It’s ironic that Ian Flemming wrote Bond with the intent of portraying espionage in a deglamorized light. Only for Bond to become the epitome of sensationalism and adventure once he reached Hollywood.
Though Flemming's Bond novels are still way more glamorous than John le Carre's espionage books, which are basically all about how working in espionage ruins your life and corrupts your soul.
Le Carre said he created George Smiley as the 'anti' Bond [far more realistic and mundane]. The character first appeared in 1961, a year before the film series started
Was he attempting to deglamorize other than in Casino Royal? I've only read Casino Royal and maybe one other novel, scene some movies and read some extended commentary, but my impression was that basically Casino Royal Bond is more dark lurid (the assault on his genitals by Le Chiffre) and petty than in the other stories with an extended bit of brooding about whether it's all worth it. I feel like the rest of the Bond novels are a re-glamorization of the more morose Casino Royal character.
My favorite fact about casino royale is that mads mikkelsen lied about being a huge bond fan during his audition when he never actually watched a bond movie before 💀
Mads never watched a Bond film because he was clearly born and bred in an alternate universe where he IS a Bond villian. I actually choose to believe LeChiffre is Hannibal Lecter's twin brother.
Mads is crazy! He is all about getting paid. He likes a steady paycheck and if the role doesn't violate his personal ethics he will go for it. Hence taking over for Johnny Depp as Grinedalwald. He made sure he got PAID!
Right? I'll never forget the bit where Bond, in the middle of crashing a depressurised aircraft, spots a loose bottle of bourbon rolling along the floor and picks it up for a long guzzle. I'm like, this is Archer... this is straight-up Archer...
@@krystlvines Hm, weirdly you might be right. I'd have to read more Bond (and I don't really want to), but Archer seems to at least acknowledge that women can do field work.
@@seanmcloughlin5983 Oh yeah, for sure. And his little monologue in (I think) season 6 about people who can't resist waterboarding having vaginas. I'd say at their worst, they're equally bad, but Bond seems to be more consistently at that level. (Also Training Day is, I think, ep 2 or 3, not the pilot. Sorry, that was going to bother me no end.)
@@macmcleod1188 I mean, brothels and sex workers in of themselves are not a bad thing. There are many women sex workers who do their jobs consensually and skillfully and should be given respect.
@Coffee Wolf Productions in theory, I agree completely. In practice, with out a strong licensing and inspection policy they always turn into sex slavery and spread disease. The women need to be strongly protected from pimps moving in, enslaving them, getting them addicted to drugs, and taking their money. And they need to be regularly tested for stds (and even other diseases that are a threat to public health). It's little different than other women who have sex for money or gifts but it's the amount of money ($8k a month or more to much much more) and the number of cross contacts ( instead of 1:1, it's 10: 1 to 40:1 (or higher)) that makes it a problem. Owning Brothels at that time likely meant low respect for the women who were treated as free sex toys by the owners. My point being, the villain side were not the white knights either.
@@coffeewolfproductions9113 The vast, vast majority are forced into it by either circumstance or a real life villain that exploits them and destroys their psyche. "Sex work" being normalized in the past few years is the most backwards kind of progressivism imaginable. A truly shocking number of prostitutes end up committing suicide or dying prematurely due to drugs or disease. It's a hard sad life, they deserve respect because they're human beings but the work they do destroys their mind and body and should not be supported, commended, or accepted. Even where it's regulated these women (and men, they're less prevalent but there are many male prostitutes as well) still live short, miserable lives.
That opening was pure perfection! 🤣 It was made even funnier by Sir Terry leaving during the slew of cursing and misogynistic statements, as if he was reacting to what James Bond was saying 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I forgot Dom's cat is called Sir Terry, because I believe this comment would have also worked had Sir Terry Pratchett been in the room. It's just fitting.
Best intro ever! I love how Sir Terry decided to nope out halfway through, as if he was so disgusted by Bond’s rant he couldn’t listen to it anymore. 😂
Trying to read the Bond novels as a teenage girl because you enjoyed the movies you watched with your dad was... An experience. "Ohhhh this guy straight up hates me. Coolcoolcool."
Used paperback store downtown and spent my first job's money on the series' paperbacks. Totally got confused with You Only Live Twice and the others were SO not Sean or Roger so I was blown away on reading them. Just last month passed the remaining books that hadn't disappeared through lending to friends many, many years ago to a friend who was helping stock Free Libraries. She took 100's of my books away for me. I have them on my Kindle now so it seems silly to keep the sad, aging print ones even for nostalgia. Man with the Golden Gun was the most OMG, what the hell is this??? novel for me.
Yeah, imagine being a queer teenage girl reading "Goldfinger" and the latter half of the book involves "fixing" a lesbian (Pussy Galore--yes, she's an American lesbian in the novel) by making her love men instead (read: Bond). Needless to say, I refused to give any more money to his estate.
@@stormcloudsabound imagine being a self absorbed narcissist who thinks anyone gives a shit about your opinions on a near century old book you read once.
@@stormcloudsabound After all, she was only a lesbian because she'd been sexually assaulted by her uncle as an adolescent, and she needed a real man to cure of her hatred of men, which is what lesbianism REALLY is, isn't it? *eyeroll* Many of Ian Fleming's attitudes towards women, other races, and LGBTQs have aged like fine milk.
I remember trying to watch Gold Finger (the movie) and noping out pretty quick because of how everyone was treating the women. The movies really do make some changes as they go on...
The story behind why Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is actually rather sweet. He wrote it for his young son after he accused him of loving James Bond more than him.
@@ashleightompkins3200 I don't know if he made some other uncredited contributions but Dahl is only credited with 'You Only Live Twice'. He also wrote the script for the 'Chitty' adaptation.
Return of The King trivia from IMDB: While filming Saruman's death scene (on the Extended Edition DVD), Sir Peter Jackson tried to tell Sir Christopher Lee how to react and breathe after he was stabbed in the back. Lee, a World War II veteran with British Special Forces, assured Jackson that he knew what a man sounded like when stabbed in the back.
I honestly would watch a movie based on the intro. Villian pities the spy's lover, spy being a sexist douche. Maybe the villian gets her a job in his crime division and it's like that prozd skit where the villian keeps accidentally doing good things
That's honestly not a bad idea for a Bond parody comedy. Especially if you take inspiration for the villain and make him Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, but then give him the heart of gold like Gru from Despicable Me or Megamind. Find a way to make that work in a PG-13 to R-rated screenplay and that could be really funny. Bonus points if you get Daniel Craig to play the Bond parody in the most humorously embarrassing way. I like Craig as Bond, but people seem to forget that before he was 007, he was originally a character actor who excelled in comedies like Layer Cake.
I read (listened to) casino royal a while ago and some things stuck out to me Bond’s first true introduction has him 1 beer short of “too drunk” and planning a mini heist of the casino’s winning as an after thought Also bond complains about how as a woman vespa is too emotional and has no place as a spy only to be out spied by her partially because he was blinded by his emotions Its been awhile so i may be misremembering
Somebody else probably mentioned this somewhere in the comments but the reason it took so long to do a "canon" adaptation of 'Casino Royale' is the rights to that book had been sold separately from the rest of the series. It wasn't until the early 2000s that it (and 'Thunderball', sort of) were back under the umbrella.
@@Linklex7 EON was always free to use SPECTRE/Blofeld but they didn't want to since it risked promoting a potential competitor. The 'Casino Royale' and 'Thunderball' rights got bundled in the 90s with Sony as talking about launching a rival franchise.
@@WNeal Legal issues meant they were not free to use Spectre again until 2013.. Kevin McClory claimed he had exclusive use of Blofeld and Spectre after a 10 year period which is why the organisation isn't mentioned again after Diamonds are forever [9 years after Dr No] and attempt to use the group in 'The Spy who loved me' lead to threats of legal action. For Your Eyes Only starts with someone clearly intended to be Blofeld [but not named for legal reasons] being killed as a reference to this issue. McClory died in 2006 and Eon assumed they could reclaim the rights but issues with his estate lead to Quantum being used until they finally re-gained it. The Sony rival series was all tied into this issue as was Never Say Never Again.
I binged the original Fleming novels, this is what I discovered. A lot of the things we associate with Bond has as much to do if not more with the movies creating their own Bond Lore as it does with Fleming. I mean, James Bond becoming Scottish was a direct result of the movies.
True. Fleming was still alive for the first two Connery films so gave him a Scottish background to tie in. Similar to how Bernard Cornwell added a stint in Yorkshire for Sharpe to tie in with Sean Bean.
@@EleiyaUmeiya and when he first heard they cast sean connery, "that bloke from darby o'gill", he apparently said "they let a country bumpkin be james bond?!" Until he Met sean connery who had had many lessons from the director on how to be a proper gentleman and wear a tux, to which ian fleming walked away saying he was clearly wrong, james bond was scottish. Sean connery embodied the idea of a gentleman spy so well in 1 meeting that it altered the way he viewed the character
@@frankm.2850 actually its only This book that hes like this In the other books he keeps falling deeply in love and wanting to marry various woman In later books hes more of a hopless romantic
Fun fact, there is a biopic of Ian Fleming of his life between 1938-52 that was made in 2014. It was a tv series that showed on Sky Atlantic and had Dominic Cooper playing Fleming. It’s decent but I remember that there are quite a few violent scenes (including sexual abuse directed towards women) so keep that in mind?
To be fair, (presumably unpaid) product placement featured in the novels too. Apparently they were among the first works of fiction to name drop real brands with any sort of regularity.
One very minor change that you forgot to mention. In the book, they played baccarat, while in the movie, they played Texas Hold-Em. 'Cause the movie was produced during that brief window in the 2000s that Texas Hold-Em was insanely popular, and the producers wanted to capitalize on it.
That’s really interesting! My brother taught me to play poker in 05 and it was indeed holdem, and I was often confused why so much media used 5-card instead - didn’t know that was a product of a brief surge in popularity! I’m not exactly a big poker fan so I wasn’t aware holdem had faded again. I do still like the tactical elements of a shared card pool versus an entirely private guessing game tho.
There's a scene where wormtongue stabs sauroman in the back and it was scripted for him to scream but Christopher Lee refused to because it wasn't realistic for someone to scream in that scenario
_Casually corrects PeeJ on what a backstab sounds like, implying he has witnessed and/or performed backstabs himself._ Sir Christopher Lee was a living legend. War hero, spy, slayer of Nazis, inspiration for James Bond, played Dracula, Saruman, Count Dooku, had his own metal band, what a guy.
Its very sad you didnt look at the 67 parody. That film contains things such as: Bond’s nephew planning to kill every man taller than him, Orson Welles doing a magic trick for 3 minutes, every mi6 agent being called james bond 007 to throw off people going after bond, a scene where petter sellers is tortured then dies suddenly because he quit the film and a german expressionist building.
