SPOILER: ONE CHANGE WOULD HAVE MADE IT SO MUCH BETTER
thegreatgalling
Posts: 180MI6 Agent
Why not have Bond injected with nano bots designed to kill EVERYONE accept him and Safin?
No need for Safin to collect hair, no need for convoluted exposition, AND NO NEED FOR IT TO FEEL LIKE BOND OFFED HIMSELF BECAUSE HE DIDN’T WANT TO RAISE HIS DAUGHTER ON ZOOM.
It would also make sense that Safin would have developed such a virus and kept it on him as insurance. It would protect him from being apprehended.
That also would have made Bond’s swan song an immediate sacrifice.
What a mistake.
Thanks @Rennervision.
Comments
The thing that irks me is this movie could have benefitted from editing tweaks as it sat in the can for two years so we wouldn't have "convoluted exposition" like you said. There should have been no clunky scenes by the time we saw it.
Would that keep Safin safe from aprehension? Bond isn't the only person who could get him. And why make sure Bond was safe from the virus if he was the only person likely to stop him? Targeting James Bond and no-one else would make more sense. And this is the nuclear option. Would even Safin want to live in a world with only Bond and himself?
About Bond killing himself because he didn't want to raise his daughter on zoom: the virus could infect via many people. Even if he made sure he never again in the decades to come was in the same room as Madeleine and their daughter they still wouldn't be safe. How many degrees of seperation would there be between Bond and his "family" even if they tried to stay ad seperate as possible? Ten, fifteen, twenty? Every time he shook hands, punched someone or had any sort of physical contact with anyone for the rest of his life he would have to wonder if he just killed his loved ones by proxy.
Your solution seems more convoluted than the scriptwriters' solution to me.
Here's the problem for me -- the movie doesn't earn the ending. Bond in Casino Royale was presented as unstoppable. He made up for his rash judgment by an unswerving dedication to his job. But by this movie, he just gives up. The argument that the events of the four movies changed him doesn't hold much water, because if it did, why did he keep returning to the service? It was just a cheap, manipulative twist on the ending of On Her Majesty's Secret Service that, as with so much in Skyfall, makes sense sentimentally but little else.
Had Bond been killed in action or chosen to sacrifice himself, that might have been different. But that's not how the ending here functions.
All that said, since they're also aping You Only Live Twice, this all could just be a feint to bringing Bond back in the next movie. We see explosions but not Bond literally die, which gives them an out, silly as that sounds.
That's a good point. They could have shown the missile strikes and left Bond's fate open, but this means they had to take out the part about Bond getting infected. Otherwise Bond would look selfish and uncaring about Madeleine and their daughter.
But I'm pretty sure they wanted CraigBond to die, they didn't just write themselves into a corner that forced them to kill off Bond.
Can’t disagree with this more.
The film was perfect.
It’s odd so many ‘fans’ have issue with the ending. 🤷🏼♀️
I don't think it's strange at all. What would be weird is if they killed Bond and stuff like this DIDN'T happen. I think there are good solutions where Bond doesn't die, the big question is if they should've kept Bond "immortal" or killed him.
For this Bond, and this story arc, it was actually a perfect ending.
I didn’t like it… but it was the bravest one!
And on second viewing it made complete sense!
I think this was the right time and way to kill Bond if there is such a thing. I'm just (permanently?) on the fence about Bond getting killed.
Well I doubt they’ll do it again 🤣
I doubt it too, but we can never be sure. That's probably a good thing, because unlike before we're not sure Bond can't die in future movies.
I do think regardless of whether Bond would've potentially infected only two people or everyone worldwide, his motivation for climbing up to the roof to sacrifice himself remains the same.
He was badly wounded and he was racing against a ticking clock. (I don't entirely understand the sense of urgency with the missile strike since Bond looked to have the situation under control before ordering the rockets, so this seemed contrived somewhat. Maybe there's something I missed there.) Anyways - I'm thinking maybe he didn't see his chances of surviving looked too good and he didn't want to risk a situation where his corpse is recovered somewhere deep inside Safin's lair (because he knows his body on display in a memorial service could still potentially infect Madeline/Mathilde). So he had to go up on the roof to ensure his body was completely vaporized.
Now whether or not a Bond film should end with such a dour ending I think is still debatable. 🙂
Thank you! This is the most persuasive defense of the ending I have seen so far. 🍻
I'm happy to be of help 🙂
'Raising his daughter on Zoom' is a pretty big sacrifice unless he was a really rubbish dad. I don't see Bond as a family man but I would have thought he'd be pretty distraught at never being able to see his daughter or the woman he loves, and that his own trust issues meant he missed time he could have spent with his daughter.
The ending of NTTD fits with the overall character arc of CraigBond in that he can never get close to anyone because of his job. It's not like they killed him off because he was rubbish at the job; Bond had everything in hand and chose to die.
I'm fairly certain this is what Safin said would happen.
They just made a bigger deal out of it affecting his family because, well, that's what he cared about the most at the time.