370 replies to this topic

[Tarl_Cabot]

We may see Bond play both games too.This will be the most Casino intensive Bond ever I imagine. As for Poker having the veneer of tackiness: It's all about the venue. Black Jack can be played in a dumpy indian Casino with a tragic crowd of walking country music cliches or a 5 star hotel with "a fast international set". This is a Bond movie. No flower shirts allowed inside the Casino!

As Han Solo once said "Let's try to keep a little optimisim!"

[00Twelve]

Well, I am a Fleming purist, but I could accept Hold'em (as long as there is a more fitting and sophisticated name for it in France) as I like to play it. But if there's gonna be something like *Texas* Hold'em in this movie, there better dang well be some Felix up in here. There's no reason to exclude Felix, there's no excuse for excluding Felix. And that's my statement.

[Tarl_Cabot]

In defense of Poker:the game is a great equalizer. At the WSOP, you have blue collar/working class guys sitting next to professionals,and CEOs of fortune 500 companies, celebrities,math genuises,chess masters...and *anyone* can win.Age,gender,physicality are irrelevant and that's why it's so popular.Just because it's called Texas Holdem and not an alegant french name like chemin de fer or bacarat doesn't mean it doesn't belong in a Bond movie.Bond may not be well practiced in Poker but he could beat the best player in the world on any given day...Anyway, I just hope it's a well written scene and is supported by the story and doesn't come off cheesy;they can really drop the ball here.

[Jack Spang]

Big mistake. Should have kept the original idea. They are just trying to wrangle in new fans because [what they are replacing it with] is so big right now.

Phase one of destroying what should be a good film: Activated

Cheers for the news Zen Cat.

I am a purist and do agree with Gabe Vieira to an extent. When has the literary Bond ever played Poker? Yet another move to try and appeal to the masses. However, I would rather a move like this then putting in the abundance of cheesy, lighthearted humour, action and over the top gadgets etc. It is a much better method of approaching it. I just hope they won

Edited by Jack Spang, 27 September 2005 - 06:00 AM.

[Slaezenger]

This is a Bond movie.

...You are implying that it will be like the pictures before it -- yet you have an actor like Craig who is the visual antithesis of casting for Bond, and you have the writer talking about reinventing the character. And you have DAD -- which couldn't figure out which style it wanted to be. So against this backdrop, some are pessimistic...

[Slaezenger]

When has the literary Bond ever played Poker?

...The literary Bond apparently never played poker, because, according to Fleming, it was illegal to do so in England. See his article in my post at the bottom of the previous page...

[Tarl_Cabot]

Is Bond playing Poker instead of bacarat more deviant for purists than Bond driving a BMW? Using a Walther P99 that doesn't conceal well? Or Bond smoke-free to conform to American values? Flemming's Bond has been desacrated already and prostituted to corporate america for years...this is sooo not a big deal.

[SecretAgentFan]

Getting so worked up about the choice of card game makes one think that even the novel was only about the elegance of Baccarat. Not about a secret agent

[1q2w3e4r]

I don't get it. Why do fans whinge that nothing get's changed and that things need to be done differently rather than follow the same old formula..

Then, news of stud poker and all of a sudden they've "screwed it up" again? Please!

It's good news, interesting game that they could really build some tension up with, easier so than with baccarat.

[Marquis]

I don't get it.  Why do fans whinge that nothing get's changed and that things need to be done differently rather than follow the same old formula..

One word, my friend - fickle!

[Jim]

I've calmed down. I think.

Still not too fond of the idea - it's not that it's resistance to change, but the nature of the change. Why not have them play Bridge? I accept that this is not the world's most fashionable game but there's something less grubby about it - I accept that this is rampaging snobbery but I doesn't poker have a slightly sleazy image?

My bigger "worry" (odd word - I shopuld be worried about more serious things than whether a film is good or not) is what this appears to be a symptom of.

Are they making their one shot at the book, or remaking the 1967 film?

If (and I accept that this is a massive assumption) the most prevalent rumours are true, then what we appear to have is this:-

Poker
Younger Bond and Older Bond
The Dench
(I forget) John Cleese?
Brand spanking new up to the minute Aston Martin
Fiat Panda
A return from the dead for Vesper Lynd

Given that the only extreme the Bond series seems to have avoided so far is time travel...

