In Casino Royale, Daniel Craig gave James Bond a much-needed shot of steroids. Pierce Brosnan started strong, but drifted into the Roger Moore never-never land of bad puns and stale gimmicks (invisible car, anyone?). Shaking up the series made Craig's debut the highest grossing Bond film ever.

On November 14, Craig's beefed-up Bond returns. Warning: If you want to go into the movie cold, stop reading. There be spoilers ahead!

Quantum of Solace picks up just an hour after Casino Royale's close, with Bond out for blood to avenge the killing of Vesper Lynde, the lover who betrayed him and died in Venice. Turns out that Mr. White, who Bond tracked down and shot in the closing minutes of Casino, is part of a wider conspiracy.

The title, taken from an Ian Fleming short story about a dinner party, has been tweaked: now QUANTUM is an evil organization like SMERSH or SPECTRE, with agents who have infiltrated the CIA and MI6. (So far, even the producers don't know what it stands for; Barbara Broccoli recently told Entertainment Weekly, "If you think of something, let us know.")

A lead on a traitorous MI6 agent sends Bond to Haiti, where he meets Camille, a Russian-Bolivian agent who leads him to an environmentalist businessman named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric, a French award winner), head of the Greene Planet Corporation. Behind his company's "green" front -- pun alert -- lies a plan to overthrow the Bolivian government for an ambitious general in exchange for a seemingly worthless piece of land that will somehow let him corner the market on fresh water.

Alongside the traditional Bond save-the-world plot, he's also nursing a wounded heart. Casino Royale added depth and darkness to the Bond character, and both are key to the sequel. Is Bond a loyal agent, or a rogue out for vengeance?

You can't have a Bond movie without a Bond girl (it's actually British law) and Quantum doubles down with two relative newcomers: Hitman's Olga Kuryelnko plays Camille, and Gemma Arterton plays an MI6 agent who works in Bolivia. (She'll be the face of the "Bond Girl 007" perfume, too. It also wouldn't be Bond without pricey product tie-ins.) Judi Dench returns as M, and Giancarlo Giannini as the French double agent Rene Mathis. Rumors of an Al Pacino cameo as the head of QUANTUM have been squashed, but they may still have something up their sleeves.

Casino Royale was directed by Martin Campbell (who also directed GoldenEye), but in the chair this time is Marc Forster, whose background is in drama rather than action, with credits like The Kite Runner and Monster's Ball. Switching to a dramatic director can be a mistake, but the action scenes in the trailers look amazing. If Forster can play up the drama and still keep the guns and speedboats blazing, this could be another classic.

Of course, the other big news item on a Bond movie is the title theme. Pop diva/paparazzi trainwreck Amy Winehouse was originally supposed to record a duet with Mark Ronson, but dropped out in between street fights with old ladies or something. Alicia Keys and Jack White of the White Stripes paired up instead to record "Another Time to Die." These theme songs are almost always underwhelming (remember that Madonna one? How about a-ha's?), but at least this looks to be a hybrid of completely different sounds. (Note: Consider "Live and Let Die" officially exempt.)

Since Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been bumped to 2009, Quantum of Solace is the blockbuster of the fall. But can it live up to Casino Royale's $594 million worldwide smash hit status?

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