Casino Royale themes in the book and film

The book and the film themes focus on greed, corruption and control or power and these two themes goes hand- in-hand in the movie and the book. With greed we see how quickly you can lose the money that you gain over gambling, just as the saying “easy coming, easy go.” And we see a Le Chiffre winning the money at the beginning, then Bond wins it over and Vesper steals the money that Bond won from him and the Secret Service Company by being a spy for the Russians. Greed in this story also goes along with killing and corruption that characters like Bond and Le Chiffre commit in order to gain power and win in the money at stakes. The message from the plot is that the money that you gain fast it, you can also lose it easily and fast.  And you can only own that money for a short term because everyone else wants it; you also have fight for it constantly to protect yourself from your enemies. This easy money also comes with a short life as we see most of the people die a lot and early just because the people that are involved in the game are all fighting to win and paying revenge.

Casino Royale also focuses a little bit on betrayal which I think also is part of being greedy. For example in the plot we  see Vesper betraying both Bond and the Secret Service company she was working for by not transforming the money that Bond won in gambling to the company they work for. At the beginning of the movie, we also see Dimitrios being betrayed by his wife who revealed his travelling plans to Miami to Bond.

Overall, the book and the movie have the same themes even though the movie has added some scenes at the beginning. The changes that were made helped with developing some of the characters and their storylines. The changes in the book and the film are a result of the time differences and lifestyles of the different times when the book was written and the movie was created.

Avery Sherrer-Theme Casino Royale

Although I don’t think that Casino Royale is fueled by a powerful message, many themes arise in the novel as well as the film adaptation made in 2006. James Bond consistently risks his life in the pursuit of his form of ‘justice.’ Defining justice, loyalty and trust are major themes in Casino Royale.

Bond’s partner on his current mission, Vesper, is attractive but emotionally detached. Even though Vesper is cold when first meeting Bond, the two have a mutual understanding of loyalty to one another. In this case, loyalty implies the responsibility that each partner has to assist the other in each task and do everything possible to keep each other safe. I thought it was interesting that Bond and his partner are expected to be selflessly loyal to one another even though they have never met. This also points to the fact that Bond is so trusting of the Secret Service that he doesn’t even question this relationship. It is not until the end of the novel that Bond realizes that he has been sold out by his partner, which brings up the question if anyone can ever be fully trusted. Bond is praised when he expresses to his boss that he has realized that no one is to be trusted and that he must be skeptical about everyone’s motive and character for the sake of his own safety.

Another major theme of the novel is justice. Bond is glorified for his pursuit of justice and making things right, yet his morality is rarely called into question. Bond’s mission is to financial cripple international terrorists, which sounds morally just until you look at his actions. He is deceitful, manipulates the majority of those around him, and brutally shoots and strangles countless ‘minor players’ in the mission whose lives could have been spared, all with next to no emotion. This leads us to question if Bond is pursuing justice or making the world all the more violent and cold.

Casino Royale- Good and Evil

The movie, based on Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, held a similar central message to the novel. The novel’s message seemed to be about the question of what the line is between good and evil. This line at first may seem black and white to some, but really appears grayer in real life. The book tackles this debate through the conversation between Bond and Mathis at the end of the book. They compare God to the Devil and how we represent good and evil through these two characters as the extremes of both sides (Fleming 136). Then he goes on to call God clear and the Devil undefined since there is no book of evil or even on how to be evil. So, no one character can truly judge another as purely good or evil because this is all relative creating more of a gray area.

The movie transfers this message and adds to it in order to make it clearer to the audience with M telling Bond to be careful with whom he trusts in the beginning. Then ending with saying he no longer trusts anyone and M replying that he has learned his lesson. Trust factors into this scale because Bond cannot only trust people that are purely good because no one is purely good; he must always be wary of others. So even at the end of the movie, Bond tells M that they should look further into Mathis and his background.