@@shawnhendrickson2668 its because it had a completely fucked production. Peter sellers quit halfway through because he didnt like working with orson welles, there was so much rewriting, they had basically no idea what was going to happen by the end
The most accurate portrayal of Bond in the movies was probably Man with the Golden Gun, where Bond hates his female counterpart for no reason and brushes her off all the time unless she wants sex, and it's upsetting that she does given how he treats her. Roger Moore's talent was completely wasted for most of his time as 007.
His first two movies were a total mess in general. Both due fighting between the producers. And Roger Moore himself felt like they tried to make him be like Sean Connery and he never felt comfortable with that. There is a good reason to why Man with the golden gun is seen as one of the lesser movies in the series.
Man with the Golden Gun is one of my favorite Bond movies! The villain played by Christopher Lee is fascinating, and so well done! And it feels like, to me, it's got the epitome of "classic" Bond & Bond girl 😂 almost to level of parody, I hate it 😂
@@MissCaraMint They really wasted him as a villain. Like the premise and motivation of him is amazing but they don't really do anything to make him compelling except for the fact it is Christopher Lee. And Roger Moore and him were friends IRL and that shows but not in a good way. Because the scenes they do talk to each other,, in what should be a pretty tense scene, it feels more like two friends chatting with each other. It's the same manner with A view to a kill. The villain would be bland and forgettable if wasn't that the villain is Christopher Walken
I've always been struck by the dichotomy of novel Bond. He's in his vehicle, racing to the rescue of a woman that his internal monologue lets the reader know just how much he hates the woman for forcing him to race after her to rescue her. In other words. Bond lies to himself about how important Vesper is to him, while his actions alone reflect his real feelings.
Agreed. If he truly hated Vesper the way the inner monologue is saying then he wouldn't even be making the attempt. He's deeply damaged (most likely by his war experiences) and because of that he's jaded and cynical, and the inner monologue is him trying to convince himself he doesn't actually care because he's in denial. Him being annoyed at her for getting captured is probably genuine enough, but the whole "if she dies, so be it, I won't lose sleep over it" bit is denial, him trying to prepare himself for the likelihood of losing her.
@@moreau1755 Yes I think it kind of speeks to the deep pesimism of the age it was written it. Very fatalistic time, and lying to yourself about how you don’t care is not out of character in this world.
Vesper's death is something which affects Bond as he visits her grave every year and thinks about her occasionally in other novels [there is an amusing scene in 'Goldfinger' where Bond thinks he's died and wonders what he's going to say to Vesper when he sees her again]. I think there is a scene in 'Diamonds are Forever' where music that reminds Bond of Vesper plays in a bar and he asks for it to be turned off [as it bringing back memories of her death clearly upsets him].
I'm glad some others actually caught this. He's saying/thinking nasty stuff that he doesn't actually mean because he's boiling over with anger at Vesper and also at himself. He's just being belligerent and unreasonable (and he is fully aware of this too). This was obvious to me when I read it. I don't know why everyone has to take things so literally nowadays.
The thing I find intriguing about bond in the novels, which is wholly absent from the movies is that bond is unabashedly suicidal. This becomes more apparent the further you go in the series. He is also nominally Catholic, so rather than kill himself he decides to go out in a blaze of glory for Queen and country. But then halfway through the mission and hands up discovering this, or that which necessitate to him somewhat unwillingly, having to save his own life, in order to prevent an even bigger disaster from happening. That’s why he’s so damn good: he holds nothing back. He does not intend to live, nor does he want to. The reason for this is never really explained of the rest of my memory, but I’m going to assume it had something to do with the war. I do really like this angle, and it makes sense, whereas the movie bond is just supernaturally good at everything for a no adequately explained reason.
@@Rocket1377 He is, to my knowledge, the only actor up to that point who’d actually read the books. I remember him saying it informed his performance, and I believe it, but there’s nothing in either film to suggest he’s suicidal.
@@JustFlemishMe He mentions a few times that he'd like to have a wife and children but probably needs to retire before he can do so. He lives with Tiffany Case for a few months but it doesn't work out and then OHMSS happens. Spoiler if you haven't read You Only Live Twice- That book ends with Bond getting what he through he was getting in OHMSS, all be it after losing his memory as he's out of the service, a girlfriend and a baby on the way but he ends up walking away from it which might be Fleming's way of saying he was never going to be able to break away from the service.
If i recall Ian Fleming was the commanding officer of actor Jon Pertwee (most famous as the 3rd doctor from Doctor Who) and theirs some speculation as to if Pertwee was another inspiration or if Pertwee drew some inspiration from Fleming and his books for tge role of the 3rd doctor
I like "I'm not going to argue with you, I am just going to read something else." A lot of people forget that while you may not like something that doesn't mean you don't recognize it's skill/value.
Fleming writing a sex scene is the epitome of r/menwritingwomen. To the point that i have a hard time imagining Fleming even being a womaniser cuz of how childishly silly that sex scene sounds. I mean tbh ive not read any books with sex scenes, except perhaps Michael Mann’s Heat 2, and certainly not any by women. I know men writing sex scenes with women is cringe but i have a hard time believing there’s even that many women that bother to include sex scenes with men cuz its not as much as a fantasy lol, it feels so superfluous in books to include sex scenes
@@GuineaPigEverydayright like “chuckled fatly” is really on the level of “breasted boobily down the stairs” (not to mention the various ways he describes Vesper)
@@GuineaPigEveryday I hate to bring it to you, but there are quite a lot of women, who should be banned from writing romance and sex scenes. Those include Sarah J. Maas and her "velvet wrapped steel", E.L. James (anyone at least heard of 50 Shades by now, right?) and then the queen of writing shitty/abusive men as love interests, the one and only Coleen Hoover. There are plenty more, these are just the ones at the top of my head. No, I haven't inflicted any of them upon myself. It's thanks to people like The Dom, who suffer so we can enjoy their teardowns of these craptastic books, that I even know they exist. I was bored enough to read one of the Twilight books to see how bad they actually were and I'm happy to say, I don't hate myself enough to try another.
@@GuineaPigEveryday Full honesty, I have read fanfiction(by women, ofc) that has described sex so beautifully and tenderly that I've gotten a bit misty-eyed at points and had to take a break to gather myself. I guess however Flemming wrote sex scenes serves as a look into his mind and how he perceived sex. Or him being a womanizer is just an exaggeration made fact by time and fame.
Another interesting part of the book was that we’re lots of descriptions of food in the book, I think because it was the end of rationing from WW2 in the 1950s and food was one of those things that a lot of fantasy was based around. Brian Jacques did similar in his Red Wall series and I recommend that series one wishes for a more palatable characters
There is a Victoria Coren bit where she is throwing shade on Bond's gambling chops, by pointing out that she has to read subtle cues of body language; while Bond wins because his opponent's tell is bleeding from the eyes. 😄
It's a movie. Most audience members aren't expert poker players like she is. They had to make it more obvious what was happening in a cinematic way, because if both actors had an actual poker face it would be impossible to follow the story.
I do find it odd how many 'inspiration for Bond' candidates they are supposedly are when it's pretty clear it's a fantasy version of Fleming himself. He often uses Bond as a mouth piece for his own opinions/observations.
@@jamesatkinsonja guess that casino royale being where Bond’s misogyny was at its worst is a good thing then if it was the first book. He got better overtime
Obviously a psyche and personalty that changed over time, and one that lead to his wife divorcing her husband ( a Viscount no less) to marry him and the two raised a son together. It was that son btw that Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for. It is on record that Ann Fleming did not like the Bond books, so I doubt Fleming could have been writing too much of his actual self into the character.
@@NelsonStJames In the books Bond often goes on tangets observing the various countries he visits [Diamonds are Forever with the USA for example] which very much feel like Fleming's views funnelled through his character.
Honestly I feel like the film was better. It took most of the good elements from the book, smoothed over some of the not so good parts, and added fun stuff of it’s own.
Fun fact: famous Game Dev Masahiro Sakurai was originally planning on putting James Bond into Smash Bros because he thought he was from Goldeneye for N64 Until he was told by Nintendos lawyers that they didn’t create the character and he was a famous movie and novel character that Nintendo only licensed the rights to the movie for.
Your cold open is actually a good writing prompt-A lover of a terrible Bond expy gets captured by a Blofield type character, and the call happens. The villain begins to manipulate the lover (through charisma and valid points) and they enter into the villain’s organization. Drama, self growth and a few exploding bases ensue.
The biggest difference between the book and the 2006 movie is that the book goes all in on explaining the rules of chemin-de-fer (baccarat), centering the action on chemin-de-fer, tying Bond's personality to how he plays chemin-de-fer, etc., and then in the movie it's 100% Texas hold 'em.
This is definitely a good example of adapting something relatively short in an effective way, building on what is there in service of the source, rather than irrelevant filler.
Its interesting listening to modern readers review Bond novels. It in some way demonstrates how rare unlikable protagonists are in modern media. The idea of a main character who is not a good person, just better than the enemy was pretty common in cold war literature but comes off as the endorsement of bad behavior today.
My observation would be that unlikable main characters are still common today, but that when they appear in blockbuster films, the writers usually shy away from actually critiquing their behaviour, instead trying to excuse or glamorize it? (Previous Bond films are actually a pretty good example of that, as are a lot of recent superhero movies). For me the problem with books like Flemings' isn't necessarily that the author writes a sh*tty person as the main character. It's that they don't critique or query that character's sh*tiness in their writing, which can quickly lead to a blurring (for the reader) between what attitudes are the character's, and what are also the author's? Doesn't mean one can't still read such books, it just tends to increase the unpleasantness factor when doing so, in my experience...
Understandably wasn't mentioned here, as it has nothing to do with the main subject matter, but I _love_ the song from this movie. Chris Cornell hit it out of the park, I still play _You Know My Name_ on loop when I'm writing sometimes.
The cool thing was composer David Arnold was told to save the Bond theme for the end of the film and like the idea Bond is so arrogant at the start of the film he doesn't need his theme because...'You know my name'!
It's a great song, that introduced me to Chris Cornell, and one of my favorite of the Bond opening title songs. Terrific power song to get in the mindset to get stuff done right up there with Tom Jones' Thunderball.
Please find enclosed the story of how Christopher Lee corrected Peter Jackson on set, reportedly saying "Do you have any idea how a man sounds when you stab him in the back? Because I do."
@Mac Mcleod some clandestine activities from WW2 may never be fully declassified. From what Lee, Fleming, and their contemporaries have said about the time, I think I'll sleep better not knowing.
