The entire development of Bond in these 4 films is very unsatisfying. The connective tissue with CR is never fully explored, and Bond goes from being a newbie to an elderly vet by the end of SPECTRE, none too convincingly. It's like they really weren't sure where they were going from film to film, so although there's this vague sense of a running storyline, and an effort to portray 007 in a certain way, it's not satisfyingly articulated, much less resolved (though the end of SPECTRE is pretty damned finite, lol). Instead of development, there's repetition.
That's probably why the Bond films have historically been standalone episodes -- and function better on repeat viewing because of that. Years from now someone could drop into QUANTUM OF SOLACE and not understand
at all the references to CASINO ROYALE -- they are convoluted enough just having watched it within a recent time frame, as Eric points out!
It's one of the failings of the Craig pictures, two of which are just fine, two of which are basically crap -- but they don't function as a whole in any event. If you run them all together like Eric is doing, it's even more obvious how unsuccessful they were in their (half hearted) attempts to produce a running story.
Frankly give me Densie and Halle any day over any of these alleged Bond girls I've seen in Craig's films
Craig's a bruiser of a Bond, not a lover. SKYFALL basically
doesn't even have a female lead!
I agree with you on this also. But I also like two-thirds of DIE ANOTHER DAY, which is brought up here over and over for some reason. I don't think we can have a Bond thread without someone mentioning that one.
Unlike DIE ANOTHER DAY, there's essentially
nothing in QUANTUM OF SOLACE that would make me ever want to watch it a second time. I feel the same way about that as I do MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, which is IMO the most pitiful by far of the Moore movies. I have a hard time getting through that one, it's so tired and not even interestingly shot (yes I would rather watch A VIEW TO A KILL again). From the terrible theme song on down, it's painful. No wonder they took an extra year off to get their act together before producing SPY WHO LOVED ME.