No Time to Die – Member reviews (Spoilers!)

Films No Time To Die (Spoilers)
11

Just got back home from seeing it. I have so many thoughts, I don’t know where to begin. Overall, I loved it (most of it). But I have so many opinions about so many bits of it. I’ll the bad out of the way first…

First off- as nice as it was to see the gun barrel back at the start where it belongs, I didn’t like it. Maybe I’m just so stuck in the past, but I didn’t like the way Daniel’s silhouette just blurs and instantly fades. Give me the CGI blood again!

Billie Eilish’s song, now I’ve seen it in the the context of the film, I realise I don’t like it at all. And the opening credits were very forgettable.

Rami Malek is also a very dull villain as Safin. There was no spark or energy to his character, just monotone dull. A waste of his acting talent. I blame the writing here. I didn’t think much of Lynch either.

Anyway! That’s all the bits I didn’t like. Everything else was just lovely! The Matera sequence was brilliant, especially Zimmer’s score. The Cuba sequence with de Armas was funny, thrilling and just damn Bondian. The chemistry between Craig and Armas was palpable, I just wish we got to see more of Paloma.

And then we get to Mr Craig himself. As others have mentioned he absolutely throws himself at this film, you can see it in his performance, he is so in the role as Bond I just couldn’t keep my eyes off him when he was on screen. Pathos, charm, wit, danger, he has it all. His comraderie with Felix (Felix! Ahhhh!) in the Jamaican nightclub was just beautiful. Talking of beautiful, big up Linus Sandgren. He makes Van Hoytema look like a child with a camcorder and some home-made gel-slides. That one-shot action sequence in the stairwell with Bond killing multiple people was great, as was him blowing up thingys eyeball. It reminded me of Daredevil.

Was the film too long? No. It was the perfect length. Even the middle part where you could argue there needed to be editing, it was so important to spend more time with Q, Moneypenny and M- and I was so happy to get a “oh shut up Q I know he has been staying with you!” a la Bernard Lee in TMWTGG. There were many Bond references littered throughout and it will probably take me another couple of viewing before I spot them all.

A fitting end to the DC tenure as 007. Bond has been completely humanised and I do wonder where we go from here.

Regardless, No Time to Die is a triumph.

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12

“His name was Bond, James Bond”

I’m just back - I thought it was fucking awesome!

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13

Seen it.

Knew what was coming but was still not prepared for how much I’d be hit by the emotional hammer blows. I’m still not quite right a couple of hours later.

Longer thoughts to come, but immediate reaction - a brilliant film, which just… works. A couple of plot wobbles, but that’s just the usual gremlins, rather than connected to Bond’s journey.

Loved it.

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14

Oh Lord! Just got back from the cinema and I am shooketh.

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15

Just back from the theatre. Bloody well hated it! So many things went wrong.
I’ll try to elaborate more, but just wanted to share my immediate impression.

Poor Ian Fleming!

Sure hope the next one (if there is one) will be another reboot so that we can forget this lame Spectre/NTTD run.

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16

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17

I’m just back from seeing it at the cinema, a bit over the top,but I wore a cream suit, blue shirt and a 007 Aston Martin tie,with 007 tie clip.

With a jack Daniels and diet Coke and a bag of salt popcorn, I settled down to watch it…

I think I will need to sleep on it,as I’m really not sure what to think…

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18

Hi everybody! I’m a long time (actually very long time) reader from germany here on the forums. I usually come here to enjoy all your comments and insights to just celebrate my lifelong Bond-affection, which began with Moonraker when i was nine years old. I was a big fan of Daltons Bond, later came Daniel Craig and reenergized my love for the franchise in a big way. So usually i like the more serious approach to Bond.

But coming back home tonight from my first viewing of NTTD i have to say that this film feels like a massive blow to the stomach for me. Yes, it DID get me on an emotional level, but not in a good way. I came back angry and very frustrated. Not because the movie is bad. In my opinion it works very well in itself. But this is James Bond. The guy, who doesn’t give up, no matter how hopeless things turn out.

For me that’s the essence of Bond. It hasn’t to be light hearted or playing for laughs all the time. But the one thing i want to take away from a Bondmovie is hope. There’s one guy in the world, who find’s a way out. That’s the one rule they broke with this movie. In my opinion they’ve pushed the limits way too far. If this was actually the reason, Danny Boyle walked away from it, i have to applaud him.

I’m feeling very sad right now. Bond meant a lot to me up to this point, especially the Craig ones, even for my professional life. But right now, i have no intention to watch one of his movies again. I couldn’t have imagined, that i ever would reach this point. Maybe, i have to take a break from it for a time. Seeing things differently in the future.

