.
The Bond movie trailers.
The complete Cinematical seven days of Bond.
