Motifs in the James Bond film series that is central to the spy film genre. The gun barrel imagery sometimes carried over to the film posters used to promote Bond films, including as a familiarising element on the introduction of Timothy Dalton for "The Living Daylights". The sequence was traditionally placed at the start of each film until the 2006 instalment "Casino Royale", where it appears after the cold open and is incorporated into the plot; in the 2008 film, "Quantum of Solace", the sequence was placed at the end of the film and incorporates the film's title in its design. For Skyfall, director Sam Mendes had
James Bond filmography the darker character Ian Fleming wrote about". James Chapman also considered Dalton to be closer to Fleming's Bond than the previous actors, writing that Dalton was "clearly less comfortable ... with the witty asides and one-liners ... so he becomes something closer to the Bond of the books, who rarely develops a sense of humour". When reviewing "Licence to Kill", Iain Johnstone of "The Sunday Times" disagreed, declaring that "any vestiges of the gentleman spy ... by Ian Fleming" have now gone; he went on to say that "this character is remarkably close both in deed and action to the