No Time To Die (Page 7 of 8)

When and where did I say there were no titles better than NTTD?

I simply asked what were the other ones being floated about.

I also don't get your hostility over this. It's not like you have any horse in this race. Are you not going to watch this movie because you don't like what they called it? I highly doubt that.

I'll agree with you on one thing; liking anything is completely subjective and due to ones own personal taste. What someone thinks is amazing, someone else may think is crap. Nobody is wrong since they are only opinions. 

First of all, apologies if I came across as hostile. It wasn't my intention, I wasn't angry at anyone, was just being direct. But sorry if it came across that way.

Secondly, just to be clear, I do not hate or even dislike the title - I just think it's very plain sounding compared to most others, but like I say, the context of the film might make me like it more, we'll see.

It is slowly warming on me anyway, but I was just hoping for something more unique sounding.

Above all else, the title is a marketing tool. I think it's a good title in that sense, even if it isn't all that creative and doesn't shake us up. It sounds like it has been successful in that the public think it sounds like a Bond film. That's important. I also have no doubt that the word "time" was included in the title to give it a sense of urgency. First of all, it gives the story a sense of urgency and adds some excitement, at least to those who aren't thinking about it in the way that we are. Also, marketers always want things to sound urgent. Including "Time" in the title as an indirect way of as saying, "There's no time to see Bond like the present", or rather 2 April 2020. They don't want you to buy another day.

According to this article there were taglines for QOS and SF, but I am not familiar with them: https://hughlockwood.wordpress.com/2015 … the-years/

How about for the new film, "No Time to Die ... but plenty of time to live"?

Or "Has has no time to drink, no time to kill, no time to f*ck and ... No Time to Die".

Hmm. Not sure about those. The TWINE one is just voiceover from the trailer, not the tagline.

gawrsh, I'm away from my computer for a week and look what happens!

Maybe the title means Bond won't be pulling a Logan in the last scene of the new film, as has so often been rumoured. So thatd be good, right?
...or maybe it means theres been so many bad rumours about "I'd rather slit my wrists" and other overpublicized "production woes" they feel the need to address the series survival with the title?

On the other hand, seriously, the precedents are dreadful. The two previous films with ...Die... in the title (not counting genuine Fleming) were the worst, most formulaic soulless action heavy plot absent entries in the series ... Revelator jokes about a Random Bond Title Generator, those two films were the product of a Random Bond Script Generator. If they're so worried about the series survival, they'd be doing well not to remind us of those two films.

There was much panic mongering over the last couple of months about the lack of a title announcement. Really, they would have done better to keep this one under wraps til the very last minute.
Supposing the title is actually somehow relevant to the plot... if they revealed the title the week before, we'd all go see the film a few days later and come home talking about how clever the title/plot relationship was. Big win for the filmmakers and their marketers!
But now that the title's out, there's approx. eight months still to go where we don't know how clever is this theoretical title/plot relationship, in which all we know is the Automatically Generated sounding title, in which time we're going to continue mocking it mercilessly. By the time the film comes out no-one's going to care if the title does turn out to means something, its alleged uncaring formulaic origin will have long been established and won't go away.

Last edited by caractacus potts (24th Aug 2019 01:16)

Just something else I wanted to point out, this is more of a random thought on my part, and I said this earlier in the thread, but Ed Sheeran said ages ago that he had already written a bond song. He did this just in case the producers pick him to do a theme one day, that way he will have the song written straight away. Now, how can one write a bond song intended for a bond film that you have no idea what will be? Use generic bond lyrics and a generic bond title. Is No Time To Die the name of Ed Sheeran's bond song, and that's why they've chosen this title? I have my suspicions lol. But maybe I'm also way off. We will see, but if I turn out to be right, refer back to this post when the time comes lol.

This is intersting analysis, but by cherrypicking titles, masks some important patterns.

I would also link We Have All the Time in the World and Diamonds are Forever lyrics that reference mortality ("men are mere mortals who are not worth going to your grave for"), and the related The World is Not Enough (which is from Fleming, and is the dark corollary of "We Have All the Time in the World").

And in Fleming's Diamonds are Forever book, there is a very Chandleresque bit of philosophising on the final page about diamonds' longevity vs human lives (very similar to his pal Chandler's paragraph about the meaning of "the big sleep" near the end of that book). Sorry my books are packed away or I would quote. But I swear, that title is another reference to mortality.

But the whole life and death imagery in relation to 1) Bond's job as assassin 2) the risks to Bond's life and 3) the fate of the world ... are a constant theme in all the stories one way or another. Its just some titles reference this much more creatively than others.

No Good About Goodbye would have been good if it wasn't already kind of used.

Agreed , I really liked the idea of Shatterhand as well. I reread YOLT a few years ago. Would have loved to see 007 choke the life out of Ernst Stavro Blofeld on screen.

Live and Let Die I gotta concede does not mean anything within the plot of either the film or the book. The book has a very high body count, that's all I got.

The Spy Who Loved Me may not share the meaning of Fleming's book, but in the film refers to rival KGB agent Anya Amasova. There had been previous lady spies in the movies before, but none quite like Amasova (and Christopher Wood's novelisation shifted the focus almost entirely onto Anya's plot thread).
Carly Simon's lyrics do confuse the issue, seeming more relevant to the missing Vivienne Michel's relationship to Bond than Bond's relationship to Amasova.

For Your Eyes Only is definitely one that lost meaning between book and film. In the book, M was using his employee to take care of personal vengeance, thus it was a completely unofficial mission that did not technically exist. In the film, the M/Havelock personal relationship is not part of the adaptation, thus the film mission is a normal appropriate use of M's employee. (the personal relationship betwen M and a murdered friend, plus daughter, actually appears in the World is Not Enough).
Simply handing Bond a file labeled "For Your Eyes Only" does not replicate the meaning Fleming implied in that title.

Octopussy is completely forced. That said, Fleming himself really stretched including an octopus that would kill Smythe when Bond had given him the chance to discretely kill himself. Smythe could have just used a gun, but the octopus gave an excuse for Fleming to do more descriptions of tropical sealife.

A View to a Kill is not just meaningless in the context of the film, it's a typo!!!. Titles with typos that make it to the marketting stage are a sign of a sloppy movie altogether. (See also Tomorrow Never Dies)

the Living Daylights means something in both the short story and the film. Bond chooses not to kill the rival assassin as ordered, instead scaring "the living daylights" out of her. It means more in the book, where Bond resents being used as an assassin, and empathises more with his opposite number than he does with his own coworkers in the Service. His motive in the film is different, and more rational.
But the story was originally published under the title Berlin Escape, and the film changes the location to Prague. Fleming's first choice was Trigger Finger. I'm not convinced he ever planned it to be published under the title the Living Daylights?

You Only Live Twice is of course another one where they didn't use Fleming's meaning for the title, because they filmed the damn story out of order so the phrase was meaningless if not paradoxical! so instead they forced  in the otherwise irrelevant fake death in the precredits sequence.

and then there's Quantum of Solace .... ack, words fail me.