how many times can you re-invent Bond and get away with it?

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2013)

READ THIS AFTER YOU HAVE WATCHED THE FILM TO COMPARE OPINIONS
As a huge James Bond fan, this is what I think ...
In a nutshell.
The first two halves/acts are great (and are definitely James Bond) The intro has a very exciting spy feel, Bonds resurrection and the bad guy being such a good actor (and hitting on Bond - loved that) all work excellently.
My first small criticism is what was the point of the Bond girl. He shags her and then she dies. He could have at least saved her life.
Then everything is fine and tense again. In the cell like Hannibal Lector. Liked that too.
Bad guy escapes and there is more tense action - all good all good.
Second small criticism is the tube train crash. Over the top - that's fine, but why is there no one in the train. I hate that! It's like The A-Team. No one dies :p Then there is a tense shoot out in the court (which is also good) I like the poetry. I liked the themes of old and new running through it ... all so good.
BUT WAIT ...
now I'm starting to get confused.
UP TO THIS POINT WE HAVE A FANTASTIC BOND FILM !!!! ...
But then a couple of things happened:
First - we find out that the master plan of the bad guy was to infiltrate MI6 so that he could locate M and set up a scenario so that he could walk into a court and shoot her. Hmm. That was his masterplan? Bond has broken into M's house twice now. Why didn't the bad guy just break into her house and kill her? OK. Maybe he wanted to punish MI6 and kill M publicly, but still, his masterplan was a bit rubbish. And in the end he just goes to the countryside to kill her in the middle of nowhere anyway.
Second - the third act ... = the big question mark. Do I like it or not? It's not Bond. You are right! Bond takes Sean Connery's car and drives M back home to Scotland for some MacGyver action. Random old Scottish bloke still hanging around and big shoot out. It was OK, but just OK. Not much spy stuff, not very Bond at all, and I just didn't feel the sadness when M died. I was a little surprised ..
(as a side note, I also know the history of M's relationship to Bond. In The World is Not Enough. She trusts him. In Die Another Day she doesn't give a crap about him. Then Casino Royale and the re-boot. She doesn't trust him. Quantum of Solace .. doesn't mind if he gets killed but starting to trust him. In Skyfall they are best mates!)
This would have worked better with a James Bond adventure between Quantum and Skyfall to establish this relationship. And that's the problem I had. I want a proper Bond adventure! We all want a proper Bond adventure! Stop reinventing yourself in every film!!
Let me explain ..... the final scene. Now I did like the idea of killing M, introducing Q and gadgets, bringing back Moneypenny and finishing the film with modern Bond in the situation of the original old Bond. I thought that was a really nice idea and it worked well.
BUT although I like it, I think that the Daniel Craig Bond's have been a bit lost ...
Casino Royale - FANTASTIC (one of the best action films ever along with Dark Knight). At the end, we have our new James Bond ready for Bond adventures.
Quantum of Solace - oh no wait. This is part two of Casino Royale. Bond is not Bond yet. First he needs to find his zen and then he is Bond. Forgive this odd Casino Royale add-on. At the end - Bond is ready. Yeh!
Skyfall - Bond is Bond look! Yipeee. Oh no wait. He was Bond for the intro ... but now he has apparently been Bond too long and he's done in. When did that happen? It seems he needs to learn some more and go through some more ... and now at the end of this film he is ready to be Bond.
Basically, I liked Skyfall a lot but what was missing was some normal Bond adventures between Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace story arch and this one. If they could have squeezed at least one James Bond adventure in between then Skyfall would have made more sense and worked better for me.
I don't need to see Bond becoming Bond in every film! He was already Bond before Daniel Craig came along! So now I am ready for Daniel Craig to be Bond.
In Skyfall Bond was all knackered and out of shape and lost his will to be a spy which was all good, but he hasn't done anything yet! We are just supposed to assume that in between Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace and Skyfall he has been doing lots of Bond stuff so that M and he have had time to develop a very close relationship.
Again, all good ideas but we wanted to see some of that first! Anyway, the ending is good and I hope now that they just give us some straight forward Bond adventures with clever story lines instead of trying to develop the new Bond every time.
That's what I think :-)