Speaking of stupid, I totally skipped over your spoiler tag and clicked on the More Inside link. Stupid stupid stupid me.

Dude, it's James Bond. It's not supposed to be intelligent.

It's James Bond, it's not supposed to make sense! That said, I loved the movie.

I really enjoyed a lot of the heavily-stylized elements (that play--what the?), and the way that it's kinda halfway between a Bourne movie and John Woo. It almost seems like the Bond imprimatur frees people up to make interesting big-budget action/adventure movies, which is exactly the opposite of the way it seems like it used to force them into making boring, by-the-numbers ones (sorry, Brosnan).

I thought it was OK, but was still a bit disappointed.

First, they seem to have edited out the bit from the poster and the trailers where he walks over the sand-dune in an immaculate suit carrying a Heckler & Koch UMP-9. Gah, I waited the whole movie for that and never even got it.

And as the Slate review pointed out, the director mostly does "upscale tearjerkers (Finding Neverland, Monsters' Ball, The Kite Runner)" and seems a bit confused by action scenes, not knowing what to do except jiggle the camera and vaguely hope the result looks like the Bourne movies. I think he'd be a lot happier if Bond was sobbing into his hanky over the death of his widowed puppy, rather than run around shooting people.

Wait...what? Unpossible movie physics? I'm stunned, beyond words. What's next, an Oliver Stone movie that tanks at the box office?

The world has no meaning anymore.

Not just the director, TE, but Paul Haggis is still on the writing team and that guy just does get the Bond personna. This Bond arc has some good ideas production-wise but they need to rethink who they hire to tell the stories. Oh yeah. the theme song sucked again too. Otherwise, it was a decent movie. Craig makes an excellent Bond.

I haven't seen the current flick, but I did see the last one, and I agree with Ardiril that Craig indeed makes an excellent Bond. My favorite is still Connery, but Craig introduces a dark and brooding side of the character. Perhaps it's something that relates to the times, and the actors were fit for their era. Though George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton should never have been part of the franchise...

I LOVE Lazenby and Dalton! That's all I have to contribute, sadly.

I thought it was great, but the hotel bitbybit blowup at the end did not make much sense. Nice concept of water becoming a commodity although.

I have liked all the Bond actors, but since I had read all the books, some multiple times, before I ever saw a movie, I don't consider any of them definitive. I think Roger Moore could have come closest if they hadn't given him such damn stupid scripts. My dream team would include Tarentino writing the speaking parts as long as he didn't get anywhere near the plot; he's a good plotter but not right for Bond. The dialogs however would absolutely rock.

I really enjoyed it. I think this was a really good bridge to go from Casino Royale into the next movie. I

I heart Daniel Craig as Bond and Judi Dench as M. I think Daniel Craig does a good job of conveying all the violence and wits necessary to the Bond character. I think part of that is just that they're allowed to show more violent stuff now and part of it is just something Craig brings to the character.

I think Timothy Dalton would be remembered as a much better Bond if he'd had better material to work from - he worked during a really crappy time for Bond scripts, though.

I thought I liked Brosnan as Bond until I saw Craig as Bond. Now Brosnan is way down the list for me...maybe even in last place. LOL. (again, part of that might have to do with the scripts he was working with.)

My dream team would include Tarentino writing the speaking parts as long as he didn't get anywhere near the plot; he's a good plotter but not right for Bond. The dialogs however would absolutely rock.

OMG, you are right. That would be awesome and probably freaking hilarious.

Roger Moore is still my favorite Bond, because he played the role like it was a cartoon. I haven't seen any of the new Bonds and don't really want to, but I'm a huge fan of the 60s-80s Bond films, every one of them.

I moved the "spoiler" bit into the main heading, because that makes the comments for the post blacked out in the "recent comments" page.

When the hotel was first introduced with a gratuitous comment about "fuel cells" you knew exactly what was going to happen.

It was okay, but it didn't always feel like a Bond movie. The director's choice of fast-cut action isn't really in character for the series and really hurt the impact of some sequences. There was a rushed feeling to what should have been elegant set-pieces like parachuting into the sinkhole. A lot of people ended up dead that he shouldn't have killed (M was right) and yet people got away or were killed by others instead of Bond. They muffed the impact of the death of Fields, even though it was a clear reference to Jill Masterson's in Goldfinger. The "Bond is a rogue agent and must be brought in" theme is already feeling overused. At least Mathis (who was a good guy in the book) ended up exonerated, but his death felt meaningless (and didn't we already have a body in the trunk this movie, or was that supposed to be a message from Mr. White instead of Mr. Greene?). The movie seemed to flirt with the idea of an evil CIA but couldn't commit either way. The two Bond girls were barely a hint of sex other than one shot of Gemma Arterton's sinuous back.

On the other hand there were some sweet locations, the scaffold fight was an unusual "confined fight" in the Bond tradition, Craig is terrific and moves like a cat the way Connery did, Judi Dench was fantastic as always, the boat fight and onesided aerial dogfight worked well enough, and there were scattered moments like Bond stealing the motorbike or crawling through the hotel atrium to escape MI-6 that were just what they needed to be.