Movies - TV
Daniel Craig's Casino Royale Scrapped A Major Part Of Its Source Material
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
The adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, “Casino Royale,” pits 007 against the gambler and member of Russia’s secret service, Le Chiffre. Director Martin Campbell made some changes to the rebooted James Bond film series, including the age of the superspy, the quantity of action, and the removal of one significant element from that era.
While the film is a more-or-less accurate adaptation of Fleming’s 1953 novel, Campbell makes a significant change for the 2006 movie. Campbell explained, “[The book] was written in 1953 [and] was set against the Cold War. In fact, it was the first one that involves SMERSH, and we’ve obviously had to change that.”
SMERSH was the catch-all term for the multiple Soviet spy agencies established to fight the Nazis during World War II, which Fleming’s novels used inaccurately to likely reference any Russian spy activity. Later books eventually changed SMERSH to the fictional supervillain society known as SPECTRE that has made several appearances in the Bond movies.