The James Bond spoiler and discussion thread

[TrueBlue4ever]

So I saw the new Bond film “No Time to Die” on opening night. Had heard rumours about the plot for a while, and had some speculation on which way they were going to go. I’ll say that my original guess was wrong, but the rumours were true. Some really big stuff happens in the movie. So if anyone wants to discuss plot points, be aware that there are MAJOR spoilers in here. Last warning, don’t scroll down if you want to see the movie first. And even more importantly, if you hate my long posts, don’t even bother diving into this epic poem. Here we go……….

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So, my original thought was that this was going to be a re-make of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” with Madeline Swann being killed and setting up the Bond revenge arc, since a lot of the Craig series has been a re-boot of the original Bond story. And there are hints at it, from an opening scene line “we have all the time on the world” offering major foreshadowing. There is even a subtle replaying of the action theme from “OHMSS” in a mid-movie scene, and the movie closes with the Louis Armstrong song that closed “OHMSS” as well. So, does Madeline die? No. Does someone significant die? Oh yeah. Multiple people, in fact. First, Felix Lighter gets offed about a third of the way in. And then even bigger, Blofeld gets killed (by Bond himself, albeit unintentionally). But those aren’t even the biggest twists. One - Bond has a daughter with Swann he did not know about for five years, and two, the biggest shock of all…..James Bond is killed at the end. When Craig said he was done, I did not expect him to take Bond with him. 
So yes there is foreshadowing and hints dropped in the movie, and I kind of saw it coming to be honest, but still a real surprise. Apparently the original director, Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire fame) quit the film over creative differences. Well we know now that the argument was over killing Bond - he was dead set against it, so he was let go. That’s when the rumours first leaked in Britain that Bond was going to die. 

And as the end was coming, I kept imagining how they might throw a curveball and resurrect him in the next film. The finale has Bond needing to blow up an island where a virology lab exists with a deadly plague being manufactured (ironic that the original release date was right when COVID exploded worldwide). The island was a WW2 silo so there are blast doors that need to be opened to expose the lab when MI6 missles are launched to destroy the facility. Bond opens the doors and is going to escape but the villain re-closes the doors, and when Bond goes back he is shot and mortally wounded (actually shot twice, falls, and then the villain has a clear shot into his back while he is down from mere feet away, yet he survives that). They fight and Bond overpowers and kills the baddie, but not before he is infected with the virus. The key to the virus is that it is DNA encoded, so it can target a specific person and kill them pretty much instantaneously upon touch, but be harmless to the carrier. The movie reveals that there is no cure, so once you are infected it is with you for life. The DNA virus Bond gets infected with is targeted for Madeline, so Bond would kill her or their child as soon as he touches them. So bleeding heavily, he needs to re-open the blast doors again and won’t have time to escape. Plus, he re-confirms that the virus  had no cure so he does not want to live and kill his family later anyway. So he bids a tearful goodbye to Madeline (over a radio communication) and stands above the silo while missles rain down on him. 
 

So could he have somehow survived? Well, one theory I have is that since the blast doors would have blocked the missles from getting through, he could have ducked behind them and survived the blast. As for the virus, it was controlled by nanobots (which is how they could be coded to someone’s specific DNA profile) so if there was an electrical component to them, perhaps they could be fried so as to neutralize the virus. And just before he embarked on the mission, Q gives Bond a watch with an EMP device in it to destroy any electrical circuit and bypass computer-locked doors (small nitpicky point here - Bond uses the watch twice, once with spectacular results during a fight, and yet his radio earpiece he has never gets fried so he can keep communicating with Q - important so he can have his final goodbye with Madeline, but still a plot hole). So maybe Bond could use the EMP to kill the nanobots as well. 
 

Problem with that theory is twofold - one, if he can survive he would go back to Madeline and their child one would assume, unless he does the Spider-Man thing where he knows they will always be in danger if he lives, so he chooses to pretend to stay dead to protect them, and goes on in secret as an agent. The second problem is that the way the ending is filmed, they pretty much show him getting blown up by the missles, and his smart blood tracker being monitored by Q is shown going offline, just to make sure we get it that he is dead. 

So what now? The end credits run the tag line “James Bond will return” so how exactly? A few theories on that. One - they find a way to make him survive (and I just gave a plausible script for it, if you discount the filming that SHOWS HIM BEING BLOWN UP. Two - the name James Bond is a code name, so whoever gets the 007 number also inherits the name. Would be neat, and then even more than ever separate all the different Bond actors as their own entities in the storyline. There was a cool moment where Bond goes to see M in his office, and on the walls are portraits of the past M’s, including Judi Dench and the second M, Robert Brown, it would be neat in future movies to see portraits of all the Bonds, and give a brief history of each to the new Bond recruit, also have some fun with it

Connnery - this Bond retired after he killed Blofeld and finished his revenge spree. 

