I think the only way forward is a reboot. Sadly, that means to me that we'll have no more Ralph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear, Naomi Harris or Ben Whishaw. They'll have to start over completely, no overlap and that means a new M, Tanner, Moneypenny and Q. It also means they can bring back Mathis and Felix which is good, but it would be a shame to lose this ensemble. If they're going the re-boot route, they have no choice. Yes, I know Judi Dench was back for CR so they could do it, but it would confuse things too much.
I don't like them killing Bond, but I would use the word angry to accurately describe the reason they killed Bond. If Bond had died saving the world, I could have begrudgingly lived with it. But Bond sacrificed himself not even to save Madeleine and Mathilde (because there was only ever a chance that his survival would endanger them as long as he stayed a very long way away from them), but because he couldn't live without them. Very touching, but not very Bond. Bond loved Tracey but carried on without her after a few tears. Bond loved Vesper, but carried on without her. He could have carried on without Madeleine and Mathilde in his life. I know some will dispute that he died because he couldn't be with them, but with current technology, that was the only definite. It wasn't definite that his survival would kill them, but it was definite that if he was near them he would. That's just not Bond.
"Every man wants to be him" because he's brave, daring, skilled, charming, has beautiful clothes, watches, cars and great gadgets, travels the world and stays in great hotels. There wasn't much of NTTD Bond's that "every man wants to be," I'm afraid. His life in Jamaica, I'd take. His DB5 I'd like to have. The tired, disillusioned, cynical, suspicious, second-fiddle-to-the-new-young-'uns life is how many of the people who go to Bond films feel in their jobs and their every day lives and is certainly not what they aspire to be.
The best bits for me were Jamaica, the DB5, Paloma and Obruchev..and the fact that the Craig era (which I have mostly loved) is over. Hopefully that means that the re-boot will be fun, action-filled, stunt-filled, gadget-filled, bright, cheerful, forward-looking and maybe even humourous...not progressively dark, brooding, self-reflecting and constantly looking backwards as DC's era steadily became.
There was little escapism in NTTD. It was a decent film, I suppose, but it's not what I want to see when I see Bond. So, while angry might not be the word I would use, 36 hours later I'm still pretty down about it. I imagine I will watch it again on my telly one day eventually, but I'm in no hurry. At the moment it lurks on the fringes with NSNA and CR67 in my Bond world. I don't care when the BluRay comes out. I'm not fussed about the "On Set" book which I likely would have bought this week. I'm now looking forward to MI7.
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
Agreed. I found it very satisfying, although I'm still processing it, like an old computer overfed with data.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Personally, I thought the way the 5 movie story arch for Craig's Bond was appropriate. They evolved his story from Bond's beginning in Casino Royale, to what could reasonably be seen as a full life. This was unlike previous Bonds where they ended their tenure with no send off and left things unresolved. The entire purpose of the Craig era was to move away from the Bond who never ages but looks older every movie until they are replaced because they are too old. Craig was getting too old and they used that opportunity to create an emotional story. THAT is what film making is supposed to be about. Not just formulaic plot devices, mindless violence, and cool explosions - those all should just serve as things that motivate and grow a character. They did it great these five movies. Bond can be more than it was in the 60's, while still having all the features we love.
If Bond was left alive but just on the run, we'd have people constantly insisting that Craig should return when he's made it clear that he doesn't want to return, and is too old for the womanising (Madeleine looks like she could be Bond's daughter).
This way, if they make more Bond films they have wiped the slate clean and can go in any direction they like (I think they would have a more lighthearted Bond). Audiences will have to accept the new actor as Bond and the new actor is released from the weight of what has gone before.
The films after CraigBond were never going to be a continuation of that character.
I watched CR again the other night (it was on TV) and was struck by what a great Bond film it is, particularly now in light of NTTD. EON hit the jackpot right there for what a modern Bond should be, just like they hit the jackpot back in 1964 with a formula which set the template.
CR hit the right notes everywhere. Lots of properly adapted Fleming, Arnold sounding like Barry, great upbeat title song, Bond gets battered, bleeds and ends up in hospital, and an uplifting ending (despite Vesper's death).
Unfortunately this drove the producers and the actor down a slightly different route to what they should have done, and why Craig's tenure went downhill after CR.
Pretty much sums it up for me too. I've now lost all interest in this Bond film, and anything associated with it. I can't be bothered to listen to the soundtrack now either.
Other than the Jamaica scenes, there is nothing about this Bond which gives us `the man that everyone wants to be, and every woman wants to sleep with.' Instead we get a Bond that we feel sorry for, that we take pity on.
Well I don't want to see that in a Bond film, and I doubt many fans do either. Once the hyperbole has calmed down on this, I expect to see some sort of backlash. This will be a film that fans will eventually turn against.
