How Did 'Casino Royale' Start the Best 007 Era? The In-depth Analyze of 'Casino Royale' (1/5)

Written in front: The analysis of Casino Royale contains serious spoilers, readers are advised to choose to watch carefully.

Before analyzing the movie, I would like to mention few unpopular tips: 1. The director of GoldenEye (1995) is also the director of Casino Royale (2006). The two 007 movie ears with very different styles were started by Martin Campbell; 2. Daniel Craig, the sixth-generation 007 actor, faced doubts from the entire network and finished the whole movie with a sigh of relief.

Agent action movies have entered the new century, and the style of painting has gradually become tougher. Plus, the world where ‘The Bourne Identity’ series is prevalent, and the veteran spy series naturally also seeks a change, it needs to be unique.

Dr. No (1962)

Since the first 007 set the action/adventure/thriller style, there have been successful agent series with similar styles, such as:

Mission: Impossible (1996)

And this movie that had a great impact on the current generation of 007:

The Bourne Identity (2002)

It can be seen that, except for the action type, they all have the same type label, which is Thriller-thriller.

And Thriller can basically be summarized as: The protagonist is forced to go to crisis alone to save himself because of being involved in an incident that may endanger his life.

Therefore, the elegant image of the fifth-generation 007 Pierce Brosnan was forced to fade away at the beginning of this century, and the mature uncle model started by the first-generation Sean Connery had no choice but to accompany their omnipotent footsteps.

The world needs new heroes.

So, the ‘first generation’ Bond, Daniel Craig, who can better play the advantages of thrillers, appeared. He is fledgling, he is full of vigor, he is proud, he is immature, he may not have talked to anyone much yet...

The British Empire has long since fallen, and the omnipotent America has been hit by 9/11. How can 007 with a strong backing ‘endanger his life’, perhaps the best answer is to go back to the starting point of the original book - telling a real and not so reliable James Bond growth series.

P.S. This article does not want to discuss the pros and cons of Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. First of all, after the above opening remarks of the article, apart from the environmental impact of the movie's commercial style change, it is obvious that the former pays more attention to the form of story, while the latter is closer to reality. Different people have different opinions on the form and realism. One can be traced back to classics and modern times;

The problem that this article wants to solve is mainly: due to the long time span of the five movies released by the sixth generation of 007, ‘Casino Royale’ (2006) , ‘Quantum of Solace’ (2008) , ‘Skyfall’ (2012), ‘Spectre’ (2015) and ‘No Time to Die’ (2021) They are related to each other, and the movie's narrative can be described as very streamlined (a common issue in action movies), which may lead to detailed questions that may not be smooth when watching the movie.

Therefore, this article mainly wants to do a complete sorting out of the series, thoroughly analyze the relationship between the characters, etc., so that friends who like the series can enjoy watching the movie.

Then, let's officially enter the analysis of ‘Casino Royale’

The movie begins with the Czech Republic in black and white, showing a key mission for Bond's promotion to the position of 'Double 0'.

This is followed by the famous theme song ‘You Know My Name’ in 007 series:

It is strongly recommended not to skip this animation when watching the movie, because there is many interesting foreshadowing, such as:

There was a quick shot of Vesper's face on a card that was a combination of the Queen of Hearts and the Queen of Spades. This is the foreshadowing of the plot: the Queen of Hearts is the symbol of love, and James Bond falls in love with her. The Queen of Spades is a symbol of doom, and Vesper betrays James...and then Bond turns and fires a heart of spades.

The style of painting turns to Uganda, and we can see that our ‘Hannibal’, Mads Mikkelsen, was introduced by the mysterious Mr. White, and successfully received a wave of money from the local armed forces. (But this segment was actually filmed outside of London.)

Mads Mikkelsen plays the villain Le Chiffre in this movie, a private banker who specializes in helping illegal organizations move money. 'Le Chiffre' is a French word that translates into English as 'The Number', alluding to the character's talent for numbers, which could rival Bond at the gaming table.

It is said that the original author Ian Fleming created the character of Le Chiffre based on the British occultist Aleister Crowley. He has two obvious dysfunctions in this movie: one is a breathing organ. The inhaler, this is the character trait in the original work; the second is the blood-tear syndrome, which will show some bloody tears in the later part of the movie, which was originally created by the two screenwriters of the movie.

After the introduction was successful, Le Chiffre immediately started a shrewd gray investment plan, shorting one million shares of Skyfleet Airlines. That is to use the money of Ugandan black veterans as collateral, borrow 1 million shares of Skyfleet Airlines, sell them all, and then implement some kind of gray means to make the company's stock price fall, buy another million shares, and return them to Skyfleet Airlines. Earn big with your mortgage seed capital!

In fact, it can be seen from another that Le Chiffre has been planning this short-selling game for a long time, and has invested millions of shares. It can be said that only success is not allowed, and failure is not allowed!

Furthermore, it can be seen from the later plot that Skyfleet Airlines has just developed a new Skyfleet S570 prototype airliner. So Le Chiffre's stock operators thought he was crazy and was going against the trend of the market.

This scene ended with Mr. White's dignified expression.

The camera is back in Madagascar (actually movieed in the Bahamas), and our muscular Bond comes up and shows a good chase! (This chase was the first scene movieed by Daniel Craig after joining the group. The complexity of various scenes led to it taking several weeks to complete the movieing)

However, before this chase scene, there is a repetitive element that will appear many times later, which is worth noting, and that is the mobile phone message Bomber Boy received:

Then it started to chase. The use of scenes in this chase scene can be described as quite classic, which established the brave and cunning workaholic status of this generation of 007. Especially the construction site part, put two pictures to feel its complexity:

After a fierce chase, Bond kills Bomber, blows up an African embassy, gets Bomber's cell phone, and finds out the key message——Ellipsis

The end of the first act.

The next article will continue to analyze Casino Royale. There are four acs in the movie. I hope you enjoyed the analysis of Casino Royale, the reviews of the same movie are as below:

The In-depth Movie Analyze of Casino Royale (the 2nd act, 2/5)

The In-depth Movie Analyze of Casino Royale (the 3rd act part1, 3/5)

The In-depth Movie Analyze of Casino Royale (the 3rd act part2, 4/5)

The In-depth Movie Analyze of Casino Royale (the 4th act and the epilog, 5/5)