Allow me to preface this post with two points: First, this is a direct response to Roger Ebert's review of the new Bond flick, "Quantum of Solace" which opened Friday in the U.S. and which I have just returned from seeing. If you have not read Ebert's review, you may do so at Ebert's website (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081111/REVIEWS/811129989). Second, I am writing this review as a long time Bond fan. My parents started taking me to see Bond movies (always at the drive-in in the early years. They expected me to go to sleep in the back seat) beginning with "The Spy Who Loved Me" (I do remember being taken to "Live and Let Die", but that must have been a rerelease since I would have been three when that movie first came out). I have since seen every single Bond film in the theater, save one: For some reason I do not remember, I did not see "Die Another Day" (the last Brosnan) until its release on DVD. I also have seen all of the Connery films from an early age (they showed them on channel 29 in Buffalo, NY on Saturday afternoons. My dad watched them with me since Connery was, to him, the "real" Bond. To me, he was the Bond on TV). So I am no fly-by-night Bond viewer who came to the series during the Brosnan years. I know whereof I speak when I speak of Bond.

This review may contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie and you don't want anything spoiled, do not read on.

Ebert's review, which I assume you have read by now, was extremely negative. He begged the producers to "never do this to Bond again" and urged them to completely reconstruct the character. His review was not meant as a criticism of Daniel Craig, however, who Ebert praises as a "great Bond, perhaps the best Bond." His complaint is about the way the character is handled and how the film is structured. He states, incredibly, that Bond is "not an action hero." (He's right in a way. Bond is not an action hero. Bond is the action hero.)

Where to begin? Ebert complains that Bond is not the suave martini-sipper of old, that the "Bond Girl" Camille is not given a racy name like "Pussy Galore," that Bond's attitude is less dispassionate than previous incarnations. This Bond is not witty. He is brutal. He doesn't sleep with all of his female co-stars. In fact, he barely shows any interest in Camille. In short, the film departs completely from at least twenty out of twenty-one previous Bond films.

I do not disagree with Ebert's assessment of the character. This is a different Bond. The question is whether this is a bad thing. Ebert believes that it is. This is where we differ.

Part of the problem lies in Ebert's admitted blind-spot when it comes to comic books and comic book related movies. Ebert is the first to admit that he doesn't know from comic books. He's never read them. Bond isn't a comic book character, of course, but Bond has been subjected in the last two films to something very familiar to comic book fans, but clearly alien to Ebert: A reboot. Obviously, Ebert doesn't know what a "reboot" is. If he did, I can't imagine that he would have written the review he did.

What Ebert clearly does not understand is that there are now two completely different "epochs" in the Bond continuity: The twenty films made between 1962 and 2002 and the two films made since 2006. There are, therefore, two different Bonds: The Bond played by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan and the Bond played by Daniel Craig. I have just completed watching the first films by each Bond as a build up to the release of "QOS," so I have the various interpretations of the character very fresh in my mind as a write this, so let us be completely clear on this: However each actor may have differed in his reading of James Bond, there can be no doubt that Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan were all playing the same character existing in a continuity that existed (however tenously, at times) between the twenty films they made. There were consistant characters (M, Q, Miss Moneypenny, Felix Leiter, Blofeld) even if the characters (like Bond himself) were played by different actors. If something happened to Felix, for example (as happened in "License to Kill"), that took him out of action, then Felix could not appear in the subsequent films (he did not appear in any of the Brosnan films, being replaced by a new CIA agent (Jack Wade, who appeared in "GoldenEye" and "Tomorrow Never Dies," played both times by Joe Don Baker).

With "Casino Royale," however, both Bond and his universe were completely rebooted. Now Bond is a novice agent who has just earned his "00" status. Felix Leiter is back in the CIA (played by Jeffery Wright in both "CR" and "QOS," making him the second actor to play Felix more than once and the first actor to play him in consecutive films), a more ambiguous ally of 007's than Felix was in the first continuity. Judi Dench is no longer the "new" M (as introduced in "GoldenEye"). She is Bond's first superior officer (there may have been male 'M's in the past, but none of them supervised this James Bond). There is no evidence of a Q (or even a Q Division) or a Miss Moneypenny (a fact that Ebert laments in his review). This James Bond never encountered Dr. No, Auric Goldfinger, Odd Jobs, Pussy Galore, or any of the villians of the original continuity. Hell, this James Bond only JUST started drinking his martinis "shaken, not stirred."

All of this is simply to say that we CANNOT compare "QOS" to any previous Bond film (save "CR") or Craig's Bond to any previous incarnation. It isn't the same character or the same MI6.

So what do we know about THIS 007 and THIS world? Well, THIS world isn't populated with world-beating villians who hide out in active volcanos or women with ridiculous names. The bad guys in this world are after money, not world conquest. There are, in fact, no "Bond Girls," just female allies and enemies. THIS Bond has yet to develop into the character introduced at the beginning of "Dr. No." Maybe he never will. He doesn't regard violence as an inconvience but rather has a way of life. This Bond's overriding characteristic is not his charm or his unflappable cool but rather his complete and utter recklessness. You get the impression that this Bond doesn't survive because he's somehow superior to his enemies, but rather because he is actually willing to die in order to get the job done. You see it several times in "QOS": Bond essentially plays chicken with his opponents, and they lose because they aren't willing to just put the petal to the floor and let nature take its course. They always flinch, and because they flinch, they die.

"QOS" picks up immediately after the end of "CR" (something very few of the previous Bond films ever did: The only thing even remotely resembling continuing storylines I can think of are the Blofeld triology ("You Only Live Twice", "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "Diamonds Are Forever") and the two Moore films that had a recurring villian (Jaws, who appeared in "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker")), which means that the two films are actually one continuing story. Bond is after the Organization (revealed in this film as Quantum) that was responsible for Vesper's betrayal and death in the previous film. It is implied that Quantum will play a role in subsequent Bond films and a lot of this film is spent trying to learn about them and what they are after. Dominic Greene (this film's villian) is (like Le Chiffre in the last film) not an Ultimate Villian but just another functionary. We don't know who runs Quantum (but we know that its members are highly placed: at least one is an advisor to Britain's PM). Again, this is something that Ebert disliked. Where are the comic opera villians with their jumpsuited henchmen and sharks with frickin' lasers on their frickin' heads? No one ever captures Bond. No one ever details his fiendish plot for world domination (or at least blackmail) and then leaves Bond in the hands of flunkies who will be quickly dispatched. It's completely unlike twenty out of twenty-two films in the series.

Don't get me wrong: I LOVE the Bond series. I love the gadgets and the silly bad guys and the babes. But I also love the fact that the producers have taken Bond in a completely new direction. I love both the old Bond and the new. But I must emphasize the fact that there ARE two Bonds. You can have both, of course. You can enjoy the New Bond in the two recent films and then go home and enjoy Bond Classic on DVD. But don't think that the producers have somehow betrayed Bond because they haven't. James Bond is dead. Long live James Bond.