Probably the best Bond film I’ve seen in a long, long time. The franchise needed a reboot even more than Batman did. Sure, the epic (yet campy) scale of the Moore/Connery era is lacking, but this movie jumped right to the modern edge of brutal action. The competitive influence of Mission: Impossible upon the Bond franchise is pretty clear, but it’s welcome. Bond is raw, unpolished in this film – a work in progress. Kind of like Anakin Skywalker in a way – we know his destiny, and we see him evolve towards it. The “intermediate” Bond actors (Brosnan, Dalton, etc) carried the baggage of the old Bond but could never really sell the premise, but the new Bond is free to redefine the character. It’s like a breath of fresh air. Bond is still far cooler than Ethan Hunt or any other fiction superspy because of the prestige of the name – a prestige that Daniel Craig inherits. I think Craig is going to define Bond the way that Moore and Connery did, and become just as synonymous.
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I wouldn’t describe Dalton as an intermediate Bond; he was barely a Bond at all. 🙂 I haven’t seen the new movie, but hopefully it is good. Only tenuously related, I watched Superman Returns Thanksgiving weekend it was boring.