Casino Royale 2006 Review

[DixieKong]

Before I begin, I'll say that I totally respect your opinion in regards to Daniel Craig and this new direction, Amp. And I'll say again that I don't mean any offence towards you and other Craig fans here, with my arguments against this reboot.

After the Die Another Day debacle, it was said that the classic Bond formula was dated and no longer suitable for modern times. Well, I say that it's not the classic formula that was the problem, it was the quality of the films. After GoldenEye, the quality of the films slowly went downhill until it hit rock bottom with Die Another Day. The producers just couldn't get their act together and kept tinkering with Brosnan's Bond character, making poor decisions with some of the casting as well as the choice of directors. And even when they had good ideas, they were usually executed poorly. So in the end, they simply gave up and threw away 40 years of cinematic history in favour of a new direction.

Daniel Craig is quite different in appearance form the previous Bond actors. It almost seems that the producers are embarrassed of the classic Bond image. Or perhaps they are afraid of certain competitors, and therefore try to give James Bond a more hardcore image. Well, Roger Moore had competition from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Stallone/Schwarzenegger action films, and even Sean Connery, and he continued to play Bond as the charismatic superspy, and successfully too. James Bond is awesome, and there is no reason to be embarrassed or afraid. Besides, there's already enough of these stereotypical macho man heroes in movies, anyway.

Another thing I find odd is how aggressively this new direction is marketed. I'm constantly hearing how Craig is the best Bond since Sean Connery, and that he closely represents the Bond character of the Fleming novels. Timothy Dalton was arguably closer to the Bond of the novels than Daniel Craig, and although he did receive some critical praise, he certainly didn't get this type of marketing backup from the studio. I think all this marketing is a way to convince people that this new direction is more superior than the old ones. Why? Well, because I think it's arguably easier to make films involving Bond's backstory, love interest, personal problems and so on, while mimicking other films (Bourne/Batman), than it is to make the classic style James Bond films.

And fine, if they really want to make a more down to earth spy thriller, then fine. But there are far better ways of going about it without destroying the classic formula altogether. Some examples are: Dr. No, From Russia With Love, For Your Eyes Only, and The Living Daylights.

There are other arguments I can still make, but overall I think that this reboot really wasn't the right thing to do. The complaints about Die Another Day weren't because of the classic Bond formula, the James Bond character, or even Pierce Brosnan, it was the overall quality of the film. It's just like during the GameCube era when people were saying Nintendo is finished and nobody is interested in playing their games anymore. The next generation proved that this wasn't the case. People were still interested in Nintendo games, they just didn't want to play those bizarre experiments on the GameCube. All the Brosnan Bond films made lots of money, so it does show that people were still interested in classic Bond, but in the end they were getting tired of the poor quality.