Casino Royale (2006)

An aging James Bond, fearing he is losing it, starts having visions of a woman he knew when he was a younger man, Vesper Lynd. He sees her several times on the street (a deliberate lift from DoubleShot).These culminate in a breakdown (obligatory Brosnan "acting" bit) which see him transferred to The Park rest home (cue the last repeat character never used: Sir James Thing, although now reinvented as Jugarama Ding-Dong, Thai masseuse). The visions do not stop and Bond begins to query whether she died after all.

He escapes from The Park (cue obligatory fugitive agent thing) and meets Q in... oh, I dunno, let's say Belgium (not that I'm thinking this through). Pitying his plight, Q demonstrates his latest absurd device - a time distorter. Before Q can prevent a crass use of special effects, Bond leaps/slides/squeezes into the Time Distorter and is shot back to (unidentified time earlier, but earlier nonetheless) and witnesses his younger self (played by twelve year old newcomer Henry Cavill) going through the plot of Casino Royale. Realising, in a postmodern twist, that it would be better for Vesper to stay alive (albeit not for love, but so she can be interrogated - and also that his Older Self will feel "no more guilt" (God, this is terrible), Bond engineers his Young Self losing the big game of poker/snap/go fish/cribbage, rather than winning - Older Bond has read the book, even if no-one else has.

To make it more accessible, and on the basis everyone has vacuum cleaners rather than carpet beaters, the torture sequence is retained but Bond is molested with an egg whisk.

Trying to capture Vesper, Old Bond turns into the sinister man following Young Bond and Vesper in his Fiat Panda through France/South Africa/wherever and this will, bitterly ironically, cause her to feel she is about to be exposed and kill herself anyway. He cannot escape his past! And now... his past cannot escape him! Ooh, deep. Actually, that's not a bad tag-line for the poster...

Old Bond, realising that his fate is set in stone (cliche), shoots Back to the Future (part II) and discovers that some evil people have paid someone to dress up like her to drive him mad for some reason and he has to play poker again to stop them doing something bad to trees or the world's AFRICAN CONFLICT DIAMOND supply and it ends in a cave with machine guns and he does cop off with the lookalike in a slightly creepy way.

Alternatively, once the poor cow in the past has done away with herself, realising the pitable nature of everything (including the script) Old Bond then shoots himself due to the pity of it all and a New Bond series begins with Mr Cavill as James Bond, poker ace. Alternatively Old Bond kills New Bond and the whole thing ends up disappearing up a collective backside.

or

Casino Royale (1996)

James Bond discovers that a woman he thought was dead is not and in the years that have passed, she has borne him a son, also called James, played by twelve-year old newcomer Henry Cavill. Something about online poker and beating a big computer virus and much father-son bonding and then father dies saving the world from something or other and James Bond II decides to take up his father's calling and fight for truth, justice and the American Way by becoming an undercover NASCAR driver or something.

[Skudor]

I'm not too pleased with this, but it was more or less expected. Baccarat has worked fine in the Bond movies as a minor element, where it didn't really matter if you couldn't follow the game. Poker is generally more accessible to people as they already at least understand what a Pair or a Full House is - it will need less explaining (which would no doubt have been embarrassing enough in the case of Baccarat). I'm sure the casino will be as elegant as it should to compensate for the game.

I never thought I'd see James Bond playing poker....

I wonder if the carpet beater will be replaced by a fluffy pillow?

[Loomis]

I don't care if Bond plays baccarat, poker or Top Trumps, but:

....the poker scene in Casino Royale is expected to be quite lengthy...

Now, this I find interesting. What's "quite lengthy"? Longer than two or three minutes, presumably (the standard duration of any kind of "talky scene" in the Brosnan era).

Judging by the recent films (and, to be fair on the Broz period, by most of the films, in fact), it seems the Bond folks tend to expend generous amounts of screentime only on things like motorcycle chases through Saigon, boat chases on the Thames, chases on ice, and basically any kind of chase or action sequence you care to name.

But not on people just sitting down and playing cards. Much harder to make exciting cinema out of that than, say, a fight on the world's largest cargo plane for control of an outer space death ray.

This poker scene, then.... sounds to me like one of the most unusual things we'll ever have seen in a Bond film, however they'll end up doing it. It'll seem particularly (careful, don't want to give out too much credit before it's due) fresh and brave and so on if Brosnan returns, because it'll look like, y'know, so not his era of Bondage.

