Let's clear something up Casino Royale simply played with the formula, it did not reinvent it.
Who said it reinvented it? I said it represented "freedom from formula." I didn't say it entirely abandoned it. Much of the Bond iconography is still there (and rightfully so, it's "Bond Begins," after all). But it's not in the same fixed, cookie-cutter manner of past films, which is what makes the difference.
In many ways, the film is intentionally playful with that iconography. The gunbarrel is delayed, the first car Bond has is a Ford Mondeo (and effectively "earns" his Aston as the movie goes on), Bond actually doesn't sleep with the first girl he meets, the villain is actually fighting out of fear rather than for something else, the set-up to a "big car chase" leads to a huge crash, Bond's captured but is left helpless rather than given an escape.
Truely look LONG and hard at it... You realize the plot structure is very similar to earlier bond films?
Is it now? I can't remember an earlier Bond film which had the main villain die two-thirds of the way through, and with Bond having very little to do with it. Nor can I remember an earlier Bond film which features a final third primarily dedicated to Bond's romantic relationship.
All that Casino Royale did was change the tone, and injected a little vulnerability into Bond to make him more relatable to the audience.
Not really. CASINO ROYALE did change the tone and humanized Bond (turning him into a tragic figure, really), but it also marked a return to a quality of Bond film which hasn't been seen since the 60s, or maybe ever. The action scenes were actually thrilling, the writing was witty (for once), the performances were shockingly excellent, the direction was remarkably beautiful... etc. and so on.
And it also nicely freed us from the need to see little things like a Moneypenny dialogue every film, or have the final scene being Bond in bed with a girl and a quip. It's that exceedingly tight, constrictive formula that was choking the series during the Brosnan era (which are really made from a
very strict formula), not the fact that Bond was being, well, James Bond.
And because of the risks it takes have now succeeded, it frees up more room to toy around with in the sequel. People here are acting like they are no big deal - in retrospect, they're not the biggest deals in the world, but how can anyone forget how controversial this film was before its release? "Bond in a hospital? What?! No Q? No Moneypenny? How come?!"
BOND 22 can go almost anywhere and it'll fly. We've said good-bye to the days of world-domination plots and supervillain lairs that explode during the final moments of the film. If BOND 22 doesn't feature a tuxedo, a martini, or the phrase "Bond, James Bond," no-one will bat an eye (and actually, I'll be pretty happy about that). In fact, EON has now opened the door up to the possibility of doing some of Fleming's more interesting story ventures. For example, Fleming's YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, where Bond gets amnesia towards the end and briefly lives an idyllic life as a Japanese fisherman. After CASINO ROYALE, why not?
That's why we buy a new phone with new features (we probably barely use), but the basic function remains.
