Someone, I don't remember who, made a great comment in the comment section for the NTTD rountable in The James Bond Experience channel: James Bond returns in "Bubble Boy" 🤣
They tell how the twist was developed and how it was kept secret. The real script featuring Bond's death had only a limited circulation with fake scripts given to most of the film crew.
The associate producer, Gregg Wilson, said that the "fake" final scene had Bond climbing out of the rubble to discover he was to be knighted. "This is the first time we have had a fake script to keep elements of the story secret," he said.
I wonder if this was one of the three endings filmed, and if so will it be included in the dvd?
if so we can program our own version of the story.
Bond's death is obvious. No doubt about it. The only door they could have left open has been closed with this shot:
If they only filmed Craig's face and then the bombing of the island, deliberately skipping Bond's body being vaporized, at least they could have introduced some ambiguity. But it's not the case...
Interesting article, justifying the ending of NTTD and that its closer to Fleming than I first thought. Hmmm...I may have to reconsider NTTD now. Looks like I'll have to give it another go.
The writer's examples are too few. The first one in Moonraker, which I've heard quoted a lot recently, is simply a recurring heroic childhood fantasy. That is not a death wish. Bond use of the example in the scene is to reassure Gala Brand he's NOT the idiot he just made himself out to be, to tell her he doesn't want to die in a moment of glory.
The second example notes that Bond suffers from depression - which CraigBond also has a tendency to endure - so well done someone in the Eon writing department - but here he's reflecting on his career in the service, the possibility of death. This isn't done because he wants to die, only that he's anticipating the odds shorten against him as his career continues. So he logically prepares for the worst. This is quite lucid thinking and suggests a man unafraid to die, but not one who is consciously anticipating it. There's a difference.
I don't understand why the last example is even there as it simply underlines why Bond suffers from depression. Yes, he feels great guilt - although that sits badly at odds when you remember his killing of Von Hammerstein in For Your Eyes Only, he positively relished the opportunity. In this example, he's not concerned about HIS DEATH, only how he and others DISTRIBUTE OTHER PEOPLE'S DEATHS.
Curiously, the writer doesn't even touch on Bond drinking himself to death in You Only Live Twice, so to be honest, I don't rate the article much.
@Revelator asked for more examples of how Spectre anticipates events in NTTD.
Obv there's the whole theme of death, 'the dead are alive' which some hope might apply to Craig at the end of the film. There's Madeleine talking about the time an assassin came to her dad's house and she filled him with lead - to be fair, she then omits how he nonetheless - Michael Myers like - stands up and carries on as if nothing happened, then saves her life and so on, an important part of the story. Perhaps she was talking bout another assassin.
C mentions how spies don't just die out or something... in his briefing to his mates about ending the 00 section. And someone talks about spies never die but always leave something behind - like BondCraig's daughter perhaps?
Having Bond dying is not the main problem of NTTD. It's the way Purvis and Wade tried to sell it.
It would have been much more powerful emotion-wise not to show the missiles vaporizing him. I find it very shocking and disrespectful towards such an iconic character (and the use of CGI shots makes it very ugly).
I would have filmed it another way: close-up on Craig's face, then you see the island exploding. And most of all, I would have let down this virus issue. Bond is shot four times from his adversary (it never happened before) in the middle of a lost island...of course he's doomed !
Bond dying for Queen and Country because deadly injured is faithful to Fleming's work. Bond rejecting life for family/personal reasons, I just don't buy it.
To be fair to Purvis and Wade, their script was rewritten by Scott Z. Burns (uncredited), Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Cary Fukunaga. We don't know how their original version of the ending differed from the final one. It might have been better...or worse.
The contrived nano-virus is there to make sure Bond will be unable to leave the island--the minute he touches someone the nanobots will eventualy leapfrog to kill Madeline and his child. Bond therefore sacrifices himself for his new family.
