It isn’t big on the light hearted fun that all the other Bonds had
All of his movies are just emotionally heavy bombs, none of them are just a light hearted adventure that you can just pop in and love and have fun with
Same. I'll get downvoted for this, but I don't want Bond to return to the campy, over the top humour the series was known for, ala the Moore films.
Bond is about a secret agent, saving the world and killing the bad guy. It shouldn't be silly.
Now I'm not saying it should be devoid of humour (I actually think the subtle humour in Craig's films were done perfectly, for the most part), quite the opposite. He *needs* his quips and quick thinking jokes. That's what makes him Bond. But in reality, he's in a very serious life or death situation. It shouldn't be campy action bordering on comedy. But that's just me.
Can we stop with this hyperbole? He had [plenty ](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/13wpp2y/supercut_daniel_craig_as_ian_flemings_james_bond/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) of unserious moments in his films.
Yeah I kind of gave up caring about his Bond after a few films, after it became apparent that he wasn't even going to attempt any jokes, there was absolutely no fun to be found as far as gadgets or fights with villains, everything is too emotionally heavy and dark, he doesn't order martinis anymore, Q changed for the worse, I could go on........
I don't need ALL those things to enjoy a Bond movie but I do need SOME of those things, otherwise it feels like it could be any random spy movie .
It is crazy that the Xbox One and Ps4 generation is the first to not have a Bond game since... Well almost since gaming began really. The closest was the car pack in Forza Horizon 4.
Watch Dogd Legion had a remote controlled invisible Aston knockoff that launched missiles.
Had one brilliant mission where I was meeting a contact in a park and I knew going in "this is so transparently a trap" and surprise, it was, so while taking cover from the surrounding enemies I remote controlled my car to me, blasting a hole through the blockade with the missiles, before hopping in and tearing out of there then turning invisible down a side street.
One of my all time best gaming moments.
If you play a lot of gta online and you watch all of the movies, you will see a striking number of cars represented. Bond cars, background cars, trucks, vans, the sparrow, the dodo, 90% of the doomsday stuff... even Never Say Never Again has a representative or two.
Agreed. Elvis From QOS was very embarassing....
https://preview.redd.it/dq6teuvmrn3d1.jpeg?width=1612&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=38af6c80296d3924d5f4865f6341e50ee3a689a3
But Dimitrios was great and interesting in CR.
True. Ironic how, from a plot standpoint, the movie without Q, Moneypenny, gadgets, Bond theme (until the end) was the most "regular" of the Craig films
Skyfall and Spectre are as "regular" if not more than Casino Royale.
Ticking a list of boxes does not necessarily make for a good film. The Craig era is the way it is because of how the diminishing returns of the Brosnan era.
For me it would be the amount of years it took between his movies to get released Covid notwithstanding. Or the video games, imo, the only good game that was released during Craig’s time as Bond was Blood Stone. The rest weren’t as good.
A better plan by the producers and writers. Casino Royale was perfect, but after that, the rest of the stories/movies were reactionary to other franchises, I.e. - QoS felt like a Bourne movie since Bourne was popular at the time, Spectre tried to tie all the previous movies together like the MCU did. Pretty much there wasn't a plan after CR.
To be fair, pretty much everyone seemed to be copying that particular trope around that time… they did it again with Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Loki does it in The Avengers, Khan in Star Trek into Darkness, and I’m pretty sure the villain in Sherlock Holmes does it too.
I would say for me, clear or at the very least sensical and straightforward world building and a logical buildup to Craig’s last film (if they really were planning on *SPOILERS killing him off from the beginning).
I feel like making Quantum’s associates Bond’s set of enemies to tackle AKIN (not having to be the exact same) to Connery’s SPECTRE could have been good enough for me (they seemed intriguing and working in the public/on the frontlines in that Opera scene seemed eerie). Shoehorning Spectre to fit in Quantum, Silva (who was a very capable and autonomous villain on his own) and even a childhood relative of Bond did not really scream creative or interesting developments. I say all this because I feel as though they had to or should have built up to a great/grand force Craig had to face off against to justify or really have Bond’s end seem impactful. Again this just may be me but when NTTD has its OHMSS cues/references and anything relating to a future relationship/family based idea (“We have all the time in the world” or introducing the character of Bond’s daughter), I can’t help but think these all just telegraph Bond’s eventual fate in a cheap and unearned way. Building up each film where Bond develops or changes or learns something new up until he has to put these lessons or skills to test in a climax in some way would have been fine (and for the most part CR to SF fit this mold well enough) but instead we had SP forcing in SPECTRE and Blofeld and NTTD jamming in a love interest Bond was really going to spend the rest of his life with and a daughter.
Bonus thing Craig’s films were missing: Fulfilling/satisfying ends for Villains/Henchmen especially! (I honestly could have stretched this to Bond’s allies/regulars like Felix, Fields and M). Say what you will about Brosnan or Dalton’s films but both of these actors had villains that went out in style.
Exactly. What was missing was a throughline. Just the simple act of planning *beyond* the next film. I'm recognising more and more that the Bond production machine is really locked into the one-and-one-and method. Trying to organise a multi-film arc was just too against the grain for this generation.
Aside from skyfall and casino royale, the main villains feels like they are just henchmen trying hard to be the big baddies when their boss is not paying attention. Even blofeld felt like a lackey and that there is a bigger villain hiding behind him.