As a young teen girl in junior high / early high-school I ate up the Ian Fleming novels. Pretty sure I read them all. I had forgotten a lot of the misogyny, etc but my god if my daughter was reading that at 13 I wouldn't be happy. Think I turned out all right though. Only lasting imprint is from movie Bond, and that's my lifelong weakness for any man with a British accent. 😂
Fun fact: the book describes Le Chiffre as a short fat toad like man with bulging eyes and coming off really weird and with a penchant for staring at people When i read it 1 name popped into my head: Peter Lorre Who played Le Chiffre in the first ever adaptation of a bond work, in a played live for syndication adaptation as the finale of the 50s show called Climax!
He was the perfect Le Chiffre except the nationality; honestly, a lot about that episode was dead on from the books. It actually surprised me. I added the VHS to my Bond collection when I had a VHS player so from that to The World where I had to go DVD.
Not gonna lie, I REALLLLLY wanna see an actual film with the premise following up from something like this video's cold open. Like... just what WOULD the girl and the villain do in a situation like that? The villain looks so scandalized by Bond by such a shitbag that I can genuinely see that being a turning point for the villain character. And obviously the girl has a lot of potential directions her character could grow from disavowing the shitheel secret agent, or from forming a new connection with the now-reformed villain. I dunno, just seems like a waaaay more interesting story than anything in any actual Bond media.
It is sooooooo amazing to hear someone else voice I had been thinking about the books, especially if that someone is a person whose opinion I value tremendously!! Thanks for your content!!
2:28 There were two TV movies of Fleming's life, one starting Jason Connery [son of Sean] and one with Charles Dance [featuring a pre-fame Christophe Waltz] 3:48 That was because Fleming had sold the rights to Casino separately from the rest of the series, hence why it was adapted for the parody movie and a 50's TV adaption. To get the rights back, MGM swapped the rights to Spiderman with Sony, hence starting the Spiderman films. 5:32 Desmond Llewelyn would have been 92 in 2006 had he still been alive.
@@Knight-of-Sarcasm He had a great line 'I'll play Q as long as the producers need me and the almighty doesn't'! And it would have been nice for him to have a link with all 6 Bond's.
I like the books, they are products of there time, so I don’t hold that against them. To me they are just old spy books that are meant to entertain and nothing else
My understanding is that EON and Albert Broccoli WANTED to start by adapting Casino Royale, but because it had been previously adapted for an episode of an American anthology series (funnily enough, the anthology series was called "Climax!"), all adaptation rights to it were held by Columbia Pictures, who would very, VERY loosely adapt the story again into the comedy version that came out in 1967. It wasn't until MGM acquired the rights to both previous adaptations in 1999 that they were finally able to make this adaptation.
When they were negotiating for Bond the Casino rights had long been sold. The first film was going to be an adaption of Thunderball but that was tied up in legal wrangling's. After coming to an agreement to do Thunderball 'in house' they tried to do the same for Casino only for the right holder to demand most of the proceeds so they let him fail on his own.
@@MissCaraMint Sorry, I meant back in 1961 Eon were looking to make Thunderball as the first Bond but couldn't make it until 1965 due to the rights issues. There was further attempts to make a 3rd Thunderball adaptions [with Pierce Brosnan in the early 90's then with Sony in the mid-90's] and Eon shutting this down was part of the deal which got them the rights to Casino Royale!
I remember reading one or two of the books and being staggered by just how unnecessarily and consistently bigoted Bond was. Very glad most of that didn't make it to the films... Also the 1967 Casino Royale is a chaotic cinematic masterpiece and I will hear nothing to the contrary
@@saoirsedeltufo7436 you do realise that the man was born 104 years ago? Also, quarrel from live and let die and dr no was actually written with more brotherly love and affection than you’d imagine. Bond was actually devastated by his death in the book dr no unlike the film.
The other thing about why Casino Royale (2006) was seen a such a great start is in between GoldenEye and Royale, the Director had started the trend of grittier spy flicks with a small pair of film adaptations called The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. Yes Bond isn't the only spy known for their Extreme Ways...
Which is the one where all black people are secretly part of the same crimminal organization and in the film adoptation bond literally fucked mind powers out of a black medium?
Casino Royale was definitely one of my favourite adaptions, and Craig my favourite Bond. I think he did such a fantastic job of playing the book version of Bond (the hot mess of a man who's own failings usually came from his arrogance), while still modernising the character enough to seem able of living in the era of the movie's creation. Craig had that aura of charm, mixed with "I don't wanna meet him in a back alley", which I think was needed. A lot of the earlier Bond's had become such paraodies of themselves that it just felt extremely far removed from the fairly 'basic' premises of the books. I binged the books for the first time in the early 00s, and even as a queer feminist, enjoy the hell out of them. I often still keep one in my bag for emergencies. They're a product of their time, and Fleming shows his ass as a dick head constantly, but I found the short form of most of them to be engaging. As someone who never reads, and struggles with books in general (mixture of ADHD and aphantasia making it nearly impossible for me to visualise anything), I just found the simplicity of the Bond books super easy to digest. There wasn't paragraphs and pages filled with flowery descriptions that were essentially meanless filler for me, you were just told they were at a place doing a thing and then it continued. Sentences were short and punchy. The characters were all hot messes but the scenarios and situations were exciting, and resolved quick enough to keep attention. They still carried me away to a different world and time, without coming with the added frustations of me not being able to visualise or understand. The fact I had movies to draw visuals from helped too. I dunno, I guess that's why I loved them anyway. Maybe they're appealing for people who aren't as well read like me?
There was a TV series in the states in the 50's called "Climax!" One episode where they did Casino Royale. Sadly, they Americanized everything from James Bond now being a CIA agent and his name changed to Jimmy Bond. He was less sexy secret agent and more the hardboiled cop type. It premiered a year or two on TV before Dr. No hit theatres. Every now and then some cable channel will play the episode even today.
It actually came out 8 years prior to Dr No [1954]. Other attempts to launch Bond on TV ended up being short stories [in the 'For Your Eyes only' collection] instead.
ngl I'd love to see a crossover where it turns out that Bond's a Time Lord who, inspired by the Doctor, opted to live a life of meddling, albeit far more proactive. And he regenerates every few years; hence the actors changing.
11:12 - Rosa Klebb is a double agent for Smersh / Spectre in the film *From Russia with Love* who has just fully defected. Bond believes Tatiana (as does she) is a Smersh honeypot in the film, but Spectre is manipulating events so that they end up with the Russian decoder, which is what the climactic fight with Rosa Klebb’s poisoned shoe knife is about. The assassin Grant is a Spectre agent in the film, but Smersh in the novel, so we can argue the Soviets are technically not the enemy, but its a subtle shift and the Turkish Station’s battle with Bulgarian intelligence is hardly pro-Warsaw Pact. Its not helped that Walter Gotell plays Spectre Agent Morzeny in this film also plays the head of the KGB in all of Roger Moore’s Bond films. Something that confused me for years before Wikipedia.
Additional note, the changed the location of the casino to Montenegro in the film. As i recall it was a seaside town in France known for its mineral waters in the book
I love how James Bond is the only character Alan Moore accurately parodied in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He completely fumbled Mina, Harry Potter and Nemo but Bond was absolutely perfect.
Just to confirm: СМЕРШ (smersh) was a real thing, there's a wikipedia page on it for anyone curious. Abbreviation comes from the words "СМЕРть Шпионам" which indeed translates as "Death to the spies".
Well to be fair, the organization in the Bond series has so little in common with the actual WW2 era military counter-intelligence task force, it might as well be fictional in all but name XD
Could you do a review of the parody spoof Casino Royale? I also could have sworn that they did Casino Royale straight up before the Daniel Craig version, but I'm no fan of Bond...the only version of Bond I like was the David Niven (and everybody else) fun time.
Dom, just to clarify Christopher Lee was the hardest MF to ever exist. And the world is truly lesser with his passing. Dude was a spy, a soldier, a thespian (in the truest sense of the word) a musician, and an all around decent human being.
Just to add something to Christopher Lee's WW2 experience, there was at least one point where he took director Peter Jackson to the side and showed him the correct sound a man makes once you stab him.
Ha! I thought you might have been going cartoonishly overboard in the opening bit, but no, that was taken right out of the book. Having read one of the Flemming novels, I probably should have known better.
This is extremely good timing, as I (after years) am back into the fandom and making my way through the 00Q tag on AO3, and enjoying it very much ^^ (And probably a lot more than the Novels)
I would be curious to see what this series would do with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the one 007 movie that actually stayed closest to the novel. On the other hand, a comparison of the book and film version of the Spy Who Loved Me, which had virtually nothing in common, might also be amusing.
Goldfinger, Dr No and Thunderball stay pretty close to the book too. From Russia with Love would make a good 'Lost in Adaptation as there is a lot of the book in the film but with crucial changes [such including Spectre].
I love how the film is able to take the ideas of the novel that still hold up and the "load-bearing" sexism which is literally part of the plot and the audience's feelings about Bond is kept in. It feels like they really followed through with being more critical of the character which Goldeneye hinted at doing but never really maintained though the sequels
It’s funny that this LiA came out right in the middle of my rewatch of every single Eon Bond movie (just finished Moonraker as of this comment). Even from the first movie, film Bond is so not the women-hater he is in the books. He’s still a jerk at times, but he’s actually affectionate towards women (at the ones who aren’t his enemies). Specifically there’s a scene in Dr No I want to talk about. When Bond & Honey Ryder are being taken to Dr No, Honey notices that Bond’s hands are cold like hers. Bond admits he’s “scared too” & holds Honey in a comforting embrace during the elevator. I did a double-take when I saw this. Open vulnerability from James Bond?! In 1962?!
Thank you for the (superbly, delightfully delivered) reminder to never, ever, tackle another of the Bond novels. (I vaguely recall having read one of them years ago, but I mostly remember it being a mostly-dull travelogue and advertisement for Being A Well-Off British Dude.)
“They’ve sold over 100million copies worldwide, so what do I know I guess?” - to be fair Dom, that doesn’t equate to 100million happy readers; it’s entirely possible (increasingly so as the years go on and the older generations die off and newer generations take their place) that many of them bought the books unaware of their troubling content, likely in the mindset of “Hey those films were rather nifty, I wonder how the source material compares”, read them, were just as disgusted as you were, and never picked them up again.
I lasted through roughly 3 pages of the Bond novel I found at my grandpa's house after he died - being a fan of the old movies I was excited to find the collection and could not have been more horrified by the comparison.. Dom, if your narration is your revenge for us making you sit through one of these novels... Well played, sir. Well played. Sidenote - I think I would pay a hefty sum for a Dom commentary of terrible sex scenes in the future - that was HILLARIOUS!
