Marc Forster has quite the resume beyond making a Bond film, with works like Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger than Fiction, The Kite Runner, World War Z and Christopher Robin.

It’s a film that looks back at early Bond films while making its own way, building on the loss that Bond endured at the end of Casino Royale. It’s also the most violent film of the series, according to a study by the University of Otago in New Zealand.

We start directly after the end of the first film, with Bond taking Mr. White to his boss M. However, White escapes and Bond begins investigating the evil organization Quantum (or Spectre, but the filmmakers didn’t have the rights). Mathieu Amalric plays the villain Dominic Greene, an eco-terrorist who acts as if he is helping the planet.

You can see this movie as really the second part of one story, setting Bond up for his future adventures and showing modern audiences who he is now.

I love how the gun barrel sequence happens at the end of the film, finally showing us that this is Bond. For not being based on an Ian Fleming story, it’s nice knowing that the character seems to be in good hands.