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19

I loved the Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace-y bits - the pre-titles was great and had a real sense of urgency I think was mostly missing from the last two films - and I wasn’t so keen on the Skyfall/Spectre-y bits - “time to die” really? and Bond’s death by missiles felt too simplistic and bombastic for Craig’s Bond.

I didn’t hate the SF/SP stuff, but it just didn’t sit right for me next to the CR/QOS stuff. I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it!

Safin was fine but I wanted to see more of him in action. I’m sick to death of the talky scenes with people stood still. Bond meeting M by the Thames I think it was, I wanted to give the two of them a slap, it felt too set up and unnatural. I had the same issue with Skyfall and Spectre. Most dialogue scenes feel preened within an inch of their life. There was less of that this time, but there were Bond’s scenes with M, Blofeld and Safin. I wasn’t sure or not if the Blofeld scene was deliberately super dry so as to give Bond strangling him more impact??

I thought the music was pretty good, but I wanted more Bond theme! The escape from the square had my blood pumping, I was actually tearing up cos it’s been so long since the Bond theme felt that vital! And then, it doesn’t really get much more use than that !

If they’re happy ending Craig’s run with him dying in a hail of missiles, then I wish they’d gone that barmy with the rest of the film! I am chomping at the bit for a big Tomorrow Never Dies bike chase style set piece, wall to wall Bond theme!

The obvious green screen when Bond gets to his resting place suggests to me it was a last minute thing… if not, why are these sorts of scenes in films always so fake looking?? I’m not sure which films it is I’m thinking of (ok one is Rise of Skywalker’s cobbled together final shot), but controversial scenes like this always also seem to have weird CGI going on. Anyway I can picture Daniel Craig going “fuck it, let’s just blow him up”.

The use of We Have All the Time in the World and the OHMSS theme felt cheap. I liked the use of No Time to Die and Vesper’s theme. But then All the Time in the World at the end too? Craig Bond deserves his own memorable line and his own song at the end!!

At the moment, I’d put it above Skyfall and Spectre because it had more Casino/Quantum-esque bits. As you may have gathered, I’m a fan of that Bond and I don’t think they have successfully brought in the traditional elements, they still feel jarring.

So

  1. Casino Royale
  2. Quantum of Solace
  3. No Time to Die
  4. Skyfall
  5. Spectre

Time for bed!

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20

First of all, welcome to CBn, Shatterhand!

To you and all the fans who don’t agree with the end - and that’s probably a number of people, both in hardcore fandom and among the casual audience - I’d like to share my take on it.

I used to be always on the sceptic side when such a theoretical possibility was discussed here. Every once in a while it popped up as a daring take but didn’t garner much support, simply because it didn’t lead anywhere - Bond dying is just the end. And few would have seriously bet on Eon going down that route anyway.

Now I came out of the theatre yesterday and, while certainly shocked even though I knew about it in advance, I was in fact at peace with this ending as it was written. Why?

Craig’s Bond was an incarnation that was from the start conceived as Bond as if he was real in his fictional universe. Mind you, not real in the drab sense of a George Smiley. But real in the limits of his world: starting out lacking expertise, ageing, showing signs of use and abuse, bleeding and hurt and not forgetting about his past. This was a character shown on a human trajectory.

For me the much more impactful scene was Bond confessing his love again, close to tears and the weight of all his wasted opportunities showing in every line. This is a character that doesn’t owe us as audience anything. This man owes it to himself to try to come to terms with his life. He’s jumping off the karma wheel of eternal invincibility for the little scrap of a chance to be, for once, human.

And therefore mortal.

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21

I’m noticing it’s getting the same reaction as The Last Jedi.

“But it didn’t do Bond as he is to me! Like it was when I was little!!”

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22

After having slept on it, I’m ready to say what I thought of it, I won’t go into detail, just highlights.

The whole movie felt like “SPECTRE PART 2”

At first I liked the nods to OHMSS, but these soon got annoying!

I thought that the pre title sequence with Madeline was very strange for a bond movie. However I loved the scenes with the DB5. Then I thought “most of this I’ve seen in the trailers already!” After such an opening, train doors closing and bond saying “you won’t see me again” seemed an anti climax!

I was excited to see the return of the LD Aston Martin but thought it was very underused. Seeing Felix die for me , did not really have the impact it should have had, even Bond referring to him as a brother did not really work for me, as unless they had off screen adventures we don’t Know about, this version of bond hardly spent anytime with him,unlike LTK,when you really feel Bonds anger.

Obviously this version of bond is not as linguistic as the others,as he did not speak to his daughter in French.

As for the ending, I thought “at last we see him shot up a bit” then “how is he going to get out of this alive?” Then it dawned on me… He’s not!

