Trivia / Casino Royale (2006)

• Ability over Appearance:
  • Daniel Craig got a lot of controversy when he was cast as James Bond because he looked very different from the past Bonds, starting with him being blonde (and him not dying his hair black for the role), to the point of being derisively referred to as "James Blond." This all went away, of course, once the film came out, and he got rave reviews.
  • Le Chiffre in the novel is described as overweight and unattractive. This is in stark contrast to Mads Mikkelsen's Handsome Lech portrayal and good looks (the man made it to several "sexiest man alive" polls and others declared him "sexiest man in Denmark").
• Acting for Two: In the French dub, Féodor Atkine voices both Dryden (the MI6 Double Agent Bond kills at the beginning) and Mendel (the Swiss banker who's in charge of the poker tournament gains).
• Approval of God: The five previous cinematic Bonds — Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan — all lent Craig their support. Moore in particular was reportedly very impressed with it.
• California Doubling: All scenes that take place in Montenegro and the United States (except the actual airport runways) are actually shot in the Czech Republic (that is located in a different climate zone than Montenegro and Florida). Also, Madagascar in the opening is the Bahamas.
• Cast the Expert:
  • The parkour guy that James Bond pursues in the foot chase scene at the beginning of the film is Sébastien Foucan, one of the inventors of Le Parkour.
  • When Bond plays poker at the Ocean Club and wins Dimitrios' car, the dealer running the game is an actual professional poker dealer who works at that establishment.
  • The dealer during the Casino Royale poker tournament was likewise played by a casino inspector who could deal poker in a professional manner.
• Deleted Scene:
  • The opening sequence is longer.
  • A scene after Bond and Vesper arrive in Montenegro.
  • Bond being rushed to the hospital after his torture.
  • The sequence in which the picture of Bond and Vesper frolicking in the ocean is taken from.
  • The scene of Bond escorting Vesper out of the hotel is longer.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Daniel Craig buffed up, quit smoking and put on twenty pounds of muscle for the role of Bond. In an aversion of the literal meaning of the trope, many critics moaned about Craig's hair being blonde in the film.
• Enforced Method Acting: During the torture sequence, Mads Mikkelsen was really swinging the knotted rope hard at Daniel Craig's privates while Craig was fully naked and relying on just a piece of plywood for protection. The two found themselves getting deeper into the situation and taking it further than scripted, prompting Martin Campbell to come up and tell them to dial it back because they were making a Bond film not a torture film.
• Fake Brit: The British Vesper Lynd is played by the French Eva Green (who's also of Swedish descent).
• Fake Nationality: The French-Armenian Simon Abkarian as the Greek-sounding Alex Dimitrios.
• Follow the Leader:
  • The filmmakers were inspired by Batman Begins to do a complete reboot of the series.
  • The gadgetless, Revisiting the Roots angle and more grounded tone meanwhile was decided upon after the success of The Bourne Identity.
• International Coproduction: The film was officially an English-American-German-Czech co-production, thereby qualifying for various regional incentives to encourage film investment in Europe.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Valenka was shown swimming underwater in the trailer (hence why in the film we first see her rise from the ocean). There's also part of a deleted scene of Alex Dimitrios tearing a card in two as well as a clip of Bond and Vesper frolicking in the ocean (which is visible on the poster).
• Irony as She Is Cast: Bond is chosen for the mission because he's the best poker player in the service. Mads Mikkelsen revealed in an interview that Daniel Craig was the only actor in the film's iconic poker game that didn't know how to play beforehand.
• On-Set Injury: Daniel Craig got splinters from the piece of wood used to protect his genitals during the torture scene. He also lost two teeth in a fight scene. The damage was so severe that Craig's dentist had to be flown in from London to fix caps into his mouth.
• Promoted Fanboy: James Ferguson, an Aberdeen physician, was the one who came up with the poisoning sequence — having been a huge fan of James Bond. He's been retained as the medical advisor on the subsequent films.
• Recycled Set: The construction site in the opening's chase scene was, believe it or not, filmed at the same place as the Coral Harbour Hotel all the way back in Thunderball 42 years prior. After that film, the resort tried to expand by constructing a new hotel tower, went bankrupt, and was acquired by the Royal Bahamas Defence Force who turned the property into the Coral Harbour Base and kept the half-complete tower around for training purposes. It is that tower which Bond runs through in this film. As another aside, Coral Harbour Base was also used in The Spy Who Loved Me to film many of the miniatures on water special effect shots.
• Role Reprise: Judi Dench as M. She was the sole cast member from the Pierce Brosnan era to return, though several clues, especially the fact that Casino Royale is a Continuity Reboot and later props from Skyfall with her name compared to scripts from the Brosnan era, indicate that it's not the same M.
• Star-Making Role: For both Daniel Craig and Eva Green. While Craig had a respectable body of work beforehand and was somewhat known in his native country for Layer Cake and Green had started her momentum with Kingdom of Heaven, this brought them to mainstream attention.
• Technology Marches On: Cell phones, here probably intended to show how gadgets aren't necessary in the modern world. They looked terrific at the time (remember that GPS?) but amusingly, in today's smartphone era they all now look terribly out of date.
• Throw It In!: Bond standing up out of the water was a complete accident. He was meant to continue swimming but he ran into a sand dune and instinctively stood up.
• Wag the Director: Vesper was scripted to be in her underwear for the shower scene. Daniel Craig had it changed to wearing her dress, feeling she would not have stopped to undress before getting in.
• What Could Have Been: Enough for its own page.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Poker game participant Madame Wu is played by Tsai Chin, who played the Chinese girl Bond bedded at the beginning of You Only Live Twice.
  • Technically, Judi Dench's M is not the same M from the Pierce Brosnan era as Casino Royale was a Continuity Reboot. The producers likely (and perhaps wisely) thought having Dench in the role was too good to waste and kept her even amidst a new era with a new Bond.
  • The French voice of Daniel Craig, Éric Herson-Macarel, dubbed Gustav Graves in Die Another Day.

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