2. Quantum Of Solace (2008)
The Man: Daniel Craig
The Mission: Picking up from where Casino Royale left off, Bond seeks revenge for the death of his lover Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) while pursuing environmentalist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric). Greene is a member of the Quantum organisation and is planning on staging a coup in Bolivia to steal its water supply. Supposedly.
The Problem: I know I've banged on about this before in
my Top 10 Terrible Sequels list, but it's worth re-iterating just how totally incompetent Quantum of Solace is. Despite a decent amount of dramatic talent behind the camera, the film feels like a collection of Bourne-style set pieces with no emotional heart to connect them. For all the characters' talk about Bond's pain after losing Lynd, the film feels horribly inert. Like Moonraker, the villain is largely uninteresting, or is at least given so little to work with that he becomes uninteresting. And like I said before, the theme song by Alicia Keys and Jack White is the worst theme song the Bond series has ever had to endure. But more than that, Quantum of Solace is so confusing and incoherently plotted that it generates no suspense or empathy. Whether due to its production problems or sheer complacency, the story and characters are boring and the storytelling is poor.
The Alternative: Casino Royale (2006). It's a little too long, but at least it has a story.