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How Casino Royale Perfectly Introduced James Bond In A Single Stunt
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Apr 14, 2025
James Bond is one of the most storied characters to ever grace the silver screen. With every new actor that portrays James Bond, there is a splashy intro to set up who this new Bond will be. Though none have been more impactful than Daniel Craig's intro in Casino Royale. Taking the character in a new direction Daniel Craig's James Bond was a Bond for the ever-changing Hollywood landscape.
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Wait, three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lily, shake it over rice
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and then add a thin slice of lemon peel. Yes, sir. You know, I'll have one of those. So will I
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From the introduction of Sean Connery in Dr. No, to Roger Moore in Live and Let Die
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to Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye, revealing a James Bond to the world has always been something that
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filmmakers have paid extra attention to. However, none of them have the brutality and intensity and
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tell us as much about the character of Bond as Daniel Craig's debut
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The cinematic character of James Bond differs in several key ways from Ian Fleming's iconic literary spy
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The novel version of the character is always described as having a scar on his cheek
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He's also less humorous than his big screen counterpart. Beg your pardon, forgot to knock
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And he's a direct reflection of Fleming's own time as a low-level intelligence agent during World War II
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where Eon Productions' now iconic MI5 agent is a constantly evolving character who morphs from iteration to iteration
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However, he's always given a splashy first scene with which to establish himself
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This tradition began in Dr. No. In his first appearance in the film, you don't see Bond's face until he actually introduces himself to the audience
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This was the exact thought process that director Martin Campbell used when attempting to reintroduce Bond 50 years later in Casino Royale
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While Campbell shows us Bond's face from the very beginning of the scene, the character remains motionless until the very last second
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In many ways, the Daniel Craig version of the character is defined much more by how he moves
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than his gentility or seductive powers, like previous versions of the character
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While it seems like a standard foot chase initially, we quickly realize that this isn't any normal would-be terrorist
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He's trained in parkour, the French urban gymnastic sport. In fact, that actor playing the bomb maker is Sébastien Foucan
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the free runner and co of Parkour While the Bomb Maker is running over through and around objects we immediately introduced to Bond character in this new updated version as he runs in straight lines He a
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weapon, blunt, and to the point. There's no flourishes in the way he moves. It's all precise
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and direct. So what does he do after chasing the bomb maker into a construction yard? He steals a
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piece of heavy machinery and attempts to run the man down in it, careening through fences, rebar
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and concrete. Why run around things when you can drive through them? The visuals all tell us one
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thing. Bond is unstoppable. The quintessential Bond calmness and indifference is still on display
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though, even all these years later. When the bomb maker fires a sidearm at the bulldozer
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the bullets smack into the glass of the cab and Bond doesn't even flinch. This is Campbell showing
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through action that the Bond of old is still here, just in a new updated vessel. As Bond chases the
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man up the construction site, they continually ratchet up the stakes of the scene by giving Bond
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increasingly impossible obstacles to overcome. He climbs scaffolding, ascends a crane, and has a
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fistfight on the mammoth piece of machinery before following the bondmaker in a near 30-foot
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leap to the roof of a nearby building. In the finale of the sequence, we get the summation of
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this version of Bond, while the bondmaker propels himself through a small slit in the wall
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and Bond, through sheer force of will, just runs directly through it. That's really the emotional
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finale of the chase scene. Yes, there's more stuff with a bomb maker at the embassy and
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a standoff where Bond makes a very controversial decision, but in terms of setting up who this new
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version of the character is, it's running through a wall. Remember at this time, the Bourne identity
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was the epitome of cool. It had just turned the spy genre on its head. This is Martin Campbell and
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the Broccolis, the longtime Bond producers, way of announcing that a new Bond would exist regardless
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of what else was happening in the genre. This Bond isn't preoccupied with the debonair class rituals
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of previous entries into the franchise. He's a killing machine. In fact that took this thematic idea so far that they completely got rid of the gadgets that were so associated with Bond and just had him be a resourceful spy We were expecting an exploding pen
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He uses the items around him as weapons, and he wants nothing more than to accomplish his mission
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And guess what? This is the exact trick that all the successful reintroductions of the character used
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It was started by two men, Dr. No's director Terrence Young and writer Dick Maybaum
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They wanted to craft a splashy debut for the character that would signal his arrival and reinvention from the literary character
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The way that Dick Maybaum had written the scene originally, it just featured the suave and debonair Bond playing Baccarat and introducing himself to Sylvia Trench, all on camera
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It was Young who decided to withhold Bond's face from the audience for the majority of the scene, allowing his introduction line to be a visual introduction as well
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Mr. Bond. James Bond. Introducing a character is all about getting the details right
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While Maybom's script is a fairly faithful translation of Fleming's novel, it was the wry sense of humor and steely standoffishness of the protagonist that everyone responded to
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That action movie trope of making puns and quips after killing assailants
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that literally comes from Dr. No. I think they were on their way to a funeral. The Bond franchise would span the next half century
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spawn 25 feature films, and dominate the box office for the majority of that time
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well, almost dominating. The franchise has had some ups and downs over the course of its run
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It had some rights issues, some box office bombs, and some critical disasters
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In 1995, Bond was at an all-time low. It needed help. So Eon brought in Martin Campbell for the first time
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to rebrand Bond in the film Goldeneye. That's right. Casino Royale is the second time Campbell relaunched Bond
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And the first time he did it, it centered around an iconic introduction as well
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And guess what? A good intro to Bond leads to a good Bond movie
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It worked. It contemporized the character leaving his Cold War trappings behind Good because I think you a sexist misogynist dinosaur A relic of the Cold War Long franchises need reinvention
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They need new ideas to be put into the creative ecosystem each time out the gate
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And let's be real, most franchises, Bond especially, spent a lot of their time attempting to just remix the same few elements over and over again
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and hoping for success. Casino Royale was just what the Doctor ordered
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It propelled the Bond franchise to heights it had never seen, money, acclaim, and a bright future
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It would ultimately go on to spawn four sequels, reincorporate the other versions of the character
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into its continuity, and cement itself as one of, if not the, definitive versions of the character
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You know that's not half bad. But the reason it was able to reach back into the past of the franchise is that it broke new ground
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It pulled new people into the franchise thanks to its ingenious idea to abandon many of the
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trappings of what had worked before and try to establish a minimalist version of the character
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And this is seen nowhere quite as well as the introduction of Craig's version of the character
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The film chose to do the tradition of an iconic intro, but in a way no one could possibly expect
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In 2022, it's easy to write off parkour. The sport became so trendy, it was a literal joke
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on The Office. But in 2006, it was something new, modern, and visually beautiful. And to serve as
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yet another testament to the brilliance of this era of eon, they didn't return to the parkour thing
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Unlike in the Roger Moore era where skiing and slapstick humor were relied on repeatedly
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they knew they couldn't top the intro to Casino Royale, and so they didn't even try
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Bond continues to reinvent itself every time it shows up in theaters, which will undoubtedly be
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happening sooner rather than later, as Daniel Craig's tenure on the character is now complete
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But for now, let's just take solace in the fact that Casino Royale could have been the biggest
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fumble of the entire franchise. And instead, it's one of the most respected. And the main
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reason for this? It took the time to introduce Bond right
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