Bond, from the movie, even proves that no character is purely good because he does things often that could be seen as bad. Bond kills people, disobeys authority, sleeps with married women, and steals from others. But, when comparing Bond to the “bad” guys relatively he can be seen as good since he does not kill innocent people or help fund terrorism. 

The gray appears through characters like Vesper because she at first looks to be on Bond’s side, but really is a double agent for the communists. In both the novel and movie, she may appear to be good since she never kills anyone (excluding herself), helps Bond (the “good” guy), and works for M. Once her double agent status is revealed, Bond’s image of her is shattered since she works for the other side even though this makes her a gray character not completely evil. Bond neglects her prior actions and judges her on the soul fact that she works for the evil people. Working for the opposing forces automatically makes someone evil. This can be seen through Le Chiffre since throughout the beginning of the novel and film he never once kills anyone directly. Le Chiffre does not get his hands dirty, but instead has other people do his biddings. But since he works against Bond, he is automatically turned into the villain even while Le Chiffre at one point turns into the victim in the film while in his hotel room.

Casino Royale has two seemingly defined sides of opposing forces which makes the central message the difference between good and evil. It can be seen through the novel that these terms are relative, while in the film they mainly focus on the blur between the two and how these shades of gray can skew trust. 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo- Lisbeth Salander

In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, the character of Lisbeth Salander at first appeared as a completely mystery through the perspective of Dragan Armansky. The book used third person omniscient perspective to give others opinions on the appearance of Lisbeth. Lisbeth came off as an emotionless recluse because of the way she would handle emotional reports in such dry tones. These things were shown through Dragan’s thoughts on her. The movie, on the other hand, portrays the character of Lisbeth shortly through Dragan’s words to Frode, but also her appearance and attitude in the first scene. She looks different because of her bleached eyebrows, facial piercings, and black mohawk. She also sits at the table with Dragan and Frode sideways in her chair facing the door rather than her boss and client.

The book begins to show the inner workings of Lisbeth through following her and seeing inside her head after she is introduced in one way. Lisbeth is changed because narration shows her go to see her ill mother at the assisted living community then later the dealings with her former guardian and father figure. The movie was able to show these things with Lisbeth as well in short clips that showed Lisbeth outside her guardian’s hospital room on the floor and on the train after finding out that he may never be the same completely zoned out in sadness. This reveals a different side to Lisbeth that cannot be seen usually through other characters, but only herself because of her closed off manner.

One way the film really changed Lisbeth and showed a more emotionally raw character was how her tattoos were not shown throughout the beginning of the film. Her dragon tattoo is only revealed after Bjurman has assaulted her. The camera angle shows her sitting on the floor curled into a ball looking at something with the tattoo exposed then it pans over her head to her face that is bright red with rage. This scene represents how the dragon has been released from inside Lisbeth revealing an independent warrior rather than a weak little girl.

Lisbeth, in the book, shows even more depth when she leaves Mikael after his ultimatum that she can either stay to be his friend or leave. Then after leaving, Lisbeth turns around realizing how much Mikael does mean to her. She then tells Mikael that she likes his company which the novel says “those were words that had never before passed her lips” (Larsson 399). In the novel, this scene shows a dramatic change in her character that was not so present in the movie. The movie never had her leave, but instead she just said that she liked Mikael, which still seemed like a big deal for her character.

Both the book and the movie represented Lisbeth as a very round character. This was shown through her appearance and how she acted around others as aloof, different, and introverted. Then on the inside, she showed herself to have emotions and feelings pertaining to others. Mikael worked as the character to break Lisbeth’s hard-shell and become close to her like not many others had done.

The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo Characters: Novel vs. Movie

The movie focused on mostly the “violent and women abuse” theme that inspired the novel, while the book brought in a lot more factors, and I think that the directors chose this option to make the rape message more powerful and straight the point. The movie seemed to be more about Lisbeth more than Mikael and the main story about Harriet was changed a lot towards the end – the movie combined Anita’s and Herriet’s story lines from the novel to one character in the film.