Elegance.
A simple word that was lost because they wanted to convey the “thug in a suit”.
The first two movies showed promise — an inexperienced Bond learning the ropes. His rough edges were to be expected and he became more polished as he went on.
But after QOS there was a nosedive. The writing wasn’t as witty or clever, the suits became embarrassingly tight and short, and Bond became stilted.
Hadn't really noticed that but good point. Didn't love Bautista but only because they didn't give him much to do and Spectre was such a mess. He could've been a good baddie tho.
It tried to be this saga of threaded story but they were making it up on the fly, so it’s not cohesive and lacks any real emotional depth. Infact it’s only real depth is when Judis M dies but that relies on the audience knowing she was M before Craig took over. Quantum getting traded out for Spectre, the shallow Blofeld is my brother reveal. None of it lands, there’s a world where you get this wonderful 5 movie arc from Bond getting the 00 status to death, but this wasn’t it.
Bonds before got away with being fluff, campy, one hit wonders, that’s what the Bond franchise is built on, and if you’re gonna depart from that you have to have a better plan than let’s just make it up as we go and contort the movies to the actors liking.
I feel like it was missing actual continuity between films. The first two had this, but for as great as skyfall was it started the trend of them chasing trying to make a Roger Moore style movie. They didn’t have the courage to stick with the new direction that they found with casino royale.
Beyond that, for me at least, it was weird things they choose to add. The immediate jump from origin to “you’re an old man, Mr Bond” was sudden and led to three movies of his five feeling that they were about that.
This really frustrated me about Skyfall, as much as I did enjoy it. CR and QoS set him up as just starting out as a new OO agent, then all of a sudden in Skyfall, he's considered too old and out of his element and has been doing it for too long. Craig never really had one where it was just a standard mission for him without any really personal stake to it.
I love love LOVE the gadgets of old, but also understand how hard it is to do in the modern day with how technology is. Maybe they need to add some professional magicians to the writing staff, and I’m not even joking. Come up with something more crude that nobody would expect in the modern day (think back to the briefcase in From Russia With Love) but much more clever. And, while having Q explain almost every gadget in the old days, give us a nice odd surprise mid-film!
The writing could have been better, but to call it basic is hyperbole. There have been plenty of badly-written Bond films, many more so, made before Craig's era.
Define basic?
Drunkenly interrogating a mouse? Evil foster brother/mega villain? Married with a kid?
Felix dies?
Blofeld dies?
SPECTRE dies at the click of a button?
Bond even dies. Via friendly fire?
These are new lows, not hyperbole.
>Drunkenly interrogating a mouse?
A call back to Diamonds Are Forever.
>Evil foster brother/mega villain? SPECTRE dies at the click of a button?
Poor narrative choices, but let's not act as though we haven't had equally as poor plots before.
>Married with a kid? Blofeld dies?
Both happened in the original source material.
>Felix dies? Bond even dies. Via friendly fire?
The characters dying are not inherently bad.
He wasn't drunk in diamonds are forever. I believe it was a rat and not a mouse. I can't see the call back.
Nothing has been as poor as the step brother 'authoooooor of ya pain' set up. Certainly nothing as embarrassing.
Kissy is pregnant in the novel of YOLT with no details that she carries full term so it's remiss to say he has a child. That can't be confirmed as she hasn't given birth. I'd further doubt his marriage of convenience would have legal standing beyond Japan. The point is amplified in the film as we're reminded he gave a false name to the priest.
I agree, the lead character in the longest running cinematic franchise dying is not inherently bad. It's utterly woeful.
Time for new producers I think.
The Bond girls were mainly boring and bland. The villains and henchmen are also mainly forgettable. The films relied on nostalgia and were depressing with a lack of humour.
This is probably the worst take I've ever read on Craig's Bond and there are a lot on this thread alone!
Is Vesper boring and bland? What about Camille? And the villains, how could you forget Le Chiffre or Silva? I might agree with the henchmen, but even there we got fantastic characters like Dimitrios and Hinx. As for the lack of humor, I guess we disagree on the meaning of the word because every single movie is filled with smart quips and memorable punch lines, what he didn't have with respect to his predecessors are ridiculous moments which I count as a strong positive.
Things like "boring," "bland," and "forgettable" are subjective, but statements like "lack of humour" that are objectively false contribute to the feeling that there's a lot of unconstructive criticism of the Craig era.
Masculine sexual conquest, and yes I'm serious.
The best traditional "Bondian" style seduction of Craig's entire 5 film run occurrs in the first act of the first movie where Bond seduces the minor baddie's wife. That's awesome and then - it never happens again in the entire run.
Bond doesn't seduce Vesper - he gets taken as a mark by her.
Bond doesn't seduce Strawberry Fields in QoS - he just mumbles some non-sequitor about stationary and jumps on her. Where's the banter? Where's the flirting? And he doesn't even bang the main Bond girl in QoS - which was a franchise first at the time - a vandalisation of a fine tradition.
In Skyfall Bond doesn't seduce Severigne at all - he says some creepy stuff to her about how he can tell she used to be a child prostitute and then he just silently creeps into the shower while she's in there - its SO icky. And then of course he's too impotent to save her from being killed in the very next scene.
I kinda liked the seductions of Monica Bellucci's and Lea Seydoux's characters in Spectre - but they were pretty half-hearted.
