Casino Royale · reception & legacy
2006 · Martin Campbell
How Casino Royale has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Announced with Daniel Craig as a 'blond Bond', it drew a genuine pre-release fan revolt — complete with boycott websites — then landed as the best-reviewed Bond in decades and instantly silenced the backlash. Twenty years on it's routinely ranked the best (or top-two) Bond film ever made.
What's debated
The perennial fan fight: does Casino Royale dethrone Connery's Goldfinger as the greatest Bond — and does its long, slower final stretch after the poker game earn its runtime or overstay it?
Its footprint
Craig walking out of the sea in those blue trunks — a deliberate flip of Ursula Andress in Dr. No — became one of the most parodied images of 2000s cinema, and 'Do I look like I give a damn?' is the franchise's favourite self-own of its own 'shaken, not stirred' catchphrase. It also put the Vesper martini on real-world cocktail menus.
Where it stands
The consensus modern-Bond masterpiece: the reboot every franchise since has tried to copy, and reliably the highest-rated Bond film on Letterboxd-style rankings.