I think it was a good ending to Daniel Craig’s version of Bond.

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23

“Sometimes I really wish Roger Moore would come back, with an underwater car and some sort of jet pack”

I thought Cornish was joking, but looking around at some…

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24

The more I think about it, the more issues I have, both on the filmmaking and on the substance.

But the main bottom line to me is that Safin actually got it right: they made Bond redundant! He’s shown as an old, tired, cry-baby, obsolete relic. He’s nowhere remotely interesting, he’s never on the top of his game, he’s always lost and 2 steps behind.

It’s not that I just want the old Bond back. I’m all for renewal. But they went way too far; they made him irrelevant and easily disposable. This was not Bond at all. If he had to go, he should have gone with a huge Bang, not in some Rogue-One-lookalike-scene while talking to Madeleine. This is no way to treat Bond. He deserved so much better. They actually showed no respect to the character. Not even a star on the memorial wall at MI6, as Alex would say…

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25

I don’t think so. I get it that they tried to be bold; why not? It’s just that they failed miserably. Their treatment of Bond is outrageous.

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26

I get your point, and it is quite valid as written so. But my question then is: did we really need this? Is this what Bond stands for?

Bond is larger than life; Bond is a symbol. He has to evolve with his time, of course, but I think there are a few basic elements that have to remain. He has to be someone we can look up to, this « entertainment for grown-ups ».

A movie such as NTTD can be a good one, but it’s not Bond vehicle. It’s too much of a love story, only with a bit of action thrown in here and there, and with a bad ending just to make it more « artsy ».

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27

I don’t think we as the audience needed this. The point is rather that this Bond needed this end. But need is perhaps not the right word here. Things just naturally came to this conclusion and we merely witnessed them. Would the happily-ever-after ending have sat better with Craig’s Bond? I’m not sure.

Depends how we look at Bond. The books used to be so much less over-the-top than the films. But the films took the major dramatic inspiration from the novels in letting Bond marry - and lose his wife immediately after. The major transformation of the hero from thriller figure to protagonist of a Greek tragedy.

At the time, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE met with a similar response from many audiences and critics - ‘This is not Bond!’ Until, with time and under the influence of changing perspectives, that particular turn was accepted and, finally, embraced by fans. To the point where ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE ranks as a favourite among the classics.

We will see how NO TIME TO DIE fares.

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28

honestly as soon as we heard Nomi as 007 all those years ago - knew it would basically be that

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29

It’s all subjective really, but isn’t this actually very Bond?.
The film’s have always, for me at least, been a time capsule of the time they were made, 1972 blaxplotation, check, 1974, Kung Fu check, now we have an overarching story with a definitive end perfectly aligning with the popular interconnecting Hollywood blockbusters envogue. DC cannot be replaced (BBs words) so start again reset the clock. Have the 60th anniversary with NTTD. Announce number 7 as part of those celebrations. New Bond new era no continuity needed because that Bond is dead.

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30

This is interesting. On reflection the reason I wasn’t emoted by the ending is probably because during the movie I never had the sense of impending inevitability which pervades the very best tragedies. Look at Shakespeare and how foreshadows the problems of Macbeth or Hamlet. What draws us to these characters is that they die despite knowing full well there will be no escape clause for them. What holds our attention is the lingering suspicion they may just get away with it. However, Bond’s death is not foreshadowed in NTTD. When it occurs it is sudden, impulsive - like all his other actions - and as many times as he can say “You have all the time in the world” at the end, there’s been no philosophically emotional hook to carry the audience on his journey.

So, given this, I look back at Spectre and think at the emotional hooks the writers gave us: Bond falls in love, Bond chases down the over arching enemy, Bond avenges [almost] another death of a loved one, he resolves his authority issues, he at last finds a semblance of freedom and - like Michael Caine at the end of Get Carter - tosses his gun aside. We know he resigns and we know he’s left with the delectable Dr Swann.

So, did we need another dose of Bond attempting to resolve his psychological issues? We’d seen it all in Spectre, and it was handled reasonably well. [It was the rest of the movie which messed it up, especially the Blofeld - Brother stuff.] Craig’s Bond was done after four films. This is an add-on which only covers ground we’ve already seen and discussed.

We already had a good end to Craig’s tenure. I was quite happy with him departing in the DBS to the Bond Theme, but now I’m saddled with the sudden, rather sad, realisation he isn’t as invincible as I thought [Bond, not Craig-Bond].

As a side point, there are two OOs on the island. Why doesn’t Nomi go and open the silo doors and Bond escape with his family? So much for a new way of evaluating women in the world of Bond, they are still damsels to be rescued…

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