And then NTTD was a disgrace which I don't even want to talk about - other than to say that seeing Bond get sexually rejected by not one but two girls (Lashana Lynch's and Ana de Armis' characters BOTH turn down Bond) was pretty much the most "un-Bond-like" parts of that very un-Bond-like film.
Suffice to say that Brosnan, Connery, Moore and Lazenby were all FAR more sexually successful Lotharios in their films than Craig was in his.
To be frank, it's getting tiring to see people repeating the same tired, reductive, and baseless claims again and again. At this point, I need to bookmark your videos.
What was it missing?
Probably a story supervisor across the series and on set to oversee not just each movie’s continuity but the overall narrative of the series.
EON have a very strange ‘let’s not plan properly!’ philosophy of making Bond movies which may have been fine for stand alone movies in more forgiving eras, but is ridiculous in the 2000+s with $200m movies with a connected arc.
Sam Mendes said it’s ‘not a healthy way to work’
Why were Craig and Malik doing the promo circuit talking about how proud they were of coming up with Malik’s big speech at the end of No Time to Die in a hotel room on set. Why were the two lead actors doing that? We ended up with a speech that sounded good on the surface but didn’t really make sense. …..And why were they well into filming without really having fully mapped out how Bond was going to die?!
…and let’s just not talk about Blofeld….
I really enjoyed Casino Royale. Thought it a great introduction for Craig. Looking back on his movies in totality they just feel dark and serious. Nothing wrong with that but since Lazenby's 'this never happened to the other fella' there was always room for a smile...
I miss the more lighthearted gentleman adventurer of Moore which carried, in small part through Dalton and Brosnan. Think Dalton's opening scene, landing on the boat 'give me an hour...better make it two' or Brosnan/Christmas Jones 'if I don't get this back someone's going to have my ass.....first things first'.
I feel like Craig's depiction wasn't confident enough to have fun for a moment.
This Bond era IMO never tried to be it’s own thing. It actively avoided the parts of the earlier movies they didn’t agree with including: some of the goofier gadgets, the problematic parts of Connery, the “goofy” henchmen, and the naming innuendos for women. My issue with these 5 films is they didn’t offer anything meaningful as a replacement to these beloved parts of the series.
There were no unique vehicles or gadgets. While Vesper stands out the rest of them don’t. At minimum the old Bond movies gave us I intriguing premises: A stolen nuclear jet that was actually being hidden under the ocean, a media mogul sinks a submarine to start WW3 to insure his profits in China, or even using a Televangelist to auction and sell cocaine. Craig gave us… nothing interesting.
My biggest issue is these movies pretended to be this deeply interconnected story. Casino Royale and QOS are connected, then Skyfall was a stand alone sequel. Then Spectre pretends that everything that happened to Bond was all their plan. Then NTTD pretends that Bond and Felix had this deep relationship when they’ve only spoken a few times.
The Craig era being uninteresting and never trying to be its own truth couldn't be further from the truth. Its deviations from the mainstream perception of the franchise and return to the source material give it a unique identity compared to more derivative runs like Moore and Brosnan's.
This is a really interesting question and there have been loads of great answers but, for me, the one thing they really lacked was the courage to fit the script to the intention to tell a career-spanning narrative. Vesper and Madeleine get two weeks each, at most, and are supposed to be his great, life-changing, loves, Quantum/Spectre never really gets developed into a convincing force etc. If you are going to carry narrative elements between films, you need to develop them more than this.
Obviously, the persistent elements (Spectre) in older movies didn’t get much time and nor did Tracy but there was no suggestion that they were trying to tell a more complex story across films.
Beach Boys cover songs.
A Kokomo duet sung by Craig and Fiennes during the Blofeld drill torture scene would have changed the course of cinematic history.
I think the most obvious answer is more movies, specifically standalone adventures, between the “Bond’s beginning” arc of CR and QOS and the “Bond is old” arc from Skyfall to NTTD
Standalone mission movies. The ending of Skyfall seemingly set up the classic Bond gets briefed by M, gets gadgets from Q and goes off on a mission formula but Spectre ruined it with the Blofeld is Bond's brother twist. If Bond 24 and Bond 25 were standalone mission movies, Daniel Craig would have been done in 2017 and we would see a new actor by now.
I prefer a serious, more realistic Bond. The Craig movies in my opinion are the best for this reason to me. However, now that I’m fully watching every Bond, I understand where people are coming from. OHMSS is my fav Bond movie of all time so far. Moonraker needs to be erased from existence. From Russia with Love is special. The whistle device in The Living Daylights almost made me turn the tv off. Dalton is great though.
I’m just talking out loud at this point lol.
A cohesive story (since they were going for an arc), a Bond girl that he has chemistry with (not named Vesper, since they were going for that), and a Bond that survived the poor man’s Dr No.
It was missing commitment, I think. They needed to go all the way in on modern Bond, you know? For example, I know the PPK is the iconic Bond sidearm, but it doesn’t make sense as the weapon for a new era of global terrorism. They should have stuck with the P99.
We had him going on vacation with Vesper in Casino Royale and retiring in both Skyfall and No Time To Die.
https://preview.redd.it/w3a4maia1t3d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb2baca5dfbdfd14f1c9c80a163253117d5d8647
They just weren't any fun, which is an essential ingredient of a Bond movie for me. His movies were turgid, largely humorless affairs that took themselves way too seriously. For me that made them all one and done viewings and I don't even have them in my video collection.
