I have somehow managed to disagree with almost everything said so far.
First of all, box-office numbers have very little to do with how good a movie is. Can we really compare a Bond film's earnings to a Rush Hour sequel? (the success of which certainly says more about the average moviegoer than the film itself.)
Would anyone argue that Rush Hour 2 or that blasted penguin movie are better than Casino Royale? Will anyone remember these movies in a decade?
With regards to DAD - I'll wager that DVD (or future equivalent) sales of Casino Royale will net far more profits for EON than Die Another Day ever will. Much like A View to a Kill, DAD will only be purchased in collector's DVD box sets.
Furthermore, I feel all Bourne/Bond comparisons are fundamentally flawed. I find no common ground between the characters whatsoever, save for two characteristics:
1) they're both globe-trotters
2) they're both 'action heroes'.
Well, ok, three:
3) they have the same initials
Other than that, I see no resemblance between the characters, and I see no advantage in either franchise trying to emulate the other.
What's more, is that I'm apparently the only one who thinks the Bourne franchise is very overrated.
The first one was fresh, different, and exciting. The second and third Bourne movies were essentially remakes of the first, replete with variations on the same car chases and battles with anonymous assassins - only the car chases and assassins became less interesting with each installment. ("
Send in the asset!" Sheesh). The Main Bad Guy in each movie was an Old Evil White Bureaucrat With a Southern Accent that was a carbon copy of the Old Evil White Bureaucrat With a Southern Accent from the first film.
Furthermore, by the third film, Matt Damon became so emotionless that I could no longer sympathise with the character.
Resolution: what happens when Bourne battles his way back to the dungeons from whence he was spawned? What's the secret history that Bourne has been fighting to reveal, that endless assassins throw their lives away to protect?
We find.... another Old Evil White Bureaucrat With a Southern Accent.
Oh, and Bourne's name is really David.
I liked the mystery better.
I thought Casino Royale was fantastic, and that Daniel Craig is very much part of the reason why. And I was part of the anti-Craig brigade in the months before release, mostly because I had already made it up in my mind that Clive Owen's entire life was created for the singular purpose of bringing Ian Fleming's character to the screen.
Casino Royale has flaws - when bulldozers and Nambutu embassies are employed, it turns into a typical Brosnan video-game flick, briefly - but overall, it's the best effort to this day to bring the literary Bond to the screen. Daniel Craig drinks like Fleming's bond and curses like Fleming's bond. I can see Craig's bond sleeping with a Colt Police Positive with a sawn barrel under his pillow; I can see him waiting for a flight in an airport, tenderly massaging the bruised hand that killed a man hours earlier; I can see him saying rude or offensive things in order to make a boring dinner party more interesting (see Quantum of Solace); I can see him paddling lazily with a snorkel and speargun, stalking a stingray with intent to kill it "because it looked so damned evil").
I cannot see Fleming's Bond in any other actor that has portrayed him. There are snippets, here and there; when Brosnan drinks vodka alone in his hotel room, PPK on the drink tray; when Dalton peers through his sniper-scope in The Living Daylights (a scene straight out of the short story of the same name); When Lazenby keeps a harem of women entertained by hinting that they all might be the daughters of duchesses; when Moore.... er... eh... hmm... When Connery womanizes without the use of stupid innuendoes, substituting raw masculinity.
Here's where previous incarnations of Bond fall short of my literary hero:
1) Connery - A very prominent part of Bond's character was a large and always-present cynicism and self-loathing. (Remember and the end of the short story The Living Daylights when he, wearily, half-wished that he would lose his 00-number due to his decision to not carry out orders and kill the sniper?) Bond turned to cigarettes and alcohol as a form of self-treatment. I couldn't see Connery's Bond admitting to
any weaknesses, much less emotional ones. I can't picture him sitting in an airport with a bruised hand, speculating that the life of the thug Mexican drug enforcer he just killed with it was worth more than all of Mexico itself and everything in it. Fleming himself said: "I'm looking for Commander James Bond, not an overgrown stunt man." Every iteration of Bond was a rough 'n' tumble character, but none evoked such an utter lack of self-reflection.
2) Lazenby - well, we hardly knew ye. Liked his movie quite a bit and think he could've really come into the character. His primary shortcoming was the lack of a hard edge, a mean streak that Bond should employ - he could set his jaw square enough and make a mean face, but you never really believed he could look you in the eyes and shoot you in cold blood.