I completely agree with you that "Bond dying for Queen and Country" rings more true to Fleming and Bond's essential character than "rejecting life for family/personal reasons." Far more people nowadays would sacrifice themselves for their family than their country, so doing the latter is more unusual and special in a dramatic context.
this film was so obviously made before COVID, because for the last 18 months we've all had to wrestle with the choice to not see elderly relatives in person, and find innovative ways to get round the danger of transmission. I for one never thought "might as well just blow myself up". Couldn't Bond just have met wife and child in a park on a warm breezy day like the rest of us did?
Not precisely. If you watch the sequence, we see the explosions approach Bond. There is the smoke and flame, the former reaching Bond first. Interestingly, his body does not appear to be affected at all by the concussion of the explosions. We see Bond appear to be enveloped in the smoke, but then the screen goes completely white and then completely black and then cuts to a distance shot showing the three explosions.
Is it likely he's dead? Absolutely. Is it impossible for them to not be able to find a way to write him out of this situation? Absolutely not. We've been shown enough to lead to a conclusion, but the screen going white and then black leaves some wiggle room, should they decide to resurrect him in the same timeline later.
Waller-Bridge's contribution mainly concerned some of the dialogues and the treatment of female characters (it's not difficult to guess she has to be credited for the part with Paloma in Cuba).
I think almost everything about the main plot is from Purvis and Wade, as usual (I hope so much they won't be involved for Bond 26 because I never enjoyed their work). Perhaps the final version of the script is not exactly the same as theirs, but I'm pretty sure they are more than involved in the global storyline.
And don't worry, I know what the nano-virus is there for. I just think it doesn't work. As I said, it would have been much more powerful and clever to have Bond dying because deadly injured, but it's not only that.
He was infected with nanobots during the Spectre party in Cuba, which means he represents a deadly vector for the relatives of the dead Spectre members, who are not necessarily criminals themselves (Madeleine is the daughter of an assassin but she's not one...). So why having this kind of thinking taking into account only Madeleine and Mathilde ? Their lives are not more worthy from an ethical point of view. I think it's a very selfish decision from Bond ("I can sacrifice myself for my family but I don't really care about other people").
Sorry but not convinced at all. As I said, the only door they could have left open has been closed with filming the "vaporization". But I must admit your theory would work if Bond was saved by a TIE-Fighter at the moment the screen becomes white, which could explain this:
You make a good point about Bond also being infected with nanobots during the Spectre party in Cuba, and therefore being a deadly vector for the relatives of the dead Spectre members, some of whom might be innocent. Taking this into mind, Bond's actions in the end would be selfish, but I think the movie completely forgot about it. In other words, you have discovered a plot hole. Considering how chaotic the film's writing process must have been, I'm sure there are more waiting to be discovered.
His motivation would have been selfish, if he specifically wanted to save wife and child, but the effect would be universal, also saving all potential targets (SPECTRE relatives) from his deadly touch once he's gone, whether he intended that or not.
Gotta admit though I'm not sure I understand all the nano-bot DNA targetting virus technobabble. Definitely gotta watch closely what everybody's doing with their little vials throughout the movie, there usually wasn't much exposition to go along with those scenes.
Eh, it's not you or I that have to be convinced. All they have to do is film the next movie using this out, should they choose. If the movie is good enough, enough of the audience will accept it to purchase the tickets. The ones who are bent out of shape will still purchase tickets, if only to grouse. Win-win.
It's not a true plot hole, though, because the movie still works as is, which is creakily and by great effort of the audience to explain it. We actually have nothing at the end to confirm that Bond "sacrifices" himself to protect Swann and Mathilde. This is merely assumed by the action of the sequence. It could just as easily be Bond giving up because he's shot or because his life has been so depressing, this final blow is too much to take and he's suicidal. His weird smiling at the end could be interpreted as his mind finally collapsing under the pressure. This is a messy script.
I think part of the problem is that the movie wants to have it not merely both ways but every way. Bond is too shot up to escape, and/or can't open the doors in time to escape from the missiles, and/or decides to get vaporized to protect his family. The film's climax is a muddle of all of these, almost as if audiences were being encouraged to select whatever option they preferred. It feels like several different scripted endings were mashed together and thrown at the camera.
I agree. It's always funny to me that people say a Bond movie has a complicated plot. The ones in the 60s did to some degree, but nowadays, Bond does so little investigating and all the spy/counterspy stuff is replaced by big action sequences. They're basically just minimal dialogue scenes designed to move us from one set piece to the other.
