Kaijuu's Blog

I also got around to see the latest edition of the James Bond series this weekend; Casino Royale.
Depicting the early years when Bond just got his famous double-O status, and the license to kill that comes with it. Bond battles for money at the poker table, in order to stop a criminal from getting enough money to finance other people's terrorism with.

It sucks.

Really. I spent a good part of the movie watching it at double speed (that way, subtitles will still appear, making the movie understandable), because watching paint dry will go faster that this movie and the paint will be somewhat more entertaining to boot.

Another thing which annoys me is the continuity error that is the movie; as this movie takes place just after James gains his double-O status, it's supposed to happen before Dr. No, right? Right.
So why is it that he has state-of-the-art communications; a miniature defibrillator; remote blood-gas and toxscreen so the guys at MI6 can instruct him on what to do when he is poisoned; a telephone with a 3D-image of the building he's observing and snooper bugs smaller than a fingernail?

Loads of things the secret services in the 1960's would literally kill for to get their hands on.

I understand that actors playing certain characters can be exchanged, but usually, there is something else going on as well.
M, for instance, changed to a woman in GoldenEye. They marked the occasion by litterally stating that her predecessor liked scotch instead of the bourbon Judi Dench is about to serve.
Q has been the same guy since he first appeared until Desmond Llewellyn died shortly after the release of The World is not Enough, and John Cleese becomes the new Q. However, Cleese is clearly marked as the new Q.

Miss Moneypenny never had "new versions", just another actress instead of the old one, and the reason that James Bond himself didn't really grow old is obvious.

So far, so good; movie makers are to some extent entitled to exchange actors and change storylines, while maintaining the bigger picture.
However, there is one big snag; the gadgets and their technical limits.
While being gifted with a vivid imagination, no-one could foresee that 40 years later, we would be able to talk to each other using miniature phones. They couldn't begin to fathom that monitors would become as flat as a dime and larger than life.

That alone is really ruining Casino Royale as a Bond movie for me.

And then there is Felix Leiter. Apparently, the CIA is also capable of re-issuing names to their recruits, as the Felix Leiter I remember from various movies is Caucasian (well, save for Never Say Never Again). The Felix Leiter that got nibbled on by a shark in License to Kill was defenitely a tall, white male.
In Casino Royale, he is suddenly a rather short African-American.

All of these things, whether intentional or by accident, make Casino Royale even less a Bond movie compared to the original Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again, the two unofficial Bond movies.

As you probably can tell; I'm pretty disappointed. Does anyone want to buy my copy of the movie? It's not something I care to see again.

Cheers, K.

Hmm, that doesn't sound very good. I wasn't too enthused about this movie anyway.

Let's go and watch the horribly tacky, but oh-so-wonderful, sixties version of "Casino Royale" shall we? That was a great movie!

The story plays in present day. That explains for all the modern gizmo´s.
The movie is supposed not to be connected to the storylines of the former Bond movies.

It would me more interesting if they made a Retro Bond movie which plays in the sixties and features retro gadgets and of course retro Sovjet spies.

The most irritating part of the movie is the fact that the movie is sponsored by Sony, so everytime Bond uses his cell you see a close up of his Sony Ericsson Phone.