The peculiar world record set by James Bond movie ‘Casino Royale’
Setting world records has become part and parcel of the James Bond franchise, with several new benchmarks being accomplished on-screen, putting Casino Royale in very familiar company when it became the latest entry in the 007 canon to blaze a brand new trail.
As far back as 1974, cinema’s marquee espionage saga was going where no movie had ever gone before, with The Man with the Golden Gun featuring the first-ever vehicular corkscrew jump captured on celluloid, even if the infamous slide whistle sound effect was wholly unnecessary.
Pierce Brosnan’s debut in GoldenEye boasted the highest bungee jump ever undertaken from a fixed structure, with stunt performer Wayne Michaels plummeting a death-defying 722 feet from the top of the Contra Dam in Switzerland as part of the movie’s opening scene.
Even after Casino Royale, Spectre smashed a record – much to Michael Bay’s chagrin – of using the most amount of high explosives for an on-camera detonation after deploying over 130 kilograms of the stuff for the sequence where Blofeld’s base of operations is reduced to a fireball of epic proportions.
That’s not even including the less dangerous milestones ticked off by Bond over the course of his big-screen career, which includes wearing the most expensive wardrobe of any character in a single feature-length production. However, for Daniel Craig’s debut as MI6’s finest, a world record came around entirely unintentionally.
For the scene where Bond crashes a custom-made Aston Martin DBS causing it to roll over multiple times on the road, the production crew had no designs on breaking new ground. As noted by Esquire, the eight-inch ramp set up for the stunt had to be raised three times higher after “the Aston proved to be a lot more stable” than expected, necessitating a much higher inclement to get the desired effect.
To add further oomph, the vehicle was also fitted with a gas cannon that used pressurised nitrogen, which in turn punched a metal ram from underneath the car to plant it onto the ground and immediately flip it onto the roof. When the plan was put into action, it rolled no less than seven times to officially set a new record.
Just like that, Casino Royale was anointed by specialists Guinness World Records as having completed the most cannon rolls ever pulled off by a four-wheeled automobile, adding yet another accolade to Bond’s already-established history for achieving stunts that have never been executed before to such a degree.
It’s only seconds of footage in the finished film, but in addition to being a jaw-dropping feat of practical filmmaking and old-fashioned stunt work, it came with the added benefit of checking off yet another first for the iconic series and its willingness to keep pushing the boundaries of what can be done on camera, even in the age of CGI assistance.