The issue with the Craig era after Casino Royale was that they kept trying to make direct sequels to Casino Royale, when Casino Royale only had a single thread to pull on. If you make one movie where Bond’s girlfriend dies, you can make one movie about him getting revenge. Quantum of Solace’s open ending basically doomed the franchise for years by not letting Bond just get revenge so the following movies could move on completely
I think that’s why Skyfall was Craig’s best film. It was the only film where it wasn’t personal to him, just another mission . . . at least until (spoiler alert) the villain kills M. If anything, I hated that SPECTRE tried to tie Skyfall to the overall plot. That’d be like revealing that Goldfinger was a member of SPECTRE all along. 🤦🏾
@@Linklex7 I'm fine with the "This time it's personal" nature of both Skyfall and Quantum of Solace. It was just a complete drag to watch them try to tie everything into the same story. And they clearly had no specific plan when they wrote Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace on how to do it, QoS was left feeling incomplete, only for Spectre/No Time to Die to drag the story out WAY TOO FAR. They should have just let Bond kill Mr. White in Quantum of Solace and let that be the end of the "Revenge of Vesper" story arc, no other Bond movie needed to bring this up beyond the occasional off-hand mention of "Yeah, Bond had a girlfriend who died right after his first mission, which isn't specifically why he's such a womanizer, but probably why he isn't open to changing." I'm fine with serialization, but Quantum of Solace/Spectre/No Time to Die represent almost the sloppiest way you can possibly do serialization.
@@TheJadedJames The early Connery films have Bond battling Spectre working his way towards Blofeld and then fighting him in a loose story arc. He pretty much gets his closure for Vesper at the end of Quantum [where he doesn't kill the man who turned her into a double agent and throws her necklace into the snow]. While he visits her grave in NTTD, that was a reference to the novels where Bond visits her grave every year as he has a new relationship now.
@@TheJadedJames Craig is also far less of a womanizer than past Bonds. While he still has the odd one night stand, he doesn't have a proper relationship post Vesper until Madeline Swan comes along. Having 2 main relationships in 5 films is far lower than the one per film of past Bonds.
@@jamesatkinsonja My problem isn’t that the movies continue to acknowledge that Vesper exist, it is the really clunky way they try to tie into each other. I think Bond should have definitively avenged Vesper’d death in Quantum of Solace, and the remaining movies could have been about something else entirely with villains that had no connection to the conspiracy plot of the first two films. QoS was left feeling like a filler episode or a Bond television show, and Spectre/No Time to Die stretched what should have been a pretty simple story of “Bond destroys the organization that killed his girlfriend” way too far into stupid pointless lengths … I was bored
In the book the card game at the Casino Royale was baccarat but no normal person in the 2000s knows how that game works so the screenwriters changed it to poker
There was one thing that was changed that he missed, in the movie the card game was texas hold-em poker whereas in the book the game was a lesser known game called chermaine de fer, ( the same game he's playing in Dr No when we first meet Bond on screen) presumably because more of the audience would know how the game is played.
Actually the game in the book was baccarat, chermaine de fer is related to baccarat though. However, I'm kind of surprised that the change didn't come in the review as well since it has such a big impact upon the plot (besides the book requiring pages to explain how baccarat is played). While Texas hold-em has an element of chance to it, generally the skill of the other players matters more than the cards, in contrast baccarat is pure luck. So the movie actually gave Bond a lot more agency over winning and losing, where as in the book it's pure chance (despite Bond "having a system").
@@rjz2 I agree. Plus the multi-phase nature of poker just makes for way better tension building. Baccarat just seems like such a silly choice by comparison, not to mention a silly card game to begin with.
No, the reason is because the book was written in the 1950s, and since then poker has become more popular, and is far more likely to be used for high stakes games.
@@Rocket1377 When the book was written is certainty part of the reason for the change. Poker didn't appear in Foster's Complete Hoyle (an encyclopedia of games) until 1937 and was considered an American game at the time. Fleming could have been aware of the game due to GIs, but I doubt it was played in any European casinos at the time.
It is funny how many people think of Bond as a straightforward hero when he is a spy "with a license to kill" which, by definition, requires him to be a pretty cold and manipulative/deceptive dude. I absolutely agree with your assessment that Ian Fleming always intended James Bond to be more of a flawed anti-hero, much like the spies he'd known in life. Fleming, actually, once described Bond as a man with many "vices and very few perceptible virtues, except patriotism and courage, which are probably not virtues anyway.”
I'm glad you pointed out that Bond's racism/sexism/other -isms are an intentional part of his character because so many critics of Book Bond that I've seen seem to take these qualities at face value and completely write them off as "Yikes, this is awful. Don't read this." which pisses me off. Compared to his contemporaries and even some of the Bond movies, Fleming's Bond books were weirdly progressive. Granted, they weren't that progressive by today's standards since these books were still written by a rich white British man in the '50s, but Fleming did actually make an effort to make the women and non-white characters in his books actual characters with legitimate flaws, goals, and roles in the story as opposed to just sex objects and racist caricatures, respectively. Just compare the book version of Dr. No's Honey Ryder to the movie version and you'll see what I mean. Or book Moonraker's Gala Brand, who was basically the deuteragonist of the story and was just as instrumental at stopping the bad guy's plot as James Bond himself. I'm not saying Fleming was great at writing women or people of color, but I'll take him over the likes of Raymond Chandler or any of his other contemporaries any day of the week.
Interesting thing for me, I was never that much of a fan of James Bond, but I loved Daniel Craig. I loved Casino Royale, Skyfall, and No Time to Die. It was clear that James was flawed, but he had redeeming qualities which is a lot more than I can say for his book counterpart.
It’s ironic that Ian Flemming wrote Bond with the intent of portraying espionage in a deglamorized light. Only for Bond to become the epitome of sensationalism and adventure once he reached Hollywood.
Though Flemming's Bond novels are still way more glamorous than John le Carre's espionage books, which are basically all about how working in espionage ruins your life and corrupts your soul.
I mean, Flemming and Le Carre are barely recognizable as the same genre. The best of Le Carre is straight-up *literature.*
Wow i didn't know that! 😮
Le Carre said he created George Smiley as the 'anti' Bond [far more realistic and mundane]. The character first appeared in 1961, a year before the film series started
Was he attempting to deglamorize other than in Casino Royal?
I've only read Casino Royal and maybe one other novel, scene some movies and read some extended commentary, but my impression was that basically Casino Royal Bond is more dark lurid (the assault on his genitals by Le Chiffre) and petty than in the other stories with an extended bit of brooding about whether it's all worth it.
I feel like the rest of the Bond novels are a re-glamorization of the more morose Casino Royal character.
My favorite fact about casino royale is that mads mikkelsen lied about being a huge bond fan during his audition when he never actually watched a bond movie before 💀
He was acting even during the non-acting components of an interview. What a legend.
Mads never watched a Bond film because he was clearly born and bred in an alternate universe where he IS a Bond villian. I actually choose to believe LeChiffre is Hannibal Lecter's twin brother.
How eeeevil, which is good as villain :P
Mads is crazy! He is all about getting paid. He likes a steady paycheck and if the role doesn't violate his personal ethics he will go for it. Hence taking over for Johnny Depp as Grinedalwald. He made sure he got PAID!
Are you telling us that a worker LIED to get a job!!?? That's just crazy talk! Stop it!
Oh god, the intro is already gold. People often forget how much of a bad person Bond was in books
Right? As soon as I saw that we were reviewing "Casino Royale" I was like, "The Dom is going to lose his s#&t over this!"
*Cackles gleefully.*
@@cjtorres5917 He won't be that surprised. He did cover GoldFinger in the past.
so... badass?
To be fair, I imagine a lot of people don’t know bond originated in books
Ian Fleming had some views that were considered, problematic, even for his own time.
I will always love your original point that Archer isn’t a Bond parody
He’s the most accurate depiction of the main described in the books
Right? I'll never forget the bit where Bond, in the middle of crashing a depressurised aircraft, spots a loose bottle of bourbon rolling along the floor and picks it up for a long guzzle. I'm like, this is Archer... this is straight-up Archer...
Archer has more respect for women.
@@krystlvines Hm, weirdly you might be right. I'd have to read more Bond (and I don't really want to), but Archer seems to at least acknowledge that women can do field work.
@@hughcaldwell1034 it varies honestly
The pilot does have the gem “when she’s dead she’s just a hooker”
@@seanmcloughlin5983 Oh yeah, for sure. And his little monologue in (I think) season 6 about people who can't resist waterboarding having vaginas. I'd say at their worst, they're equally bad, but Bond seems to be more consistently at that level.
(Also Training Day is, I think, ep 2 or 3, not the pilot. Sorry, that was going to bother me no end.)
I like to imagine the "bond girl" from the intro joins the villian team where she is respected and rises in the ranks.
The villain team owned brothels... so...
@@macmcleod1188 I mean, brothels and sex workers in of themselves are not a bad thing. There are many women sex workers who do their jobs consensually and skillfully and should be given respect.
@Coffee Wolf Productions in theory, I agree completely. In practice, with out a strong licensing and inspection policy they always turn into sex slavery and spread disease.
The women need to be strongly protected from pimps moving in, enslaving them, getting them addicted to drugs, and taking their money. And they need to be regularly tested for stds (and even other diseases that are a threat to public health).
It's little different than other women who have sex for money or gifts but it's the amount of money ($8k a month or more to much much more) and the number of cross contacts ( instead of 1:1, it's 10: 1 to 40:1 (or higher)) that makes it a problem.
Owning Brothels at that time likely meant low respect for the women who were treated as free sex toys by the owners. My point being, the villain side were not the white knights either.
@@coffeewolfproductions9113 probably not so much in the 50s, pre contraception
@@coffeewolfproductions9113 The vast, vast majority are forced into it by either circumstance or a real life villain that exploits them and destroys their psyche. "Sex work" being normalized in the past few years is the most backwards kind of progressivism imaginable. A truly shocking number of prostitutes end up committing suicide or dying prematurely due to drugs or disease. It's a hard sad life, they deserve respect because they're human beings but the work they do destroys their mind and body and should not be supported, commended, or accepted. Even where it's regulated these women (and men, they're less prevalent but there are many male prostitutes as well) still live short, miserable lives.
That opening was pure perfection! 🤣 It was made even funnier by Sir Terry leaving during the slew of cursing and misogynistic statements, as if he was reacting to what James Bond was saying 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Puurrrrrfection
Sir terry knows what's up
Truly an excellent opening
Thank you, Sir Terry. You're a stand up guy.
I forgot Dom's cat is called Sir Terry, because I believe this comment would have also worked had Sir Terry Pratchett been in the room. It's just fitting.
Best intro ever! I love how Sir Terry decided to nope out halfway through, as if he was so disgusted by Bond’s rant he couldn’t listen to it anymore. 😂
Sir Terry is the best boy, he has taste ❤
That is because Sir Terry is a true gentleman.