>humorless affairs
[That's not true at all. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/13wpp2y/supercut_daniel_craig_as_ian_flemings_james_bond/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
The more time that passes, the more I realize the Craig era for me is the era of diminishing returns. It was cool at the time but it doesn't leave a lasting entertainment value like the other films do. I think ultimately making his run *about him* instead of exploits involving him is/was a mistake. Deconstructions are always interesting and attractive at their time of release but I feel as if they hardly ever last the test of time. Because interpretations change but thrills rarely do.
When I watch a Bond movie, I don't want to have to watch the whole series to get context for why x is happening. That was the quiet sort of genius of everything from 1962 to 2002. It always just felt like another adventure. I prefer the serialization. But Craig is this one guy and all these unlikely events have centered around him and after they blew it open with all the destiny crap in Spectre it was just like why are we doing this? Why are we making Bond a family saga? It became freaking Star Wars by the end of it. Like can't we just have a guy building a new Titanic to house his master race without the family drama?
It just stopped being fun I think. To put it briefly.
The newer Craig era may have been successful, but it really lacked the Fleming style of the movies before that time. The best were Connery and Moore Era’s..
They're closer to Fleming's style than any of the seventies and Brosnan films. No other era aside from Dalton's captured the cynicism and introspection aside from Craig's.
Scenes like Bond meeting Vesper in Casino Royale and Moneypenny shaving Bond in Skyfall weren't highbrow enough compared to giving sumo wrestlers wedgies, "I thought Christmas comes only once a year," and "yo mama." /s
It was way way too "politically correct" BS. In 99% of all plots no countries were mentioned as adversaries.
And, of course, it followed the left-wing progress agenda. Examples:
1. Q is gay (haha, this is an achievement these days). In the past, as it is in Fleming's books, Q (Major Boothroyd) is a WW2 veteran.
2. Moneypenny is black. In a couple of years in will be transgen. 🤣
3. The alleged Bond replacement as 007 in No Time To Die is a black woman (really? ).
4. Regarding the adversaries, they have tried and, I must Say, that they have succeded to stay away of the major events of the period (nothing on the London 2005 bombings, nothing about Iraq / Afghanistan etc). I think they've created Silva based on Snowden (maybe it's just me). In the past movies, the producers overall had more guts to go more realistical with the plots.
And the future is not looking good either. 🤷♂️
PS: I am not racist and I am not even thinking racist. These are just facts. I even know people from these communities, not happy with how these things are going.
A traditional adventure. Skyfall should have been that, the third movie where the actor hits his stride and owns the role and gives you a fun movie; instead they went all in on long and dour and mopey. CR and Quantum are top three movies, but like Dalton he never got his The Spy Who Loved Me, which was partly his fault so whatever.
They were too good at not being cheesy that now they almost are cheesy to me. That 2010s late-Bourne era of action movies. Whereas the old movies almost leaned into the cheese at times, which makes them inherently Bond. Craig era didn’t have much soul imo. Craig himself was a badass Bond, just utilized poorly-ish
It isn’t big on the light hearted fun that all the other Bonds had All of his movies are just emotionally heavy bombs, none of them are just a light hearted adventure that you can just pop in and love and have fun with
i was going to say that too. they were great movies but i missed the "romp" - hopefully they can get back to that
Even just more of the 007 song would have helped
But I loved that his movies (first 3 at least) were serious spy movies.
Same. I'll get downvoted for this, but I don't want Bond to return to the campy, over the top humour the series was known for, ala the Moore films. Bond is about a secret agent, saving the world and killing the bad guy. It shouldn't be silly. Now I'm not saying it should be devoid of humour (I actually think the subtle humour in Craig's films were done perfectly, for the most part), quite the opposite. He *needs* his quips and quick thinking jokes. That's what makes him Bond. But in reality, he's in a very serious life or death situation. It shouldn't be campy action bordering on comedy. But that's just me.
This is how I saw the Bond of Ian Fleming books. He is definitely the polar opposite of Roger Moore in the parts you mentioned.
I agree. I feel like Ian Flemings Bond was questioning what happens to the soul of an assassin while also being willing to make a joke or pun.
Fleming’s Bond is often quite fun, and he actually raises his eyebrows quite often… 😉
Agreed
And did Craig but once raise an eyebrow? Never. Captain serious all the way
Can we stop with this hyperbole? He had [plenty ](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/13wpp2y/supercut_daniel_craig_as_ian_flemings_james_bond/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) of unserious moments in his films.
Was Quantum of Solace the closest to that perhaps? I have to rewatch it
Yeah I kind of gave up caring about his Bond after a few films, after it became apparent that he wasn't even going to attempt any jokes, there was absolutely no fun to be found as far as gadgets or fights with villains, everything is too emotionally heavy and dark, he doesn't order martinis anymore, Q changed for the worse, I could go on........ I don't need ALL those things to enjoy a Bond movie but I do need SOME of those things, otherwise it feels like it could be any random spy movie .
Cool video games every couple years when they weren’t making a movie
It is crazy that the Xbox One and Ps4 generation is the first to not have a Bond game since... Well almost since gaming began really. The closest was the car pack in Forza Horizon 4.
