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So there’s one very minor plot detail I still can’t quite figure out - in Jamaica Bond takes a shower outside. We then see him dressed and he pulls his gun out of his waistband. He pushes a button and a drawer opens. He puts the gun in the drawer and removes another object.
Why does he put his gun away before heading out? And what is the object he takes? My best guess on the object is a cell phone that he might have had turned off in order to stay off the grid, but I’m not sure why they would make it a point to shows us not wanting to take a weapon with him…
What was that again, a Browning HiPower? Big butt (no offence) that’s going to stick out. You don’t really want to carry such a thing through an evening in a tropical climate. People will notice, chances are even the wrong people will notice, like that one incorruptible police officer on the squad. Without a permit one better avoids being seen with a gun sticking out from the waistband.
None of which of course needs to concern a Bond film. I take it just as showing Bond’s not gone entirely soft - but neither is he expecting trouble.
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Right, but the reason it still remains puzzling to me is that he had just taken a shower and gotten dressed, which means he had just put the gun in his waistband only to walk to his living area and remove it again presumably minutes later.
It’s a quirky little series of events when you add them up…
Any thoughts on what he takes out of the drawer?
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Odd indeed.
On that thingy he takes from the drawer: my best guess is a mobile. Or perhaps the keys to the Landrover, though they’d probably be smaller.
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I think this is the answer. Bond is suspicious around his house but not alarmed enough yet to raise his defences everywhere else.
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Indeed, it is the Browning HP. The classic standard issue workhorse of the SAS/SBS.
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I thought the only reason he opened the drawer was to show the audience that he kept newspaper clippings of Blofeld’s incarceration.
There’s an image of the open drawer in the Making Of book.
Various notes (one sheet has the headline “Spectre”) and notebooks, some photographs (not sure about the persons, one of them could be Dr Vogel), key ring with two keys, prayer beads, a commando dagger, one newspaper clipping about Blofeld, some documents, one of which seems to have the word “Belmarsh” on them, an old photo album, various small items (staples etc.), two passports (Argentina and U.S.), the gun and a mobile phone.
Must have been the mobile phone he grabbed. Thinking about how we’ve been used to mobile phones being much more visible and recognizable than necessary in Bond movies (cough), it’s rather unusual that for this scene, we even have to go back and check what item that was.
This might be on of those case of “dated devices”, possible that a reshoot with the new device couldn’t be done, so they decided to not show the old device at all (or only in passing). Had the movie come out earlier, there might have been a shot into the open drawer, with the phone clearly identifiable…
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Can Primo see out of his bionic eye?
Or is Madeleine’s botany not up to snuff and she’s misidentified the tea plant?
First time I read that Bond would die in the next film was in connection with „Logan“ and Craig’s desire to go there. After NTTD Craig said he proposed it already after CR, so that’s what P&W were told to do.
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I like how one of them said that there was no master plan.
I must say, I’m shocked. The continuity hangs together so perfectly you’d think that they’d mapped out every second of the five films way before they even cast Craig in the role. 
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P&W were definitely following a general template for the ending, so if people want someone to blame it’s not them. I’d be interested to hear how they really feel about penning it for the first time in Bond history. Knowing it was 100% Craig’s last was a huge factor in playing this card.
The question for me is “how strong is this character?” Does killing him in one story topple everything? No way. I’m not advocating for it, but you could kill him 100 more times and he’s never going away.
Batman has been killed twice recently (The Flash and the Gotham Knights videogame) but that didn’t change anything in how I perceive that brand or character. There are so many incarnations and stories that it’s either an interesting inversion or easily dismissed. It’s kind of like burning a nation’s flag. The burn-ability makes it indestructible - the iconography is too strong.
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In contrast to previous new eras the next one will for the first time break any continuity with the former, simply because it has to.
I would be very disappointed if EON kept the Mi6 crew like they did in earlier times. Even doing „the Dench“ will not work, IMO.
I believe recasting completely and going a different thematic way (no personal traumas) would be the best way to start again.
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I would agree that I wouldn’t want them to bring back the Craig MI6 crew for the new Bond. Those characters should stay within that arc.
Even if they wanted to pull what they did with Dench and bring Fiennes back, I’m not sure that’s really even feasible. They did so wrong by the M character in No Time to Die that I just can’t see how Fiennes can be brought back, even if it’s a different character. I wish that weren’t the case, because I love Fiennes as M, or at least the idea of him as M, but the writers didn’t do him any favors whatsoever with how they wrote that character, especially in the last film.
Plus, given how long of a gap we’re going to have between the last film and the next one, it’s probably a good idea to start completely fresh anyway.
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I agree with you on everything. I would love to see Ralph Fiennes comeback as Sir Miles as M, but the writing on M TRULY needs to change. I feel that EON was making M’s SF death more of a tribute to Dench herself than M as a character. Silva should have seen it happen. Judi Dench’s M just got to about repeating herself. She created 2 villains based on her personal opinions. She also threw James Bond under the bus multiple times, based on him following her orders on assignment. The biggest offender of her M is when she criticized Bond. Then she would ALWAYS say he was the best in MI6 and that she always believed in him. No sympathy from me when she died. Just a poorly overused character. Judi Dench shouldn’t be considered as high in Bond royalty. Bad writing. Ralph Fiennes M had this happen to him in NTTD. Enough from me.
The biggest question is: will EON be courageous enough to stop the „Bond is a traumatized, layered character“-train and withstand the obligatory reviews which will snigger at „Bond is back to the Moore-era again“?
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On the other hand… the bigger the gap between NTTD and the next one will get, the more the audience doesn’t realy remember what M did in the last one, they only know Fiennes as M. Maybe Broccoli and Wilson will count on that and just ask Fiennes to return in the part to have some known actor back.
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I have faith that they will go a different way.