Angry isn’t the right adjective to describe what I felt last night at the theater and when I left. Shock and hurt seem like more apt descriptions of how I was feeling.
Thankfully I avoided any and all spoilers - my thanks to this community for their consideration and labelling anything even remotely spoiler-ish.
On the whole I enjoyed it, but the ending, which I didn’t see coming, really jarred with me. Not so much the execution, (though after several hours ruminating on it, it has more than a whiff of David Tennant’s sacrificial Dr Who exit) but just…why?!?!
I completely agree about the comments Exec Producer DC having too much clout; he’s become bigger than the character he’s portraying, at least in the other producer’s eyes. With hindsight, he probably only agreed to come back if Bond was killed off, putting me in mind of Harrison Ford arguing with George Lucas to kill off Han Solo to give the story arc some dramatic heft.
In my opinion, for what it’s worth, Bond shouldn’t die. These films are an escapist institution, a formula that should carry on through the generations. No doubt many of us grew up with and were introduced to “the Bond films” by our families and we should be able to do the same with our kids.
Bond has gone from “silhouette” to a more fully fleshed out character during Craig’s era, so the signs of his mortality were there I suppose, but I really don’t believe he should have been killed off.
The Garden of death idea was also wasted. Why not faithfully adapt the close of YOLT, have Bond suffer with amnesia before the next actor starts the next film with TMWTGG plot about being brainwashed in the interim period etc. If they wanted to carry on the Madeline/Mathilde storyline, this could even inject a bit of tension should he ever meet up with them again, not remembering he has been infected and would kill them. Or they could just abandon the nanotechnology/Bond family sub plots entirely - my preference.
Maybe it’s too soon after my viewing, but Bonds death just spoiled the film for me. Comparisons have been drawn with The Dark Knight Rises finale, but they aren’t the same in my opinion. Nolan’s film has an element of ambiguity about it, NTTD does not as far as I can tell. This film would have been immeasurably improved with some ambiguity about Bond’s fate.
I think what’s really upsetting me though, is that the Bond formula that’s persisted for 60 years is now at an end. Yes, there were inconsistencies from film to film but Bond was the same agent, not a code passed from one to another. Each generation grew up with their Bond actor but he was the same man whether from Dr No to Moonraker and so on.
Going forward we’ll either have a fresh reboot, with an all new cast or, God forbid, something akin to the Batman films, where we’ve had Burton’s take, Nolan’s trilogy, Zak Snyder’s etc, with a different unconnected iteration every other year. This Craig “quadrilogy” certainly seems like the start of the latter, which is nothing to celebrate.
Strange and sad to think we currently live in a world where Bond and Felix are both dead, frankly the last thing the world needed given the events of the last 18 months…
Japanese proverb say, "Bird never make nest in bare tree".
Very good points Domino Effect, thank you. I think Bond giving his life to save his country would always be the most appropriate way for him to go. I love the part in Moonraker where he cheerfully volunteers to light a cigarette under the rocket. That's a fully Bondian death.
Bond deciding to get vaporized because he can't be with his "wife" and kid is less satisfactory, exactly for the reasons you've given. Bond is a survivor, and could survive even being apart from his new family. Not that I ever wanted to see Bond with a family. It brings him down to our level.
At bottom Bond is a fantasy hero--a fantasy of what a hero could be--and his appeal is at bottom escapist, including an escape from domesticity and everyday life. His occasional moments of humanity are there to ground the fantasy and prevent it from becoming insubstantial. If earlier films neglected Bond's humanity and threatened to turn him into a cartoon, the Craig era sometimes erred in the opposite direction. I quite liked the first two-thirds of NTTD and wish I could have liked the rest. The series has been good at course-correction, and I hope the next Bond film will have a lighter touch.
Maybe someone can help me with this...Bond received the smartblood injection in Spectre. Why did he need to receive another injection before going to the lair? There's nothing implied in either film that the smartblood eventually wears off that I can remember.
Spot on! Exactly how I feel about the film too. They should have adapted the end of YOLT, Blofeld instead of Safin, Sparrows Tears, and ditched the family backstory/daughter angle. It would have been a much better film.
@JTBond, in Spectre, after C shuts down the OO programme, M meets with Q and Moneypenny because Q has tracked Bond to Blofeld’s lair using Smartblood. At this point in the movie, M instructs Q:
“If we can track him so can others. Delete the Smartblood files. Everything. He’s on his own.”
Bond doesn't kill himself because he can't be with Madeleine and their daughter. He kills himself because if he survived he would be risking killing them indirectly every time he came in contact with another human being. Every punch, every handshake. Who could live with risking killing their family every time he interacted socially with other people?
Bond kills himself because the story was written that way; it's called stacking the deck and it's something a lot of these big budget movies do to artificially up the stakes.
