5. Fits The Skyfall Timeline
As the name suggests, Solo often deals with the solitary life Bond has chosen to lead. It begins with him celebrating his forty-fifth birthday alone in the Dorchester Hotel. Bond reminisces back to his time during World War II and how his past life has carried him up till the present. Then he is quickly summoned by M for his next assignment. Except for the WWII part this opening feels perfectly plausible if not familiar to audiences by now. It follows the same motif Skyfall gave us of Bond being a rough around the edges senior agent with still a lot to offer. As Moneypenny put it, "old dog, new tricks." Bond is not a young, fresh-faced recruit, but a hardened man with scars. It helps that Daniel Craig is forty-five himself, an ironic match. Of course, the novel is set in the year 1969 to follow the timeline set by Fleming, but that's a minor detail.