Casino Royale was a fantastic film! I ended up
watching the 2006 version, with Daniel Craig as James Bond.
Lately I’ve
been talking about genres and if they’re important or not and I’ve been pretty
negative about genres. I’ve said they don’t really matter. But I’ve learned
that when books hit the big screen, genre is very important. When I reviewed
and compared The Rum Diary the film and adaptation wasn’t that great and
it was a rather boring movie. Casino Royale was a fun and very exciting
film. The Rum Diary was a fictional narrative. A narrative has potential to either be an ok film or a pretty boring
film. Casino Royale is a action packed, espionage thriller. Has
potential to be very fun and exciting as a movie. That’s why The Rum Diary was not well received by critics and the general audience and Casino Royale was very well received by the general public—but not all critics loved
it and I can understand why.
The big game in the novel is Bond
playing Le Chiffre in Baccarat at the Casino Royale. In the movie, the game is
Texas Hold ‘Em and the terrorist group Le Chiffre is playing for is called
SMERSH in the novel but stays unnamed in the novel. Already, this is a classic
example of how all the details in the novel cannot fit into the movie. As for
Baccarat and Texas Hold ‘Em, I don’t get that. Personally, I don’t know
Baccarat that well, but I know Texas Hold ‘Em very well. So my only guess is
the directors wanted a card game that many people were more acquainted with.
The other big thing that I’m having
trouble figure out is Bond’s morals. In the novel, Bond is confused on the line
that divides good and evil believe that good and evil are based on perception,
so he could be good or evil. He also does not support killing and in the novel
does not kill a single person. In the movie he doesn’t really care much about
what is good and evil and kills a ton of people. He shoots tons of bad guys and
just destroys anything that gets in his way. My biggest problem with this is
the morals. Morals are what define a character in any story. And in the novel
and the movie, as much as I enjoyed Daniel Craig playing Bond, Bond’s character
doesn’t match up at all. I don’ think there was anything theatrically wrong
with Bond’s novel character and don’t know why it needed change. Another small
thing I noticed towards the end of the movie is James Bond didn’t smoke at all!
In the movie, he’s always smoking. All the time. It was things like these with
Bond’s character that bothered me. The plot stayed pretty consistent, the
outcome and resolution stayed pretty consistent. However, when you mess with
the main character’s morals then you start to screw with who they are and it
isn’t the same character as the book.
Unfortunately, though, Hollywood has brainwashed me and
all these differences don’t make too much of difference because I loved the
movie.
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