Sir Terry has too much class to be associated with such schlock.
Also reaching his paw out to push the button and make the phone call 🥺
Good kitty!
Every time Dom does a Bond film you just get reminded how sexist the books are.
The movies are barely better.
The movies are a _lot_ better. Which, to be clear, is a criticism of the books, not praise of the movies.
They are hardly perfect. But they are significantly better then the books.
Once in a while I tell myself I should try reading Fleming's James Bond stories, but watching Dom convinces me that's really really not necessary.
@@tildessmoo Yeah the bar the movies had to clear to be significantly better than the books is subterranean.
Trying to read the Bond novels as a teenage girl because you enjoyed the movies you watched with your dad was... An experience.
"Ohhhh this guy straight up hates me. Coolcoolcool."
Used paperback store downtown and spent my first job's money on the series' paperbacks. Totally got confused with You Only Live Twice and the others were SO not Sean or Roger so I was blown away on reading them. Just last month passed the remaining books that hadn't disappeared through lending to friends many, many years ago to a friend who was helping stock Free Libraries. She took 100's of my books away for me. I have them on my Kindle now so it seems silly to keep the sad, aging print ones even for nostalgia. Man with the Golden Gun was the most OMG, what the hell is this??? novel for me.
Yeah, imagine being a queer teenage girl reading "Goldfinger" and the latter half of the book involves "fixing" a lesbian (Pussy Galore--yes, she's an American lesbian in the novel) by making her love men instead (read: Bond). Needless to say, I refused to give any more money to his estate.
@@stormcloudsabound imagine being a self absorbed narcissist who thinks anyone gives a shit about your opinions on a near century old book you read once.
@@stormcloudsabound After all, she was only a lesbian because she'd been sexually assaulted by her uncle as an adolescent, and she needed a real man to cure of her hatred of men, which is what lesbianism REALLY is, isn't it? *eyeroll* Many of Ian Fleming's attitudes towards women, other races, and LGBTQs have aged like fine milk.
I remember trying to watch Gold Finger (the movie) and noping out pretty quick because of how everyone was treating the women. The movies really do make some changes as they go on...
Daniel Craig and Eva Green have such amazing chemistry here.
Mads Mikkelsen is a great villain.
I agree 💯
Ah yes,another much awaited episode of "Bond was WAY worse in the books" from our dear Dominic. Long overdue, if you ask me.
This is a Patreon Sponsored review.
@@Pikachu2Ash still much awaited and long overdue.
@@Pikachu2Ash So?
I don't know why, but the line "Marijuana, decided Bond" is one of the funniest things to me when taken out of context
* Marihuana. The 'H' spelling is part of what makes it so funny, I think.
The story behind why Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is actually rather sweet. He wrote it for his young son after he accused him of loving James Bond more than him.
He wrote that?!
The film adaption doesn't resemble the story much. It was produced by Bond alumni Cubby Broccoli.
Ian's son Casper tragically died at a very young age back in the mid 1970s
In related news, Roald Dahl wrote several bond film scripts as well as a story called Lambs to the Slaughter. Check it out, it's genius
@@ashleightompkins3200 I don't know if he made some other uncredited contributions but Dahl is only credited with 'You Only Live Twice'. He also wrote the script for the 'Chitty' adaptation.
Return of The King trivia from IMDB:
While filming Saruman's death scene (on the Extended Edition DVD), Sir Peter Jackson tried to tell Sir Christopher Lee how to react and breathe after he was stabbed in the back. Lee, a World War II veteran with British Special Forces, assured Jackson that he knew what a man sounded like when stabbed in the back.
He's also the only cast member who MET Tolkien
@@ashleightompkins3200 Indeed!
@@Jason_Bryant HUH
@@Jason_BryantHard to say if it was all classified.
@@macmcleod1188 Interesting
I honestly would watch a movie based on the intro. Villian pities the spy's lover, spy being a sexist douche. Maybe the villian gets her a job in his crime division and it's like that prozd skit where the villian keeps accidentally doing good things
Brilliant!
That's honestly not a bad idea for a Bond parody comedy. Especially if you take inspiration for the villain and make him Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, but then give him the heart of gold like Gru from Despicable Me or Megamind. Find a way to make that work in a PG-13 to R-rated screenplay and that could be really funny. Bonus points if you get Daniel Craig to play the Bond parody in the most humorously embarrassing way. I like Craig as Bond, but people seem to forget that before he was 007, he was originally a character actor who excelled in comedies like Layer Cake.
I read (listened to) casino royal a while ago and some things stuck out to me
Bond’s first true introduction has him 1 beer short of “too drunk” and planning a mini heist of the casino’s winning as an after thought
Also bond complains about how as a woman vespa is too emotional and has no place as a spy only to be out spied by her partially because he was blinded by his emotions
Its been awhile so i may be misremembering
It will never not be hilarious to me that Archer is one of the most accurate adaptations of bond as a character
"Well I don't really like to invite that comparison..."
Does he phrase a lot?
Somebody else probably mentioned this somewhere in the comments but the reason it took so long to do a "canon" adaptation of 'Casino Royale' is the rights to that book had been sold separately from the rest of the series. It wasn't until the early 2000s that it (and 'Thunderball', sort of) were back under the umbrella.
They didn’t get Thunderball back till much later. That’s why Craig went against Quantum instead of SPECTRE at first.
@@Linklex7 EON was always free to use SPECTRE/Blofeld but they didn't want to since it risked promoting a potential competitor. The 'Casino Royale' and 'Thunderball' rights got bundled in the 90s with Sony as talking about launching a rival franchise.
@@WNeal Legal issues meant they were not free to use Spectre again until 2013.. Kevin McClory claimed he had exclusive use of Blofeld and Spectre after a 10 year period which is why the organisation isn't mentioned again after Diamonds are forever [9 years after Dr No] and attempt to use the group in 'The Spy who loved me' lead to threats of legal action. For Your Eyes Only starts with someone clearly intended to be Blofeld [but not named for legal reasons] being killed as a reference to this issue.
McClory died in 2006 and Eon assumed they could reclaim the rights but issues with his estate lead to Quantum being used until they finally re-gained it.
The Sony rival series was all tied into this issue as was Never Say Never Again.
I binged the original Fleming novels, this is what I discovered. A lot of the things we associate with Bond has as much to do if not more with the movies creating their own Bond Lore as it does with Fleming. I mean, James Bond becoming Scottish was a direct result of the movies.
True. Fleming was still alive for the first two Connery films so gave him a Scottish background to tie in. Similar to how Bernard Cornwell added a stint in Yorkshire for Sharpe to tie in with Sean Bean.
which is kinda a huge deal since Fleming's Bond was supposed to be the epitome of English manhood iirc
@@EleiyaUmeiya and when he first heard they cast sean connery, "that bloke from darby o'gill", he apparently said "they let a country bumpkin be james bond?!" Until he Met sean connery who had had many lessons from the director on how to be a proper gentleman and wear a tux, to which ian fleming walked away saying he was clearly wrong, james bond was scottish. Sean connery embodied the idea of a gentleman spy so well in 1 meeting that it altered the way he viewed the character
@@ConnorNotyerbidness Unfortunately not to the tune of making him not a misogynistic trash fire.
@@frankm.2850 actually its only This book that hes like this
In the other books he keeps falling deeply in love and wanting to marry various woman
In later books hes more of a hopless romantic
There's that great Mitchell and Webb sketch that's like "Oh and good luck" "I don't need luck" "you're going to a casino" "oh god yeah you're right"
I love how I can immediately tell Mitchell was the “you’re… going to a casino.” guy
Fun fact, there is a biopic of Ian Fleming of his life between 1938-52 that was made in 2014. It was a tv series that showed on Sky Atlantic and had Dominic Cooper playing Fleming. It’s decent but I remember that there are quite a few violent scenes (including sexual abuse directed towards women) so keep that in mind?
Yes, I made the mistake of starting to watch it with my parents….
There's also a 1990 film called The Secret Life of Ian Flemming starring Sean Connery's son Jason as Flemming.
There’s also a film called “Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming” starring Charles Dance as Fleming.
You have actually increased my to ever read his works. I wouldn't have thought that was possible 😊
Generally speaking, biopics aren't documentaries.
They're fiction.
To be fair, (presumably unpaid) product placement featured in the novels too. Apparently they were among the first works of fiction to name drop real brands with any sort of regularity.
One very minor change that you forgot to mention. In the book, they played baccarat, while in the movie, they played Texas Hold-Em. 'Cause the movie was produced during that brief window in the 2000s that Texas Hold-Em was insanely popular, and the producers wanted to capitalize on it.
Yeah. I remember there being an entire chapter dedicated to teaching readers Baccarat.
Thank you. I haven't read the book, but my assumption was that they didn't play Texas Hold 'Em in the 50s, so my guess was that was a change.
Also, baccarat is a terrible game.
And thank bugger for that, baccarat is boring to watch and not super well-known.
That’s really interesting! My brother taught me to play poker in 05 and it was indeed holdem, and I was often confused why so much media used 5-card instead - didn’t know that was a product of a brief surge in popularity! I’m not exactly a big poker fan so I wasn’t aware holdem had faded again. I do still like the tactical elements of a shared card pool versus an entirely private guessing game tho.
There's a scene where wormtongue stabs sauroman in the back and it was scripted for him to scream but Christopher Lee refused to because it wasn't realistic for someone to scream in that scenario
_Casually corrects PeeJ on what a backstab sounds like, implying he has witnessed and/or performed backstabs himself._
Sir Christopher Lee was a living legend. War hero, spy, slayer of Nazis, inspiration for James Bond, played Dracula, Saruman, Count Dooku, had his own metal band, what a guy.
Peter Jackson's telling of this moment is great.
Also played Knight Kato in Mio in the Land Far Away (not 100% sure of the English translation of the title)
Is directly related to fucking Charlemagne. The man was a bingo card of awesome
@@ashleightompkins3200 ...aren't all Central and Western Europeans related to Charlemagne though? (I say this as a German)
Its very sad you didnt look at the 67 parody. That film contains things such as:
Bond’s nephew planning to kill every man taller than him, Orson Welles doing a magic trick for 3 minutes, every mi6 agent being called james bond 007 to throw off people going after bond, a scene where petter sellers is tortured then dies suddenly because he quit the film and a german expressionist building.
Welles was more accurate looks-wise, as he could chuckle fatly.
At least the 1967 film kept to the novel's classic game of Baccarat.
Bond playing Texas Hold'em? Do me a favour!
I genuinely love the '67 Casino Royale, it's a bonkers movie.
