Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006)

How is the main character constructed? What filmic tools are used to accentuate and highlight that construction? What are the objectives, desires and challenges s/he faces?

Each actor who played James Bond accentuated a characteristic they thought was necessary to bring the character to life. What makes Daniel Craig’s James Bond different to Sean Connery’s iconic interpretation was the lack of sureness and playfulness and an overdose of the darker and more serious side to Bond. This interpretation stunned audiences at first and many fans of the one-liners and at times ironic puns/jokes didn’t take the change of mood so well.

At the beginning of the film, James Bond is sat in a darkened room, waiting for his next target to show up. They exchange some conversation and a flashback shows Bond fighting and killing a bad guy in a sequence with intense and fast-paced music. He does this using his hands and not a gun which implies he’s more ruthless than the past Bonds- it’s easier and quicker to shoot someone. Throughout the scene, he expresses no emotion in his face, signalling he’s a stone cold killer, that he has no remorse. This is proven again when he shoots his target in mid-sentence.

Even though this interpretation of Bond is a more serious one, the filmmakers decided to show more of Bond’s emotional side through the scenes where he comforts Vesper in the shower and when he fails to bring her back to life after drowning. Relatively sad music pieces help to accentuate the emotion that Bond is going through. In the past films, very rarely does the audience see this emotional and raw side to Bond. He seemed almost invincible to physical and emotional distress and that his quick wit and resourcefulness were enough to get him through anything. In Casino Royale, there’s a scene where he unknowingly ingests a poison through a drink during a high stakes poker game. He immediately rushes off to the bathroom where he drinks salt water in order to throw up, but his resourcefulness doesn’t pay off. He ends up dying after a failed attempt at using a high tech medical kit built into his car but Vesper was the one that saved him. Through that sequence, the audience sees a real vulnerability in this character that the past films chose not to focus on.

Throughout the film, Bond is in constant danger and the audience learn that he’s not the invincible Bond they know. At one point, he is captured and tortured and if his torturer hadn’t been killed off, Bond would have probably died. So it would seem that without other characters interfering, Bond would have certainly died because he’s not invincible, he’s just a man with a license to kill.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Like all characters who have been played by multiple actors throughout the years, such as The Doctor, Bilbo Baggins and those featured in the various remakes and reboots that have been released, each actor who has played James Bond has brought something new and different to the role, with the latest actor to take on the role, Daniel Craig easily being the darkest interpretation of the character, and the closet to the original character from Ian Fleming’s novels (with the only one coming close being Timothy Dalton’s interpretation).
 
You get a feel for Craig’s bond straight from the very beginning of the film, showing him achieving Double 0 status, as he is introduced sat at the desk of rouge MI6 agent Dryden, the lighting in this scene, with him being almost completely covered by shadow and the sheer brutalness of the fight scene between him and Dryden’s contact and the remorselessness with the killing of Dryden. You can tell that this is a much darker Bond than those seen in the past, particularly than that of Craig’s predecessor Pierce Brosnan.
 
Though this Bond is much more ruthless than those of the past, he could also be seen as the most emotional as well, comparing him to George Lazenby’s appearance as Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” he is shown to fall completely in love with Eva Green’s character Vespa Lynd, and like with Lazenby’s love interest, Teresa Draco, he decides to retire from MI6 and spend his life with her, but both are killed by the actions of the group known as Spectre, though Vespa’s death is inadvertently caused by Spectre due to her committing suicide after betraying information about Bond and MI6 to them. It could be argued that the events of this film are what spurns Bond from truly connecting with the “Bond Girls” of future films, as both of the featured Bond girls in this movies meet their ends for helping him, take the trauma of seeing a characters first true love die in front of them, and the realisation that said love was just using them, and any character would be emotionally distant in their future life.
 
The character is also shown to be a lot less indestructible in this movie than previous films. With the famous crash scene knocking him out for a good few hours or so, and him being almost killed through being poisoned by Le Cheffe. This helps the audience care about the characters and their predicaments more, as in the previous films their no real feel of danger for Bond or the lead girl, whereas in this one there is a genuine fear that they may not survive the events of the film, in fact one of them doesn’t.
 