Everybody seems to be dancing around the central issue here and that is that the filmmakers and lead actor put themselves above the interests of the character at the center of it all or the fans that have sustained this franchise for years. The ending was all about Craig's and Broccoli's egos and their desire to go someplace that no other Bond movie had gone to before, future health of the franchise be damned.
To me this is no different than Rian Johnson turning Luke Skywalker into an urecognizeable hermit and then ultimately having him die in the Last Jedi. That movie divided the Star Wars fanbase and the subsequent theatrical movies suffered at the box office because of it. I already see a lot of the same divisiveness happening with NTTD; time will tell what effect this has on the franchise's long term box office.
My initial shock at the ending yesterday has turned to something akin to animosity, hate being too strong a word. A damn shame, as the rest of the movie was just fine, save a few scenes that could have benefitted from a tweak here and there.
Ultimately, there was no need to kill off Bond. The script should have done away with Bond’s “infection” and shown some means of possible escape as Bond and Nomi explored the complex and Bond could have made a dash for it at the climax, with his fate hanging in the balance as the missiles fell. Next film, new actor as Bond, amnesia etc as in TMWTGG novel, no knowledge of Madeline - next mission, away we go!
But no, it seems he’s emphatically dead and any belated script contrivance to bring him back from the dead in the next film will just look just like that, a contrivance. Something akin to those old serial cliffhangers where, “oh look, he actually survived” but he “didn’t get out of the cockadoodie missile silo”!!! to paraphrase an enraged Annie Wilkes.
Craig’s done with Bond, so on that rationale so should we all be too.
Defenders of this climax will no doubt argue that the series as we all knew it is dead, time to change with the times and have another fresh reboot. Why? So that can serve an actor’s ego and kill Bond off in another 15 years? Can’t wait…
Equally there was no need to co-opt “We have all the time in the world” (the line and the song) that belongs to OHMSS and the relationship between Bond and Tracey. Why not be original and respectful to the series?
Anyway I’m trying to not let it bother me, hard as it is. If I choose to believe my James Bond died, it was on October 31 last year…
Japanese proverb say, "Bird never make nest in bare tree".
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
Don’t forget he was shot a few times and was bleeding out too. This seems to get missed a lot.
Yes, I mean I don't really see how he could get shot at close range and still be able to run around and up to the top of the island or whatever it was, had given up believing long before that point though.
Maybe a homage to Connery getting shot in The Untouchables but at least he was just slithering along the floor.
I think the whole thing has been a downer on Bond and his machismo, I don't know, I can see why but... It has a touch of Hepburn's Maid Marion to Connery's Robin about it, a film that I find increasingly moving and more relatable as I get older. Ultimately, she's just had enough, and he keeps making wrong decisions, getting embroiled in violence or giving her grief. Also deals with the idea of the legend v the reality.
I think it was more cribbing Connery's Bond being riddled with bullets at the beginning of You Only Live Twice. It's clear to me the writers are largely just rewatching the classic Bonds and cherrypicking bits and pieces they can retcon for the Craig series.
But keep in mind, too, how Craig's Bond has been presented. In Casino Royale, he literally dies and is brought back to life. Later, he's shot by a nail gun and nonchalantly pulls the nail from his shoulder and soldiers on. He's flipped over in a car seven times. His manhood is subjected to brutal assault. And I'm not just talking about the train scene dialogue. He's willing to just end the whole LeChiffre problem by killing him with a steak knife in public and broad daylight. There are "superhuman" moments with Craig's Bond in the other films, too -- and it's a testament to Craig's acting that he makes them believable.
This is one reason why I don't think No Time to Die earns its ending. It runs counter to everything we've seen up till that point with Craig's Bond. And No Time to Die itself does nothing to lead us to that point. The argument that he's doing it to protect his girlfriend and daughter would work better if the movie had done something dramatically to lead us to that point. Making breakfast for Mathilde doesn't cut it. Instead, what we get is, well, he's a father, and you all know father's will sacrifice themselves for their children. Those of you who are parents will especially understand.
This is the guy who never gives up and carries around the memory of a woman he fell in love with 15 years ago, to the degree it defines much of his existence. Yet, in this movie, we're led to believe he gives up and won't do more for his own flesh and blood. It is antithetical to Bond to that point, and the movie only does lip service to the need for him to die. Take our word for it, there's no cure. Like Skyfall, we're supposed to accept the character's motivations primarily because of sentimentality, not the drama onscreen. Your point about Robin and Marian -- another sometimes disappointing film -- is quite apt because at least that movie earns the ending. The drama unfolds in the scenes the lead to the end. To me, No Time to Die does not. It wants the accolades but doesn't do enough of the hard work.