So, the end of NTTD is bizarre. As you point out, it offers a cafeteria-style medley of choices for why Bond dies -- or, from my point of view, commits suicide rather than soldiers on -- when it would have been so completely easy to write a definitive, simple end: Bond holds the lever down for the doors to stay open because otherwise they will shut, for instance. (It still doesn't explain why a sea-based attack or demolition through the submarine pen couldn't be done, but, hey, I think that's as good as we can get with this muddled script.)
But, of course, that's if they'd fully intended for Bond to die a hero's death. As it stands now, his demise is rather ignominious, more the punchline to a rather mean joke about his entire life.
During the wake for Bond in M's office, should he have refered to Nomi with another number than 007? I think so. If M had called Nomi 008 or something they would've accomplished two things: The audience knows Nomi is still a 00-agent and they also know the 007 number wasn't given back to her after Bond's death.
Yes, a little ambiguity would have gone a long way with me. And I hated the nanobot junk. The idea of him being a carrier & endangering his family was lifted from the TV series Dark Angel. Only they executed it better on that. And they found a way to deal with it that didn't include 'suicide'. All in all I'm entirely disappointed with this entry. To me, Dan's tenure ends with the last scene in SPECTRE...
First of all I want to point out to Chrisisall that the idea of a hero sacrificing himself to save his family is as old as the hills and not something Dark Angel came up with.
But the reason I visited the forum was something that was said in the James Bond & Friends podcast. Perhaps the action movie ending that is best compared to NTTD is Terminator 2. At the end the enemy is defeated, but the Terminator reminds there is a last microchip that can destroy the world is left, and that's the chip he's running on. He then decides to destroy himself to make the world safe from that threath.
The Terminator is sort of "infected" with his CPU, isn't he? He can't live on with it without endangering others. I really think T2 has the ending closest to NTTD among big budget action movies.
I still don't see any room for debate in 007's final fate in this film.
Yes, there is feasible wriggle room for such discussion in Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (which pretty much skews toward a happier ending, but those who choose the "death" ending can do so, as I did). But, I didn't get any sense in NTTD that Bond could have survived - not remotely. He would have been killed on impact. Even if you wanted to really stretch it and say that the missiles avoided him and he somehow collapsed with the earth to a softer ground, he's still dead given the leg wounds, Bond bleeding out. I can't see the same ambiguity in NTTD that I saw in Nolan's Batman swan song.
I will admit this; as with the initial post of this thread, the title "No Time To Die" is certainly an odd title choice given Bond's final fate. Could it be referring to the sacrifice that he made for Madeleine and daughter? It's unclear, but the title does have a nice ring to it while also working against the overall message of this film. People do die. In fact, more key players who fought for good in this film die.
In addressing the extract from "You Only Live Twice", the only way i'd be looking to make a case (by way of analogy) between NTTD and the aforementioned novel, there would have to be some dialogue in the film guiding me to think along those lines. There isn't. Again, I refer to The Dark Knight Rises; we have a line hinting why it may be possible that Bruce/Bat survived. Conversely, in NTTD, we see the MI6 crew mourning their beloved agent. There's no hint or realisation that there were a network of hidden tunnels beneath the island where Bond may have retreated. Nor is there the the reveal of an absence of a plane that may have been parked in a bunker before their arrival to the island. Nothing.
Had a subtle point like that been alluded, I could see what inspired debate.
I have a question that's not really om topic, but related. I just didn't want to start yet another spoiler marked thread.
When Tom Cruise finally gets til old to do all those stunts in the Mission Impossible movies, do you think he'll kill off Ethan Hunt? I think making him the M of the series is another alternative.
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Comments
Someone, I don't remember who, made a great comment in the comment section for the NTTD rountable in The James Bond Experience channel: James Bond returns in "Bubble Boy" 🤣
David Sanderson (London Times, Nov. 6) said:
They tell how the twist was developed and how it was kept secret. The real script featuring Bond's death had only a limited circulation with fake scripts given to most of the film crew.
