Actually, I don't think Bond has ever been particularly relevant to the modern world. When you look at the other big movies of recent years, like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, you wonder if it matters. The franchise has got more popular with each consecutive film. The question now is how much they deviate from the expected formula. Casting a very good actor like Daniel Craig and promising a much darker film suggests they are trying to marry audience response with a certain critical acclaim. That's very encouraging. Robert Mitchell