It all comes down to the writing, of course. There seemed to be missed opportunities. Some things are hinted at to such a gossamer degree, I'm reluctant to include them. For instance, there's the Mathilde dialogue about mosquitos -- you know, hint, hint, creatures that prey on a victim's blood. But it seems so random, and nothing is done with it, it doesn't count. There's some irony in that Saffin kills Madeline's parents but then saves her life -- only to let Madeline and Mathilde live only to cause Bond's death. But, again, there's no connection drawn onscreen dramatically. It's there -- like panels in a graphic novel -- for us to discover and, I guess, gasp at in the realization, but we're the ones doing the work, not them. In fact, I think if No Time to Die were merely reduced to clips once every 30 seconds or so, it would probably work better as a graphic novel than as a movie. But these are exclusive kinds of texts, with some overlap but not identical.
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
His getting shot and carrying on was pretty close to reality. Gunshots are weird. The trauma of one isn’t like movies. You can go on doing your thing without noticing. Then it drops you. You don’t go crawling in futility on the ground dying. Sometimes you don’t even notice you have been shot. Then it hits a few minutes later and you know about it. Hunters will see this with their game over and over. To experience it is another thing. NTTD did it well.
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LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
edited October 2021
Smithers500: "Equally there was no need to co-opt “We have all the time in the world” (the line and the song) that belongs to OHMSS and the relationship between Bond and Tracey. Why not be original and respectful to the series?"
Because I found it to be perfectly fitting...and actually quite a lovely way to roll credits. Made me misty, and gave the whole experience quite a glow. Just one Bond fan's opinion 🍸️
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I think the reason a lot of people have problems with the use of the song goes back to Craig's characterization of Bond. Lazenby played Bond as more of a happy go lucky character who clearly fell in love and, lack of acting experience notwithstanding, tried to show genuine emotion in his scenes with Tracy. That's not the case with Craig. From day one his Bond was a blunt instrument with perpetual trust issues and a genuine inability to connect with anyone in his circle. Other than the very ending of Spectre (which was negated within the first 30 minutes of NTTD), his attempts at relationships with women always ended in failure and he showed zero growth in terms of trust or empathy during his time as Bond. He never told Madeleine that he loved her and dropped her like a bad habit at the first suspicion that she had betrayed him without even trying to listen to what she had to say. So when the music starts to play it just feels forced and disingenuous to me. It wasn't earned because Craig had not grown as a person to warrant it. Just one fan's opinion.
Totally agree. AATITW is associated with a stone cold classic 5 star Bond film, a pillar of both the film franchise and the literary Bond, as it was arguably Fleming's greatest novel.
With NTTD - a mis-match, hotch-botch, script-by-committee, cheap shock trend movie, it hasn't earned the right to be associated with OHMSS.
Had the film really gone back to the YOLT novel, ditched Safin, given us Blofeld on the island, more of the garden of death, Bond killing Blofeld before escaping and losing his memory, and then adapting Sparrows Tears (you can still have Bond being a father during this moment), before setting off sail to Russia, then yes. AATITW would have been more fitting, as the film is really trying to honour the character Fleming wrote about, and NTTD could truly have belonged among the greats, like CR before it, along with FRWL, GF and OHMSS.
But this shambles of a film hasn't earned the right to be associated with classic Bond. They ditched Fleming and gave us something much poorer instead.
I found the inclusion of We Have All the Time... more affecting than in OHMSS, where it is really only used for Bond and Tracey's 'courtship' which seems a bit stiff, a bit corny. It might have worked for the end credits, but not really, as it's a happy, luxurious song at odds with the finale. Perhaps in NTTD it's meant to refer to Madeleine and her kid anyway.
It does seem odd however that they have a song that is simply not part of this reboot, along with the Aston Martin in a way, either of them. I don't know if there's another franchise that does that, does the Nolan Batman assimilate stuff from the Adam West or Tim Burton era? Maybe they do, there are things about Sherlock like the deerstalker that were not in the Conan Doyle template but appeared later.
It seemed a strange treat to be in the 70s and have Moore films with nary a nod to the Connery movies, save M, Q and Moneypenny. It made things feel fresher, for sure. But perhaps, being a kid, everything was anyway.
Whatever mistakes were made with NTTD in my opinion it’s still way better than OHMSS. OHMSS is right down near the bottom of my Bond films along with DAF.
Indeed. It showed that you could have your cake and eat it too as it were, giving us a Bond film that largely followed the classic formula while still making room for character development and emotional drama.
Not for me. I even bought it so I could watch it a few times but I just don’t rate it at all. I preferred the book especially when Bond had a “stag night” with himself and a random taxi driver if I remember correctly.
