Casino royale chair

Casino Royale pushed the boundaries of James Bond movies when it showed Daniel Craig's 007 being tortured by Mads Mikkelsen's villain Le Chiffre – but the stomach-churning scene could have gone even further. The notorious moment in the movie sees Bond tied to a chair and tortured by the mysterious terrorism financier before he manages to escape unscathed. However, the Casino Royale scene could have entered the ultra-violent territory, as both actors were discussing taking action to an "insane" place – with Bond film bosses finally warning them, "We can't go there."

In Casino Royale – the title's second movie outing after 1967's non-canon version – Daniel Craig's Bond is tasked with beating Le Chiffre in a poker tournament, leading to the two men facing each other in an intense one-on-one scene. The 2006 film was Craig's debut as James Bond, and he brought a much grittier, grown-up tone to the franchise, portraying a more human 007 than previous sillier or self-aware versions. The franchise's new era explored ways to break the mold of James Bond films, and Craig and Mikkelsen were a perfect duo for this task – even if it meant they threw themselves into Casino Royale's torture scene with surprising gusto.

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The Casino Royale Torture Scene Was Nearly More Graphic

After James Bond is victorious in the casino, Le Chiffre ties up the secret agent naked on a chair with no seat, whipping him in the testicles with a rope in an effort to extract information. However, it might come as a relief to Casino Royale viewers – and Craig, in hindsight – that director Martin Campbell stopped the scene going even further. Hannibal actor Mikkelsen has revealed the two actors were considering "cutting [Bond] up" on screen, pushing for more violence in Casino Royale. Mikkelsen told Vulture that the Bond film boss stepped in, saying that it wouldn't have been appropriate for the Bond franchise. Read Mikkelsen's full Vulture quote below:

We’ve never seen Bond naked, and we’ve never seen him that fragile, and then obviously there are some undertones with the rope. We were discussing how to approach it, and we just went further out with something that was really brutal and insane. One idea was I actually cut him up somewhere, and he had to suffer with that for a while. At a certain point, director Martin Campbell was just smiling and said, "Boys, come back to the table. This is a Bond film. We can’t go there.”

Craig and Mikkelsen were both new to the James Bond franchise in their Casino Royale roles and used to less mainstream fare – Craig being fresh from the crime thriller Layer Cake and Mikkelsen a star of prestige cinema in Denmark. The actors evidently wanted to explore going a different direction than other Bond films had, bringing an edgier and even psychosexual element to the table, implied by Mikkelsen mentioning "undertones with the rope." If Campbell had not put a stop to their discussion, audiences would have got a very different version of James Bond indeed, which could have carried on past Casino Royale to influence the direction of Craig's other Bond films.

Casino Royale's Censorship Helped The Movie

Stopping Mikkelsen and Craig's plan was the right move from director Martin Campbell. Casino Royale experimented with James Bond tropes but didn't completely throw them away, and while Daniel Craig brought a much more three-dimensional character to Bond, having him graphically tortured on screen would have been too dark. Gritty as Craig's Bond films are, they would not have fit the tone of the 007 franchise and would still have seemed a scene from a different film. Mikkelsen told Esquire that he and Craig got lost in their "indie world," – butCasino Royaleis not an indie film. It's a part of a franchise that already has its own tone, which creators need to respect.

Source: Vulture