This seriousness regarding character is a theme that has continued through the Bond films starring Daniel Craig, the first of which is this 2006 debut performance. The answer, of course, is “severe emotional trauma,” but we’ll get to that a little later.
For the first time in a series that has ranged in quality from iconic to self-parodic, the series bothered to ask itself what could make someone into a person like James Bond. It’s not my personal favorite of the series, and it’s maybe not the most emblematic of what the series is known for, but it’s the one that takes Bond most seriously as a character, the only one where the plot is secondary to the character of Bond himself (though it also just happens to be a great movie). If you’re only ever going to watch one James Bond movie, it should probably be Casino Royale. Bond fan Jacob Farley still greatly enjoys the deconstructive 007 revival Casino Royale, calling attention to how it humanizes a character that had become self-parody, the film’s series-best first act chase sequence, and the top-notch work by Daniel Craig and Eva Green.
