The influence of the Bourne pictures on Bond was not in the visual style. In that regard they are completely different animals (except QoS, which had Dan Bradley working the second unit). What I meant was that before the Bourne films, the James Bond series had become a repetitive exercise in gadgets and poor puns. What Bourne did differently was largely dropping the gadgets from the spy genre, putting higher emphasis on raw physicality and athleticism, and using dark humor rather than in your face gags. Bond adopted all of these traits for Casino Royale. They always wanted to do the book, that's fine, but the way they went about adapting the story was definitely more in the vein of The Bourne Identity/Supremacy than what had been seen before in previous Bond films. Bourne took a lot of cues from Bond, but I'd argue that in recent years, Bond has taken more cues from Bourne, and it shows. Skyfall appears to be developing it's own identity, making use of the terror state the world has adopted while injecting a fresh take on the classic formula. Casino Royale did this well, but to an extent, it had Bourne to thank for the new found edge. Just my two cents.
"Dropping the gadgets from the spy genre, putting higher emphasis on raw physicality and athleticism" it's an approach that have happened many times before in the history of Bond after an excess of fantasy within the line of the EON series (i.e. FYEO after MR or OHMSS after YOLT). And where's the "dark humor", or the humor at all, in the Bourne movies (specially, in the Greengrass ones)??
Edited by Mr. Arlington Beech, 09 February 2012 - 06:55 PM.