James bond casino royale torture

Casino Royale star Mads Mikkelsen reveals that he and Daniel Craig came up with ideas for the infamous James Bond torture scene that were too graphic for the movie. Released in , Casino Royale is directed by Martin Campbell and serves as Craig's first film as the iconic British superspy. Mikkelsen plays villain Le Chiffre in the movie and, during one infamous scene in the film, tortures Bond by repeatedly whacking his testicles with a knotted rope.

Now, in a recent interview with GQ, Mikkelsen reveals that he and Craig got a little carried away while making Casino Royale when it came to devising graphic torture methods for the scene. While the scene that ends up in the film is traumatic enough, the two stars were apparently keen on going even further. Check out Mikkelsen's full comment or watch the interview below (the relevant section starts at ):

“Daniel Craig and I and Martin Campbell, we had a lot of ideas. Daniel came straight from like indie films, smaller films, and I also had my background in the Pusher films. We discussed, among other things, the big torture scene, and we went down the rabbit hole, me and Daniel.

"We had so many ideas and it was getting crazier and crazier. You could just see Martin going, ‘Guys, come back, it’s a Bond film.’ ‘Oh, you’re right, sorry.’ But he was quite open to look and experiment within the parameters of what you can do in a Bond film.”

Why Casino Royale's Torture Scene Works So Well

After the suave and increasingly ridiculous films of the Pierce Brosnan era of Bond, Casino Royale announces loud and clear that Craig's tenure will be very different. Drawing from the grittier Bourne movies, Casino Royale presents a more grounded take on the character, doing away with outlandish gadgets and the corny one-liners to present a film that feels significantly more serious than any past installment.

The torture scene, often carried out by a villain not for information but simply to give a slow and painful death, is a key tenet of the Bond franchise. Sean Connery's , for example, was famously strapped to a table in Goldfinger as a powerful laser inches its way towards his crotch. While previous scenes of this nature were intense in their own way, they also often felt over-engineered and needlessly complicated.

Casino Royale's torture scene strips away the fluff and makes Mikkelsen's more grounded villain even more sinister. The scene ultimately serves as a painfully realistic way of extracting information while also being a torture method that has never really been seen in a movie before. The rope scene in Casino Royale isn't the only time Craig's Bond is tortured, but it is the most impactful not only in his era of the character but for the franchise as a whole.

Source: GQ/ YouTube