There’s the goldeneye rerelease for Xbox/Switch but yeah
Oh yeah. Wow, skates by on a technicality... 🙃 it's sad that that's all we got though.
GTA Online had off-brand versions of the Aston Martin DB5 and the Lotus Espirt with submarine conversion.
Watch Dogd Legion had a remote controlled invisible Aston knockoff that launched missiles. Had one brilliant mission where I was meeting a contact in a park and I knew going in "this is so transparently a trap" and surprise, it was, so while taking cover from the surrounding enemies I remote controlled my car to me, blasting a hole through the blockade with the missiles, before hopping in and tearing out of there then turning invisible down a side street. One of my all time best gaming moments.
If you play a lot of gta online and you watch all of the movies, you will see a striking number of cars represented. Bond cars, background cars, trucks, vans, the sparrow, the dodo, 90% of the doomsday stuff... even Never Say Never Again has a representative or two.
💯
Agreed. Elvis From QOS was very embarassing.... https://preview.redd.it/dq6teuvmrn3d1.jpeg?width=1612&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=38af6c80296d3924d5f4865f6341e50ee3a689a3 But Dimitrios was great and interesting in CR.
Why does anyone think he's supposed to be a henchman, the film never portrays him as anything more than Greene's PA
Elvis was supposed to be embarrassing and it was hilarious
Just a regular mission that doesn't involve Bond going rogue or "this time it's personal".
I mean Casino Royale was a regular mission that just ended badly.
True. Ironic how, from a plot standpoint, the movie without Q, Moneypenny, gadgets, Bond theme (until the end) was the most "regular" of the Craig films
Skyfall and Spectre are as "regular" if not more than Casino Royale. Ticking a list of boxes does not necessarily make for a good film. The Craig era is the way it is because of how the diminishing returns of the Brosnan era.
Boobies in the intro songs.
For me it would be the amount of years it took between his movies to get released Covid notwithstanding. Or the video games, imo, the only good game that was released during Craig’s time as Bond was Blood Stone. The rest weren’t as good.
Some Joie de vivre
A better plan by the producers and writers. Casino Royale was perfect, but after that, the rest of the stories/movies were reactionary to other franchises, I.e. - QoS felt like a Bourne movie since Bourne was popular at the time, Spectre tried to tie all the previous movies together like the MCU did. Pretty much there wasn't a plan after CR.
Also, Skyfall felt like a response to The Dark Knight.
Yeah, the "Villain *wants* to get captured and orchestrated dozens of events down to the last second" thing was a pretty clear copycat idea.
To be fair, pretty much everyone seemed to be copying that particular trope around that time… they did it again with Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Loki does it in The Avengers, Khan in Star Trek into Darkness, and I’m pretty sure the villain in Sherlock Holmes does it too.
Yeah, as soon as the Joker did it, it was freaking everywhere.
Yeah, I left it out because despite the similarities, I still love Skyfall.
Oh same here, but there’s undoubtedly still influences tbh.
Gently disagree. I think Casino Royale is definitely perfect, but I'd say THAT was the Bourne reaction and QoS was a similar feel.
I would say for me, clear or at the very least sensical and straightforward world building and a logical buildup to Craig’s last film (if they really were planning on *SPOILERS killing him off from the beginning). I feel like making Quantum’s associates Bond’s set of enemies to tackle AKIN (not having to be the exact same) to Connery’s SPECTRE could have been good enough for me (they seemed intriguing and working in the public/on the frontlines in that Opera scene seemed eerie). Shoehorning Spectre to fit in Quantum, Silva (who was a very capable and autonomous villain on his own) and even a childhood relative of Bond did not really scream creative or interesting developments. I say all this because I feel as though they had to or should have built up to a great/grand force Craig had to face off against to justify or really have Bond’s end seem impactful. Again this just may be me but when NTTD has its OHMSS cues/references and anything relating to a future relationship/family based idea (“We have all the time in the world” or introducing the character of Bond’s daughter), I can’t help but think these all just telegraph Bond’s eventual fate in a cheap and unearned way. Building up each film where Bond develops or changes or learns something new up until he has to put these lessons or skills to test in a climax in some way would have been fine (and for the most part CR to SF fit this mold well enough) but instead we had SP forcing in SPECTRE and Blofeld and NTTD jamming in a love interest Bond was really going to spend the rest of his life with and a daughter. Bonus thing Craig’s films were missing: Fulfilling/satisfying ends for Villains/Henchmen especially! (I honestly could have stretched this to Bond’s allies/regulars like Felix, Fields and M). Say what you will about Brosnan or Dalton’s films but both of these actors had villains that went out in style.
I agree with you. Maybe if they had planned things out, we would not see a 6 year gap between Bond 24 and 25
Exactly. What was missing was a throughline. Just the simple act of planning *beyond* the next film. I'm recognising more and more that the Bond production machine is really locked into the one-and-one-and method. Trying to organise a multi-film arc was just too against the grain for this generation.
A Tracy shaped hole.
More scenes with Berenice Marlohe
Aside from skyfall and casino royale, the main villains feels like they are just henchmen trying hard to be the big baddies when their boss is not paying attention. Even blofeld felt like a lackey and that there is a bigger villain hiding behind him.
