BOND 50 CASINO ROYALE

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of James Bond on the big screen. To celebrate, SFX's Nick Setchfield revisits each and every 007 adventure in a week by week countdown to Skyfall ...

KEEP ON RUNNING Bond’s remorseless pursuit of scarred bomb-maker Mollaka is one of the most satisfying action sequences yet – a defiantly physical reproach to the crowd-swindling CGI of Die Another Day . He’s clumsy but winningly gutsy in the chase, clearly lacking the free-running expertise of his quarry but compensating with balls, determination and ingenuity (when he’s not commandeering a bulldozer the inexorable agent is smashing through a plaster wall with just the faintest touch of Wile E Coyote). Framed against clear Madagascan skies, the confrontation on the towering cranes of a construction site has a dizzyingly vertiginous sense of reality – and when Bond effortlessly catches the gun that a desperate Mollaka lobs at him it’s a moment of masterful, minimalist cool. This exhaustively choreographed sequence took six weeks to shoot, with real life free-running specialist Sebastien Foucan cast as the fleet-heeled terrorist.

TRIV AND LET DIE

Casino Royale was brought to the screen as a TV adaptation in 1954 and a lacklustre big screen spoof in 1967. Eon reclaimed the rights in 1999.

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN IN QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Nick Setchfield is the Editor-at-Large for SFX Magazine, writing features, reviews, interviews, and more for the monthly issues. However, he is also a freelance journalist and author with Titan Books. His original novels are called The War in the Dark, and The Spider Dance. He's also written a book on James Bond called Mission Statements.