New James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace faces an almost impossible task – could it be more well-received than Casino Royale?

It’s a tough job – because, as we all know, films don’t get any better than overlong Bourne rip-offs about a man who cries blood when he’s losing at cards – and it seems like it might have been too much of a tough job for Quantum Of Solace.

Early reviews for Quantum of Solace are starting to trickle in, and they’re all fairly scathing. But James Bond movies always tend to be a direct reaction against the previous one, so we can all relax. The follow-up to the emotionally bleak Quantum Of Solace – provisionally entitled Daniel Craig Punches A Laser-Shark In His Little Knickers – is sure to be a belter.

The omens for Quantum Of Solace weren’t great from the outset. Following a success as big as Casino Royale was always going to be tough, but following it with a movie with the world’s worst name directed by a man whose last film was about kites, written by a bald Scientologist, featuring a theme-tune that sounds like an angry wasp smacking against the inside of an upturned metal dustbin and starring a 12-fingered woman doing an impression of a Torrey Canyon gannet probably wasn’t going to help very much either, to be honest.

Having said that, though, nobody thought that Casino Royale was going to be any good either, so maybe Quantum Of Solace could pull off the impossible and end up halfway decent too, couldn’t it?

Well, no. Not if the early stream of Quantum Of Solace reviews are anything to go by. Here’s the best of what we’ve seen so far…

Kim Newman from Empire says that “while it’s exciting, it’s not exactly anyone’s idea of fun. To keep in the game, perhaps the next movie could let the hero enjoy himself a bit more.”

Richard Brookes from The Times was especially unimpressed. “Bond is a boorish oaf who simply rushes from country to country with the manic speed of Jason Bourne, including sequences shot in Panama, Chile, Italy, Mexico and Austria, in a plot about holding a country to ransom over its water supply. Quantum of Solace lacks any wit, ironic or otherwise, which has been a strength of so many 007 films.”

The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw claims “I was disappointed there was so little dialogue, flirtation and characterisation in this Bond: Forster and his writers Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade clearly thought this sort of sissy nonsense has to be cut out in favour of explosions… I was also baffled that relatively little was made of the deliciously villainous Amalric: especially the final encounter.”

The Mirror‘s Dave Edwards thinks that Quantum Of Solace “doesn’t feel like a Bond film at all. Not once does Craig say: ‘The name’s Bond. James Bond.’ There’s no Q or his gadgets. Heck, we even see Bond in a cardigan.”

A cardigan? Well eff that. Anyway, it was always fairly obvious that Quantum Of Solace wasn’t going to be particularly amazing, because of the well-worn ‘one good, one bad’ James Bond formula. Casino Royale was good, so Quantum Of Solace has to be bad. Then the movie after Quantum Of Solace will be good, and the one after that will be about a man with a dream machine trying to saw the world in half with a space laser that only an invisible car can stop. That’s just how it works. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Anyway, just because the Quantum Of Solace reviews are bad, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun watching it. Why not do what we plan to do – every time you see a piece of jarring product placement in Quantum Of Solace, shout the name of the offending brand as loudly as possible. You’ll be thrown out by the twelfth “SONY!”, promise.

Casino Royale. It was OK and everything, but when we think of James Bond we imagine a creaky old leather-skinned corset-wearing man huffing and puffing after baddies in a safari suit, and that isn't Daniel Craig – yet.

But, by Christ, it will be soon enough. Daniel Craig has reportedly signed a deal to keep playing James Bond for another four movies, hopefully at the end of which he'll have perfected the wheezing belly/combover combination that everyone expects from 007. But at least Daniel Craig is getting properly reimbursed for it – according to rumours, the four-movie deal he's been given will make him the highest-paid actor in Britain, which should at least mean he won't feel the need to make cock like The Invasion again.

It's been a while since Daniel Craig was drafted in to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond after Brosnan reportedly wanted to take Bond in a more 'sweary car park paparazzi scuffle' direction. And Daniel Craig had a lot of opposition from just about the whole world, who disliked him speaking out against handguns and losing teeth-fights with midgets and having a face that looks like a potato that's been thrown through a pane of glass.

But Daniel Craig only went and pulled it off. Casino Royale became the most successful James Bond movie ever – even though it was beaten at the box office by some penguins – and fans went crazy for Daniel Craig's gritty portrayal of a completely humourless thug playing cards while a policeman loudly described exactly what was going on in the background. But what of the future?

Well, although the Casino Royale sequel – directed by him out of Monster's Ball – is due out next year, the future of Daniel Craig's Bond has been vastly uncertain. First he didn't want to make any more 007 films, then we didn't want him to make any more 007 after he revealed the new movie's Carry On direction, and now MGM has said he's going to keep making 007 films until the day that cloned nanobots become so intelligent that they make humans their slaves. Or about 10 years, whichever comes soonest. The Guardian reports:

Hollywood studio MGM has signed the British actor, who won plaudits for his tough and rugged 007 in Casino Royale, for another four movies. It was already known that Craig would don the tuxedo jacket a second time for the forthcoming 22nd Bond film, but his further plans had been unclear. Now his future at MI6 seems assured. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Harry Sloan, MGM's chief executive and chairman, "signed Daniel Craig to do four more James Bond films" because franchises are the "the bases of any studio".

Looking at Daniel Craig's new deal objectively, it's hard not to get excited. The five-movie canon of James Bond films will give Daniel Craig the perfect 007 career trajectory – after the hungry reimagining of Casino Royale, there'll be the triumphant follow-up, then the complacent third movie, then the fourth movie that nobody goes to see and finally the fifth re-reimagining where a paunchy 50-year-old Daniel Craig teams up with German ladyspy Mingey McOrgasm and uses his laser cufflinks and invisible helicopter to try to save the world from a crazed madman who lives in a cave made out of diamonds in the centre of the Earth's core and wants to rule the world by pulling the moon out of the sky with a big rope.

And that's the James Bond movie we want to see. 

Read more:

MGM Extends Craig's Licence To Kill - Guardian