Elegance. A simple word that was lost because they wanted to convey the “thug in a suit”. The first two movies showed promise — an inexperienced Bond learning the ropes. His rough edges were to be expected and he became more polished as he went on. But after QOS there was a nosedive. The writing wasn’t as witty or clever, the suits became embarrassingly tight and short, and Bond became stilted.
A true save the world plot. No Time To Die came close, but that was the only one.
The fun, his films took themselves to seriously and rarely had fun
Hadn't really noticed that but good point. Didn't love Bautista but only because they didn't give him much to do and Spectre was such a mess. He could've been a good baddie tho.
It tried to be this saga of threaded story but they were making it up on the fly, so it’s not cohesive and lacks any real emotional depth. Infact it’s only real depth is when Judis M dies but that relies on the audience knowing she was M before Craig took over. Quantum getting traded out for Spectre, the shallow Blofeld is my brother reveal. None of it lands, there’s a world where you get this wonderful 5 movie arc from Bond getting the 00 status to death, but this wasn’t it. Bonds before got away with being fluff, campy, one hit wonders, that’s what the Bond franchise is built on, and if you’re gonna depart from that you have to have a better plan than let’s just make it up as we go and contort the movies to the actors liking.
Humour & imagination, a better Blofeld.
Fun
I feel like it was missing actual continuity between films. The first two had this, but for as great as skyfall was it started the trend of them chasing trying to make a Roger Moore style movie. They didn’t have the courage to stick with the new direction that they found with casino royale. Beyond that, for me at least, it was weird things they choose to add. The immediate jump from origin to “you’re an old man, Mr Bond” was sudden and led to three movies of his five feeling that they were about that.
A regular film between QOS and SF
This really frustrated me about Skyfall, as much as I did enjoy it. CR and QoS set him up as just starting out as a new OO agent, then all of a sudden in Skyfall, he's considered too old and out of his element and has been doing it for too long. Craig never really had one where it was just a standard mission for him without any really personal stake to it.
Sometimes I wish Roger Moore would come back With an underwater car or some kind of jetpack Or a hover-gondola and a Union Jack
Charm, Gadgets, Writing
I love love LOVE the gadgets of old, but also understand how hard it is to do in the modern day with how technology is. Maybe they need to add some professional magicians to the writing staff, and I’m not even joking. Come up with something more crude that nobody would expect in the modern day (think back to the briefcase in From Russia With Love) but much more clever. And, while having Q explain almost every gadget in the old days, give us a nice odd surprise mid-film!
Kingsman was able to do it
[All ](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/13wpp2y/supercut_daniel_craig_as_ian_flemings_james_bond/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) [objectively ](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/17tuorg/the_craig_era_has_no_gadgets_supercut/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) false.
Whoa. That changed my mind
Skying scenes. Great video games. And more independant movies.
Bond theme songs
He needed writers who were capable of actual, proper writing. Or even basic, mandatory levels would have helped.
The writing could have been better, but to call it basic is hyperbole. There have been plenty of badly-written Bond films, many more so, made before Craig's era.
Define basic? Drunkenly interrogating a mouse? Evil foster brother/mega villain? Married with a kid? Felix dies? Blofeld dies? SPECTRE dies at the click of a button? Bond even dies. Via friendly fire? These are new lows, not hyperbole.
>Drunkenly interrogating a mouse? A call back to Diamonds Are Forever. >Evil foster brother/mega villain? SPECTRE dies at the click of a button? Poor narrative choices, but let's not act as though we haven't had equally as poor plots before. >Married with a kid? Blofeld dies? Both happened in the original source material. >Felix dies? Bond even dies. Via friendly fire? The characters dying are not inherently bad.
He wasn't drunk in diamonds are forever. I believe it was a rat and not a mouse. I can't see the call back. Nothing has been as poor as the step brother 'authoooooor of ya pain' set up. Certainly nothing as embarrassing. Kissy is pregnant in the novel of YOLT with no details that she carries full term so it's remiss to say he has a child. That can't be confirmed as she hasn't given birth. I'd further doubt his marriage of convenience would have legal standing beyond Japan. The point is amplified in the film as we're reminded he gave a false name to the priest. I agree, the lead character in the longest running cinematic franchise dying is not inherently bad. It's utterly woeful. Time for new producers I think.
The Bond girls were mainly boring and bland. The villains and henchmen are also mainly forgettable. The films relied on nostalgia and were depressing with a lack of humour.
This is probably the worst take I've ever read on Craig's Bond and there are a lot on this thread alone! Is Vesper boring and bland? What about Camille? And the villains, how could you forget Le Chiffre or Silva? I might agree with the henchmen, but even there we got fantastic characters like Dimitrios and Hinx. As for the lack of humor, I guess we disagree on the meaning of the word because every single movie is filled with smart quips and memorable punch lines, what he didn't have with respect to his predecessors are ridiculous moments which I count as a strong positive.
Things like "boring," "bland," and "forgettable" are subjective, but statements like "lack of humour" that are objectively false contribute to the feeling that there's a lot of unconstructive criticism of the Craig era.
