Originally, this was part of yesterday’s recommendation about the original Casino Royale novel:
But a combined post about both the book and the movie got a little long and unwieldy, so I decided to break it up and make this post a follow-up/companion piece to that one.
So, with that in mind, here’s me revisiting Daniel Craig’s 007 debut for the first time in 20 years.
As I understand it, the rights to Bond novels, particularly Thunderball, are kind of a mess. As a result, despite being the first novel, Casino Royale didn’t get a mainline Eon-produced adaptation until 2006.
It did, however, get a TV adaptation via the anthology series Climax! in 1954 and an infamously bizarre, widely-disliked parody adaptation in 1967. On a slightly related note, there was also 1983’s Never Say Never Again, a non-Eon production that saw Sean Connery reprise the role of Bond, an adaptation of Thunderball stemming from the aforementioned rights disputes.
The one time I can remember watching the movie version of Casino Royale was on the plane in 2007 – as part of a trip a bunch of Canadian high school students went on for the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge and the rededication of the monument on the battlefield.
So, it’s been 20 years (wow…) and that original viewing wasn’t exactly in the ideal conditions. Though, according to my brother, being sleep-deprived on 20-hour flight made The Northman a transcendent experience.
All of which is to say, I actually went out of my way to rewatch Casino Royale to compare it to the book.
Casino Royale is the only Bond movie whose book counterpart I’ve actually read. So, I can’t compare how more or less faithful to the other books the other movies are beyond the most basic level – I know, for example, that The Spy Who Loved me entirely jettisoned the original story by Ian Fleming and attached it to an entirely new script. The original novel being one of the least popular Bond stories, Fleming actively tried to disavow it.
Casino Royale is pretty faithful overall. Most of the changes seem like they came about either to make the story work better as a movie in general, to expand the book’s pretty brief story to fill out a big-budget movie’s runtime specifically, or to update the story so it better fits the society, filmmaking trends, and geopolitics of 2006. The bones of the story are the same: Bond is sent to bankrupt Le Chiffre, he meets Vesper, falls in love with Vesper, he beats Le Chiffre in the high-stakes card game, Vesper is revealed to be a double agent, she commits suicide, Bond has to deal with his own emotional fallout.
Though, notably, Le Chiffre is once again offed by the other bad guys for failing them.
In general, the movie is really just a sexier version of the book: both abstractly, in that is generally more impressive, bombastic, and exciting (consistent with how most book-to-film adaptations seem to go) and literally, in that Bond has more actual sex and it gets more focus and attention. In the book, Bond only sleeps with Vesper and, all things considered, their relationship is actually pretty chaste and wholesome – especially given the image most people probably have in their head about what happens in a (stereo)typical Bond story.
Though, for what it’s worth, Casino Royale easily has one of the least sexy title sequences I can recall in the franchise.
Other than a handful of scenes back at HQ where M sends Bond his mission briefing and reads over Le Chiffre’s dossier, the entirety of the book takes place in and around the actual casino. The movie has an entire subplot sending Bond around the world to gather intel on Le Chiffre. Like I previously mentioned, this version of Le Chiffre isn’t a Soviet agent, he’s a generic, politically-non-aligned criminal working for a generically evil cabal of criminals/terrorists – while Quantum does have political goals, those goals are to put itself in charge of world politics, not to further the goals of any other government or ideology.
Since Quantum starts out as a fairly nebulous, shadowy cabal that doesn’t even really get followed up until Quantum of Solace (as you might expect from “Quantum” being right there in the title…) it does make sense that Bond needs to do the legwork first to get to Le Chiffre. It also allows for the movie to actually have action setpieces, something that the original novel largely lacks. That’s probably the result of the filmmakers working to meet the expectations people have for a Bond movie.
I think Vesper represents the most positive change in the movie version. Although Bond is still dismissive of her (at least partly because Daniel Craig’s Bond is really just a jerk), she’s portrayed as a lot more capable, independent, and active than she is the in book. She also has a much clearer and significant role in the actual operation, since she’s the one in charge of the money Bond is buying in to the card game with.
Plus, I can absolutely believe somebody would fall for Eva Green after only knowing her for 15 seconds.
Notably, her suicide has a lot more emotional weight in the movie. In the book, she takes poison the night before Bond finds her and she’s already dead by the time Bond becomes aware. In the movie, she traps herself in a flooding building and Bond actually almost manages to save her – which adds both impact for the viewer and makes the situation even worse for Bond, since it’s basically his fault for not being able to save her, giving him a lot more trauma to (neglect to) process.
And, as a fairly minor change, the game they’re playing is Texas hold ’em, rather than baccarat. That was probably for the benefit of the audience, since I think a lot more people have at least a vague understanding of poker, rather than baccarat.
Casino Royale is a fairly successful adaptation and I agree with, or at least understand, most of the changes. Considered in a vacuum, it’s probably one of my favourite Bond movies. I’d been deep into the Roger Moore era most recently before rewatching Casino Royale. I don’t necessarily dislike any of those movies, but I will freely acknowledge they get too campy for their own good and have a lot of stupid moments, some of which do actually circle back into being pretty awesome. The best example of that is probably Bond’s Union Jack parachute in Spy Who Loved Me:
Which, in hindsight, seems rather conspicuous for a master spy…
Casino Royale is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. It’s grounded, self-serious, and devoid of any of the most ridiculous aspects of the classic era. Notably, the only real gadgets Bond gets in the movie are a biometric tracking chip injected into his arm by MI6 and an automatic defibrillator in his car. Which in a way, is actually a throwback to very first Bond movies: in Dr. No the only thing Bond gets from the Quartermaster (who at this point, isn’t even identified as Q; also, a different actor) is a new gun, and in From Russia with Love, he gets (from the recognisable Q) a booby-trapped case that’s still fairly grounded, plausible, and is tricked out with things like extra ammo and money that would actually be reasonably useful to a real spy.
The Daniel Craig movies do get progressively more ridiculous, but Casino Royale absolutely nails the gritty, grounded tone.
What I particularly like about the Daniel Craig era of the franchise is that they have the highest level of continuity I can remember ever seeing in the franchise. While it’s at least kinda-sorta established that Bond is the same person in at least some of the movies, even the ones that clearly take place sequentially don’t really have that much direct connection. Up until the Craig movies, the previous Bond movies had largely been episodic and standalone and on the whole played fast and loose with continuity and canon.
In Diamonds are Forever, Bond is going after Blofeld to avenge the murder of his wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but it doesn’t get that much attention drawn to it and the movie is primarily just another spy job for Bond, rather than a revenge story specifically.
Conversely, avenging Vesper is absolutely the driving factor behind Quantum of Solace and Vesper’s death remains a major part of Bond’s character for all of the Daniel Craig movies. And, overall, the Craig movies clearly more a continuous, self-contained sub-series, telling its own story with a clear Beginning, Middle, and End within the franchise.
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