Daniel Craig's first real Bond adventure! - but is it his last?

Rating: 9/10 (28 October 2015)

Sean Connery was the original cinematic Bond of the 60s - suave, dangerous, charming, sexy, sexist and sarcastic, Roger Moore brought us the tongue-in-cheek laugh-out-loud Bond, and George Lazenby tied those two together with an epic cheeky yet emotional and sad portrayal of Bond. In the 80s, Timothy Dalton's serious and more ruthless Bond was the most literary accurate, and then came Pierce Brosnan in the 90s with a version of Bond that managed to incorporate aspects of all of these.
But in 2002, they ruined Bond. Die Another Day was a soul- destroyingly ridiculous affair with bad CGI instead of stunts, an invisible car that took Bond purely into fantasy, and an inexplicable script in which everyone was suddenly hurtling pitiful sarcastic remarks at each other for no apparent reason.
I felt the way other adults feel when they cry hopelessly because their favourite football team just lost the championship - devastated.
So I decided to finally read the books and concluded that they had gone so far on a tangent that what they needed to do to save Bond from this mess was to remake all the films, but this time in the correct order and faithful to the books.
Then to my utter surprise, they acquired the rights to the first book, Casino Royale, and decided to do a reboot. Wow. My enthusiasm returned!
Casino Royale turned out to be one of the best spy thrillers ever made.
It incorporated everything that makes a 007 film and respectfully turned it on its head. The gadget is a mobile; the big enemy base is a big plane; Bond is not interested in the women or the vodka martini. The second half of the film is the book. He falls in love and loses the girl through betrayal, shaping Bond into the 007 we know - a killing machine with a fragile heart.
When Casino Royale finishes, James Bond is ready for his first adventure as the new 007 - or so we think.
Because it turns out in Quantum of Solace that the new Bond first needs more self-discovery to become the Bond we know and love. The excellent political backstory of this film is sadly lost in this short, unnecessary Bond outing, with atrocious editing and virtually none of the elements that actually make a Bond film. How could they mess it up twice in the space of three films? Next came Skyfall.
Excellent marketing strategies made this next film the highest- grossing in Bond history, but was it really that amazing?
In Skyfall, M has developed into a mother figure and Bond has been the 007 super-spy for so long that he is feeling weathered. But when did that happen!?
We are once again left with another character development story setting up Bond. Only this time, our new Bond needs to become more of the old Bond again!
Don't get me wrong. Skyfall director, Sam Mendes, presented us with one of the most beautiful James Bond films ever made with gorgeous colours, set pieces, elegant action sequences, and a wonderful script with a wonderful villain played by Javier Bardem. But the motif throughout the film is that we need the new Bond without moving so far away from what made 007 so good in the past. The film finishes with our modern-day Bond reintroduced into the traditional Bond set up.
I came to Spectre with only one hope. Having not read any of the script leaks or controversy surrounding production (until after seeing the film), I just wanted a real Bond adventure!
And I am glad to say - Spectre delivers just that!
Spectre is the first film in which Craig carries on the torch of the previous Bonds once again. Just like Pierce, his Bond now incorporates the danger and charm of Sean, laugh-out-loud humour and light relief of Roger, care and compassion of George, seriousness of Timothy, but also remaining the likable modern-day maladjusted killing machine that we have come to know as Craig's Bond.
The film itself has all the traditional Bond elements. The gun barrel intro, the secret base, the gadgets, the car, the henchman, the girl he must protect (and not let die!), and for the longstanding Bond fans out there, the film takes us to wonderful moments in Bond history.
The plot in Spectre is no better than Silva's ridiculously convoluted plan in Skyfall to shoot M in public, but this is excusable to a certain extent in the Bond world because Bond villains are always completely insane.
Spectre is a wonderful James Bond film. They did something new and incredible with Casino Royale, but they couldn't sustain it, so instead they gave us old Bond in a new world.
My only criticism is that Christoph Waltz is totally underused! There is no momentous speech as with Silva in Skyfall. All of Christoph Waltz's scenes are rushed, lacking and thin.
Hopefully, this will not matter though because Waltz could return ... or could he?
They may have shot themselves in the foot again in this film by ending it the way they did. The film creates closure. A happy end for Craig's Bond. But what now?
I came away loving this new Bond film! But with no feeling of conviction that they know now what they are doing with Bond today.
Is Craig done? Is his first real Bond adventure his last?
As a James Bond adventure harking back to pre-Casino Royale, this is one of the best in the series, and let's hope Daniel Craig decides to give us a few more!
For we know that 'Bond Will Return'. But in what way is no longer certain.