Lisbeth is more powerful and a fighter in the movie, we do not see a lot of her soft side, but we see more of her aggressive side. For example her computer wasn’t just crashed by a car and in the book he didn’t do anything to the person who crashed her laptop. But in the movie it was stolen by a guy in a train station and he bit him up on the escalators and this scene show us the more violent side of Lisbeth. In the movie her motorbike was more sophisticated and large which helped with creating the fearless image of Lisbeth. In the movie she even rides the motorbike in harsh weather conditions while in the book it was only during the summer. Even though Lisbeth was this brave girl in both the novel and the film, I think in the film they left out most the compassionate part about her.  For example the scene where she visits her mother and discusses her sister is cut out and her group of friends is never mentioned in the movie. The scene where she attacks Bjurman is too rough in the movie; she kicks him several times and lives him with a cutter for the handcuffs instead of the keys like it happened in the book.

Mikael is not portrayed as the bad bod in the movie as he is in the book. He doesn’t ever go to jail for three months but he is just charged a large fine by the law. Secondly, he doesn’t sleep with a lot of women in the movie; he doesn’t fall in love with Cecelia Vanger.

Towards the end of the movie, we discover that Harriet plays both her part and Anita’s. Harriet Vanger is a not married and doesn’t have children. She also lives in London instead of Australia and we do not see the change of her hair color. And her character in pretty much flat and never fully developed.  

Avery- Girl With Dragon Tattoo Character

Lisbeth is fleshed out well in the movie and the storylines always come back to her as the character that the audience cares about most. The novel version was able to focus on Lisbeth and Blomkvist’s experiences as they intertwine, but the film played down some aspects of the story, like Blomkvist’s relationships with other women. Even the characters that served as Lisbeth’s social group outside of work (and mother) were cut so we could better focus on her.

I did think it was a good choice to cut Lisbeth’s social circle from the film, because her character really relied on being a social outsider, but I would have liked to see more of Blomkvist’s character. I understand that delivering the murder clues to viewers is more tricky in a film, but the whole investigation was watered down and simplified so we could just get the point and keep it moving, which isn’t as exciting as details coming to the surface slowly like in the book. Overall, the movie was a great adaptation and most of the changes that were made helped move the story forward and keep the viewers interested and invested in Lisbeth.

The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo Character Adaption

Like we've seen in previous movie adaptions, characters from the novels are often omitted, simplified or several characters become one in the film version. While many of the characters in the film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo did suffer a simplified adaption, I think Lisbeth’s character was more fully developed in the film.

By removing the complications from Blomkivst’s character – the relationship with Cecilia and the importance of the Wennerstrom scandal – the focus of the film became Lisbeth. Even Blomkivst became a character defined by Lisbeth. His scenes by himself were always countered with a scene where Lisbeth dominates. Even his last scene with Erika is seen from Lisbeth’s perspective, and it is Lisbeth on her motorcycle who audiences follow when the film ends and not Blomkivst.  While many of these moments are true to the novel, the omitted scenes detract from the other characters importance and Lisbeth becomes more knowable, less mysterious than she is in the novel.

One of the biggest ways that Lisbeth’s character was developed was in her interactions with her new guardian. Although the first two interactions between them where he sexually abused her were hard to watch, her revenge and the additional scene between them made her seem much more badass. The scene in which she revenges her rape and tattoos him was pretty true to the novel, but being able to see it made it much more impactful – especially as her makeup was insane. Then there was the scene in the elevator where she came back to threaten him. Seeing her fearlessness juxtaposed with her super creepy guardians fear emphasized how intimidating she is. She completely changed his character; he became a cowering loser instead of a confident rapist.

The film version also revealed more about her. For one, Blomkivst learned that she was a ward of the state. In the novel, she is afraid of anyone finding that out which makes it a weakness. In the film, her treatment of her guardian and the revelation that she tried to kill her father at twelve (without revealing what her motivation is) makes her a strong character, if a little unhinged.