There is a good gawker piece on why.
https://www.gawker.com/culture/hes-really-had-a-substantial-amount-of-time-to-die
But let me put my own words out there instead. As a different writer (not the gawker piece), once said (I am paraphrasing and blending). We love to watch Bond for the same reason we love to watch cats. Bond is amoral, graceful, flippant, etc. Bond like a Cat has nine lives, for he is a lucky person who is living on a razor edge before fate catches up with him.
Someone who is not living with society, but instead on the outside of it, the periphery. Who Ian Fleming himself stated he was a dinosaur living in the wrong time, in the 19 fricking 50s. A man outside of time, much like Captain America but inverted.
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Ironically while I feel the Craig era was a mistake besides, perhaps Casino Royale, the name of the 2nd movie comes from a short story which I feel could have been a different path the series could have taken. Quantum of Solace is a concept in said story, the bare minimum between two people of fellow feeling to make the relationship possible, the smallest unit where one feels connected and works together.
The short story Quantum of Solace is not a spy story, even though it was a Bond Story. It was Bond attending a dinner party and he heard about the Marriage troubles of another, and why one partner separated from the other. The separator also did a cruel revenge plot, for he was cheated upon. And how the cheatee was going to be cordial at first with the separation, but changed his mind for he did not have the bare minimum of kindness the short story is referencing anymore.
In the end Bond realized that boring, banal thing, this marriage and it’s estrangement, is more meaningful than all his missions which are full of excitement. He also learned the person who suffered the revenge plot, she later found love again and this was her dinner party with her new husband.
Origin stories are a trickee thing to build a franchise around. You can write yourself into a corner with them. For you feel the need to tell a congruent tale with no interruptions, a path that may wander, but the string that connect things is hard to cut and reattach to a different string, forming a new path. Did we need to create a metanarrative around an amoral cat, who has feelings, yet is a sociopath? Are we setting ourselves up to disappointment when we try?
