It’s in my top ten, possibly my top five. I’ll mock the film’s minor inadequacies for laughs, but know that I truly love Casino Royale. Why am I telling you all this? Because this recap is going to have a bias to it. The chick enjoyed the film but didn’t care about the whole “Craig Bond” issue as she’s never been fond of Bond anyway (women, am I right? Probably not). In fact, this divide spreads between myself and the other two blokes – they never really liked Craig (up until recently when they saw Skyfall, anyway). Unfortunately, it appeared to divide the Bond fanbase in half as strongly as Marmite. Casino Royale came out, and it was awesome. I’d like to point out that, at the time, I was one of a few who still had hope.ĭie Another Day screwed up so badly that they had to bring back Martin Campbell, the guy helmed the return to the franchise several years earlier with GoldenEye. The Sun in particular ran a scathing article regarding the fact that Craig wore a life-jacket while riding a boat to a press conference – I can’t find the article, but I can find a Daniel Craig hate site that was set up pointing to a defunct Sun article. Pierce Brosnan didn’t know he’d been dropped until the last minute, and there was a massive outcry because “Bond shouldn’t be blonde-haired and blue eyed”. I want to take you back to before Casino Royale, when Daniel Craig was announced as the new Bond. Frankly, beyond this point I figured that James Bond couldn’t get any worse. I only go to the cinema to see things that I think I’ll enjoy, so it was a massive surprise that a fairly reassuring pillar of my film library should cause such annoyance. I left the cinema that day in a state of disgust, and that rarely happens. Scarily, this might actually be what Bond films are like when you distil them down to their core elements (I don’t really believe this, but it’s possible). The film’s production team were tasked with honouring Bond’s 40th anniversary, and they created something that paid so much tribute to the Bond series that we ended up with a film that was a gurning, moronic self-satisfied cretin of a movie. Put yourself in my position – you’ve just watched the Bond franchise fire a nail gun into its own ball-sack over and over for two hours in the absolutely dire Die Another Day, a film that didn’t just jump the shark, it strapped rockets to itself and then took off over Sea World. You have to understand that there’s a reason I like Casino Royale so much. Three Blokes and a Chick Watch: Casino Royale

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