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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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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“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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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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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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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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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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honestly as soon as we heard Nomi as 007 all those years ago - knew it would basically be that
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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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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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This is indeed one of my issues with NTTD: there is no real emotional build up, and eventually no real emotion in the end (apart from the shock of knowing he dies, obviously).
I get it that it was inevitable to have Craig-Bond end this way. His life and adventures could only lead up to tragic fate. Granted. But my problem is I think it was poorly executed: re-using old Bond scores just for nostalgia’s sake, poor last lines, the hero crying, etc. I mean, really, is this all they could come up with? If he had to go, he should have gone tall and proud, witty, “defiant to the last”, with a real emotional twist that would have punched our guts. Here we get 2+ hours of a weak and tired and irrelevant relic (he’s even bullied by the new 007!), and eventually a very low-key end.
I think Bond, and Bond’s death even more so, deserved better treatment.
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Fuller review still to come when I’ve got time to sit down and write something properly, but just wanted to throw one question out there about the ending. Why the urgency for the air strike that it couldn’t wait 15 minutes for Bond to get clear? I get that it was about the ships approaching the island, but that felt resolvable in other ways.
I appreciate the short answer, however, is: it’s a film!
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No Time To Die seems very much to be a validation of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Not just in the various music and dialogue references, but in its very spirit. Being a well made film with an ending that divides the fan base, turning some off to all that preceded that moment, even if it was satisfactory.
In 1969, Molly Haskell, referencing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s ending, said “some of the audience hissed, I was shattered. If you like your Bonds with happy endings, don’t go.” The same response has seemingly been elicited in 2021, showing the real power of cinema and the attachment we have with this beloved franchise. We are hurt because we care.
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But this isn’t like Tracy’s death in OHMSS, which the constant music cues try to remind us of, because her sudden demise effects the hero. What makes me so emotionally involved in the epilogue of OHMSS is that my hero has grown as an individual, beaten the odds and is embarking on a new life of potential happiness. He really does have all the time in the world. That it is cruelly taken from him hits like a blow to the audience’s heart as well as Bond’s.
There’s no growth for Craig’s Bond in NTTD that we haven’t seen before; in fact generally he’s attempting to make up for his past errors. Yet the errors and the deaths keep on coming. Five years away from espionage hasn’t improved his temperament. Indeed, he’s probably even more dark and brutal than before. When he stares at Mathilde in astonishment, Craig-Bond isn’t displaying growth, it is astonishment: how could I have produced such a beautiful thing? Sorry, Dustin, but even the badly edited sentence “This is my family” [again invited at a moment of high tension, not when appropriate and noticeable] doesn’t work because it is effectively played for a laugh.
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Bond is contagious with a virus that can’t be removed. Bond dies, or Madeline and Matilda do.
But yes, kill the kid so 53 year old recluse can live
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Ironically Bond’s arc is to get out of his own head and see that not everything is about him…
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OK, but that doesn’t mean he has to die. He just has to not touch Madeleine or Mathilde. He can still live on, even with pain and heartbreak.
Seeing him quit just because he can’t hold her (and by the way, has anyone heard of gloves?..) is so not Bond. Bond’s not a quitter; that’s one of the very few sacred basic elements that make Bond.
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It seems when the silo doors re-open it’s basically a done deal for Bond. If he’s then shot a number of times it’s going to be a serious struggle to escape in that condition, with a short countdown on top of things. If you can only move in a limited manner is it really giving up?
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I get that bit, but was a bit lost on why the urgency of launching the air strike. They’d found the island and the poison wasn’t imminently about to be released through the population.
Yes, it sounds like just a plot twist to make it seem inevitable, when it’s not. they could have aborted the missiles and relaunch some time after. But they needed to make us think there was no other way.
Oh well, another weakness in this script, which is full of them…
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