Apostrophe S

I just saw the teaser trailer for the upcoming adaptation of “Casino Royale,” pretty much the last Ian Fleming James Bond story to get a proper adaptation. You can check it out at the official site. (Check out the other digital swag available, also.)

As always, I’m fairly excited. And also as always, I’m fairly pessimistic. Despite some bright spots in the last, oh, 15 or so Bond flicks, there’s been a steady decline in the quality of the series, and a steady increase in absurdity. Not that I’m expecting a movie about a renowned secret agent who kills without blinking and shags without thinking to be “realistic.” It’s fantasy, I understand that. But dammit, the first few Bond films were good fantasy, and quality storytelling. “From Russia With Love” is still one of my favorite movies, in addition to being my favorite 007 movie.

But anyway, so far the promotional materials for “Casino Royale” are giving me a little hope. Despite the seemingly commercially-motivated plot changes (they just had to throw in a handful of additional exotic locations, and they just had to swap out the Baccarat tournament for a Texas Holdem tournament), it seems the writers actually cracked Fleming’s original novel to build their story. It faces a few challenges already. For instance, shifting the story to a modern-day setting and still plotting this adventure as Bond’s first gives the longtime fan a head-scratching, time-space-continuum-destroying, better-if-we-ignore-the-previous-twenty-movies timeline to figure out. Then again, the overall Bond timeline has always been somewhat flexible.

After I read the novel, my first thought was that a film adaptation would work best, and probably quite beautifully, as a period piece of sorts, actually set in the ’50s or ’60s, with the setting evoking the necessity and plausibility a lucky secret agent. These kinds of characters exist best in eras that need them, while they exist somewhat gratuitously in an age of satellite surveillance, smart bombs and enemies who don’t have the class that fictitious Cold War-era Ruskies did.

But ah, class. That could perhaps be what pulls this series back from the over-the-top action, expensive-yet-unexpectedly-handy gadgetry, and T&A mentality it has been stuck in pretty much since Roger Moore took over. We can argue for days about which of the films since “Thunderball” has merit. I’ve seen them all multiple times, and there is quality to be found. But let’s be honest. The series is stagnant at best. At worst it’s a laughingstock. Somewhere around “The Man With the Golden Gun,” the writers traded in their classy, hard-working spy who occasionally smirks for a smirking, gadget-reliant spy who occaionally works hard. I hope “Casino Royale” features as few gadgets as possible. I hope it doesn’t have a New Car Cameo. I hope the dialogue doesn’t make me cringe. And I hope to fucking god that they tell a good story and not just take us through the James Bond Visual Theme Park, like the latest installment in the series did. And above all, I just hope Daniel Craig shows a little class. It’s the last of the Fleming fairy dust. Let’s not waste it.