NO TIME TO DIE [Bond 25] - SPOILER Talk

[Paul MacLean]

SPOILERS AGAIN

Can't speak for Paul but he was here and saw it with me...and he liked it less than I did!

I can't refute any of the criticisms Andy levels at this film, but I will add that I disliked how it also contained some distasteful profanity -- like "M" using an f-bomb (the first in the entire 007 series if I'm not mistaken) and Bond saying "sh*t", and using "Jesus Christ" as an expletive.

The use of the Louis Armstrong performance of "We Have All the Time in the World" over the end credits is ludicrously irrelevant -- what does a 1969 Bond song have to do with this movie? Sillier still is the usual "James Bond Will Return" at the end of closing credits -- right after we've watched Bond get blown to smithereens.

I originally found Casino Royale a refreshing change of pace for the Bond movies. While every actor who has played 007 has made Bond films I greatly enjoyed, I appreciated that Craig's debut was an attempt to capture the tone of the character of Fleming's books. However, James Bond of the books never gave another thought to Vesper in any of the subsequent novels, whereas in No Time To Die, Craig continues brood over the memory of her.

Overall the film left a very bad taste in my mouth, and I honestly think it is the worst Bond film ever made.

[Monterey Jack]

Son of a BITCH.

[AndyDursin]

Two other things that irritated me: Craig turning soft plays against his strengths as an actor. He's not my favorite Bond and I'm not that engaged by him as a performer to begin with, but when he loses his "grit" I find him especially unconvincing and uninteresting. Much of this film finds him along those lines, not the Bond from Casino Royale.

Secondly, the use of children in peril in this movie is a turnoff. The girl stalked at the beginning who nearly drowns, the little girl abducted at the end...it felt like cheap thrills and something, as a friend of mine said to me today over chat, that felt more like "Taken" than Bond.

Anyway it's curious reading how many people had no issue with how this movie ended and/or think the film is good. I think they are less Bond fans than people who viewed these Craig movies like a Marvel cycle or whatever. But I'd argue this was a real failure because they set out to do something really tough and Fleming like, made a universally acclaimed film with Skyfall, resurrected SPECTRE and Blofeld, and then deflated all of that promise with two bloated, self indulgent and humorless entries in a row. And this one really lost its way with plot elements foreign to this series and the character that Craig must've wanted included at his insistence. A real vanity play at work, and that's why Danny Boyle left. He thought they were crazy for wanting to blow up Bond, so they found someone willing to go along with what Craig wanted.

[AndyDursin]

Here's the 2018 article wherein this ending was spoiled:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/7 ... 25th-film/

[Monterey Jack]

This is what Craig reminded me of whenever he tried to play "light" in the Bond films...

[Eric Paddon]

This is the only Craig as Bond item I ever liked.

[AndyDursin]

I just am scratching my head over the people who like this movie gushing that "Craig has humanized Bond" or "given us a Bond we can emote with." Do you want him selling Girl Scout cookies next? Or maybe he can start working in HR as a career guidance specialist? This movie feels like Craig decided he was embarrassed to play this role and decided to blow up this "horrible misogynist" after giving him a monogamous relationship and a toddler in tow -- elements which have as much to do with Ian Fleming as Ronald McDonald.

Oh and the last scene looked like a car commercial too. Just ridiculous.

[Monterey Jack]

Oh and the last scene looked like a car commercial too.

EON will be making more on product plugs attached to this movie than actual ticket sales, and it's their own damn fault. Even with the excuse of a (rapidly waning) pandemic, they're gonna take a bath on No Time To Die, and it's ENTIRELY due to the fact that the majority of Craig's run has been morose and funereal in tone. Remember when Bond gave us exotic locales, sexy women, cool gadgets, wry humor and exciting action? Now Bond is essentially an eunuch who's been pining after his dead sweetie for FIVE MOVIES STRAIGHT (only Skyfall lacks a mention of Vesper entirely) and is far too busy murdering people with a dyspeptic scowl to make witty quips or bed any of his Bond Women (can't call them "Girls" anymore, it's sexist...! ). And the fact that this run of films has been so heavily serialized only accentuates the misplaced tone. Imagine having to remember specific plot points from Dr. No when sitting down to see You Only Live Twice just to understand the basics of the storyline.