The associate producer, Gregg Wilson, said that the "fake" final scene had Bond climbing out of the rubble to discover he was to be knighted. "This is the first time we have had a fake script to keep elements of the story secret," he said.
I wonder if this was one of the three endings filmed, and if so will it be included in the dvd?
if so we can program our own version of the story.
Bond's death is obvious. No doubt about it. The only door they could have left open has been closed with this shot:
If they only filmed Craig's face and then the bombing of the island, deliberately skipping Bond's body being vaporized, at least they could have introduced some ambiguity. But it's not the case...
Interesting article, justifying the ending of NTTD and that its closer to Fleming than I first thought. Hmmm...I may have to reconsider NTTD now. Looks like I'll have to give it another go.
https://crimereads.com/fatalism-james-bond-series/?fbclid=IwAR2yoV7g175zYSS-rUeBY3N2qWgGIZAuLLsJtyHMBimqk4ZJX7WmGARiIpo
I don't think it does.
The writer's examples are too few. The first one in Moonraker, which I've heard quoted a lot recently, is simply a recurring heroic childhood fantasy. That is not a death wish. Bond use of the example in the scene is to reassure Gala Brand he's NOT the idiot he just made himself out to be, to tell her he doesn't want to die in a moment of glory.
The second example notes that Bond suffers from depression - which CraigBond also has a tendency to endure - so well done someone in the Eon writing department - but here he's reflecting on his career in the service, the possibility of death. This isn't done because he wants to die, only that he's anticipating the odds shorten against him as his career continues. So he logically prepares for the worst. This is quite lucid thinking and suggests a man unafraid to die, but not one who is consciously anticipating it. There's a difference.
I don't understand why the last example is even there as it simply underlines why Bond suffers from depression. Yes, he feels great guilt - although that sits badly at odds when you remember his killing of Von Hammerstein in For Your Eyes Only, he positively relished the opportunity. In this example, he's not concerned about HIS DEATH, only how he and others DISTRIBUTE OTHER PEOPLE'S DEATHS.
Curiously, the writer doesn't even touch on Bond drinking himself to death in You Only Live Twice, so to be honest, I don't rate the article much.
@Revelator asked for more examples of how Spectre anticipates events in NTTD.
Obv there's the whole theme of death, 'the dead are alive' which some hope might apply to Craig at the end of the film. There's Madeleine talking about the time an assassin came to her dad's house and she filled him with lead - to be fair, she then omits how he nonetheless - Michael Myers like - stands up and carries on as if nothing happened, then saves her life and so on, an important part of the story. Perhaps she was talking bout another assassin.
C mentions how spies don't just die out or something... in his briefing to his mates about ending the 00 section. And someone talks about spies never die but always leave something behind - like BondCraig's daughter perhaps?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Having Bond dying is not the main problem of NTTD. It's the way Purvis and Wade tried to sell it.
It would have been much more powerful emotion-wise not to show the missiles vaporizing him. I find it very shocking and disrespectful towards such an iconic character (and the use of CGI shots makes it very ugly).
I would have filmed it another way: close-up on Craig's face, then you see the island exploding. And most of all, I would have let down this virus issue. Bond is shot four times from his adversary (it never happened before) in the middle of a lost island...of course he's doomed !
Bond dying for Queen and Country because deadly injured is faithful to Fleming's work. Bond rejecting life for family/personal reasons, I just don't buy it.
Yes, good point!
To be fair to Purvis and Wade, their script was rewritten by Scott Z. Burns (uncredited), Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Cary Fukunaga. We don't know how their original version of the ending differed from the final one. It might have been better...or worse.
The contrived nano-virus is there to make sure Bond will be unable to leave the island--the minute he touches someone the nanobots will eventualy leapfrog to kill Madeline and his child. Bond therefore sacrifices himself for his new family.
I completely agree with you that "Bond dying for Queen and Country" rings more true to Fleming and Bond's essential character than "rejecting life for family/personal reasons." Far more people nowadays would sacrifice themselves for their family than their country, so doing the latter is more unusual and special in a dramatic context.
this film was so obviously made before COVID, because for the last 18 months we've all had to wrestle with the choice to not see elderly relatives in person, and find innovative ways to get round the danger of transmission. I for one never thought "might as well just blow myself up". Couldn't Bond just have met wife and child in a park on a warm breezy day like the rest of us did?
