NO TIME TO DIE Spoilers (production pictures & videos)

You’d think it’d be a pretty easy operation then…

I don’t see there being any way that Bond 25 can help Spectre’s retcons come across any better than they already do. They don’t work in Spectre because they aren’t even remotely organic or, lacking that, even clever. They reek of “we just won a lawsuit and got our most famous villain back, so now he was in charge of it all instead of what we were originally planning, if we had anything planned at all”.

I also don’t see it helping Spectre, as it didn’t have much of an impact on Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, or Skyfall, at least in terms of their value and quality on their own merits as standalone entries (or in the case of Quantum of Solace, in its relation to its predecessor as a planned direct sequel).

Barring the discovery of some alternate cut of Spectre where all of the bad decisions (computer printouts of figures from Bond’s past, I’m looking at you) that were made are magically replaced by good decisions, Spectre will forever be remembered fondly by all involved with Die Another Day for lifting that film out of the cellar of the franchise.

Nope…

yup Spectre retroactively made Casino, Quantum and Skyfall worse in the series ‘canon’ of course you can just choose to ignore Spectre as I do - (I watched it again recently and the film itself is fine - but the story and decisions they made make it amongst the bottom few Bond films) - to me doubling down on that is a bad move and whether it retroactively improves Spectre its still a pointless exercise for a final film to rely on so heavily for the final Craig film

Why pointless?

If BOND 25 can shed more light on Madeleine-Mr.White-Blofeld and the whole Spectre-organization one could see the whole Craig era in better context.

It wouldn’t make SPECTRE a better film - but one could see its place in the whole arc as an exposition.

Fans of Spectre and people who hate it on this forum are like Brits over EU withdrawal…

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There’s one movie left, and to me spending a 2nd movie explaining what wasn’t explained properly in the last one is a waste of time and packages the film with Spectre in a way that is pointless when the story stops after this one (safely assuming Craig is done and that they will reboot/reimagine rather than recast and keep telling the Craig v Spectre/Quantum story). I’m not saying it can’t be good, in fact I have faith in Fukunaga and EON, Craig etc that it probably will be - just you know, I’d rather a good film than a film trying to make sense of the last sub par one or give it context.

Maybe they can manage to do both.

No, being in favor of SPECTRE does not diminish any chances of future economic well-being.

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One can hope

And remember, FYEO had a whole sequence showing Melina’s parents being gunned down. Bond girls can factor into the plot and have sufficient backstory attributed to them.

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Hahahhahahha brilliant

No, no no no! No more reboots! My hope is that Bond 25 wraps up the Spectre/Quantum arc and then Bond 26 just continues Bond’s story without Spectre. That, or if the producers feel Craig’s Bond was a stand alone entity, then they can go back to the original Bond timeline and have Bond 26 take place after Die Another Day. But the last thing we need is another reboot. It worked for Casino Royale as it restarted Bond after the Die Another Day fiasco, but Bond doesn’t need to be reinvented and made cool again. Just make Bond 26 the next story and not another timeline. Also, my Nos are specifically for the reboot/reimagining part of your post, as I agree that I have faith in CJF.

I don’t see them going reboot. They’ll want to avoid immediate comparisons to Craig (as much as that’s actually possible)
Going straight for hard reboot actually invites those comparisons, given Craig is the only Bond to have an origin story rather than business as usual, which I see them wanting to avoid with a ten foot pole.

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When I say reboot/reimagining - I don’t mean them starting again from first mission 007, remaking casino etc, I mean just a new Bond that ignores the Craig era and is not “in continuity” as such (ie: going forward with a new actor, no references to Craig movies (ie: Skyfall, Dench M) even with the same actors in certain roles etc…)

Essentially just going back to the original timeline?

That I can see, going back to pre-Craig era style of “conti…what?”

I’m going to be pedantic here and point out Craig’s is an arc, not a retcon. Silva working for the group is a retcon, but the rest is answering questions raised in the other 3. You can dislike the execution, but they did do the ground work, a final film with Craig going into the few things left dangling would be a complete narrative (obviously how successful it is would be subjective) - which brings me to the point I actually wanted to make, whilst there are threads dangling, they all connect around relationships established by Craig - Trying to continue them with another actor would be going “This is our new lead - Not Daniel, now don’t think about Daniel Craig, not Daniel is closer to Moneypenny’s age than Daniel was, and see how the age gap makes Fiennes more of a superior to Not Daniel than he was for Daniel,”

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basically yes. Back to the original timeless timeline. Though I don’t underestimate our current generations desire for everything to be excessively explained and origin-ised to lead them to reboot completely. It obviously depends if it is more traditional or they give it to someone like Nolan to do his own thing with.

@Orion - They did the groundwork for Quantum imo - not for Spectre, who show up out of nowhere and their leader was suddenly responsible for Casino and Quantum, which were all plans targeted at James Bond out of spite as well as the more egregious Silva retcon - which is why it doesn’t feel like a complete arc but a total shift to another, very similar omniscent criminal organisation for marketing sake

Exactly.

And, as it has been pointed out before many times, every era was a reboot, every era has its own arc.

OHMSS tried clumsily to pretend that LazenbyBond had been on ConneryBond´s missions in order to establish the same timeline - and DAF kind of pretended that ConneryBond wanted to take revenge for the death of LazenbyBond´s wife… (probably Connery imagined himself as a younger version of himself there, as a lesser actor). And MooreBond at least had the memory of LazenbyBond´s wife, too, while still working for the same people as ConneryBond.

I hope BOND 25 continues that way: new actor, established crew, and barely mentioning what CraigBond has done.

What I do not need to see in BOND 26 onwards is another film that tells us how Bond became 007. So, no origin story anymore, please. It wasn’t needed in DR.NO either.

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The Bobby Ewing scenario?

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