It’s poorly explained, its relevance to the Vesper plot it’s supposed to be a sequel to is unclear at best and near arbitrary at worst. The final film, while follow-able, requires more filling in of the blanks on the audiences’ part than this kind of film should. Unsurprisingly this scripting issue is the main culprit for almost all the film’s woes. Only Daniel Craig and director Marc Forster were allowed to work on the script under the strike rules and so, working from an unfinished draft of the script and with only a vague notion of what it would become (allegedly the film wasn’t initially planned to be the direct sequel it ultimately became), they soldiered on, wrote new lines on the day and managed to get a finished film out of it. But this was Bond, and they had a release date to meet.

Rushed into production to capitalise on Casino Royale’s staggering success and goodwill toward the franchise, the film almost immediately hit trouble with the now near-legendary writers’ strike which knee-capped any number of films and TV shows at the time. Discovering a plot to steal Bolivia’s water supply, install a dictator and sell the water back to the country for massive profits, Bond fights to thwart Greene and finally get answers regarding Vesper’s (Eva Green) involvement in the Quantum-linked events of the prior film. Bond ends up on the trail of Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), an environmental philanthropist and one of Quantum’s key members. Taking place minutes after 007 franchise re-starter Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace begins with James Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Judi Dench) as they interrogate Mr White (Jesper Christensen), ultimately learning of the mysterious Quantum organisation a globe-spanning, shadowy cabal with connections to the highest levels of government and people everywhere. And quite damaging, they most certainly were. For production woes it most certainly had.

– would this film have been more favourably received. One wonders if this film had been released now – given the huge increase in awareness of production woes and the taking of them into account in reviews etc. However there are times – and movies – where the opposite holds just as true Quantum of Solace is one such example. ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ as a turn of phrase is often especially true of films.

What is the movie after casino royale