007 - Casino Royale (2006)

Casino Royale's James Bond is vulnerable, both physically and psychologically. Run-ins with the films various heavies leave him bruised and bloody. There's always a sense that he's straining, Daniel Craig rarely seen without a veil of sweat. The casual arrogance that has driven four decades of powdered and puckered secret agents is played like a con. Craig's Bond doesn't wade into every situation an expert either, he's a bruiser, careful enough to roam around a room before committing to violence. 

Screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (with Paul Haggis polishing) have re-thought Bond from the ground up, scattering clues and signifiers throughout the film that indicate a markedly different reading of Fleming's old Etonian character. Casino Royale's 007 (if for this film only) hasn't come from privilege. He isn't a gentleman, born to inhabit opulent casinos, he's a chancer. Although Bond never confirms Vesper Lynd (Eva Green)'s pointedly probing assertions about his background, her comments that he doesn't come from money dangle so unopposed it seems sensible to assume they're exposition. Bond is still an orphan, but he's also been made into an interloper.

When Lynd pegs him as having entered an esteemed university thanks to someone else's charity, 007 looks evasive. Casino Royale places a chip firmly on James Bond's shoulder. He's stuck, by his past, by his lack of liquid status, always playing catch-up. Lynd takes pity, furnishing him with a tailored Brioni dinner jacket that better allows him to fit in with the millionaires that encircle the film's high stakes poker table. This new 007 (thankfully) doesn't tally with the invincible, flawless persona we're used to. He's incomplete. Craig doesn't even look the part. Aside from his blonde hair, this Bond is broad and muscular were the last two were dark and wiry. He's heavier and more brutally tuned than even ex-bodybuilder Sean Connery. 

When casting their new Bond, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson have taken Ian Fleming's description of the character as a blunt instrument to heart, chiselling out a version of Craig that looks like he could collide with a small car and come off better. Casino Royale also hones in on Bond's desperate desire to please, an underutilised component of the Fleming character's psychological make-up. Purvis and Wade's approach to this quality (one that could potentially weaken their character and make him appear a toady) is to have him act out. Bond doesn't break into M's house to further his cool-guy agenda, he's doing it to impress her. He's asking her if any other agent has ever been so bold? It's a challenge, absolutely, but it's an audacity born out of an essential loneliness. One that Vesper spots.

She categorises the Double Os, the murderers, as lost little boys, desperate for order. Orphans, malcontents, Bond is doubly damned. Despite what Spectre would have you believe, these are the threads that allow Craig's four to operate as an unbroken run. Skyfall gives us the antithesis of this adventure, a different agent that turned bitter and rogue under torture. Quantum of Solace and Spectre offer resolution, Bond fulfilling his promise then throwing his gains away. Casino Royale is Bond as a superheroic text. The film taking as many cues from Christopher Nolan's Batman and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man as it does the Jason Bourne series. In every case we're watching a man assume and struggle with a mantle. 

Casino Royale does this by proposing a Bond that acts like a working class squaddie who has been elevated, socially, by a mysterious benefactor. Bond took this new arena as a challenge, fine-tuning himself until he was able to hang in there and outlast the better bred competition. That's his power - an idea that has roots in Fleming's books - Bond won't be broken. He'll suffer, bleed, and curse his failing body but he won't give in. He's bloody-minded; cackling all the way into his extinction. Royale complements this idea beautifully by making all of Bond's victories either moral or completely inconclusive. This new 007 isn't someone used to outright triumph then, he just has a nasty habit of living longer than the people trying to kill him.

007 - Casino Royale (1967)

Casino Royale is about how beautiful Ursula Andress is and precious little else. The film is a mess. Lacking any coherent dramatic thread, scenes bungle along like a series of chain reactions. David Niven's prissy Sir James Bond functions as the catalyst, a stuttering bore dragged out of retirement to flit around anointing successors and instigating a never-ending wave of digressive asides. Niven's scenes, some of which were directed by John Huston, revolve around a well-dressed English gent breezing through highly dangerous situations. His incredulous presence is a sight gag that plays in any language. It's an idea the 'official' Eon films would return to when Roger Moore became the series' driving force.

This spoof Bond project began as a something of a follow-up to What's New Pussycat? with spendthrift producer Charles Feldman hoping that the lightning generated by pairing Sellers with Woody Allen might strike twice. Unfortunately, Sellers' idea of a farcical 007 is a smartly dressed man prone to random, ultra-violent, outbursts; a shtick Sean Connery had long since canonised. Lacking any particularly outlandish - or even humorous - character ideas, Sellers appears to be playing his Bond reasonably straight. Although he breaks out some terminally unfunny comedy accents for the film's climactic baccarat game (with Orson Welles, no less), earlier scenes spent romancing Andress reach for pulsing machismo. 

Perhaps sensing the damage he stood to do his career, Sellers duffed up his director (and personal friend) Joseph McGrath then refused to participate in any more filming. Feldman's solution to a half-finished film? Throw millions upon millions at the screen. Cameos! Extravagant sets! A sumptuous song and dance sequence featuring Joanna Pettet's Mata Bond (the offspring of the British superspy and Mata Hari) that anticipates the glitzy Orientalism seen in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Casino Royale's mise en scene heaves with expense, rambling action sequences are padded out with models rather than simply extras - each and every one of them wearing the latest Paris fashions. This manic kitsch is the best of Casino Royale though. The film may not have even a basic idea of how to build a consistent tone or sense of character but it is, at least, amusing to look at.

007 - Casino Royale (Climax!)

Barry Nelson's Jimmy Bond isn't the frenzied, sexually aggressive, thug we might expect. This American draft doesn't navigate his adventure with the detached indifference synonymous with Ian Fleming's British super-spy. Bond is tense, even jittery here. When his ex-girlfriend's life is under threat he's panicky and shrill; careening back and forth between telephones and allies, desperate for some sort of update. This lack of emotional control is intensified by Nelson's breeze block head and cherubic features. He looks like a safer, television friendly, alternative to Ralph Meeker. Nelson, friendly and approachable where Mr Meeker reads as louche, even dangerous. Screened live as part of CBS's Climax! anthology television series, this Casino Royale is a creaky, but intimate, run around the broad outline of the first 007 tale. 

Fleming's characters are broken down and reconfigured - James Bond becomes Jimmy Bond, a Combined Intelligence operative with a supernatural flair for the obscure card game baccarat. René Mathis and Vesper Lynd are roughly combined into a composite identity named Valerie Mathis, a French spy and former lover of Jimmy's. Perhaps in recognition of this Bond's national identity change, Felix Leiter is transformed into Clarence Leiter, a British counterpoint for the nervy Jimmy who has been blessed with a roaming, chilly, arrogance. It's interesting then - in light of the subsequent Eon film franchise - to note that zero effort is expended to portray this character as a brutal snoop. Instead Jimmy plays more like a desk guy drafted solely for his card smarts. So while he might be able to resist a round of toe torture, his subsequent break out is marked by an inexpert application of violence and, most disappointing of all, mercy.