We've been expecting you Meester Bond, etc

Skyfall has justifiably been getting great reviews and there is much talk of it being the Best Bond Ever~!, which is quite the claim. Is it one that’s even remotely close to the truth?

No, is the short answer.

The long-winded and infinitely more tedious answer - which will almost inevitably involve SPOILERS - is below:

The Bond franchise is a funny old beast, frequently rebooting or reinventing itself while still cradling the same recognisable bunch of characters and tropes tightly to its be-suited bosom. A Bond film can wander from the template, but only in some ways and never by too much. This is why rumours of an auteur type like Tarantino ever getting the director’s gig are so much hot air, even though the media still tries its best to fan the flames - Tim Burton was asked about it last week, for example (memo to Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli: I will hunt you down if you ever try this.)

Casino Royale was the most recent, and best, reboot - probably because it went a lot further than other New Bond debuts by genuinely rebooting the character as a newly-qualified agent. Even then, it was careful not to break the formula entirely, rooting the story in the present day and retaining Judi Dench’s superior turn as M. It was lean, slick, successfully incorporated prevailing action movie trends and was defiantly un-camp. Even the theme tune - which wisely didn't try to shoehorn the film's title into its lyrics - was ace.

Of course, the fact that its predecessor was the wretched Die Another Day helped enormously - it would have been tough not to look good in comparison to its wooden star turns, naff directorial wankery and that bloody invisible car (not to mention the lame song). Skyfall has this advantage too, although Quantum of Solace was hardly the disaster of legend. If the stories of cast and crew literally making up the dialogue on set thanks to a writers’ strike-induced lack of script are true then it was an achievement just to make a film that was semi-comprehensible.

Anyway, what Skyfall lacks is the immediate impact of Royale. Whilst this is hardly its fault, any changes it does make are within the now-established parameters of Daniel Craig-era Bond. It also can’t escape the fact that over the course of 22 previous films most possible plot points have already been covered in one way or another. Bond’s “death”, for example? Happened in You Only Live Twice, and was teased at the start of From Russia With Love too. Bond coming back from a long enforced absence and not being entirely trusted at first? That happened as recently as DAD, although it’s dealt with far more satisfyingly here.

What’s new are the motives of Javier Bardem’s villain - still brimming with incredibly devious machinations, but driven by a specific goal of M-centric revenge rather than the usual world domination thing. This leads to his being intentionally captured halfway through, followed by an audacious escape that leads to a finale whose location is chosen on Bond’s terms rather than in a suitably massive undersea or volcano-based lair.

If that deliberate capture/escape/mind games pattern doesn’t seem entirely fresh, it’s because it has very strong echoes of a certain red-lipped mentalist from another blockbuster franchise. In the same way as Royale “borrowed” its action aesthetic from Bourne, Skyfall owes an awful lot to Christopher Nolan, and Heath Ledger’s Joker in particular. This is in no way a bad thing - as always, the difference between loving homage and shameless rip-off lies in the execution. The resulting plot is intriguing and refreshingly Britain-centric (Bond clocks up all his air miles early on), and Bardem gives a well-judged performance, camp and menacing in equal measure.

All the personnel here, on and off camera, are top notch. Sam Mendes brings some nice flourishes but never gets in the way of the action, the cinematography is gorgeous and the cast is stuffed with recognisable names who all happen to be pretty decent at this acting lark. Craig is completely at ease as Bond, and if his injections of vulnerability and reality to the character mean he can't quite match up to Connery's iconic suavity - from a time when shades of grey were far less important - then he can't really help the hand of history being against him.

They even made sure to get Adele (as close as we get now to a universally popular artiste) to do the song. It’s not an all-time great Bond theme, but is reassuringly classy and several leagues above the tuneless Jack White/Alicia Keys effort from last time. And that applies to Skyfall in general really. It’s not going to be remembered as a masterpiece, but it does everything it sets out to do - and is allowed to do - exceedingly well.

As franchises go, Bond is an extremely rigid one. When you've been at something for 50 years, you pick up an awful lot of expectations along the way. People don’t want too much change from a Bond movie - it wouldn’t be possible for a Christopher Nolan to come in and impose his own unique stamp on it without alienating a substantial part of the audience. The Dark Knight Rises is my film of the year by some distance, and Skyfall never seriously has the chance to compare.

But ultimately this matters not. Bond is cinematic comfort food. You can sprinkle in a bit of sophistication and emotional undercurrents, but at its heart is still a rock-solid hero who quips, shags, and boozes his way through to the other side relatively unscathed. It’s a reassuring constant, and we the audience glory in its predictable silliness. Long may it continue.