In each case, a radical directional change was made in order to remind filmgoers that Bond was a character and not just a cipher to follow in between action set-pieces. And now, after Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry raced around in an invisible car in Die Another Day, Daniel Craig has assumed the mantle of Fleming's secret agent in the back-to-basics Casino Royale. After Moore retired his license to kill following the bloated A View to a Kill, a surly, no-nonsense Timothy Dalton returned Bond to his gritty roots in The Living Daylights.

After Roger Moore blasted into space in Moonraker, he came back down to earth in the leaner For Your Eyes Only. After Sean Connery's Bond ventured into a hollowed-out volcano to battle Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, he returned in the person of George Lazenby for the pared down (and more faithful to the source material) On Her Majesty's Secret Service. So why did the powers-that-be let Pierce Brosnan go and decide to argue with success? The answer is that the Bond producers always did that. The Bond series, on the other hand, had its most successful installment in years with 2002's Die Another Day. The earlier Batman films, though, had ended with a boxoffice underperformer. As you may already know, Casino Royale reboots the Bond franchise much the same way as Batman Begins did Warners' Caped Crusader series. Dame Judi Dench reprises her role as Bond's boss, 'M.' The cast includes Eva Green ( Kingdom of Heaven) as Bond girl Vesper Lynd, Mads Mikkelsen ( King Arthur) as the villainous Le Chiffre, Jeffrey Wright ( Syriana) as CIA agent Felix Leiter, Giancarlo Giannini ( Hannibal) as Mathis, Caterina Murino as Solonge, Simon Abkarian ( The Truth About Charlie) as Dimitrios, Tobias Menzies (Brutus on HBO's Rome) as Villiers, Ivana Milicevic ( Love Monkey) as Valenka, Clemens Schik as Kratt, Ludger Pistor as Mendel, and Claudio Santamaria as Carlos. Daniel Craig has been cast as the silver screen's sixth 007.

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