It's probably a result of the MCU-ization of franchise cinema, where no one, individual movie can stand on its own, only acting as a cog in the endlessly-grinding machinery of sequels and spin-offs. Bond has endured for decades where other franchises have withered and died after two or three sequels precisely because you used to NOT have to have seen any of the previous movies. The whole Craig run has played like an extended miniseries, replete with an oversized "season finale" (with an "Is he really dead...?" cliffhanger) in NTTD, whereas you could previously watch any one, random Bond movie from years past and get an A-B-C plot that was satisfactorily resolved in under 130 minutes.

I just hope that the next Bond actor will be put under a contract that stipulates that he has to make one new movie every two years, no matter what, and that the films back away from the idea of serialization, a half-assed experiment that just didn't work with the Craig films.

[AndyDursin]

Yes, and the staunch Craig "serialization" that we've had is just silly anyway since M was initially Judi Dench, a carryover from the Brosnan films.

You touched upon it MJ but part of the thing that made the Bond movies appealing was that you'd get a new director or a new writer or new composer in occasionally and freshen things up without doing a radical overhaul of the formula. The loose continuity is underlying in those '60s pictures -- an increasing amount of SPECTRE as those films progress, for example -- but the fact they're not serialized is a major plus to them, all these years later.

Now, the "connectivity" is there because movies are like TV shows, forever setting up future episodes. They exist as much as an advertisement for what's coming next as they do telling a functional story. Sometimes more so.

I could see a serialized story working in these movies if it was done well -- but the Craig movies failed. They started off well, fell apart, recovered with Skyfall, then struck out IMO with two bloated, self indulgent, humorless slogs in a row.

What surprises me a little are reading comments from these supposed Bond fans -- really younger viewers I assume who are weaned on the Marvel franchises -- who are giving off this "see, Bond has evolved, he has no place in modern cinema" thing. Like giving him a girlfriend and a toddler is this "evolution" that's supposed to make him "more like us", more PC and that's a good thing.

But the reason why we go to the movies is to see things that AREN'T like us. Audiences went to Bond movies to live out a fantasy adventure world with gorgeous women, exotic locations and outlandish sets and characters -- and audiences KNEW they were absurd. That's why Roger Moore was playing it tongue in cheek. He was in on it, just like viewers were. I see a lot of comments from younger viewers and they simply don't understand that at all -- and that's a function of how serious people take themselves today, especially younger people. They have lost a sense of humor, probably because they never had one to begin with.

Audiences actually were sophisticated and understood what they were seeing in the '60s and '70s, even when the Bond films were at their most lavish -- and I'm not sure where the franchise goes from here. Is it a full reset again? Or are they going to take a plot point from Fleming's MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN where I believe Bond survived some explosion, doesn't remember who he is, and gets brainwashed by bad guys, who send him out to assassinate M?

Either way, the movie's tepid box-office and the fact most of the audience skewed to us older crew, 40+, doesn't seem to indicate young people gravitated towards the "contemporary" elements Craig introduced over the last couple of films. If you turn off the core audience what are you left with? We're about to find out, but Eon definitely took a bath here because they would've made out financially better had they taken the $600 mil Apple was offering them last year for the movie. NO TIME TO DIE would've suffered a huge word of mouth loss even in a healthy commercial marketplace given how morose and depressing it is.

[Monterey Jack]

All I remember from my (sparsely-attended) noon matinee is some old dude getting up and shuffling out while M, Q and Moneypenny are toasting Bond's memory, and the couple a few seats away being like, "They didn't really kill him, right...?" The attitude wasn't mournful or even angry, it was like a shrug just hanging in the air. I remember a theater full of MCU geeks practically bawling when Iron Man died two years ago, but the first Bond movie in the franchise's nearly sixty-year history that actually had the gall to KILL THE MAIN CHARACTER, and people just...didn't...care.

And it's all so pointless, because, as the end credits always assuage us, "James Bond WIll Return". Maybe they'll keep the same continuity and concoct some bullcrap explanation as to how Bond could have survived, maybe it'll be yet another top-to-bottom reboot (which would be a shame, as Craig's scorched-Earth finale to his run in the role would basically take the current M, Q and Moneypenny with him, and I like all of those actors ), but either way, this excessively "woke" run of Bond films has thoroughly wrung any sense of glamour, humor or wit out of the series, replacing the 007 of decades past with a scowling murder machine who's suddenly supposed to be a loving husband and father RIGHT before they blow him up? It's like that TV trick where, when a character is about to be killed off, they'll go out of their way to make them "sympathetic" in some way.