Comments
I think the only way forward is a reboot. Sadly, that means to me that we'll have no more Ralph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear, Naomi Harris or Ben Whishaw. They'll have to start over completely, no overlap and that means a new M, Tanner, Moneypenny and Q. It also means they can bring back Mathis and Felix which is good, but it would be a shame to lose this ensemble. If they're going the re-boot route, they have no choice. Yes, I know Judi Dench was back for CR so they could do it, but it would confuse things too much.
I don't like them killing Bond, but I would use the word angry to accurately describe the reason they killed Bond. If Bond had died saving the world, I could have begrudgingly lived with it. But Bond sacrificed himself not even to save Madeleine and Mathilde (because there was only ever a chance that his survival would endanger them as long as he stayed a very long way away from them), but because he couldn't live without them. Very touching, but not very Bond. Bond loved Tracey but carried on without her after a few tears. Bond loved Vesper, but carried on without her. He could have carried on without Madeleine and Mathilde in his life. I know some will dispute that he died because he couldn't be with them, but with current technology, that was the only definite. It wasn't definite that his survival would kill them, but it was definite that if he was near them he would. That's just not Bond.
"Every man wants to be him" because he's brave, daring, skilled, charming, has beautiful clothes, watches, cars and great gadgets, travels the world and stays in great hotels. There wasn't much of NTTD Bond's that "every man wants to be," I'm afraid. His life in Jamaica, I'd take. His DB5 I'd like to have. The tired, disillusioned, cynical, suspicious, second-fiddle-to-the-new-young-'uns life is how many of the people who go to Bond films feel in their jobs and their every day lives and is certainly not what they aspire to be.
The best bits for me were Jamaica, the DB5, Paloma and Obruchev..and the fact that the Craig era (which I have mostly loved) is over. Hopefully that means that the re-boot will be fun, action-filled, stunt-filled, gadget-filled, bright, cheerful, forward-looking and maybe even humourous...not progressively dark, brooding, self-reflecting and constantly looking backwards as DC's era steadily became.
There was little escapism in NTTD. It was a decent film, I suppose, but it's not what I want to see when I see Bond. So, while angry might not be the word I would use, 36 hours later I'm still pretty down about it. I imagine I will watch it again on my telly one day eventually, but I'm in no hurry. At the moment it lurks on the fringes with NSNA and CR67 in my Bond world. I don't care when the BluRay comes out. I'm not fussed about the "On Set" book which I likely would have bought this week. I'm now looking forward to MI7.
Agreed. I found it very satisfying, although I'm still processing it, like an old computer overfed with data.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Personally, I thought the way the 5 movie story arch for Craig's Bond was appropriate. They evolved his story from Bond's beginning in Casino Royale, to what could reasonably be seen as a full life. This was unlike previous Bonds where they ended their tenure with no send off and left things unresolved. The entire purpose of the Craig era was to move away from the Bond who never ages but looks older every movie until they are replaced because they are too old. Craig was getting too old and they used that opportunity to create an emotional story. THAT is what film making is supposed to be about. Not just formulaic plot devices, mindless violence, and cool explosions - those all should just serve as things that motivate and grow a character. They did it great these five movies. Bond can be more than it was in the 60's, while still having all the features we love.
Well said and right on.
If Bond was left alive but just on the run, we'd have people constantly insisting that Craig should return when he's made it clear that he doesn't want to return, and is too old for the womanising (Madeleine looks like she could be Bond's daughter).
This way, if they make more Bond films they have wiped the slate clean and can go in any direction they like (I think they would have a more lighthearted Bond). Audiences will have to accept the new actor as Bond and the new actor is released from the weight of what has gone before.
The films after CraigBond were never going to be a continuation of that character.
Great post! I agree with pretty much all of this.
I watched CR again the other night (it was on TV) and was struck by what a great Bond film it is, particularly now in light of NTTD. EON hit the jackpot right there for what a modern Bond should be, just like they hit the jackpot back in 1964 with a formula which set the template.
CR hit the right notes everywhere. Lots of properly adapted Fleming, Arnold sounding like Barry, great upbeat title song, Bond gets battered, bleeds and ends up in hospital, and an uplifting ending (despite Vesper's death).
Unfortunately this drove the producers and the actor down a slightly different route to what they should have done, and why Craig's tenure went downhill after CR.
Pretty much sums it up for me too. I've now lost all interest in this Bond film, and anything associated with it. I can't be bothered to listen to the soundtrack now either.
Other than the Jamaica scenes, there is nothing about this Bond which gives us `the man that everyone wants to be, and every woman wants to sleep with.' Instead we get a Bond that we feel sorry for, that we take pity on.
Well I don't want to see that in a Bond film, and I doubt many fans do either. Once the hyperbole has calmed down on this, I expect to see some sort of backlash. This will be a film that fans will eventually turn against.