Not precisely. If you watch the sequence, we see the explosions approach Bond. There is the smoke and flame, the former reaching Bond first. Interestingly, his body does not appear to be affected at all by the concussion of the explosions. We see Bond appear to be enveloped in the smoke, but then the screen goes completely white and then completely black and then cuts to a distance shot showing the three explosions.
Is it likely he's dead? Absolutely. Is it impossible for them to not be able to find a way to write him out of this situation? Absolutely not. We've been shown enough to lead to a conclusion, but the screen going white and then black leaves some wiggle room, should they decide to resurrect him in the same timeline later.
Waller-Bridge's contribution mainly concerned some of the dialogues and the treatment of female characters (it's not difficult to guess she has to be credited for the part with Paloma in Cuba).
I think almost everything about the main plot is from Purvis and Wade, as usual (I hope so much they won't be involved for Bond 26 because I never enjoyed their work). Perhaps the final version of the script is not exactly the same as theirs, but I'm pretty sure they are more than involved in the global storyline.
And don't worry, I know what the nano-virus is there for. I just think it doesn't work. As I said, it would have been much more powerful and clever to have Bond dying because deadly injured, but it's not only that.
He was infected with nanobots during the Spectre party in Cuba, which means he represents a deadly vector for the relatives of the dead Spectre members, who are not necessarily criminals themselves (Madeleine is the daughter of an assassin but she's not one...). So why having this kind of thinking taking into account only Madeleine and Mathilde ? Their lives are not more worthy from an ethical point of view. I think it's a very selfish decision from Bond ("I can sacrifice myself for my family but I don't really care about other people").
Sorry but not convinced at all. As I said, the only door they could have left open has been closed with filming the "vaporization". But I must admit your theory would work if Bond was saved by a TIE-Fighter at the moment the screen becomes white, which could explain this:
😂😂😂😂
"Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?"
You make a good point about Bond also being infected with nanobots during the Spectre party in Cuba, and therefore being a deadly vector for the relatives of the dead Spectre members, some of whom might be innocent. Taking this into mind, Bond's actions in the end would be selfish, but I think the movie completely forgot about it. In other words, you have discovered a plot hole. Considering how chaotic the film's writing process must have been, I'm sure there are more waiting to be discovered.
His motivation would have been selfish, if he specifically wanted to save wife and child, but the effect would be universal, also saving all potential targets (SPECTRE relatives) from his deadly touch once he's gone, whether he intended that or not.
Gotta admit though I'm not sure I understand all the nano-bot DNA targetting virus technobabble. Definitely gotta watch closely what everybody's doing with their little vials throughout the movie, there usually wasn't much exposition to go along with those scenes.
Eh, it's not you or I that have to be convinced. All they have to do is film the next movie using this out, should they choose. If the movie is good enough, enough of the audience will accept it to purchase the tickets. The ones who are bent out of shape will still purchase tickets, if only to grouse. Win-win.
It's not a true plot hole, though, because the movie still works as is, which is creakily and by great effort of the audience to explain it. We actually have nothing at the end to confirm that Bond "sacrifices" himself to protect Swann and Mathilde. This is merely assumed by the action of the sequence. It could just as easily be Bond giving up because he's shot or because his life has been so depressing, this final blow is too much to take and he's suicidal. His weird smiling at the end could be interpreted as his mind finally collapsing under the pressure. This is a messy script.
I think part of the problem is that the movie wants to have it not merely both ways but every way. Bond is too shot up to escape, and/or can't open the doors in time to escape from the missiles, and/or decides to get vaporized to protect his family. The film's climax is a muddle of all of these, almost as if audiences were being encouraged to select whatever option they preferred. It feels like several different scripted endings were mashed together and thrown at the camera.
