Entertainment

1. Casino Royale, 2006

After becoming a 00 agent, James Bond hunts down a bomb maker in Madagascar, leading him to shady financier Alex Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian) in the Bahamas, and then to a plot to blow up the prototype Skyfleet airliner at Miami Airport. 

By preventing the bombing, Bond leaves villain Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) on the verge of bankruptcy, as he lost his clients’ money by betting on Skyfleet’s failure. Le Chiffre sets up a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro in an attempt to win back the lost money. 

Bond attends with Treasury agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and wins, but Le Chiffre kidnaps Lynd and tortures Bond. They are saved when a senior figure in the terrorist organisation QUANTUM, Mr White (Jesper Christensen), kills Le Chiffre. However, Lynd is secretly working for White, and has made a deal with him to save the agent’s life.

In love with Lynd, Bond resigns from MI6 and travels to Venice with her. There, he realises she has betrayed him and stolen the money. A gunfight with QUANTUM’s men in a collapsing Venetian villa ensues, and Lynd lets herself drown because she cannot bear the burden of her guilt. Bond pursues White and shoots him in the leg, then introduces himself with the iconic line; “The name’s Bond, James Bond.”

2. Quantum of Solace, 2008

This film takes place 10 minutes after the end of Casino Royale. 

Bond’s search for answers behind Vesper’s betrayal leads him to uncover QUANTUM, a menacing organisation whose tentacles spread across the globe, with double agents hiding within the British government, MI6 and the CIA. 

His investigation takes him to Haiti, where he meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), an agent who has her own vengeance-fuelled agenda. Posing as the girlfriend of faux-environmentalist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), she becomes apprehensive of his business relationship with General Medrano (Joaquín Cosío). 

With Bond by her side, they discover Greene is part of QUANTUM, an organisation that is secretly appropriating all of Bolivia’s water supply, and replacing its president with a more pliable leader.

3. Skyfall, 2012

Here, Bond chases assassin Patrice (Ola Rapace) through the streets of Istanbul to recover a flash drive containing the names of every MI6 and NATO agent embedded in terrorist organisations around the world. 

As Bond and Patrice fight atop a moving train, on M’s (Judi Dench) orders, field agent Eve (Naomie Harris) attempts to shoot Patrice, but she hits Bond. He plunges 300 feet into the water below and is presumed dead. Later, M is forced to relocate the agency underground. These events cause her authority and position to be challenged. 

Bond returns broken and full of doubts. He fails MI6’s physical and psychological tests, but M lies to him and tells him he has passed, and she sends him on a mission to track down Patrice in Shanghai. Assuming Patrice’s identity, Bond follows clues that lead him to Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) in Macau, and then to her master, Silva (Javier Bardem), on an abandoned island. 

Silva is a former MI6 agent seeking revenge for M’s betrayal, but Bond intercepts before he can carry out his plan. As M goes in front of a board of inquiry, and Q tries to hack into Silva’s computer, Silva escapes and attacks the board. However, Bond manages to get M out safely and drives her north to his ancestral home in Scotland, Skyfall. With the help of groundskeeper Kincade, Bond and M defend Skyfall from Silva’s assault, and defeat him, but not before M receives a fatal wound. 

Later Bond reports to Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) – the new M – and is ready to take on his new mission.

Adele recorded a single with the same name as the movie, which received universal acclaim.

4. Spectre, 2015

On a rogue mission in Mexico City, Bond kills an assassin. Back in London, Bond is grounded by the current M, Mallory, but confides in Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) that he was acting on orders from the previous M before she passed. 

Bond travels to Rome and infiltrates a secret meeting, but their leader Franz Oberhauser, reveals Bond’s presence. Hinx (Dave Bautista) pursues Bond in a car chase. 

In Austria, Bond meets his old nemesis Mr White, and makes a promise to keep Mr White’s daughter safe in exchange for leading him to Oberhauser. The daughter, Dr Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), reluctantly agrees to help. She reveals the secret organisation is SPECTRE. 

Swann leads Bond to Tangier and they journey by train to a desert location where Swann makes Bond question the life he has chosen for himself. At a high-tech facility in the desert, Bond and Swann meet Oberhauser, who later reveals himself to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz).

In London, Bond debriefs M.  Bond has the opportunity to kill Blofeld but decides to let him live. Bond joins Swann, leaving his old life behind.

Sam Smith performed “Writing’s on the Wall”, and won the second ever Academy Award for Best Original Song for a Bond-themed song, after Adele’s “Skyfall”.