Earlier Casino Royale

Could a version of Casino Royale had been made earlier with all the toughness and darkness as the Daniel Craig one?
 
You would need a dark period of the United States and lets face it the beginning of the new millennium starting with 2001 was pretty dark. A darker 1970's me thinks would do it and let us not forget that back in the day 80's Batman was considered dark while now it would be considered light hearted
 
You could argue Licence to Kill was that very thing, perhaps Dalton pushes for a 'reboot' after Moore as one of the conditions for him taking the job. Couldn't be called Casino Royale though as someone else would've owned the rights due to the 60s film
 
You could argue Licence to Kill was that very thing, perhaps Dalton pushes for a 'reboot' after Moore as one of the conditions for him taking the job. Couldn't be called Casino Royale though as someone else would've owned the rights due to the 60s film

You could also argue the same with Lazenby. OHMSS was not exactly an upper...
 
The movie is made in Britain? I don't know if it applies to movies as well, but seriously, compared Sonic The Hedgehog to The Animals Of Farthing Wood, the Britsh one was way more grim, with possible death in the third episode, and actual death in the fourth.
 
I heard that Feldman (producer of Casino Royal 1967) in the beginning wanted to made it a serious movie. He even asked Sean Connery to play it. Connery wanted 1 million $ and Feldman didn´t followed this route. Later he said that it was a mistake.
If he decided otherwise a serious Casino Royal with Sean Connery would be possible.
 
You may already be aware, but there was a comedy version in 1967

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Royale_(1967_film)

The prospects for a serious version at some point earlier, I'd say so. The seriousness (toughness, darkness) of the modern, Craig Bond is another thing, though.

There was a TV version of the book in 1954, Because it was TV it toned the violence down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bBnVDj5SkA

Director Howard Hawk was interested in doing a version of the Book in the late 1950's with Cary Grant.

While neither version as tough or as dark as the Craig Version, there is no reason that a version of the novel could not have see the light of day.
 
I've said it before, but the modern gritty reboot Casino Royale is ultimately sourced back to Ronin and Assassins (via the Bourne franchise), so, yes, you can advance it a couple of years, but not too many.

Otherwise I just can't see anyone deciding to take the tired old Bond series and create a new subgenre* for it in, say, the late eighties. The biz doesn't work like that.


*Gritty modern post-MTV actioner.
 
I've said it before, but the modern gritty reboot Casino Royale is ultimately sourced back to Ronin and Assassins (via the Bourne franchise), so, yes, you can advance it a couple of years, but not too many.

Otherwise I just can't see anyone deciding to take the tired old Bond series and create a new subgenre* for it in, say, the late eighties. The biz doesn't work like that.


*Gritty modern post-MTV actioner.

Sp you want a Bond film written by the Wachowskis brothers and directed by John Frankenheiner?
 
Given that the story was adapted (by U.S. television) in the mid-50s, I don't see a reason why Casino Royale couldn't have been the first Bond movie in 1962. (Maybe it was a licensing issue, or just the preference of the producers that chose Dr. No over Casino Royale, but setting that aside.)

I think using Casino Royale as the first movie would have changed the tone of future movies, though, as they might have focused more on the physical and mental toll on Bond. (The testicle torture in the Craig movie is straight out of the book, and the early books, at least, emphasize that as a 00 agent, Bond is not expected to live to the mandatory retirement age of 45.)
 
Sp you want a Bond film written by the Wachowskis brothers and directed by John Frankenheiner?

Those three guys did both Assassins and Ronin? I'm impressed.:D

No, what I'm thinking is that the nineties saw a couple of action movies break out of the then dominant OTT, 2 dimensional type of action movie making ("Yippee ki yay, mofo") to focus on a more 'neo noir' plot-driven style.

I don't know what the cinema scholars have to say about this period, but with Kathryn Bigelow's recent ascendancy in the biz I wouldn't be surprised if they have Point Break (yes) as the starting point of this subgenre.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
You would need a dark period of the United States and lets face it the beginning of the new millennium starting with 2001 was pretty dark. A darker 1970's me thinks would do it and let us not forget that back in the day 80's Batman was considered dark while now it would be considered light hearted

How so? I'd say the definitive emotion of the new millennium was apathy, what with the Soviets being gone and all. If anything, the 70's were a lot darker.
 
Long before I'd thought Casino Royale should have been made in the late Film Noir of the latter 1950s, or the post Film Noir serious styles of the early 1960s. Those would have been close in feeling to the recent Craig version. The later Bond movies were too flashy, too tonge in cheek to give justice to the line "The bitch is dead." Martin Campbell came very close to my vision even if there were few few small bits looking excessive, I thought the bitterness and disillusionment were nailed in Craigs climatic line.
 
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