It just annoys me because I was REALLY impressed by Casino Royale (and watching it again last month, it holds up), and Skyfall was also superb, so I was really high on Craig in the role (Quantum of Solace sucked, but it seemed like a one-off "direct sequel" experiment at the time that EON wasn't going to replicate because no one liked it), but two good movies out of five is a pretty lousy track record for a Bond actor, and the fact that he kept the franchise tied up for FIFTEEN YEARS with his diva demands makes it even worse. They could have had two or even three more movies within that timeframe with an actor sporting less hands-on clout.

[Paul MacLean]

And it's all so pointless, because, as the end credits always assuage us, "James Bond Will Return".

That's how I feel. What is the purpose of Bond's "great sacrifice" if he is coming back? Sorry Eon, you can't have it both ways.

It seems to me that Craig wanted his tenure as Bond to be its own self-contained entity, presumably to make the "Craig era" uniquely his own, and stand out from the others. The next Bond era will (obviously) have no continuity with Craig's.

It's too bad. Casino Royale was such a promising start, and Craig such a breath of fresh air. But Eon (and Craig) short-sightedly worked overtime to make Bond "evolve", so he would be relevant in a woke, SJW zeitgeist. I prophesy No Time To Die will ultimately be seen as a the most dated of all the Bond films.

[mkaroly]

Although there is no way this would ever happen, I would like to see them go back to the books and make more faithful adaptations of some of them - like MOONRAKER (very different than the movie version). Or...they could even branch out and make films out of the James Gardner series of 007 novels. I remember really liking those back in the day - I am kind of interested in reading through them again (which means buying the books again). Anyway, if "James Bond will return," they have options other than the direction in which they chose to go.

Interesting thought about Craig wanting to make his series of Bond films a self-contained unit Paul. One could only hope...

Addendum: now that I am thinking about it, there is one Ian Fleming novel in which Bond suffers amnesia after a large explosion; the world thinks he is dead but he is really with his lover in a village (she is pregnant by him)...hmmm...

[AndyDursin]

2 out of 5 certainly isn't a good batting average!

It's really the ultimate bait-and-switch. What started out as a Bond who was billed as the closest to Fleming ends up being the furthest apart from its source material of them all. And unfortunately, the poor story progression and clumsy scripting ("oh it's Mr. White's daughter" as if we're supposed to remember any of that) go hand in hand with the bloated, morose tendencies of these last two films. SPECTRE was awful, this film not quite as tedious (I really hated Spectre) but the ending and overall point of it ends up making this whole Craig cycle a total wash. Maybe CASINO ROYALE and SKYFALL will be able to be enjoyed as self-contained entities in time, but those other three...I have no reason to revisit them. And there's obviously no way around them either in terms of judging the five films as a whole.

The person to blame for this is Craig. He's a diva, pure and simple. He managed to negotiate his way into huge pay days and talked the Broccolis into doing all kinds of things foreign to this series -- whether it was opening a film without the familiar gun barrel, or turning Bond into a domesticated, one-woman man with a kid, or having him blown to smithereens at the end.

All the major creative decisions of the last two films are entirely his. He had story elements he wanted to incorporate, he got the directors hired he wanted, he's listed as a producer but clearly he was involved as much as any entity -- I think his point was to have a self-contained story cycle for "his" Bond and bring some of his politics into these films. The results sadly speak for themselves.

[Monterey Jack]

[BobaMike]

LOL That video is 100% right about everything!

Saw the movie with another Bond fan they other night. I liked the movie up they see Blofeld. The long precredits sequence was good, and I really enjoyed the stuff in Cuba (too bad that girl they met wasn't in the rest of the movie, she was great!) A bad guy with a robot eye- yes! That's cool! A bad guy who kills all of Spectre? That sounds intriguing- what's his deal? I was pumped!

Then it all goes downhill.
How did NOONE notice Blofeld has a bionic eye? Do they not do a eye exam on patients?
Why make M the cause of everything? He came across as an awful person?
Q is gay now, huh? Wonderful.
Why is every chase and fight (save the opening chase) in the dark? It was hard to see anything. I see people calling this such a beautifully shot film, but it really isn't!
What was in the acid water? Made no sense.
Why did Safrin not age? And what was his motivation to kidnap Madelyn and the daughter?

and why didn't Bond try to escape? We all spend the past 2 years wearing masks- you're telling me Bond couldn't put up with a few minor inconviences to see his "love"?

Argghhhh!! Makes me want to watch Die Another Day, which at least wasn't depressing!