Angry isn’t the right adjective to describe what I felt last night at the theater and when I left. Shock and hurt seem like more apt descriptions of how I was feeling.
I’ve just seen it today, finally.
Thankfully I avoided any and all spoilers - my thanks to this community for their consideration and labelling anything even remotely spoiler-ish.
On the whole I enjoyed it, but the ending, which I didn’t see coming, really jarred with me. Not so much the execution, (though after several hours ruminating on it, it has more than a whiff of David Tennant’s sacrificial Dr Who exit) but just…why?!?!
I completely agree about the comments Exec Producer DC having too much clout; he’s become bigger than the character he’s portraying, at least in the other producer’s eyes. With hindsight, he probably only agreed to come back if Bond was killed off, putting me in mind of Harrison Ford arguing with George Lucas to kill off Han Solo to give the story arc some dramatic heft.
In my opinion, for what it’s worth, Bond shouldn’t die. These films are an escapist institution, a formula that should carry on through the generations. No doubt many of us grew up with and were introduced to “the Bond films” by our families and we should be able to do the same with our kids.
Bond has gone from “silhouette” to a more fully fleshed out character during Craig’s era, so the signs of his mortality were there I suppose, but I really don’t believe he should have been killed off.
The Garden of death idea was also wasted. Why not faithfully adapt the close of YOLT, have Bond suffer with amnesia before the next actor starts the next film with TMWTGG plot about being brainwashed in the interim period etc. If they wanted to carry on the Madeline/Mathilde storyline, this could even inject a bit of tension should he ever meet up with them again, not remembering he has been infected and would kill them. Or they could just abandon the nanotechnology/Bond family sub plots entirely - my preference.
Maybe it’s too soon after my viewing, but Bonds death just spoiled the film for me. Comparisons have been drawn with The Dark Knight Rises finale, but they aren’t the same in my opinion. Nolan’s film has an element of ambiguity about it, NTTD does not as far as I can tell. This film would have been immeasurably improved with some ambiguity about Bond’s fate.
I think what’s really upsetting me though, is that the Bond formula that’s persisted for 60 years is now at an end. Yes, there were inconsistencies from film to film but Bond was the same agent, not a code passed from one to another. Each generation grew up with their Bond actor but he was the same man whether from Dr No to Moonraker and so on.
Going forward we’ll either have a fresh reboot, with an all new cast or, God forbid, something akin to the Batman films, where we’ve had Burton’s take, Nolan’s trilogy, Zak Snyder’s etc, with a different unconnected iteration every other year. This Craig “quadrilogy” certainly seems like the start of the latter, which is nothing to celebrate.
Strange and sad to think we currently live in a world where Bond and Felix are both dead, frankly the last thing the world needed given the events of the last 18 months…
Very good points Domino Effect, thank you. I think Bond giving his life to save his country would always be the most appropriate way for him to go. I love the part in Moonraker where he cheerfully volunteers to light a cigarette under the rocket. That's a fully Bondian death.
Bond deciding to get vaporized because he can't be with his "wife" and kid is less satisfactory, exactly for the reasons you've given. Bond is a survivor, and could survive even being apart from his new family. Not that I ever wanted to see Bond with a family. It brings him down to our level.
At bottom Bond is a fantasy hero--a fantasy of what a hero could be--and his appeal is at bottom escapist, including an escape from domesticity and everyday life. His occasional moments of humanity are there to ground the fantasy and prevent it from becoming insubstantial. If earlier films neglected Bond's humanity and threatened to turn him into a cartoon, the Craig era sometimes erred in the opposite direction. I quite liked the first two-thirds of NTTD and wish I could have liked the rest. The series has been good at course-correction, and I hope the next Bond film will have a lighter touch.
Maybe someone can help me with this...Bond received the smartblood injection in Spectre. Why did he need to receive another injection before going to the lair? There's nothing implied in either film that the smartblood eventually wears off that I can remember.
Spot on! Exactly how I feel about the film too. They should have adapted the end of YOLT, Blofeld instead of Safin, Sparrows Tears, and ditched the family backstory/daughter angle. It would have been a much better film.
@JTBond, in Spectre, after C shuts down the OO programme, M meets with Q and Moneypenny because Q has tracked Bond to Blofeld’s lair using Smartblood. At this point in the movie, M instructs Q:
“If we can track him so can others. Delete the Smartblood files. Everything. He’s on his own.”
Bond doesn't kill himself because he can't be with Madeleine and their daughter. He kills himself because if he survived he would be risking killing them indirectly every time he came in contact with another human being. Every punch, every handshake. Who could live with risking killing their family every time he interacted socially with other people?
Bond kills himself because the story was written that way; it's called stacking the deck and it's something a lot of these big budget movies do to artificially up the stakes.
