OK...So I saw the new Bond a couple days ago & just happened to catch Die Another Day on the tube today. Not that I didn't like Casino Royale...it was an OK movie. It was not a Bond movie though. You can really see the difference between the two. CR the villain is an arms dealer that bleeds tears. DAD the villain has surgically changed his race and launched a satellite that is a planet threatening weapon. The ice palace set in DAD is over the top...a true "Bondesque" background. The main set in CR is a Casino. I am sorry...but saving the hot girl in the end and enjoying an interlude laden with diamonds is truly Bond. I grant you the girl dying is realism but that is not what Bond movies are...they are grand scale escapism. People go to the bathroom in real life but I don't want to see that in a movie & I don't want my Bond to repeatedly get the snot beat out of him. I want to see him para-sailing the arctic waters ahead of a tidal wave caused by maniacal super-villain with a death ray.

Had the movie been pitched as a secret agent story by some other name I'll bet the receipts would prove much lighter than them taking the Bond name to sell it. Still a decent movie with a good actor...just not a Bond plot.