[David Schofield]

Is it really necessary is my thought?

OK, poker is "trendy" (is it?) among the young, baccarat is for lady dowagers and displaced crown princes of Europe. But doesn't Bond - in theory - at least, in habit the world of Crockfords and Monte Carlo, not games games in pub back-rooms in Soho?

So it might make the game - and hence the movie - more accessible to the young (while removing a veneer of sophistication) and perhaps this is just a compromise to Sony from EON on the basis that Sony wanted a more radical, Bourne-type overhall.

But then if you do go the full Bourne, you end up without Bond.

And will more people stand in line because Bond is playing a more accessible game - poker - than an exclusive one. I know nothing about movie premotion but surely not.

Seems totally bloody pointless.

Zen, I assume your source is 100% reliable he asks (trying to retain some optimism about what coming next)

[spynovelfan]

Lovely stuff, Jim - but probably not too far off.

Sure, there's silly Fleming purism. But we've already seen Bond betrayed, tortured, in casinos and the rest of it. The *only* point in adapting the last Fleming novel not to have had a serious treatment, surely, is to keep some of the details that have *not* been done before. Yes, you need change some of it. But this seems like change for change's sake. If you changed Vesper's name (to Miranda Frost, say), and changed Le Chiffre into a British media baron, and change the location to Bermuda, and change the game to poker, and cut the torture scene, and add a space station, sure, it's still a Bond film, and sure, it could be fun. But why call it CASINO ROYALE? Of course changing the game per se is not a massive change - but why do it at all, when baccarat immediately speaks of the novel, isn't seen in other films, couldn't be in other films without bringing this book to mind, and would be just as easy to explain as Texas Hold 'Em?

[Frostyak]

Forget about the game. The fact that these scenes are important and play a central role to the movie is what excites me. It makes me think that this really will be a more serious Bond movie and Sony won't "XXX" the franchise. Let's face it...Fleming's Bond drove a Bentley, the early movie Bond drove an Aston Martin, and the 90's Bond drove a BMW. If you wish to discuss pandering to the general audience, I don't know how it could be done more than putting Bond in the yuppie car brand of the 90's. But they did. And it worked.

I agree that baccarat is the more exotic game and is one of the things that makes the novel appealing. But it is not the only thing. To me, it is the dialogue and the atmosphere. So long as that is captured, I am in.

- Chris

And btw, I still want my gritty car chase and Russian assassin-turned 007 savior : )

[Loomis]

Of course changing the game per se is not a massive change - but why do it at all, when baccarat immediately speaks of the novel, isn't seen in other films, couldn't be in other films without bringing this book to mind, and would be just as easy to explain as Texas Hold 'Em?

Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be in CASINO ROYALE, but isn't baccarat seen (albeit briefly) in GOLDENEYE?

[Shrublands]

Talk about from one end of the spectrum to the other: out with Baccarat, in with Hold'em Poker. How incredibly common.

Interesting to see all the

[marktmurphy]

Of course changing the game per se is not a massive change - but why do it at all, when baccarat immediately speaks of the novel, isn't seen in other films, couldn't be in other films without bringing this book to mind, and would be just as easy to explain as Texas Hold 'Em?

To play devil's advocate- baccarat is entirely luck based, something Fleming's Bond depended on constantly but not something Movie Bond relies on. Just making him really lucky playing cards combined with all his other indestructiveness removes any sense of tension at all, which is presumably what they're after here.

Still not sure why poker, though. It is a bit dank, isn't it?

[SecretAgentFan]

Of course changing the game per se is not a massive change - but why do it at all, when baccarat immediately speaks of the novel, isn't seen in other films, couldn't be in other films without bringing this book to mind, and would be just as easy to explain as Texas Hold 'Em?

Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be in CASINO ROYALE, but isn't baccarat seen (albeit briefly) in GOLDENEYE?

I think it is. And please, all purists, be puristic about the central plot elements (Bond really falling in love with a double agent and getting almost killed), not about details like a card game that only serve one purpose: Bond defeating someone with courage, wit and intelligence. If EON had chosen to do this without a game of cards, I could have understood the outrage. But they chose to let this part of the story be enacted through a game of cards. Something that does not cry out "high tech thrills for the XXX-audience".