This is also the only Bond film aside from “From Russia With Love” (that comes to my mind at least) where the main villain isn’t killed by Bond himself (excluding those featuring Ernst Stravo Blofleid and those where the villain inadvertently kills themselves) as the villain Le Cheffe is killed by the mysterious Mr. White, this serves to not only show that Bond isn’t indestructible (it wouldn’t make much sense for Bond to kill Le Cheffe following the torture he has just endured) but also to show the ruthlessness of the mysterious organisation the two work for, later revealed to be Spectre.
 

All in all this is a far younger, brasher, darker yet more emotional Bond than we’ve seen in the movies previously, he is far more violent and even shown to be quite sadistic, such as when he drowns Dryden’s contact in a bathroom sink and the sick smile on his face after causing the character of Carlos to accidently blow himself up, though he does change to become more like the Bond we know from the previous films through his conversations with Vespa, M (with whom we see a relationship much more akin to that of a mother and son as apposed with that of a boss and employee or straight friendship from previous M’s and Bond’s respectively) and Felix Leiter. Though his main character growth is shown in Skyfall with the death of Judi Dench’s M, the character grows from a dark killer to the wise cracking hero from the later movies, as shown with the final line from the movie, the classic “My name’s Bond, James Bond” at which point Monty Norman’s theme kicks in, both of which have not been featured in the film at this point, as if to say, “you (the audience) just saw this man become one of the greatest heroes in cinema.”

Casino Royale (2006)
The character of James Bond played by Daniel Craig is a more of a different kind of Bond. His characteristics are different in contrast to previous Bond's for example Pierce Brosnan or Sean Connery. 

We see more of a darker side to him and of course he is presented in a courageous and fearless way which is typical to the type of character that he plays which is the hero. However, Craig's character shows a lot of killing throughout, which ironically isn't typical of this type of character. 

The opening scene basically connotes and completes our expectations of Bond with the use of Mise en Scene, editing and cinematography. The use of the fast paced editing adds to the excitement of the scene with all the characters trying to shoot at Bond as he is trying to catch Mollaca. 



We see a more of a weaker side with Bond when it comes to scenes with Le Chief. This again, isn't typical of the hero character. Especially in the game of poker that Bond has with Le Chief, he is portrayed as the weaker character as Bond is being taken advantage by him. This adds vulnerability to the character. We see camera shots showing Bond on the high angles which connotes to weak and with less power. 


In this clip, we see Le Chief in a more of a low angle shot with him in the background and Bond in the foreground. 

In this film we see a much younger Bond than previous and the film successfully provides and exceeds audiences expectations.

James Bond is a man with an ego. We first see Bond sitting alone in a dark room. He is a man of a few words. This adds to the mystery of the character. One way that his confidence is shown in the film is when he places a detonated on an enemy. A close-up is shown of Bond quietly smiling to himself as it explodes. He is also somewhat desensitized to killing, quipping that he "wouldn't be very good" at his job if it bothered him. He appears to take violence casually.

As well as being the hero of the film, Daniel Craig's James Bond can also be classed as "the hunk. He is shown wearing smart, well-fitted suits and on the beach in speedos. He is desired by the women in the film and is an example for men.


Bond's main weakness is the women in his life. Firstly, M is introduced as a mother figure - the only woman who can stand her ground and command 007. However, Bond falls for the beautiful Vesper. M described Bond as "emotionally detached" Though her, it is revealed that he [X]. She changes him, with Bond revealing that he has "no armour left" by the end of the film. He is left vulnerable. 

At the start of the film, M tells Bond that it was too early for him to be promoted to "00" level. This means that he must prove himself throughout the film. This gives him both a challenge and incentive, as well as making this Bond "rough around the edges", rather than the ideal spy from start to finish. He develops into the hero.