10 Things Nobody Wants To Admit About Daniel Craig's Bond Movies

6. The Movies Have Really Struggled To Find The Right Balance Between Old Bond & New Bond

Casino Royale aside, a movie which did a perfectly admirable job of blending old Bond and new Bond in a way that made sense, it's time to admit that - generally speaking - the Craig-era Bond movies have struggled to find a consistent identity. Whilst Casino made Bond believable for the 21st century, Quantum Of Solace acted as something of a regression; Skyfall was arguably too po-faced, but it's also scattered with attempts to be like "classic Bond" which - in the context of the movie - are jarring; Spectre wanted to be old-fashioned Bond so badly, but couldn't shake the new, modern legacy. Daniel Craig's Bond movies are, for lack of a better term, all over the place. Save for the first movie which straddles the line perfectly, there's an awkward struggle going on across the later three instalments, each one vying to be raw and Bourne-like, but then also trying desperately to be a bit silly and "classic Bond" at random points. And it doesn't work. There's a muddled, "we couldn't make our minds up" sensibility about the franchise as a whole. And yet there was no need to backtrack after Casino Royale.