This "Casino Royale" will be different from the book but true to the essence of it. And that

[spynovelfan]

To play devil's advocate- baccarat is entirely luck based, something Fleming's Bond depended on constantly but not something Movie Bond relies on. Just making him really lucky playing cards combined with all his other indestructiveness removes any sense of tension at all, which is presumably what they're after here.

It's extremely tense in the book, though. Baccarat is largely about luck, but not entirely. The banker has an advantage, for example. Bond gauges when to take his turn - when he thinks he can pressure Le Chiffre. If the other player loses, then you turn the pressure on. There are tactics you can use to better your chances - and Bond uses them.

I don't think it's really that purist to object to Texas Hold 'Em replacing baccarat in the first serious adaptation of CASINO ROYALE, frankly. Sure, the key element is he falls in love with a traitor. But if you change everything around that - her name, the location, the game he plays, the villain, how he is tortured and so on, it quickly becomes just another Bond film. Which is fine - they did a lot of this stuff in Brosnan's last films. Why adapt CR, though, if you don't want to keep some of the stuff that differentiates it from 1. The other Bond films. 2. Other films in general.

[marktmurphy]

Why adapt CR, though, if you don't want to keep some of the stuff that differentiates it from 1. The other Bond films. 2. Other films in general.

Because its got a nice title. I'm afraid that anyone expecting a straight adaptation is really barking up the wrong tree with this one- it was never going to happen. Wait for a radio or TV version (although that will never happen either).

[Loomis]

Why adapt CR, though, if you don't want to keep some of the stuff that differentiates it from 1. The other Bond films. 2. Other films in general.

Because its got a nice title.

Agreed. As have (to pick three examples off the top of my head) YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and MOONRAKER, none of which bears all that much resemblance to the Fleming novel. And look at THE SPY WHO LOVED ME for the ultimate instance of "just using the title".

CASINO ROYALE is a very marketable title, too. Everyone's heard of it, and everyone knows it's Bond, even though they may not have read the novel and may not even know what kind of story Fleming tells in it.

[Shrublands]

Well the problem that I have with it is not so much that they have had the audacity to change the game, but what they have chanced it to.

From a game thats connotations are

[marktmurphy]

CASINO ROYALE is a very marketable title, too. Everyone's heard of it, and everyone knows it's Bond, even though they may not have read the novel and may not even know what kind of story Fleming tells in it.

That's true- the advantage over other Fleming titles being that this one has even been a movie before so will be even more well known!

[spynovelfan]

You may be right, Mark and Loomis, although my instinct is that CASINO ROYALE is a fairly old-fashioned title and a confusing one. I suspect quite a few people will be saying 'Huh? Didn't they already do that?' And the idea of Bond in a casino - 'ooh, how original'. If you want to get people who don't normally go to Bond flms to go back for this new one, I wouldn't have thought this title would do that. Sure, another TOMORROW NEVER DIES or DIE ANOTHER DAY title would put people off, too. But something like THE COLD LIGHT OF MORNING might get the Bourne crowd in. But you may be right.

[David Schofield]

You may be right, Mark and Loomis, although my instinct is that CASINO ROYALE is a fairly old-fashioned title and a confusing one. I suspect quite a few people will be saying 'Huh? Didn't they already do that?' And the idea of Bond in a casino - 'ooh, how original'. If you want to get people who don't normally go to Bond flms to go back for this new one, I wouldn't have thought this title would do that. Sure, another TOMORROW NEVER DIES or DIE ANOTHER DAY title would put people off, too. But something like THE COLD LIGHT OF MORNING might get the Bourne crowd in. But you may be right.

I suspect these days, Spy, you're right - "Pierce Brosnan in James Bond in THe Day After Yesterday Again" on posters attracts far more of the public to the conclusion, "Ah, must be the new James Bond movie then," than the phrase "Ian Fleming's Casino Royale."

[Bondian]

Now, that really did put a smile on my face.

That's a classic, Jim.

I've calmed down. I think.

Still not too fond of the idea - it's not that it's resistance to change, but the nature of the change. Why not have them play Bridge? I accept that this is not the world's most fashionable game but there's something less grubby about it - I accept that this is rampaging snobbery but I doesn't poker have a slightly sleazy image?

My bigger "worry" (odd word - I shopuld be worried about more serious things than whether a film is good or not) is what this appears to be a symptom of.

Are they making their one shot at the book, or remaking the 1967 film?

