I still wanna talk about James Bond. I've been watching all the James Bond movies in order. Already watched all the Connery and the one Lazenby movies and the first with Roger Moore. It's fun to watch the evolution of the series, how Bond starts as a swaggering thug and slowly becomes more of a goofy gadget using spy. And how the Bond girls go from Bond's dumb and useless playthings into not-dumb but still useless and eventually into good characters. Craig!Bond is actually really interesting because they decided to deconstruct him and make that Bond exterior hide something more complex inside.
Yeah, each decade of Bond tends to be reflective of its time.
The 60s brought the "classic" movies which established a genre, with thrilling, complex plots, intense action, suave charisma, and psychotic megalomaniacs who would stop at nothing.
The 70s were a more laid-back humorous set of movies, with witty quips and action that had become more about the ridiculous (moon buggy chase, top half of a double decker running into a bridge, the 360, and going into space. Most of the 70s Bond films didn't take themselves too seriously, although this is where the girls started evolving into more than playthings, such as Anya.
The 80s brought some more serious tones to the Bond franchise, and relied more on character development, great music, and exciting action than the 70s films; this, of course, excludes
A View to a Kill, which is pretty bad anyway, and
Octopussy to an extent. The other three were very serious and exciting, and a combination of the 60s and 90s that produced stellar results. Given the other 80s thrillers, Bond needed to keep up with the times - they did.
The 90s started with a continuation of the awesomeness in
GoldenEye and brought Bond back to prosperity. However, Brosnan's next two outings didn't measure up, and
Die Another Day returned to 70s levels of ridiculousness.
With Daniel Craig, they rebooted the franchise, and returned to the suave, sophisticated Bond who was just setting out on his 00 adventures. There's some dry humor, there's plenty of character development, and the girls aren't just playthings - it's really a modern action film with classic roots. Unfortunately
Quantum tried to ruin it by throwing everything out the window and destroying Bond's relevance, but
Skyfall promises to be a return to what made
Casino Royale so amazing.
And how could a series that makes $600,000,000 per film at the worldwide box office NOT be relevant? That's less than Harry Potter, I'm aware, but $600,000,000 is still VERY relevant.