3) Moore - I know Fleming made some remark about how Roger Moore would make a good Bond, way back when Moore was The Saint, and he had his moments in his debut piece. I think Fleming would've eaten his words if he had lived to see the result. Moore looked the part sure enough, but the character bears zero resemblance to the hard-drinking recreational skin diver of the novels. With Moore came the era of the James Bond that has an encyclopaedic knowledge of absolutely everything, from Arabic languages to diamonds and Faberge eggs and the Latin names of deep-sea fish, which is patently ridiculous; when Bond began to drink nothing
but Vodka martinis (never a tradition in the novels, Bond seemed to drink whatever was handy, and strong); when the conquest of a woman meant uttering groaners while cocking an eyebrow, in Austin Powers fashion; when Bond became an expert jet pilot, an expert horseback rider, Tarzan, and space shuttle gunner
I also don't see Moore having more than a couple of Bloody Marys before having to lie down to keep the room from spinning.
4) Dalton: He was good, could've been great; he suffered from having to act out a script written with Moore in mind, and thus carries vestiges of Moore's know-it-all-ness (
It's a Stradivarius; they ALL have names)
But he drank; he even smoked; he demonstrated a capacity for blind, incapacitating anger (remember when Fleming's Bond strangled Goldfinger to death? Now remember Dalton sending a man - and two million dollars - to be eaten alive by a shark. Or sacrificing his safe cover on the ship to send a speargun into the heart of the guy who killed his friend). I would've liked to have seen him get another chance at the helm.
5) Brosnan: The melting pot of his predecessors, he shares their strengths and weaknesses; he's able to come across as wonderfully cold-blooded at times... but he still apparently knows every spoken language created by Man and is a crack fighter pilot (though he apparently forgot how to disarm nuclear warheads and had to rely on Denise Richards, whereas Roger Moore did this twice!), and he also borrows Moore's cheesy pickup artist skills. Where the Brosnan era suffers the most is in how it seems to have drawn its inspiration from video games; Bond strolls and runs through rooms full of endless supplies of faceless bad guys, with a gun in each hand, Die Hard style, killing everything in sight. Fourteen bad guys with AK-47's firing full auto from six paces away are no match for his Halo skills and a Walther P99. One expects to see points being racked up at the top of the screen every time one of Bond's 9mm bullets make a guy flip over in mid-air. This was made most ridiculous in his final outing, in which we find out that Bond happens to be an expert swordsman as well, and an entire action sequence consisted of two guys pushing buttons in their spy cars. They might as well have been playing against each other in the hit Super Nintendo multiplayer game, "Goldeneye." ;D
And, here we are, at the point of this long-winded post.
While Casino Royale suffered briefly from Brosnan Video Game Syndrome at the beginning of the movie, as a whole, I felt like I was watching the literary James Bond on the screen for the first time. When Daniel Craig stares Solange down with simple confidence until she agrees to drink with him, I felt that sweet spot somewhere between Sean Connery's rather obvious rape of Pussy Galore/Thunderball Nurse and Roger Moore's cheesy raised eyebrow sweet-talking. When he turns a tumbler of whiskey upside-down and drinks it in one gulp. When he tells a joke it's not to get a simple groan, but to work as an emotional deflection or defense ("you've got your armor back on"). When we see him relishing his dinner after the game (Bond always took great pleasure in his food as well as drink). The raw, animal hunger that surfaces in eyes at the card table across from his prey (Fleming quote: "Got you, you bastard!"). The vicious torture scene and recovery period. Being convinced that, despite his coldbloodedness, Bond can fall in love and will always be a sucker for a bird with a wing down.
I try to picture other actors in the role pulling it off as superbly, but I can't. Not even my original desired actor for the role, Clive Owen.
The movie has flaws. Purvis and Wade and Whoever are still using that tired old bit about Bond's ego being too big that they beat to death back in Goldeneye ("You're just trying to show off the size of your... your..." "Engine?" "Ego!"). Judi Dench, playing the same character, but different, has now given the ol' ego lecture to two different Bonds.
We still got to see Bond the bullet-dodger in the Embassy scene, but the final shootout in the collapsing building was creative and better done than the Brosnan flicks (which amounted to Bond seeing someone out of the corner of his eye, spinning, and shooting - then seeing someone on the other side, spinning, and shooting them with his other gun... yawn. If he hits 10,000 points he unlocks the bonus level...).
Most importantly, we saw weakness. We saw weakness in a character that's arguably tougher than any Bond we've seen before - harder, colder, and able to cry - human.
And to put a nail into the Jason Bourne comparisons - picture Matt Damon in the final scene of Casino Royale, standing over Mr. White, in three-piece suit and rifle in hand, as the horns begin to brass out that music we know so well -
- and tell me that wouldn't suck.