James Bond, quit playing games with my heart.
The eponymous super spy returns this November with Casino Royale
the 21st installment in the series that began with 1962's Dr. No. This will be the first film for new Bond Daniel Craig (Munich), but to faithful fans like myself, it seems poised to be yet another addition to a long line of disappointments.
A short preview of the film, which appeared on the Internet a couple weeks ago, gives the phrase teaser trailer a whole new meaning. It starts off very promising: In gritty black and white, there are some intense shots of Craig looking cool and tough, followed by some interesting dialogue from Craig and Judi Dench, who plays Bond's boss, M. Seeing this footage, I thought, Yes this is dark brooding
old school Sean Connery-style Bond. My mind filled with images of a Bond film without ridiculous action sequences and horrible cameos, like Madonna as a fencing instructor in Die Another Day.
All my hopes were dashed when, 40 seconds into the teaser, it turned to color and all of a sudden Craig's jumping on a giant crane, frolicking with women in bikinis and driving some sort of gigantic construction machine. Gone is the dark, mysterious Bond, replaced by anonymous, garden-variety, action-movie Bond.
I might be jumping the gun a little by passing judgement on a movie based solely on a short preview, but I feel like the teaser gives me a pretty good idea of where this movie is headed. The filmmakers involved with Casino Royale have squandered their opportunity to rejuvenate the franchise. All they've done is turn the aging Pierce Brosnan in for the younger, buffer Craig. And while Craig certainly purses his lips with authority in the teaser, he's going to have to shake and stir fans to make them forget Brosnan's great performance as Bond (even if the movies he was in weren't very good).
Granted, I will concede that the Bond franchise has been pretty silly, fluffy stuff for years now, and some will argue that it's been nothing but a cinematic trifle even from the beginning. But I think ' and I know I'm not alone here ' that the Bond movies were excellent when they first started out. Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball and You Only Live Twice
the first five Bond films (all starring Connery), are classics that more or less still stand up today. Love
especially, is not only a great Bond movie but also a solid movie in general.
But the Bond movies have been pretty corny for years, starting all the way at the end of the Connery era with the dreadful Diamonds Are Forever. Roger Moore's Bond, who started off promisingly enough, ended up in some of the absolute lamest installments in the franchise; I'm thinking of 1979's Moonraker in particular, which has a scene with space commandos engaged in a laser gun duel with the evil villain's henchmen.
So what does director Martin Campbell do when given the chance to reinvigorate the franchise to which he already gave a shot in the arm with 1995's GoldenEye (which introduced Brosnan)? He puts the whole show on generic action movie autopilot and, presumably, cashes a big paycheck.
So does this mean I'm skipping Casino Royale? Of course not. However, to show my disgust, I will go in the afternoon and thus pay a matinee price instead of a full evening admission. Take that!
17
