The biggest issue, however, was the lack of an authoritative figure.

Feldman’s desire to carve out his own place in the spy genre is admirable, but his decision to do that by turning one of its most iconic stories into a comedic farce that resembles an early draft of Austin Powers received an immediate backlash.

one of the most baffling experiences any moviegoer can subject themselves to. Which brings us to his version of Casino Royale, a.k.a. Trying to imitate the Eon films would be a fool's errand, but Feldman was smart enough to realize this. Indeed, Saltzman and Broccoli had already released four box office sensations by the time Feldman got his cameras rolling, putting him in the daunting position of having to make a Bond film without the established Bond elements – no gun barrel sequence, no signature theme song, no Sean Connery.

Broccoli saw him squandering his opportunity to make his Bond the gold standard from which everything else would be compared. Feldman had acquired the rights to Ian Fleming’s seminal novel in 1960, but a revolving line-up of scripts and growing competition from Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Most notably, it was the first to be produced by someone other than Eon Productions, with that duty falling to Charles K. The film is (once again) Casino Royale, a 1967 release that marked several firsts for the series. It’s a contender for the best film in the series, and remains the greatest example of the franchise’s unparalleled ability to reinvent itself to ensure its continued relevance in the everchanging cinematic landscape.Īnd then there’s the other film… that one whose presence has lingered over this series like an unpleasant smell for almost sixty years, and which these days seems to exist solely as the answer to annoying trivia questions designed to trick anyone but diehard fans. 2006’s Casino Royale was nothing short of a triumph – a stunning return to form that weaponized its stripped-back approach to craft not just some of the most exhilarating action sequences in the entirety of cinema, but also molded them with a surprising amount of thematic depth that (when combined with Daniel Craig’s excellent performance) made its version of Bond a truly fleshed out character in a way we hadn’t seen since 1969’s On Her Majesty's Secret Service. There aren’t many examples where two separate films with identical names in the same franchise exist on opposing ends of the critical spectrum, but much like its title character, the James Bond series has never been one to play by the rules.

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