The wacky comedy and James Bond spoof Casino Royale, released in 1967, features several versions of the iconic character. Unlike its more critically successful 2006 main continuity namesake starring Daniel Craig, Casino Royale parodies the character and the franchise’s conventions. Just five years after the film series launched with Dr. No and decades before Austin Powers, Casino Royale introduced audiences to the humorous side of the spy movie and Cold War espionage in a surrealist comedic style. The film is marked by mayhem and excess, shown most overtly by it giving its audience not just one Bond, but eight of them.
Born out of having both the rights to Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel and an acceptance of the impossibility of competing with the main series, Charles K. Feldman produced Casino Royale, which also prevented Sean Connery's Bond from featuring in a cinematic adaptation of the first Bond novel. A who’s who of contemporary A-listers - Woody Allen, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, and David Niven - all have the chance to play 007 due to the film’s absurd plot. To combat SMERSH, a rogue counterintelligence organization that has been eliminating spies, MI5 seek to confuse them by renaming all remaining agents "James Bond 007."
Each version of James Bond 007 has their own bizarre origin and distinct rendering of the character. Casino Royale may be comedically and cinematically dated, however, it shows the diversity of different directions in which the character can be taken. In this uncertain era for the franchise - amid the passing of the gauntlet from Craig - it is an apt time to revisit this eccentric, and often overlooked, piece of Bond history and explore the several variations of Bond it exhibited and how potentially 007 rather than Bond can be replaced.
Sir James Bond
Academy Award-winning British actor, David Niven, plays the original agent given the alias, the legendary Sir James Bond, who, after the death of M, comes out of retirement to become the head of MI5. As a critic of womanizing, "sex maniacs", "joke shop spies" and their use of gadgets, and Aston Martins, Sir Bond is the antithesis of the canon 007 and a stranger to the new style of espionage. He is traditional, drinks jasmine tea rather than vodka martinis, and upholds a celibate image. SMERSH tries to decimate this persona using a seductive agent posing as M’s grieving widow, however, after being so impressed by his prowess, she changes allegiance to Bond. To defeat SMERSH, Sir Bond recruits a team of agents and assigns them all the codename "James Bond 007" to confuse the villainous organization.
Though the film has him follow some main series motifs, such as Bond quitting the Secret Service as in Craig's films and Bond's wife being killed as in Her Majesty's Secret Service, Sir Bond uncharacteristically heavily relies on other agents. When the head of SMERSH, Dr. Noah, is revealed to be Sir Bond’s young nephew, Jimmy Bond, he leans on the newly labeled team of James Bond 007s, including Moneypenny, Vesper Lynd, and his daughter Mata Bond, to stop him from releasing a deadly virus to the world. In this, he and his cohort are successful, but at a huge cost as they are all killed in an explosion during the final, frenzied battle against SMERSH at Casino Royale, beating No Time to Die's Bond death by over five decades.
Evelyn Tremble
Comedy legend Peter Sellers, known primarily for his role as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the original Pink Panther series, plays suave baccarat master Evelyn Tremble, who is recruited by Vesper Lynd to challenge Orson Welles’s Le Chiffre at Casino Royale. Having embezzled SMERSH’s money, Le Chiffre is desperate to raise funds to cover this up and avoid assassination. Impeding his plan, Tremble discerns that his opponent is cheating using infrared sunglasses. After Lynd steals this deceptive crutch, Tremble is able to beat Le Chiffre at a fair game of baccarat. However, following Tremble's win, Lynd is apparently abducted and, while pursuing her, he is also captured by Le Chiffre, who wants his winnings check. Le Chiffre psychologically tortures Tremble in a quintessentially 1960s psychedelic version of Mads Mikkelsen's reinvented and dark villain Le Chiffre's infamous torture scene in the 2006 film. Tremble is eventually rescued by Lynd, only to be killed by her with a gun hidden in a set of bagpipes. Tremble later greets his fellow agents into Heaven, dressed in a kilt, and playing the flute.
Vesper Lynd
A multi-millionaire former spy with an outrageous fashion sense, Vesper Lynd’s portrayal by Ursula Andress – who also appeared in the main series Bond film Dr. No – deviates markedly from that of Fleming’s novel. Like Sir Bond, Lynd comes out of retirement and is tasked with enrolling Tremble to play baccarat to halt Le Chiffre. After having an affair with Tremble, she helps him beat Le Chiffre and is then supposedly kidnapped. Lynd rescues Tremble, only to kill him, but not before offering him a piece of advice: "Never trust a rich spy." Like in Fleming's novel and the 2006 adaptation, Lynd betrays Bond. Yet, instead of Vesper Lynd dying by suicide, like the novel, she feels no remorse for her treachery and is presented as more straightforwardly villainous.
