There’s a time in every franchise where they fall into a rut and need to do something to get out of it. For many, the solution has been to reboot; whether hard or soft, these restarts are meant to get the audience and property back on the same page, but can easily lead to a stagnation of its own that’s as frustrating as it is invigorating. One of the bigger victims of this phenomenon is arguably the James Bond franchise. Ian Fleming’s iconic super spy has spent 20 years learning to become the classic version fans love, starting with 2006’s Casino Royale. To give the property a full-on restart, original IP owners Eon looked at Batman Begins’ approach to dark and gritty realism and an emphasis on practical stunt work for inspiration, creating a young Bond that was no stranger to secretly serving Her Majesty, but still had some tricks to learn. As surprising as it was to hear back then, Eon thought this was necessary for the good of the franchise, and it’s a gamble that paid off spectacularly. Mostly. Yes, Casino Royale introduced the world to Daniel Craig and convinced studios that reboots were the new hotness. But it also did its job a bit too well, putting Bond in a state where he’s never quite left the reboot mindset. 2012’s Skyfall functions as a soft reboot by adding in classic 007 fixtures missing from the prior two films like his supporting cast. (Q, Moneypenny, and a male M all debut here and recur going forward.) And both Skyfall and Craig’s last, No Time to Die, see Bond rebooting himself within those films, working throughout them to get his groove back after he’s spent a different amount of years in retirement.