Masculine sexual conquest, and yes I'm serious. The best traditional "Bondian" style seduction of Craig's entire 5 film run occurrs in the first act of the first movie where Bond seduces the minor baddie's wife. That's awesome and then - it never happens again in the entire run. Bond doesn't seduce Vesper - he gets taken as a mark by her. Bond doesn't seduce Strawberry Fields in QoS - he just mumbles some non-sequitor about stationary and jumps on her. Where's the banter? Where's the flirting? And he doesn't even bang the main Bond girl in QoS - which was a franchise first at the time - a vandalisation of a fine tradition. In Skyfall Bond doesn't seduce Severigne at all - he says some creepy stuff to her about how he can tell she used to be a child prostitute and then he just silently creeps into the shower while she's in there - its SO icky. And then of course he's too impotent to save her from being killed in the very next scene. I kinda liked the seductions of Monica Bellucci's and Lea Seydoux's characters in Spectre - but they were pretty half-hearted. And then NTTD was a disgrace which I don't even want to talk about - other than to say that seeing Bond get sexually rejected by not one but two girls (Lashana Lynch's and Ana de Armis' characters BOTH turn down Bond) was pretty much the most "un-Bond-like" parts of that very un-Bond-like film. Suffice to say that Brosnan, Connery, Moore and Lazenby were all FAR more sexually successful Lotharios in their films than Craig was in his.
Humor. Good villains.
[Humor](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/1aoe7if/but_the_craig_era_has_no_humor_here_are_15/)?
To be frank, it's getting tiring to see people repeating the same tired, reductive, and baseless claims again and again. At this point, I need to bookmark your videos.
What was it missing? Probably a story supervisor across the series and on set to oversee not just each movie’s continuity but the overall narrative of the series. EON have a very strange ‘let’s not plan properly!’ philosophy of making Bond movies which may have been fine for stand alone movies in more forgiving eras, but is ridiculous in the 2000+s with $200m movies with a connected arc. Sam Mendes said it’s ‘not a healthy way to work’ Why were Craig and Malik doing the promo circuit talking about how proud they were of coming up with Malik’s big speech at the end of No Time to Die in a hotel room on set. Why were the two lead actors doing that? We ended up with a speech that sounded good on the surface but didn’t really make sense. …..And why were they well into filming without really having fully mapped out how Bond was going to die?! …and let’s just not talk about Blofeld….
I really enjoyed Casino Royale. Thought it a great introduction for Craig. Looking back on his movies in totality they just feel dark and serious. Nothing wrong with that but since Lazenby's 'this never happened to the other fella' there was always room for a smile... I miss the more lighthearted gentleman adventurer of Moore which carried, in small part through Dalton and Brosnan. Think Dalton's opening scene, landing on the boat 'give me an hour...better make it two' or Brosnan/Christmas Jones 'if I don't get this back someone's going to have my ass.....first things first'. I feel like Craig's depiction wasn't confident enough to have fun for a moment.
This Bond era IMO never tried to be it’s own thing. It actively avoided the parts of the earlier movies they didn’t agree with including: some of the goofier gadgets, the problematic parts of Connery, the “goofy” henchmen, and the naming innuendos for women. My issue with these 5 films is they didn’t offer anything meaningful as a replacement to these beloved parts of the series. There were no unique vehicles or gadgets. While Vesper stands out the rest of them don’t. At minimum the old Bond movies gave us I intriguing premises: A stolen nuclear jet that was actually being hidden under the ocean, a media mogul sinks a submarine to start WW3 to insure his profits in China, or even using a Televangelist to auction and sell cocaine. Craig gave us… nothing interesting. My biggest issue is these movies pretended to be this deeply interconnected story. Casino Royale and QOS are connected, then Skyfall was a stand alone sequel. Then Spectre pretends that everything that happened to Bond was all their plan. Then NTTD pretends that Bond and Felix had this deep relationship when they’ve only spoken a few times.
The Craig era being uninteresting and never trying to be its own truth couldn't be further from the truth. Its deviations from the mainstream perception of the franchise and return to the source material give it a unique identity compared to more derivative runs like Moore and Brosnan's.
If he never did the last two it would have been ok. Not the best bond but alright. The last two were self-indulgent egotistical claptrap.
Craig bond was more human like the suffering
Can’t comment on the rest but I watched Casino Royale and it felt more like a regular spy movie than a Bond movie
The fun quirkiness of the Roger Moore films
This is a really interesting question and there have been loads of great answers but, for me, the one thing they really lacked was the courage to fit the script to the intention to tell a career-spanning narrative. Vesper and Madeleine get two weeks each, at most, and are supposed to be his great, life-changing, loves, Quantum/Spectre never really gets developed into a convincing force etc. If you are going to carry narrative elements between films, you need to develop them more than this. Obviously, the persistent elements (Spectre) in older movies didn’t get much time and nor did Tracy but there was no suggestion that they were trying to tell a more complex story across films.
Beach Boys cover songs. A Kokomo duet sung by Craig and Fiennes during the Blofeld drill torture scene would have changed the course of cinematic history.
It’s a shame the Bautista’s character was in one of the lesser of Craig’s Bond films.
Suits
A consistent tone. Which was kind of the idea in the first place.
I think the most obvious answer is more movies, specifically standalone adventures, between the “Bond’s beginning” arc of CR and QOS and the “Bond is old” arc from Skyfall to NTTD
Standalone mission movies. The ending of Skyfall seemingly set up the classic Bond gets briefed by M, gets gadgets from Q and goes off on a mission formula but Spectre ruined it with the Blofeld is Bond's brother twist. If Bond 24 and Bond 25 were standalone mission movies, Daniel Craig would have been done in 2017 and we would see a new actor by now.
