“I always enjoy Bond movies but of course they are daft, and you need very intelligent actors to play them with just the right twinkle in the eye.” — The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw in a 10.16 post.

They weren’t always this way. Bond films didn’t start sipping the crazy water until Goldfinger. The first two, Dr. No and From Russia With Love, were tongue-in-cheeky with a light, self-amused attitude, but they didn’t stand on a rooftop and shout “look how batshit ludicrous we can be!” That attitude started to creep in with Goldfinger, gained traction with Thunderball and then went full-tilt boogie with You Only Live Twice.

Back to Bradshaw: “But the promotional machine insists that these intelligent people pretend to be glassy-eyed devotees in the cult of Bond and all its luxury-brand sponsors, for the benefit of journalists and hype-merchants who are themselves pretending. Perhaps the Bond cast will just freak out, en masse, on the red carpet and start screaming their hatred of Bond — like 12-year-old piano prodigies forced to practice 17 hours a day who end up deliberately smashing their fingers in a car door.”