If (and I accept that this is a massive assumption) the most prevalent rumours are true, then what we appear to have is this:-

Poker
Younger Bond and Older Bond
The Dench
(I forget) John Cleese?
Brand spanking new up to the minute Aston Martin
Fiat Panda
A return from the dead for Vesper Lynd

Given that the only extreme the Bond series seems to have avoided so far is time travel...

Casino Royale (2006)

An aging James Bond, fearing he is losing it, starts having visions of a woman he knew when he was a younger man, Vesper Lynd. He sees her several times on the street (a deliberate lift from DoubleShot).These culminate in a breakdown (obligatory Brosnan "acting" bit) which see him transferred to The Park rest home (cue the last repeat character never used: Sir James Thing, although now reinvented as Jugarama Ding-Dong, Thai masseuse). The visions do not stop and Bond begins to query whether she died after all.

He escapes from The Park (cue obligatory fugitive agent thing) and meets Q in... oh, I dunno, let's say Belgium (not that I'm thinking this through). Pitying his plight, Q demonstrates his latest absurd device - a time distorter. Before Q can prevent a crass use of special effects, Bond leaps/slides/squeezes into the Time Distorter and is shot back to (unidentified time earlier, but earlier nonetheless) and witnesses his younger self (played by twelve year old newcomer Henry Cavill) going through the plot of Casino Royale. Realising, in a postmodern twist, that it would be better for Vesper to stay alive (albeit not for love, but so she can be interrogated - and also that his Older Self will feel "no more guilt" (God, this is terrible), Bond engineers his Young Self losing the big game of poker/snap/go fish/cribbage, rather than winning - Older Bond has read the book, even if no-one else has.

To make it more accessible, and on the basis everyone has vacuum cleaners rather than carpet beaters, the torture sequence is retained but Bond is molested with an egg whisk.

Trying to capture Vesper, Old Bond turns into the sinister man following Young Bond and Vesper in his Fiat Panda through France/South Africa/wherever and this will, bitterly ironically, cause her to feel she is about to be exposed and kill herself anyway. He cannot escape his past! And now... his past cannot escape him! Ooh, deep. Actually, that's not a bad tag-line for the poster...

Old Bond, realising that his fate is set in stone (cliche), shoots Back to the Future (part II) and discovers that some evil people have paid someone to dress up like her to drive him mad for some reason and he has to play poker again to stop them doing something bad to trees or the world's AFRICAN CONFLICT DIAMOND supply and it ends in a cave with machine guns and he does cop off with the lookalike in a slightly creepy way.

Alternatively, once the poor cow in the past has done away with herself, realising the pitable nature of everything (including the script) Old Bond then shoots himself due to the pity of it all and a New Bond series begins with Mr Cavill as James Bond, poker ace. Alternatively Old Bond kills New Bond and the whole thing ends up disappearing up a collective backside.

or

Casino Royale (1996)

James Bond discovers that a woman he thought was dead is not and in the years that have passed, she has borne him a son, also called James, played by twelve-year old newcomer Henry Cavill. Something about online poker and beating a big computer virus and much father-son bonding and then father dies saving the world from something or other and James Bond II decides to take up his father's calling and fight for truth, justice and the American Way by becoming an undercover NASCAR driver or something.

[Hansen]

I think that the litterary Bond does play poker. If I am not wrong, it is written in Moonraker when describing a common evening when he is in London : "making love with no passion to one of the married women he knows or playing poker with a couple of close friends".
(can someone confirm the title ?)

Anyway, Poker is not "class" enough to be played in a casino. Moreover, there is not this feeling of direct confrontation that you can have in Baccarat when you say "Banco".
"Banco" means that you will stand alone against the "sabot owner" in front of other players and audience. There is a psychological dimension that is not in poker.

[David Schofield]

I think that the litterary Bond does play poker. If I am not wrong, it is written in Moonraker when describing a common evening when he is in London : "making love with no passion to one of the married women he knows or playing poker with a couple of close friends".
(can someone confirm the title ?)

Anyway, Poker is not "class" enough to be played in a casino. Moreover, there is not this feeling of direct confrontation that you can have in Baccarat when you say "Banco".
"Banco" means that you will stand alone against the "sabot owner" in front of other players and audience. There is a psychological dimension that is not in poker.

I think the quote is playing cards, rather than specifically poker.

I suspect in Fleming's 50s world poker was an American game and not part of the gambling life of his English upper class.