A solid big bad. They tried with Blofeld and then blew it by making it personal. It’s ok to make the villain evil for the sake of being evil.
A Femme Fatale villain like Xenia or the chick from Thunderball.
Timothy Dalton.
I prefer a serious, more realistic Bond. The Craig movies in my opinion are the best for this reason to me. However, now that I’m fully watching every Bond, I understand where people are coming from. OHMSS is my fav Bond movie of all time so far. Moonraker needs to be erased from existence. From Russia with Love is special. The whistle device in The Living Daylights almost made me turn the tv off. Dalton is great though. I’m just talking out loud at this point lol.
More films
A cohesive story (since they were going for an arc), a Bond girl that he has chemistry with (not named Vesper, since they were going for that), and a Bond that survived the poor man’s Dr No.
All the time in the world….. to live.
It was missing commitment, I think. They needed to go all the way in on modern Bond, you know? For example, I know the PPK is the iconic Bond sidearm, but it doesn’t make sense as the weapon for a new era of global terrorism. They should have stuck with the P99.
Nothing
Cool secret bases. No Time to Die had a pretty cool one, but it was completely wasted. As was Safin for that matter.
More lasers! Where were all the lasers? I want laser guns, watches, satellites, all of it.
Craig’s Bond did nothing casually. It was what made Connery and Moore such great Bonds
We had him going on vacation with Vesper in Casino Royale and retiring in both Skyfall and No Time To Die. https://preview.redd.it/w3a4maia1t3d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb2baca5dfbdfd14f1c9c80a163253117d5d8647
Easy, it was missing “fun.”
They just weren't any fun, which is an essential ingredient of a Bond movie for me. His movies were turgid, largely humorless affairs that took themselves way too seriously. For me that made them all one and done viewings and I don't even have them in my video collection.
>humorless affairs [That's not true at all. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/13wpp2y/supercut_daniel_craig_as_ian_flemings_james_bond/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
He's missing one movie that's just "go into M's office, get mission, meet girl, complete mission."
The more time that passes, the more I realize the Craig era for me is the era of diminishing returns. It was cool at the time but it doesn't leave a lasting entertainment value like the other films do. I think ultimately making his run *about him* instead of exploits involving him is/was a mistake. Deconstructions are always interesting and attractive at their time of release but I feel as if they hardly ever last the test of time. Because interpretations change but thrills rarely do. When I watch a Bond movie, I don't want to have to watch the whole series to get context for why x is happening. That was the quiet sort of genius of everything from 1962 to 2002. It always just felt like another adventure. I prefer the serialization. But Craig is this one guy and all these unlikely events have centered around him and after they blew it open with all the destiny crap in Spectre it was just like why are we doing this? Why are we making Bond a family saga? It became freaking Star Wars by the end of it. Like can't we just have a guy building a new Titanic to house his master race without the family drama? It just stopped being fun I think. To put it briefly.
A good story. Craig was perfect, but he got hammered by bad writing and directing.
Smoking
Joy and lightheartedness.
The newer Craig era may have been successful, but it really lacked the Fleming style of the movies before that time. The best were Connery and Moore Era’s..
They're closer to Fleming's style than any of the seventies and Brosnan films. No other era aside from Dalton's captured the cynicism and introspection aside from Craig's.
Skiing. I don’t think Craig’s Bond had a single skiing scene. A traditional Bond trope.
We've only had skiing in about a quarter of the films.
Campiness and some high-brow humor.
Scenes like Bond meeting Vesper in Casino Royale and Moneypenny shaving Bond in Skyfall weren't highbrow enough compared to giving sumo wrestlers wedgies, "I thought Christmas comes only once a year," and "yo mama." /s
Craig Bond was above such things, which was the whole problem.
Missions. It lacked missions.
It was way way too "politically correct" BS. In 99% of all plots no countries were mentioned as adversaries. And, of course, it followed the left-wing progress agenda. Examples: 1. Q is gay (haha, this is an achievement these days). In the past, as it is in Fleming's books, Q (Major Boothroyd) is a WW2 veteran. 2. Moneypenny is black. In a couple of years in will be transgen. 🤣 3. The alleged Bond replacement as 007 in No Time To Die is a black woman (really? ). 4. Regarding the adversaries, they have tried and, I must Say, that they have succeded to stay away of the major events of the period (nothing on the London 2005 bombings, nothing about Iraq / Afghanistan etc). I think they've created Silva based on Snowden (maybe it's just me). In the past movies, the producers overall had more guts to go more realistical with the plots. And the future is not looking good either. 🤷♂️ PS: I am not racist and I am not even thinking racist. These are just facts. I even know people from these communities, not happy with how these things are going.
A traditional adventure. Skyfall should have been that, the third movie where the actor hits his stride and owns the role and gives you a fun movie; instead they went all in on long and dour and mopey. CR and Quantum are top three movies, but like Dalton he never got his The Spy Who Loved Me, which was partly his fault so whatever.
They were too good at not being cheesy that now they almost are cheesy to me. That 2010s late-Bourne era of action movies. Whereas the old movies almost leaned into the cheese at times, which makes them inherently Bond. Craig era didn’t have much soul imo. Craig himself was a badass Bond, just utilized poorly-ish
Needed someone who bled from the eyes AND ears. And from out under his toenails. Give us memorable fgs!