Given Madeline was working for them, and Bond wasn’t, Mi6 did know about Matilde but were respecting Madeline’s wishes in not telling Bond.
Also, given Madeline was claiming Matilde wasn’t Bond’s child - what business is it of Bond’s?
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Fair enough about the Official secrets act, but still, it’s strange to play against his old service. Maybe there’s a hint at a deeper reason and I missed it.
About Bond’s legacy, I noticed that in the very last scene, Madeleine seems to be driving the same car Bond did when he was in London. Maybe someone could confirm that?
If true, I guess the implication is that she/Mathilde effectively inherited from Bond.
His friendship with Felix was more important than his old job.
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Not Bond’s business: well, the service could have had doubts abiut her claim and simply checked the child’s DNA. Not just for the sake of being nosy, but because a child could be a liability to an agent. But then he had retired…
Again. She worked for them, Bond didn’t.
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I took it to be ordinary stubbornness. He had already declined Felix, now his old service - his replacement actually - comes knocking to warn him off. Countless examples in the hardboiled genre where the hero simply does what he’s told not to, simply because he’s told not to.
Interestingly, without Bond Blofeld wouldn’t have had his party - but he’d still have Spectre and he’d still have a life.
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Social distancing saves lives… 
Stubbornness: surely there’s that, but I think I might have missed something. In a dialogue with Nomi, I think, he hints at the situation being fishy, perhaps at a suspicion over M, I do not remember. Bond really does have trust issues 
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My willpower to resist spoilers proved to be low, and I still have a month before I get to see NTTD on a big screen. But I’ve mentally contemplated the information I’ve gleaned. Cavill’s Superman died in his second film. It’s a lot more effective doing such a thing after a strong audience connection has been made, ala Craig’s Bond. If it has to be done, this is how you do it.
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Not if it turned out that those boats were, say, Russian. Federal Security Service, for example… I guess that’s the whole point of the boats being “unidentified”.
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He still has spots.
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We just saw it last night. I’m still processing everything. I’d read a comment along the lines of “Wow … that ending.” It wasn’t a spoiler, but I knew something big was going to happen. Oh well, the perils of reading web-posted comments!
But otherwise, I knew almost nothing about the film other than what was in the trailers. I have read a criticism that “No Time To Die” is overly long. I don’t know how the film could have been shortened without reducing the substantial character interaction, especially between Madeleine and Bond. Another criticism is that Safin is the least menacing Bond villain ever. But when he is holding Mathilde, he is absolutely chilling. That scene had me on the edge of my seat, worrying “What is he going to do with the child?”
Did Mathilde’s Dou Dou seal Bond’s fate? It certainly seems so, both literally and metaphorically. Reaching down and affectionately retrieving a child’s (especially that child’s) beloved knitted toy is something only Craig’s Bond would have done.
I was also struck by the fact that no significant female character died. That’s a first in the Bond film canon. But then, they left it to Bond this time.
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This never happened to the other fellows.
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Saw it last night with my wife, youngest daughter (25-years old and herself a massive Bond fan), and my younger brother (who is as fanatical about all things 007 as I am). I don’t know that I can add much to the conversation beyond what’s already been posted here and has consumed my coffee time this Saturday morning.
In short, I love NTTD. It was everything I have personally wanted to see during Craig’s run. I was longing to see how the Craig era would handle a maniacal villain with a sci-fi tinged global threat and a massive lair with minions to do his bidding while a clock ticked down to doomsday. I got that in spades and somehow EON figured out how to merge that with the grittiness of the previous Craig films and weave legitimate and well-earned emotional impact out of it all to boot.
Fukunaga’s efforts are a masterclass in epic action filmmaking; I hope he returns at some point. He clearly understands this universe. The pacing, camera work, lighting, framing of shorts, editing—it all worked beautifully. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat during almost all of the action sequences, filled with suspense and excitement, which is the exact thing that was sorely lacking throughout SPECTRE. Just compare the car chases in those 2 films!
My daughter openly wept at the end. I admit, I was not prepared for the death of Felix, Blofeld, AND Bond himself. I was exhilarated and spent at the end of the movie. My wife, a casual Bond fan, loved it. My brother and I sat there in shock, unsure what to feel after that ending. Then the last image came across the screen after the final credit… JAMES BOND WILL RETURN. That’s when a tear came to my eye. The Craig era is over, but the franchise lives on. How? I have no clue, but I am reassured that it will in the hands of the people who care more about it than anyone else.
Kudos to Daniel Craig, Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, and Cory Fukunaga. I love when being a fan is rewarded so lovingly.
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I agree. This is the first time the villain wasn’t really interested in Bond, other than as a tool in getting at Madeleine. That was an interesting twist.
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That was Silva’s plan in Skyfall (swapping Madeleine for M).
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Ah, yes, I’d forgotten about that!
Something that has bothered me a little, when Bond uses his EMP watch to blow Primo’s mind, how does his ear piece survive? Shouldn’t that have been destroyed too?
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I think SIS equipment is EMP proof as standard.
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There are a few films where no major female characters die:
The Spy Who Loved Me
Octopussy
The Living Daylights
Goldeneye
Spectre
No Time To Die
I never even noticed that the type color matches the blue in Craig’s (and Mathilde’s) eyes.
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