Lazenby- this Bond left the service after his wife was murdered (maybe committed suicide?)

Moore - discharged with honours after reaching mandatory retirement age

Dalton - went rogue after being expelled from MI6, last known whereabouts was South America and believed to be working as a hit man for hire. 

Brosnan - after we left him for dead in a South Korean prison by MI6, he got his revenge by stealing a cache of diamonds we sent him to retrieve and has disappeared (presumably in his invisible car)

Craig - died in active service

Now the headache there is that some plot points carried over between actors (both Connery and Moore made reference to his wife Tracy’s death after Lazenby’s character had experienced it in his movie) and others have been re-told in different timelines (Craig basically re-booted the series and the Blofeld angle, so he does not exist either as a stand alone or as following the Bond arc the other actors started, he is telling the same story in a different parallel universe (the multiverse seems to be the new go to in Hollywood). The other issue is that Craig’s Bond explicitly referenced his parents whose last name was in fact Bond, so it has not been established as a code name. 

Second option is being him back to life and pretend he did not die, but that kills and emotional heft this movie had. 

Third option is do what Craig did and just create a new Bond in a new universe and start in a different timeline. Could always re-visit other stuff like 1960’s Cold War espionage. But then it erases all of Craig’s legacy. There is something nice about referencing the previous franchise. But Craig’s Bond got too caught is serialized storytelling rather than having each movie stand independent of the others, and it already erased the legacy of all the prior Bonds, so there is precedent to this idea. 

Fourth, create a new 007 who is not Bond and just carry on. They already did that in this movie, but are you really going to bury the line “Bond. James Bond” forever now?

Option 5, just call it quits  Bond has been played out, and basically shifted into Jason Bourne territory, and Mission Impossible has taken over as the new indestructible super agent with gadgets franchise  But his name brand recognition of James Bond and the movie profits that it can generate virtually guarantee this won’t happen.

One last thought on Craig’s Bond. I was weaned on Bond in the Roger Moore era, so o was used to the tongue in cheek humor and wild gadgets. I found it hard to rank Connery’s performance with the others because of this, and his movies are very dated compared to the others - the sexism in them has aged terribly. But I think Craig takes a run at being the best ever, and ironically it is because he is the most unBond-like character of them all. You saw him get hurt. He quit the job 3 times. Rather than being a heartless invincible spy like the books had him be, he is an assassin with a heart, whose conscience eats away at him. There is far more emotion and character development In this movie than any other Bond action film, even topping the death scene in OHMSS which was the only other time Bond was treated as a human being an not an unstoppable killing machine, impervious to pain or injury. I think the change was for the better, as the movies had become a parody by the time he took over from Brosnan. But once they broke the formula, what could they do but kill him off? Curious to see what direction they go next, but it will be tough to re-invent the character again, or go back to his original immortal spy idea, since it became boring too. 

Anyone else see it yet? Thoughts on the story choice to give him a kid and kill him off, who the next Bond will be, and where they go from here?

Edited October 13, 2021 by TrueBlue4ever

[Tracker]

For some reason, you forgot to include David Niven and Peter Sellers Bond portrayers in your 007 review.

[TrueBlue4ever]

1 hour ago, Tracker said:

For some reason, you forgot to include David Niven and Peter Sellers Bond portrayers in your 007 review.

Thought it would make my post too long, lol. 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

On 2021-10-10 at 7:35 AM, TrueBlue4ever said:

Anyone else see it yet? Thoughts on the story choice to give him a kid and kill him off, who the next Bond will be, and where they go from here?

I saw it couple nights ago. First I want to thank you for the first post. Definitely up there for post of the year on this board.

Now as for the film...I really was ho-hum on it. The villain was meh and I like Rami. I kept thinking this was just a better version of Quantum and you can't make that a good film.

Bond franchise has always been weird. Decades go by, actors replaced but they are essentially still playing the same characters from 1962.

Now the Craig franchise was basically a reboot of everything with the exception of Judy Dench. He got his license to kill at the beginning of Casino and died at the end of this. The start and the end of Bond....and Felix....and Blofeld.

I love Craig as Bond but if you're rebooting the whole thing perhaps they should not have hired a mid-late 30s actor. Maybe it would not have mattered anyway, they all get tired of it after so many.

It's been brought up and worth mentioning again perhaps they should have just left Bond in the 60s.

 

 

[Noeller]

I really enjoyed it and was certainly surprised that Bond was killed off for the first time ever. I chuckled that Craig wanted to make absolutely sure that he wasn't coming back for another. Ha ha.