@@shawnhendrickson2668 its because it had a completely fucked production. Peter sellers quit halfway through because he didnt like working with orson welles, there was so much rewriting, they had basically no idea what was going to happen by the end
@@limbobilbo8743 Having seen the end of that movie, I'm pretty sure the audience didn't either.
The most accurate portrayal of Bond in the movies was probably Man with the Golden Gun, where Bond hates his female counterpart for no reason and brushes her off all the time unless she wants sex, and it's upsetting that she does given how he treats her.
Roger Moore's talent was completely wasted for most of his time as 007.
His first two movies were a total mess in general. Both due fighting between the producers. And Roger Moore himself felt like they tried to make him be like Sean Connery and he never felt comfortable with that. There is a good reason to why Man with the golden gun is seen as one of the lesser movies in the series.
Roger Moore himself hated that aspect and had it removed from the rest of his films to his credit.
Man with the Golden Gun is one of my favorite Bond movies! The villain played by Christopher Lee is fascinating, and so well done! And it feels like, to me, it's got the epitome of "classic" Bond & Bond girl 😂 almost to level of parody, I hate it 😂
@@backtoklondike In has Christopher Lee in it, how could it possibly be lesser.
@@MissCaraMint They really wasted him as a villain. Like the premise and motivation of him is amazing but they don't really do anything to make him compelling except for the fact it is Christopher Lee. And Roger Moore and him were friends IRL and that shows but not in a good way. Because the scenes they do talk to each other,, in what should be a pretty tense scene, it feels more like two friends chatting with each other. It's the same manner with A view to a kill. The villain would be bland and forgettable if wasn't that the villain is Christopher Walken
Lee telling Jackson "That's not the sound someone makes when you stab them in the back" is the coldest story from a set I've ever heard.
I've always been struck by the dichotomy of novel Bond. He's in his vehicle, racing to the rescue of a woman that his internal monologue lets the reader know just how much he hates the woman for forcing him to race after her to rescue her. In other words. Bond lies to himself about how important Vesper is to him, while his actions alone reflect his real feelings.
Agreed. If he truly hated Vesper the way the inner monologue is saying then he wouldn't even be making the attempt. He's deeply damaged (most likely by his war experiences) and because of that he's jaded and cynical, and the inner monologue is him trying to convince himself he doesn't actually care because he's in denial. Him being annoyed at her for getting captured is probably genuine enough, but the whole "if she dies, so be it, I won't lose sleep over it" bit is denial, him trying to prepare himself for the likelihood of losing her.
@@moreau1755 Yes I think it kind of speeks to the deep pesimism of the age it was written it. Very fatalistic time, and lying to yourself about how you don’t care is not out of character in this world.
Vesper's death is something which affects Bond as he visits her grave every year and thinks about her occasionally in other novels [there is an amusing scene in 'Goldfinger' where Bond thinks he's died and wonders what he's going to say to Vesper when he sees her again]. I think there is a scene in 'Diamonds are Forever' where music that reminds Bond of Vesper plays in a bar and he asks for it to be turned off [as it bringing back memories of her death clearly upsets him].
That's exactly why I love Book Bond. He is a jerk but definitely has his moments of unabashed heroism.
I'm glad some others actually caught this. He's saying/thinking nasty stuff that he doesn't actually mean because he's boiling over with anger at Vesper and also at himself.
He's just being belligerent and unreasonable (and he is fully aware of this too).
This was obvious to me when I read it. I don't know why everyone has to take things so literally nowadays.
The thing I find intriguing about bond in the novels, which is wholly absent from the movies is that bond is unabashedly suicidal. This becomes more apparent the further you go in the series. He is also nominally Catholic, so rather than kill himself he decides to go out in a blaze of glory for Queen and country. But then halfway through the mission and hands up discovering this, or that which necessitate to him somewhat unwillingly, having to save his own life, in order to prevent an even bigger disaster from happening. That’s why he’s so damn good: he holds nothing back. He does not intend to live, nor does he want to. The reason for this is never really explained of the rest of my memory, but I’m going to assume it had something to do with the war. I do really like this angle, and it makes sense, whereas the movie bond is just supernaturally good at everything for a no adequately explained reason.
@@Rocket1377 He is, to my knowledge, the only actor up to that point who’d actually read the books. I remember him saying it informed his performance, and I believe it, but there’s nothing in either film to suggest he’s suicidal.
I think he tried to leave the life of a spy and live a settled, married life. And then he lost his wife (killed, I think).
@@JustFlemishMe well, he got married, and she died on the way to the honeymoon…
@@mahatmarandy5977 Yeah, I wouldn't be overly happy either...
@@JustFlemishMe He mentions a few times that he'd like to have a wife and children but probably needs to retire before he can do so. He lives with Tiffany Case for a few months but it doesn't work out and then OHMSS happens.
Spoiler if you haven't read You Only Live Twice-
That book ends with Bond getting what he through he was getting in OHMSS, all be it after losing his memory as he's out of the service, a girlfriend and a baby on the way but he ends up walking away from it which might be Fleming's way of saying he was never going to be able to break away from the service.
Okay, that is a *quality* intro. I don't usually comment until I've finished watching the video, but I just have to say, *quality* intro.
If i recall Ian Fleming was the commanding officer of actor Jon Pertwee (most famous as the 3rd doctor from Doctor Who) and theirs some speculation as to if Pertwee was another inspiration or if Pertwee drew some inspiration from Fleming and his books for tge role of the 3rd doctor
Worzel Gummage
@@mathieuleader8601 I'll put me spying head on - over here Aunt Sally I wants to play hide the corn sheaf.
I like "I'm not going to argue with you, I am just going to read something else." A lot of people forget that while you may not like something that doesn't mean you don't recognize it's skill/value.
Not even 2 minutes in, but I gotta say that I loved that opening! It had me giggling.
Ian Fleming writes sex scenes like how a non-ace person thinks an ace person would write a sex scene.
Aaaaannnnd now I have to read one. Just so I can know what that even means.
Fleming writing a sex scene is the epitome of r/menwritingwomen. To the point that i have a hard time imagining Fleming even being a womaniser cuz of how childishly silly that sex scene sounds. I mean tbh ive not read any books with sex scenes, except perhaps Michael Mann’s Heat 2, and certainly not any by women. I know men writing sex scenes with women is cringe but i have a hard time believing there’s even that many women that bother to include sex scenes with men cuz its not as much as a fantasy lol, it feels so superfluous in books to include sex scenes
@@GuineaPigEverydayright like “chuckled fatly” is really on the level of “breasted boobily down the stairs” (not to mention the various ways he describes Vesper)
@@GuineaPigEveryday I hate to bring it to you, but there are quite a lot of women, who should be banned from writing romance and sex scenes. Those include Sarah J. Maas and her "velvet wrapped steel", E.L. James (anyone at least heard of 50 Shades by now, right?) and then the queen of writing shitty/abusive men as love interests, the one and only Coleen Hoover. There are plenty more, these are just the ones at the top of my head.
No, I haven't inflicted any of them upon myself. It's thanks to people like The Dom, who suffer so we can enjoy their teardowns of these craptastic books, that I even know they exist. I was bored enough to read one of the Twilight books to see how bad they actually were and I'm happy to say, I don't hate myself enough to try another.
@@GuineaPigEveryday Full honesty, I have read fanfiction(by women, ofc) that has described sex so beautifully and tenderly that I've gotten a bit misty-eyed at points and had to take a break to gather myself. I guess however Flemming wrote sex scenes serves as a look into his mind and how he perceived sex. Or him being a womanizer is just an exaggeration made fact by time and fame.
Another interesting part of the book was that we’re lots of descriptions of food in the book, I think because it was the end of rationing from WW2 in the 1950s and food was one of those things that a lot of fantasy was based around. Brian Jacques did similar in his Red Wall series and I recommend that series one wishes for a more palatable characters
Best intro ever!!!!! I also made the mistake of trying to read a bond novel and holy crap. I wanted him to die really bad haha. Great video!!!
There is a Victoria Coren bit where she is throwing shade on Bond's gambling chops, by pointing out that she has to read subtle cues of body language; while Bond wins because his opponent's tell is bleeding from the eyes. 😄
It's a movie. Most audience members aren't expert poker players like she is. They had to make it more obvious what was happening in a cinematic way, because if both actors had an actual poker face it would be impossible to follow the story.
Not really , relax, it was a bit
Ian Fleming's books were definitely more of an insight into his psyche and personality than that of Bond.
Absolutely!
I do find it odd how many 'inspiration for Bond' candidates they are supposedly are when it's pretty clear it's a fantasy version of Fleming himself. He often uses Bond as a mouth piece for his own opinions/observations.
@@jamesatkinsonja guess that casino royale being where Bond’s misogyny was at its worst is a good thing then if it was the first book. He got better overtime
Obviously a psyche and personalty that changed over time, and one that lead to his wife divorcing her husband ( a Viscount no less) to marry him and the two raised a son together. It was that son btw that Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for. It is on record that Ann Fleming did not like the Bond books, so I doubt Fleming could have been writing too much of his actual self into the character.
@@NelsonStJames In the books Bond often goes on tangets observing the various countries he visits [Diamonds are Forever with the USA for example] which very much feel like Fleming's views funnelled through his character.
Honestly I feel like the film was better. It took most of the good elements from the book, smoothed over some of the not so good parts, and added fun stuff of it’s own.
Fun fact: famous Game Dev Masahiro Sakurai was originally planning on putting James Bond into Smash Bros because he thought he was from Goldeneye for N64
Until he was told by Nintendos lawyers that they didn’t create the character and he was a famous movie and novel character that Nintendo only licensed the rights to the movie for.
😂😂
Had they secured him for all Smash games you think they’d keep him as Brosden or switch to Craig with Brawl onward
@@skibot9974 would’ve been a skin like Twilight princess link and Breath of the Wild Link
@@seanmcloughlin5983though there are only 6 offical actors so which two bond actors would get two costumes?
Sounds like a fake story. Sakurai is not some dumb tik tok zoomer, he'd had to be at least aware of who James Bond is.
0:34 Sir Terry in the intro is just "Dad, this isn't as fun as when I crash your reviews. I'm out!"
"he chuckled fatly" 😂😂😂
I look at that and I think "What's that supposed to mean?"
@@tristanhartup4936my guess is: the laughter made extra chins vibrate. It’s really poor writing though.
@@kaitlyn__L Well, there's an image
I died laughing at that part of the video!
Your cold open is actually a good writing prompt-A lover of a terrible Bond expy gets captured by a Blofield type character, and the call happens. The villain begins to manipulate the lover (through charisma and valid points) and they enter into the villain’s organization. Drama, self growth and a few exploding bases ensue.
The biggest difference between the book and the 2006 movie is that the book goes all in on explaining the rules of chemin-de-fer (baccarat), centering the action on chemin-de-fer, tying Bond's personality to how he plays chemin-de-fer, etc., and then in the movie it's 100% Texas hold 'em.