Everybody seems to be dancing around the central issue here and that is that the filmmakers and lead actor put themselves above the interests of the character at the center of it all or the fans that have sustained this franchise for years. The ending was all about Craig's and Broccoli's egos and their desire to go someplace that no other Bond movie had gone to before, future health of the franchise be damned.
To me this is no different than Rian Johnson turning Luke Skywalker into an urecognizeable hermit and then ultimately having him die in the Last Jedi. That movie divided the Star Wars fanbase and the subsequent theatrical movies suffered at the box office because of it. I already see a lot of the same divisiveness happening with NTTD; time will tell what effect this has on the franchise's long term box office.
Right. I was just thinking that whatever was injected would still be in his system though. And obviously smartblood made a comeback.
Couldn’t agree with you moreTonyDP.
My initial shock at the ending yesterday has turned to something akin to animosity, hate being too strong a word. A damn shame, as the rest of the movie was just fine, save a few scenes that could have benefitted from a tweak here and there.
Ultimately, there was no need to kill off Bond. The script should have done away with Bond’s “infection” and shown some means of possible escape as Bond and Nomi explored the complex and Bond could have made a dash for it at the climax, with his fate hanging in the balance as the missiles fell. Next film, new actor as Bond, amnesia etc as in TMWTGG novel, no knowledge of Madeline - next mission, away we go!
But no, it seems he’s emphatically dead and any belated script contrivance to bring him back from the dead in the next film will just look just like that, a contrivance. Something akin to those old serial cliffhangers where, “oh look, he actually survived” but he “didn’t get out of the cockadoodie missile silo”!!! to paraphrase an enraged Annie Wilkes.
Craig’s done with Bond, so on that rationale so should we all be too.
Defenders of this climax will no doubt argue that the series as we all knew it is dead, time to change with the times and have another fresh reboot. Why? So that can serve an actor’s ego and kill Bond off in another 15 years? Can’t wait…
Equally there was no need to co-opt “We have all the time in the world” (the line and the song) that belongs to OHMSS and the relationship between Bond and Tracey. Why not be original and respectful to the series?
Anyway I’m trying to not let it bother me, hard as it is. If I choose to believe my James Bond died, it was on October 31 last year…
Don’t forget he was shot a few times and was bleeding out too. This seems to get missed a lot.
Yes, I mean I don't really see how he could get shot at close range and still be able to run around and up to the top of the island or whatever it was, had given up believing long before that point though.
Maybe a homage to Connery getting shot in The Untouchables but at least he was just slithering along the floor.
I think the whole thing has been a downer on Bond and his machismo, I don't know, I can see why but... It has a touch of Hepburn's Maid Marion to Connery's Robin about it, a film that I find increasingly moving and more relatable as I get older. Ultimately, she's just had enough, and he keeps making wrong decisions, getting embroiled in violence or giving her grief. Also deals with the idea of the legend v the reality.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I think it was more cribbing Connery's Bond being riddled with bullets at the beginning of You Only Live Twice. It's clear to me the writers are largely just rewatching the classic Bonds and cherrypicking bits and pieces they can retcon for the Craig series.
But keep in mind, too, how Craig's Bond has been presented. In Casino Royale, he literally dies and is brought back to life. Later, he's shot by a nail gun and nonchalantly pulls the nail from his shoulder and soldiers on. He's flipped over in a car seven times. His manhood is subjected to brutal assault. And I'm not just talking about the train scene dialogue. He's willing to just end the whole LeChiffre problem by killing him with a steak knife in public and broad daylight. There are "superhuman" moments with Craig's Bond in the other films, too -- and it's a testament to Craig's acting that he makes them believable.
This is one reason why I don't think No Time to Die earns its ending. It runs counter to everything we've seen up till that point with Craig's Bond. And No Time to Die itself does nothing to lead us to that point. The argument that he's doing it to protect his girlfriend and daughter would work better if the movie had done something dramatically to lead us to that point. Making breakfast for Mathilde doesn't cut it. Instead, what we get is, well, he's a father, and you all know father's will sacrifice themselves for their children. Those of you who are parents will especially understand.
This is the guy who never gives up and carries around the memory of a woman he fell in love with 15 years ago, to the degree it defines much of his existence. Yet, in this movie, we're led to believe he gives up and won't do more for his own flesh and blood. It is antithetical to Bond to that point, and the movie only does lip service to the need for him to die. Take our word for it, there's no cure. Like Skyfall, we're supposed to accept the character's motivations primarily because of sentimentality, not the drama onscreen. Your point about Robin and Marian -- another sometimes disappointing film -- is quite apt because at least that movie earns the ending. The drama unfolds in the scenes the lead to the end. To me, No Time to Die does not. It wants the accolades but doesn't do enough of the hard work.