Mata Bond
The grown daughter of Sir Bond and Dutch exotic dancer and convicted WWI German spy, Mata Hari, Mata Bond is portrayed by Joanna Pettet. A beautiful and resourceful dancer-turned-spy, Mata is the first appearance of a child of James Bond, again preceding No Time to Die's use of a Bond daughter. Living in India, Mata is approached by her father and convinced to travel to East Berlin to penetrate the International Mothers’ Help, formerly the Mata Hari School of Dancing, a spy school and SMERSH façade operation. Mata discovers Le Chiffre’s plot to sell compromising images of military leaders from both sides of the iron curtain to raise money to escape execution. She destroys the films, forcing Le Chiffre to find his funds through baccarat. Mata is later kidnapped by SMERSH - Fleming's antagonistic organization later replaced by SPECTRE in later novels - and transported via flying saucer to Dr. Noah’s lair beneath Casino Royale, in an attempt to lure her father to the evil supervillain. Pursuing her, Sir Bond discovers the truth about the antagonist’s identity, and the casino-wide battle against SMERSH erupts.
Jimmy Bond
The nervous, neurotic nephew of Sir Bond, Jimmy Bond is an operative posted to the Caribbean, played by Woody Allen. He is rendered mute in the presence of his uncle and is a constant disappointment to him. The bumbling character's inferiority complex drives him to defect and head SMERSH, under the codename Dr. Noah, to spite and undermine Bond. He plans to wield biological warfare with a highly contagious bacillus to make all women beautiful and destroy all men over four foot six, meaning he will become the tallest man in the world who, in his mind, will get all the ladies. Jimmy's is a ludicrous, comedic plan with shades of the villain Safin's strategy in No Time to Die of how to go toe-to-toe with Bond without the required physical presence. However, his ineptness with women turns out to be his greatest weakness; he captures The Detainer, who convinces him she has accepted his offer to be his partner, only to trick him into swallowing a fatal pill of his own making. After ingesting the pill, Jimmy becomes a walking atomic bomb and, after numerous mini explosions in his body, one large final explosion blows up Casino Royale. Although at first, he joins Sir Bond and all the other Bonds in playing harps in Heaven, he soon descends down to Hell.
Miss Moneypenny
Ever the faithful secretary, Miss Moneypenny, played by Barbara Bouchet, is the daughter of the previous Moneypenny, whom Sir Bond worked with before his retirement. Moneypenny is a tradition of the Bond series and, after Sir Bond becomes the head of MI5 and learns that agents have been eliminated due to their powerlessness to resist sex, is tasked with initiating a program of male agents able to withstand the allure of seductive women. Moneypenny recruits and begins to train karate master "Coop" and later assists Bond in rescuing Mata from Casino Royale and discovering the truth about Dr. Noah, before joining her fellow Bonds in heaven.
Coop
Cooper, or "Coop," is a karate expert, played by actor Terence Cooper, who is recruited into the training program designed by Sir Bond and headed by Miss Moneypenny, aimed at creating a class of agents who are able to resist the charms of women. Mocking Bond's heel trope of the "Bond girl betrayal", Casino Royale sees Coop endure rigorous training to be immunized from female advances, such as standing in a gym surrounded by women, including the Detainer, who try their best to tempt him. Much to Coop's dismay, the training works and he merely tackles the women to the ground. Using his newly acquired resilience, Coop fights in the final battle and is also killed in the explosion at Casino Royale, earning his place in Heaven with the other Bonds.
The Detainer
The Detainer, portrayed by Israeli actress Daliah Lavi, is enlisted to help train Coop to resist the charms of women. She is kidnapped by Jimmy Bond and held at his lair, where she exploits his hopelessness with women and convinces him she has fallen in love with him in order to persuade him to unshackle her. The Detainer's aptitude for espionage represents early glimmers of Nomi and Paloma's strong roles in No Time to Die and leads to Jimmy trusting and narrating his plan to replace world leaders with robot clones and to release the virus. He also explains the weaponized pill he has produced which looks like an Aspirin but is, in fact, a tiny atomic bomb. The Detainer is one of the more adept spies and Bonds in Casino Royale, as she manages to slip one of these lethal pills into his drink. However, this starts the countdown to the nuclear explosion that, despite destroying SMERSH, also eventually kills all remaining Bonds, as well as MI5, and U.S., Soviet, Chinese, and French Secret Services, all present in the final chaotic battle at the casino.