This is definitely a good example of adapting something relatively short in an effective way, building on what is there in service of the source, rather than irrelevant filler.
Its interesting listening to modern readers review Bond novels. It in some way demonstrates how rare unlikable protagonists are in modern media. The idea of a main character who is not a good person, just better than the enemy was pretty common in cold war literature but comes off as the endorsement of bad behavior today.
My observation would be that unlikable main characters are still common today, but that when they appear in blockbuster films, the writers usually shy away from actually critiquing their behaviour, instead trying to excuse or glamorize it? (Previous Bond films are actually a pretty good example of that, as are a lot of recent superhero movies).
For me the problem with books like Flemings' isn't necessarily that the author writes a sh*tty person as the main character. It's that they don't critique or query that character's sh*tiness in their writing, which can quickly lead to a blurring (for the reader) between what attitudes are the character's, and what are also the author's? Doesn't mean one can't still read such books, it just tends to increase the unpleasantness factor when doing so, in my experience...
Understandably wasn't mentioned here, as it has nothing to do with the main subject matter, but I _love_ the song from this movie. Chris Cornell hit it out of the park, I still play _You Know My Name_ on loop when I'm writing sometimes.
The cool thing was composer David Arnold was told to save the Bond theme for the end of the film and like the idea Bond is so arrogant at the start of the film he doesn't need his theme because...'You know my name'!
It's a great song, that introduced me to Chris Cornell, and one of my favorite of the Bond opening title songs. Terrific power song to get in the mindset to get stuff done right up there with Tom Jones' Thunderball.
That song remains to be my favorite Bond theme
Never cared for it myself. I much prefer the themes for the 60's and 70's.
I thought “when you take a life, do you know what you giiiiive?” was so deep back then 😅
Please find enclosed the story of how Christopher Lee corrected Peter Jackson on set, reportedly saying "Do you have any idea how a man sounds when you stab him in the back? Because I do."
And according to iforces web site, Lee's work in ww2 is *still* classified and he has military awards from multiple countries.
@Mac Mcleod some clandestine activities from WW2 may never be fully declassified. From what Lee, Fleming, and their contemporaries have said about the time, I think I'll sleep better not knowing.
Perfect! Just the thing to pair with the Kill James Bond podcast
Would you please touch this metal plate?
Rocket fall down Mr. Bond!
@@ezraclark7904 I have a bachelor's degree in pure mathematics. I could shoot you from Stuttgart and create the proper effect.
As a young teen girl in junior high / early high-school I ate up the Ian Fleming novels. Pretty sure I read them all. I had forgotten a lot of the misogyny, etc but my god if my daughter was reading that at 13 I wouldn't be happy. Think I turned out all right though. Only lasting imprint is from movie Bond, and that's my lifelong weakness for any man with a British accent. 😂
Fun fact: the book describes Le Chiffre as a short fat toad like man with bulging eyes and coming off really weird and with a penchant for staring at people
When i read it 1 name popped into my head: Peter Lorre
Who played Le Chiffre in the first ever adaptation of a bond work, in a played live for syndication adaptation as the finale of the 50s show called Climax!
He was the perfect Le Chiffre except the nationality; honestly, a lot about that episode was dead on from the books. It actually surprised me. I added the VHS to my Bond collection when I had a VHS player so from that to The World where I had to go DVD.
He’s also described as having reddish hair, like most of Flemings villains
Not gonna lie, I REALLLLLY wanna see an actual film with the premise following up from something like this video's cold open. Like... just what WOULD the girl and the villain do in a situation like that? The villain looks so scandalized by Bond by such a shitbag that I can genuinely see that being a turning point for the villain character. And obviously the girl has a lot of potential directions her character could grow from disavowing the shitheel secret agent, or from forming a new connection with the now-reformed villain. I dunno, just seems like a waaaay more interesting story than anything in any actual Bond media.
It is sooooooo amazing to hear someone else voice I had been thinking about the books, especially if that someone is a person whose opinion I value tremendously!! Thanks for your content!!
2:28 There were two TV movies of Fleming's life, one starting Jason Connery [son of Sean] and one with Charles Dance [featuring a pre-fame Christophe Waltz]
3:48 That was because Fleming had sold the rights to Casino separately from the rest of the series, hence why it was adapted for the parody movie and a 50's TV adaption. To get the rights back, MGM swapped the rights to Spiderman with Sony, hence starting the Spiderman films.
5:32 Desmond Llewelyn would have been 92 in 2006 had he still been alive.
You know Desmond WOULD have came back if he was asked. I can't say for sure, but his attitude both in and out of character was one that I abso adored.
@@Knight-of-Sarcasm He had a great line 'I'll play Q as long as the producers need me and the almighty doesn't'! And it would have been nice for him to have a link with all 6 Bond's.
Can we get a supercut of Dominic just saying "SMERSH"?
I like the books, they are products of there time, so I don’t hold that against them. To me they are just old spy books that are meant to entertain and nothing else
My understanding is that EON and Albert Broccoli WANTED to start by adapting Casino Royale, but because it had been previously adapted for an episode of an American anthology series (funnily enough, the anthology series was called "Climax!"), all adaptation rights to it were held by Columbia Pictures, who would very, VERY loosely adapt the story again into the comedy version that came out in 1967. It wasn't until MGM acquired the rights to both previous adaptations in 1999 that they were finally able to make this adaptation.
When they were negotiating for Bond the Casino rights had long been sold. The first film was going to be an adaption of Thunderball but that was tied up in legal wrangling's. After coming to an agreement to do Thunderball 'in house' they tried to do the same for Casino only for the right holder to demand most of the proceeds so they let him fail on his own.
@@jamesatkinsonja I thought they allready made Thunderball twice? Do we really need another.
@@MissCaraMint Sorry, I meant back in 1961 Eon were looking to make Thunderball as the first Bond but couldn't make it until 1965 due to the rights issues. There was further attempts to make a 3rd Thunderball adaptions [with Pierce Brosnan in the early 90's then with Sony in the mid-90's] and Eon shutting this down was part of the deal which got them the rights to Casino Royale!
Hahahaha, the way the villan covers Sir Terry's ears when Bond stars swearing is so hilarious I kept clicking back to rewatch it 😂😂😂
I remember reading one or two of the books and being staggered by just how unnecessarily and consistently bigoted Bond was. Very glad most of that didn't make it to the films...
Also the 1967 Casino Royale is a chaotic cinematic masterpiece and I will hear nothing to the contrary
Doodle me, Jamie.
@@saoirsedeltufo7436 you do realise that the man was born 104 years ago?
Also, quarrel from live and let die and dr no was actually written with more brotherly love and affection than you’d imagine. Bond was actually devastated by his death in the book dr no unlike the film.
@@mohammedashian8094 You realise that Bond is a fictional character and thus was not in fact born?
@@saoirsedeltufo7436 yes I do but do YOU? still different time and you can’t really judge him by modern standards because like I said.
@@mohammedashian8094 who said I was judging him by modern standards?
I just want a Christopher Lee bio. Anyone else want to absolute legend of a man's story told on the big screen?
The other thing about why Casino Royale (2006) was seen a such a great start is in between GoldenEye and Royale, the Director had started the trend of grittier spy flicks with a small pair of film adaptations called The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. Yes Bond isn't the only spy known for their Extreme Ways...
I saw what you did there.
The later books are so much worse. Oh God, the racism. It goes well beyond unpalatable.
Which is the one where all black people are secretly part of the same crimminal organization and in the film adoptation bond literally fucked mind powers out of a black medium?
Casino Royale was definitely one of my favourite adaptions, and Craig my favourite Bond. I think he did such a fantastic job of playing the book version of Bond (the hot mess of a man who's own failings usually came from his arrogance), while still modernising the character enough to seem able of living in the era of the movie's creation. Craig had that aura of charm, mixed with "I don't wanna meet him in a back alley", which I think was needed. A lot of the earlier Bond's had become such paraodies of themselves that it just felt extremely far removed from the fairly 'basic' premises of the books.
I binged the books for the first time in the early 00s, and even as a queer feminist, enjoy the hell out of them. I often still keep one in my bag for emergencies. They're a product of their time, and Fleming shows his ass as a dick head constantly, but I found the short form of most of them to be engaging. As someone who never reads, and struggles with books in general (mixture of ADHD and aphantasia making it nearly impossible for me to visualise anything), I just found the simplicity of the Bond books super easy to digest. There wasn't paragraphs and pages filled with flowery descriptions that were essentially meanless filler for me, you were just told they were at a place doing a thing and then it continued. Sentences were short and punchy. The characters were all hot messes but the scenarios and situations were exciting, and resolved quick enough to keep attention. They still carried me away to a different world and time, without coming with the added frustations of me not being able to visualise or understand. The fact I had movies to draw visuals from helped too. I dunno, I guess that's why I loved them anyway. Maybe they're appealing for people who aren't as well read like me?
SMERSH was referenced once in the movies in The Living Daylights where it's implied to be the reason agents are getting killed.
They are also briefly are mentioned in 'From Russia With Love' as Klebb deflected from them to Spectre.
There was a TV series in the states in the 50's called "Climax!"
One episode where they did Casino Royale. Sadly, they Americanized everything from James Bond now being a CIA agent and his name changed to Jimmy Bond. He was less sexy secret agent and more the hardboiled cop type. It premiered a year or two on TV before Dr. No hit theatres.
Every now and then some cable channel will play the episode even today.
It actually came out 8 years prior to Dr No [1954]. Other attempts to launch Bond on TV ended up being short stories [in the 'For Your Eyes only' collection] instead.
@@jamesatkinsonja really? Never knew that bit of info.
The most bizarre 007 book is definitely The Spy Who Loved Me. As you read it, you can't help but think "Dude, Fleming, wtf is wrong with you?"
Is that the one where Spectre had a council meeting and decided the best evil scheme they had was burning a motel and collecting the insurance?
To quote Linkara, "Nineteen-fifties/ Casual sexism!"
ngl I'd love to see a crossover where it turns out that Bond's a Time Lord who, inspired by the Doctor, opted to live a life of meddling, albeit far more proactive.
And he regenerates every few years; hence the actors changing.
"An Englishman always has more tea...even when he hates it." 😂😂
11:12 - Rosa Klebb is a double agent for Smersh / Spectre in the film *From Russia with Love* who has just fully defected. Bond believes Tatiana (as does she) is a Smersh honeypot in the film, but Spectre is manipulating events so that they end up with the Russian decoder, which is what the climactic fight with Rosa Klebb’s poisoned shoe knife is about.