It all comes down to the writing, of course. There seemed to be missed opportunities. Some things are hinted at to such a gossamer degree, I'm reluctant to include them. For instance, there's the Mathilde dialogue about mosquitos -- you know, hint, hint, creatures that prey on a victim's blood. But it seems so random, and nothing is done with it, it doesn't count. There's some irony in that Saffin kills Madeline's parents but then saves her life -- only to let Madeline and Mathilde live only to cause Bond's death. But, again, there's no connection drawn onscreen dramatically. It's there -- like panels in a graphic novel -- for us to discover and, I guess, gasp at in the realization, but we're the ones doing the work, not them. In fact, I think if No Time to Die were merely reduced to clips once every 30 seconds or so, it would probably work better as a graphic novel than as a movie. But these are exclusive kinds of texts, with some overlap but not identical.
His getting shot and carrying on was pretty close to reality. Gunshots are weird. The trauma of one isn’t like movies. You can go on doing your thing without noticing. Then it drops you. You don’t go crawling in futility on the ground dying. Sometimes you don’t even notice you have been shot. Then it hits a few minutes later and you know about it. Hunters will see this with their game over and over. To experience it is another thing. NTTD did it well.
Smithers500: "Equally there was no need to co-opt “We have all the time in the world” (the line and the song) that belongs to OHMSS and the relationship between Bond and Tracey. Why not be original and respectful to the series?"
Because I found it to be perfectly fitting...and actually quite a lovely way to roll credits. Made me misty, and gave the whole experience quite a glow. Just one Bond fan's opinion 🍸️
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Great post! Spot on!
I think the reason a lot of people have problems with the use of the song goes back to Craig's characterization of Bond. Lazenby played Bond as more of a happy go lucky character who clearly fell in love and, lack of acting experience notwithstanding, tried to show genuine emotion in his scenes with Tracy. That's not the case with Craig. From day one his Bond was a blunt instrument with perpetual trust issues and a genuine inability to connect with anyone in his circle. Other than the very ending of Spectre (which was negated within the first 30 minutes of NTTD), his attempts at relationships with women always ended in failure and he showed zero growth in terms of trust or empathy during his time as Bond. He never told Madeleine that he loved her and dropped her like a bad habit at the first suspicion that she had betrayed him without even trying to listen to what she had to say. So when the music starts to play it just feels forced and disingenuous to me. It wasn't earned because Craig had not grown as a person to warrant it. Just one fan's opinion.
Totally agree. AATITW is associated with a stone cold classic 5 star Bond film, a pillar of both the film franchise and the literary Bond, as it was arguably Fleming's greatest novel.
With NTTD - a mis-match, hotch-botch, script-by-committee, cheap shock trend movie, it hasn't earned the right to be associated with OHMSS.
Had the film really gone back to the YOLT novel, ditched Safin, given us Blofeld on the island, more of the garden of death, Bond killing Blofeld before escaping and losing his memory, and then adapting Sparrows Tears (you can still have Bond being a father during this moment), before setting off sail to Russia, then yes. AATITW would have been more fitting, as the film is really trying to honour the character Fleming wrote about, and NTTD could truly have belonged among the greats, like CR before it, along with FRWL, GF and OHMSS.
But this shambles of a film hasn't earned the right to be associated with classic Bond. They ditched Fleming and gave us something much poorer instead.
I found the inclusion of We Have All the Time... more affecting than in OHMSS, where it is really only used for Bond and Tracey's 'courtship' which seems a bit stiff, a bit corny. It might have worked for the end credits, but not really, as it's a happy, luxurious song at odds with the finale. Perhaps in NTTD it's meant to refer to Madeleine and her kid anyway.
It does seem odd however that they have a song that is simply not part of this reboot, along with the Aston Martin in a way, either of them. I don't know if there's another franchise that does that, does the Nolan Batman assimilate stuff from the Adam West or Tim Burton era? Maybe they do, there are things about Sherlock like the deerstalker that were not in the Conan Doyle template but appeared later.
It seemed a strange treat to be in the 70s and have Moore films with nary a nod to the Connery movies, save M, Q and Moneypenny. It made things feel fresher, for sure. But perhaps, being a kid, everything was anyway.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Whatever mistakes were made with NTTD in my opinion it’s still way better than OHMSS. OHMSS is right down near the bottom of my Bond films along with DAF.
A very rare view among Bond fans, that's for sure. OHMSS is usually seen as one of the best.
Indeed. It showed that you could have your cake and eat it too as it were, giving us a Bond film that largely followed the classic formula while still making room for character development and emotional drama.
Not for me. I even bought it so I could watch it a few times but I just don’t rate it at all. I preferred the book especially when Bond had a “stag night” with himself and a random taxi driver if I remember correctly.