To me, the Craig Bond films were entirely their own continuity, divorced from the rest of the prior films, and I'm just fine with that. No reason they can't create another continuity again. The vast majority of the Bond films are stand-alone entries anyway, that only occasionally make reference to the previous films (and most of the time those are passing references). James Bond, probably more than any other long running series, is able to exist without worrying about canon.
As for comics, I'm of two minds. I DO care about continuity, and don't want contradictions to it (I miss the No Prize, when the editors had readers write in to explain away continuity mistakes, and those were adopted as canon). At the same time, I agree that superheroes existing in their OWN realities is better, and we don't need to obsess over the minor details (as
@cmoney noted, retcons like the "Siancong War" are cool ways to address things that were previously anchored in historical events). Marvel, in my mind, has always handled this better overall, whereas DC just reboots every few years. I do think BOTH universes need to stay away from too many events that happen in the real world. I don't need to see 9/11 or the pandemic depicted in either continuity...especially considering that far worse events have been depicted in those comics. Tying someone like Captain America to such an event just waters down his history. Do we need to know when Captain America was rescued from the ice, and how it related to the events we experienced in our lives? I'd argue that we definitely don't.
I completely understand the desire to only ever have Peter Parker as Spider-Man or Bruce Wayne as Batman, but at the same time I think it runs the risk of getting stagnant and dull if those characters never progress. Spidey is a great example of this, in that the writers and editors at some point decided that he couldn't progress past a certain point, and even made the decision to roll back certain progressions like his marriage. Now, Peter is this dude stuck in an endless loop of being the down-on-his-luck single thirty-something that never really goes anywhere (and don't get me started on the whole travesty that has been done to his relationship with Mary Jane). Marvel and DC have both employed a type of decompressed time in their books, with events over one year seeming to unfold over five years in our time...and I have no issue with this, especially when you're dealing with each part of a story being released once per month. So, we see characters like Dick Grayson growing from a kid into a young man over time, and while Bruce still seems to be fairly spry, he does seem to have aged some over the years. I guess THAT is what I'd like to see Marvel apply to their books overall (I know they do this with some books like Fantastic Four). We don't need for Peter to be eighty or anything, but would it be horrible if he aged a bit, had kids, etc.? Would it be so bad if Peter was a bit of a seasoned hero mentoring Miles? At this point, shouldn't Spider-Man be shown the same respect that guys like Thor or Iron Man receive? One thing that I feel DC does better than Marvel overall is the sense of legacy. The relationships that Bruce has to Dick, Barry has to Wally, etc. really enforce the idea of the core characters having earned the respect of their younger counterparts. I'm not saying Marvel never does this...they certainly do with some heroes like Cap, but I'd like to see more of that legacy building in that universe.
I know I'm rambling a bit here, and I probably am not conveying my thoughts clearly, but I tried!