I agree. It's always funny to me that people say a Bond movie has a complicated plot. The ones in the 60s did to some degree, but nowadays, Bond does so little investigating and all the spy/counterspy stuff is replaced by big action sequences. They're basically just minimal dialogue scenes designed to move us from one set piece to the other.
So, the end of NTTD is bizarre. As you point out, it offers a cafeteria-style medley of choices for why Bond dies -- or, from my point of view, commits suicide rather than soldiers on -- when it would have been so completely easy to write a definitive, simple end: Bond holds the lever down for the doors to stay open because otherwise they will shut, for instance. (It still doesn't explain why a sea-based attack or demolition through the submarine pen couldn't be done, but, hey, I think that's as good as we can get with this muddled script.)
But, of course, that's if they'd fully intended for Bond to die a hero's death. As it stands now, his demise is rather ignominious, more the punchline to a rather mean joke about his entire life.
During the wake for Bond in M's office, should he have refered to Nomi with another number than 007? I think so. If M had called Nomi 008 or something they would've accomplished two things: The audience knows Nomi is still a 00-agent and they also know the 007 number wasn't given back to her after Bond's death.
Yes, a little ambiguity would have gone a long way with me. And I hated the nanobot junk. The idea of him being a carrier & endangering his family was lifted from the TV series Dark Angel. Only they executed it better on that. And they found a way to deal with it that didn't include 'suicide'. All in all I'm entirely disappointed with this entry. To me, Dan's tenure ends with the last scene in SPECTRE...
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
First of all I want to point out to Chrisisall that the idea of a hero sacrificing himself to save his family is as old as the hills and not something Dark Angel came up with.
But the reason I visited the forum was something that was said in the James Bond & Friends podcast. Perhaps the action movie ending that is best compared to NTTD is Terminator 2. At the end the enemy is defeated, but the Terminator reminds there is a last microchip that can destroy the world is left, and that's the chip he's running on. He then decides to destroy himself to make the world safe from that threath.
No, not the hero sacrificing himself, the 'infect the hero so he(she) kills the one(s) he(she) loves'. In 2001 it was still kinda new... ;)
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
The Terminator is sort of "infected" with his CPU, isn't he? He can't live on with it without endangering others. I really think T2 has the ending closest to NTTD among big budget action movies.
'I'll be back....'
'Only on DVD!!'
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I still don't see any room for debate in 007's final fate in this film.
Yes, there is feasible wriggle room for such discussion in Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (which pretty much skews toward a happier ending, but those who choose the "death" ending can do so, as I did). But, I didn't get any sense in NTTD that Bond could have survived - not remotely. He would have been killed on impact. Even if you wanted to really stretch it and say that the missiles avoided him and he somehow collapsed with the earth to a softer ground, he's still dead given the leg wounds, Bond bleeding out. I can't see the same ambiguity in NTTD that I saw in Nolan's Batman swan song.
I will admit this; as with the initial post of this thread, the title "No Time To Die" is certainly an odd title choice given Bond's final fate. Could it be referring to the sacrifice that he made for Madeleine and daughter? It's unclear, but the title does have a nice ring to it while also working against the overall message of this film. People do die. In fact, more key players who fought for good in this film die.
In addressing the extract from "You Only Live Twice", the only way i'd be looking to make a case (by way of analogy) between NTTD and the aforementioned novel, there would have to be some dialogue in the film guiding me to think along those lines. There isn't. Again, I refer to The Dark Knight Rises; we have a line hinting why it may be possible that Bruce/Bat survived. Conversely, in NTTD, we see the MI6 crew mourning their beloved agent. There's no hint or realisation that there were a network of hidden tunnels beneath the island where Bond may have retreated. Nor is there the the reveal of an absence of a plane that may have been parked in a bunker before their arrival to the island. Nothing.
Had a subtle point like that been alluded, I could see what inspired debate.
But, I just can't make it that far.
I have a question that's not really om topic, but related. I just didn't want to start yet another spoiler marked thread.
When Tom Cruise finally gets til old to do all those stunts in the Mission Impossible movies, do you think he'll kill off Ethan Hunt? I think making him the M of the series is another alternative.
Tom Cruise will carry on forever. He’s probably already working on a clone back up body.
Makes sense.