The assassin Grant is a Spectre agent in the film, but Smersh in the novel, so we can argue the Soviets are technically not the enemy, but its a subtle shift and the Turkish Station’s battle with Bulgarian intelligence is hardly pro-Warsaw Pact.
Its not helped that Walter Gotell plays Spectre Agent Morzeny in this film also plays the head of the KGB in all of Roger Moore’s Bond films. Something that confused me for years before Wikipedia.
Additional note, the changed the location of the casino to Montenegro in the film. As i recall it was a seaside town in France known for its mineral waters in the book
I saw the cat and stayed for the cat.
Dom is completely aware of how many people love to see his cats so they frequently show up in bloopers XD
I love how James Bond is the only character Alan Moore accurately parodied in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He completely fumbled Mina, Harry Potter and Nemo but Bond was absolutely perfect.
The Harry Potter parody was brilliant. It wasn't about the character but about how shit the book series is.
Just to confirm: СМЕРШ (smersh) was a real thing, there's a wikipedia page on it for anyone curious. Abbreviation comes from the words "СМЕРть Шпионам" which indeed translates as "Death to the spies".
P.S and it's NOT pronounced as "smursh" -___-
Well to be fair, the organization in the Bond series has so little in common with the actual WW2 era military counter-intelligence task force, it might as well be fictional in all but name XD
@@vonPeterhof I mean, fair,
Just pointing out, that the real thing the fake thing is based on is a real thing indeed
YES! My dose of Dom has arrived today! thanks!
Every time I learn something new about Christopher Lee, I'm reminded of what an accomplished badass the man was.
Could you do a review of the parody spoof Casino Royale? I also could have sworn that they did Casino Royale straight up before the Daniel Craig version, but I'm no fan of Bond...the only version of Bond I like was the David Niven (and everybody else) fun time.
Dom, just to clarify Christopher Lee was the hardest MF to ever exist. And the world is truly lesser with his passing. Dude was a spy, a soldier, a thespian (in the truest sense of the word) a musician, and an all around decent human being.
Just to add something to Christopher Lee's WW2 experience, there was at least one point where he took director Peter Jackson to the side and showed him the correct sound a man makes once you stab him.
Ha! I thought you might have been going cartoonishly overboard in the opening bit, but no, that was taken right out of the book.
Having read one of the Flemming novels, I probably should have known better.
This is extremely good timing, as I
(after years) am back into the fandom and making my way through the 00Q tag on AO3, and enjoying it very much ^^
(And probably a lot more than the Novels)
Incidentally, Casino Royale is my Madness cover band.
Is your version of their great hit, named Our House (always wins)?
Cat acting was amazing! Extra treats well earned!
I would be curious to see what this series would do with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the one 007 movie that actually stayed closest to the novel. On the other hand, a comparison of the book and film version of the Spy Who Loved Me, which had virtually nothing in common, might also be amusing.
Goldfinger, Dr No and Thunderball stay pretty close to the book too. From Russia with Love would make a good 'Lost in Adaptation as there is a lot of the book in the film but with crucial changes [such including Spectre].
i love 'he chuckled fatly' so much
Before I watch you, Mister Dominic…
I love how the film is able to take the ideas of the novel that still hold up and the "load-bearing" sexism which is literally part of the plot and the audience's feelings about Bond is kept in. It feels like they really followed through with being more critical of the character which Goldeneye hinted at doing but never really maintained though the sequels
It’s funny that this LiA came out right in the middle of my rewatch of every single Eon Bond movie (just finished Moonraker as of this comment).
Even from the first movie, film Bond is so not the women-hater he is in the books. He’s still a jerk at times, but he’s actually affectionate towards women (at the ones who aren’t his enemies).
Specifically there’s a scene in Dr No I want to talk about. When Bond & Honey Ryder are being taken to Dr No, Honey notices that Bond’s hands are cold like hers. Bond admits he’s “scared too” & holds Honey in a comforting embrace during the elevator. I did a double-take when I saw this. Open vulnerability from James Bond?! In 1962?!
I'm only going to chuckle "fatly" from now on 😂
Thank you for the (superbly, delightfully delivered) reminder to never, ever, tackle another of the Bond novels. (I vaguely recall having read one of them years ago, but I mostly remember it being a mostly-dull travelogue and advertisement for Being A Well-Off British Dude.)
“They’ve sold over 100million copies worldwide, so what do I know I guess?” - to be fair Dom, that doesn’t equate to 100million happy readers; it’s entirely possible (increasingly so as the years go on and the older generations die off and newer generations take their place) that many of them bought the books unaware of their troubling content, likely in the mindset of “Hey those films were rather nifty, I wonder how the source material compares”, read them, were just as disgusted as you were, and never picked them up again.
I just need a loop of Dom saying “Smersh” 😂😂😂
I lasted through roughly 3 pages of the Bond novel I found at my grandpa's house after he died - being a fan of the old movies I was excited to find the collection and could not have been more horrified by the comparison.. Dom, if your narration is your revenge for us making you sit through one of these novels... Well played, sir. Well played.
Sidenote - I think I would pay a hefty sum for a Dom commentary of terrible sex scenes in the future - that was HILLARIOUS!
How fun, honestly. I realised that I missed Dominic ranting about Bond when I began watching this video :) what a weird feeling
The issue with the Craig era after Casino Royale was that they kept trying to make direct sequels to Casino Royale, when Casino Royale only had a single thread to pull on. If you make one movie where Bond’s girlfriend dies, you can make one movie about him getting revenge. Quantum of Solace’s open ending basically doomed the franchise for years by not letting Bond just get revenge so the following movies could move on completely
I think that’s why Skyfall was Craig’s best film. It was the only film where it wasn’t personal to him, just another mission . . . at least until (spoiler alert) the villain kills M. If anything, I hated that SPECTRE tried to tie Skyfall to the overall plot. That’d be like revealing that Goldfinger was a member of SPECTRE all along. 🤦🏾
@@Linklex7 I'm fine with the "This time it's personal" nature of both Skyfall and Quantum of Solace. It was just a complete drag to watch them try to tie everything into the same story. And they clearly had no specific plan when they wrote Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace on how to do it, QoS was left feeling incomplete, only for Spectre/No Time to Die to drag the story out WAY TOO FAR. They should have just let Bond kill Mr. White in Quantum of Solace and let that be the end of the "Revenge of Vesper" story arc, no other Bond movie needed to bring this up beyond the occasional off-hand mention of "Yeah, Bond had a girlfriend who died right after his first mission, which isn't specifically why he's such a womanizer, but probably why he isn't open to changing." I'm fine with serialization, but Quantum of Solace/Spectre/No Time to Die represent almost the sloppiest way you can possibly do serialization.
@@TheJadedJames The early Connery films have Bond battling Spectre working his way towards Blofeld and then fighting him in a loose story arc.
He pretty much gets his closure for Vesper at the end of Quantum [where he doesn't kill the man who turned her into a double agent and throws her necklace into the snow]. While he visits her grave in NTTD, that was a reference to the novels where Bond visits her grave every year as he has a new relationship now.
@@TheJadedJames Craig is also far less of a womanizer than past Bonds. While he still has the odd one night stand, he doesn't have a proper relationship post Vesper until Madeline Swan comes along. Having 2 main relationships in 5 films is far lower than the one per film of past Bonds.
@@jamesatkinsonja My problem isn’t that the movies continue to acknowledge that Vesper exist, it is the really clunky way they try to tie into each other. I think Bond should have definitively avenged Vesper’d death in Quantum of Solace, and the remaining movies could have been about something else entirely with villains that had no connection to the conspiracy plot of the first two films. QoS was left feeling like a filler episode or a Bond television show, and Spectre/No Time to Die stretched what should have been a pretty simple story of “Bond destroys the organization that killed his girlfriend” way too far into stupid pointless lengths … I was bored
In the book the card game at the Casino Royale was baccarat but no normal person in the 2000s knows how that game works so the screenwriters changed it to poker
There was one thing that was changed that he missed, in the movie the card game was texas hold-em poker whereas in the book the game was a lesser known game called chermaine de fer, ( the same game he's playing in Dr No when we first meet Bond on screen) presumably because more of the audience would know how the game is played.
Actually the game in the book was baccarat, chermaine de fer is related to baccarat though. However, I'm kind of surprised that the change didn't come in the review as well since it has such a big impact upon the plot (besides the book requiring pages to explain how baccarat is played). While Texas hold-em has an element of chance to it, generally the skill of the other players matters more than the cards, in contrast baccarat is pure luck. So the movie actually gave Bond a lot more agency over winning and losing, where as in the book it's pure chance (despite Bond "having a system").
@@rjz2 I agree. Plus the multi-phase nature of poker just makes for way better tension building. Baccarat just seems like such a silly choice by comparison, not to mention a silly card game to begin with.
No, the reason is because the book was written in the 1950s, and since then poker has become more popular, and is far more likely to be used for high stakes games.
@@Rocket1377 When the book was written is certainty part of the reason for the change. Poker didn't appear in Foster's Complete Hoyle (an encyclopedia of games) until 1937 and was considered an American game at the time. Fleming could have been aware of the game due to GIs, but I doubt it was played in any European casinos at the time.
It is funny how many people think of Bond as a straightforward hero when he is a spy "with a license to kill" which, by definition, requires him to be a pretty cold and manipulative/deceptive dude. I absolutely agree with your assessment that Ian Fleming always intended James Bond to be more of a flawed anti-hero, much like the spies he'd known in life. Fleming, actually, once described Bond as a man with many "vices and very few perceptible virtues, except patriotism and courage, which are probably not virtues anyway.”
I'm glad you pointed out that Bond's racism/sexism/other -isms are an intentional part of his character because so many critics of Book Bond that I've seen seem to take these qualities at face value and completely write them off as "Yikes, this is awful. Don't read this." which pisses me off.
Compared to his contemporaries and even some of the Bond movies, Fleming's Bond books were weirdly progressive. Granted, they weren't that progressive by today's standards since these books were still written by a rich white British man in the '50s, but Fleming did actually make an effort to make the women and non-white characters in his books actual characters with legitimate flaws, goals, and roles in the story as opposed to just sex objects and racist caricatures, respectively.
Just compare the book version of Dr. No's Honey Ryder to the movie version and you'll see what I mean. Or book Moonraker's Gala Brand, who was basically the deuteragonist of the story and was just as instrumental at stopping the bad guy's plot as James Bond himself. I'm not saying Fleming was great at writing women or people of color, but I'll take him over the likes of Raymond Chandler or any of his other contemporaries any day of the week.
Interesting thing for me, I was never that much of a fan of James Bond, but I loved Daniel Craig. I loved Casino Royale, Skyfall, and No Time to Die. It was clear that James was flawed, but he had redeeming qualities which is a lot more than I can say for his book counterpart.