No it's not, not if you became a fan through the original novels. No one really expects Bond to be like Le Carre, but there are many of us who cringed as the movies became more and more ridiculous.
I have read Fleming's stories, and while they tended to be darker and grittier than the movies, they contained some wild ideas themselves.
Moonraker introduced the kind of over-the-top imminent threat, something
Dr No and
Thunderball picked up, too. In
Casino Royale itself, the idea of surprising gadgets is introduced by a gun disguised as a cane. The short story
From A View To A Kill has a secret villain's lair hidden underground beneath some hedges. And you don't have to look further than some of the names Fleming has given his characters to know he had some humor about his work.
For the record, I thought Casino Royale got the balance between the novel and pandering to the expectations of the cinema audience about right, and still did great business.
See, I personally like the Brosnan era best, because those films (at least the first three) felt liked they had gotten the formula worked out. There was toughness, there was emotion, their was charme, there was over-the-top characters and clever action. And while the fourth,
Die Another Day, had those things, too, it went from one extreme (dark and gritty in the beginning) to another (over-the-top fantastic in the end), and most people tend to forget the darkness after the fantastic.
CR, I think, was propably the best one could make out of this particular story (it doesn't quite work within the established formular), I thought it should have been something special, as in 'out of the ordinary', for the series, like OHMSS was.
But, having learned that the Bond series does go from one extreme to another, depending on the zeitgeist, I've made my peace with sitting these pseudo-realistic movies out, letting those who enjoy them, well, enjoy them, and waiting for the more tongue-in-cheek films that will undoubtedly follow.
