“When I came on board, I felt the same way.

“They wanted to bring it back to earth,” Campbell says. By the time Brosnan finished 2002’s Die Another Day, driving invisible cars through ice palaces, Bond producers knew the franchise had shifted into self-parody. Over the next three movies, the stories became excessively kitschy.

In 1995, Campbell introduced Pierce Brosnan as Bond with Goldeneye, which moved on from Timothy Dalton’s gritty take into a more fantastical realm. “It was the thing I sweated on more than anything else.” “There was a lot of playing in it,” he tells Polygon. But for Campbell, who had never picked up a deck, it looked like a snooze. The card game, they believed, made for better drama - it was known more widely, required more skill and delivered higher stakes. Loosely adapting Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel of the same name, screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis had replaced the author’s original game of baccarat with three big rounds of Texas hold’em. This was his second reboot of the James Bond franchise, and on the cusp of production, he realized the movie’s centerpiece - a showdown between 007 and the blood-eyed villain Le Chiffre - took place around a quiet poker table. Bond returns to find that she had been tortured, killed and wrapped in a hammock on the beach by Le Chiffre's Quantum members.The script for Casino Royale worried director Martin Campbell.

While Bond was on the phone she leaves him in the bedroom and walks out of the hotel.Īfter Bond thwarts the terrorist plot at Miami Airport, Dimitrios' boss Le Chiffre deduces that Solange informed Bond. Bond decides to follow him, but does not tell Solange, instead ordering some Bollinger and caviar up to their room as a parting gift before he leaves. However, Solange receives a phone call from her husband which serves to inform Bond that Dimitrios will be taking the last flight to Miami. She accepts and the two plan to spend the night together, where she tells him that she is not happy with her life, because of the evilness and one-sided relationship with her husband. Later, Bond offers Solange a ride back to his rented villa for a drink after he wins Dimitrios' Aston Martin DB5 at the poker table. Losing, Dimitrios reacts coldly to his wife's affection, which attracts Bond's attention. Later at night Solange meets Bond when she arrives at a poker game where Alex Dimitrios plays against Bond. Solange and James Bond first notice each other in The Bahamas while she is horseback riding along the beach and he is swimming in the ocean.

Casino royale cast