Bond. A Daniel Craig Bond. 2021. This Is No Time To Die.

Tom Hardy as Bond and Nolan as director, Cilian Murphy as villain and Michael Caine as Q or M or whatever. Done.

It’s too late for it now, but my dream was for Tom Hiddleston as a period-piece Bond.

Not sure I want a Nolan plot in a Bond film…

As far as I’m concerned, we already got a Nolan Bond film with Tenet.

Does it count as a one liner, if you can’t hear the line over the sound mix?

Yes I am still mad about that.

So, to make clear where I’m coming from: I’ve watched 5 of the worst Bond movies in the last week just to make sure I was properly calibrated. There are no rose-coloured glasses here, everything is fresh in my memory. No Time to Die is a really bad Bond movie. It is is worse than Spectre, no questions asked. I’d probably even rewatch Quantum of Solace over No Time to Die.

The theater was absolutely packed. They were showing this on like 12 screens at the same time. We were 15 minutes late (i.e. literally got in as the last trailer ended) due to massive queues at both the entrance and the ticket check. I think the box office is going to be monstrous, and MGM’s gamble with the delay might have worked out.

I saw the movie in Screen X. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, my usual cinema is basically the first in the world to buy into any new technical innovation. This particular one has stuff projected to the side walls (so basically 270 degrees), not just the screen. It’s horrible, we only see things in Screen X if there is no option, which was the case here since we were late in booking tickets. And I have to say that this time it actually worked better than any of the previos experiences.

But onto the movie itself. Spectre was gorgeous but badly paced. NTD is nowhere near as good looking, and much much slower than Spectre.

The opening(s) were strong, as always, though they do take quite a long while. The Billie Eilish theme song is probably in my top 3 Bond themes. I’ve listened to it dozens of times.

The first act in Cuba is solid too . Ana de Armas might as well not have been in the movie, given how brief her appearance is. (And she has second billing on IMDB! It’s like one of those recent Bruce Willis movies). Lashana Lynch as the new 00 was good. And then all the recurring characters are trotted out for camera time whether the movie needed them or not, and everything just grinds to a halt. You get the first major cliche with Mathilde popping out from nowhere to give Bond that special bit of motivation.

And then we get to the interminable final hour of the movie, where things really falls apart. It becomes obvious that the script writers have started from the ending “Bond has to die, but in a way that’s heroic, inevitable, allowing him to monologue for five minutes, but also a totally pointless sacrifice if you think about it for even one minute”. And they’ve worked the plot backwards from that event only concerned with local consistency.

As the movie nears the end, the actions of the characters make less and less sense. Why does Nomi give up the 007 title? If you’re the kind of person who strives for those titles (and Nomi clearly was), you don’t just give it up for no reason. And Bond had done literally nothing to earn it. He’d accidentally handed the virus to the bad guys, accidentally killed Blofeld, and led the bad guys to his love and his child to get them kidnapped. Everything Bond is touching turns to shit, and the people around him don’t realize it.

Why, when they’re escaping the lair and get to the boat, is it Bond who returns to open the (sigh) blast doors that (sigh) the rockets would bounce off of. I think you literally needed one change in the movie to fix it. Bond gets on that boat and hands the reins to Nomi who goes and kicks ass. He is a civilian who finally has a reason to live. There is no reason to believe he is uniquely well suited for this mission either; based on the movie so far, Nomi would clearly be more competent. And taking this risk is her actual job, the thing she has been training for and signed up for. Or they could go together, because Madeleine is more than capable of taking care of herself. But no, all the women sail off with no discussion, leaving Bond to go alone on his unnecessary manly man suicide mission.

The only reason we have this contrived nanobot virus, the only reason we have Mathilde, is to create a situation that makes Bond into thinking that life is no longer living and just die without a fight. Of course that situation is that they can’t ever again meet the child he only found out about 2 days ago again. In person, that is. Living in a remote hut like Bond had been doing for 5 years and having a Zoom call every weekend would be just fine.

Rami Malek is completely wasted, being given only lines that absolute tripe, while wearing makeup that removed all facial expression and being directed to talk with a ridiculous stilted accent. Why not just hire a guy from Fiverr for the role if you’re not interested in letting the actors act? And what was his villainous plan anyway? Steal a virus that can be customized to individuals, and then instead of doing that customize it to be lethal to millions of undifferentiated people, and sell that undifferentiated virus to some totally unspecified buyers. And this is not just standard grumbling about an illogical villainous plot. The entire (intended) emotional climax of the movie depends on that stupid plan, because the only reason Bond ends up killing himself is the artificial time pressure from these “buyers” arriving in a few minutes.

Also, I’m just not buying the Bond / Madeleine love story at the level the writers clearly intend it to. Which again makes the final act very hard to believe.

That is amazing.

so you suggest, she has dementia, too? Bummer. I started to like Spectre a bit more after repeat watching. Maybe NTTD will be good enough. I liked the first 3 Craig Bonds, too bad, they could not maintain the quality to the end.

I think when Craig started, it was supposed to be more gritty and realistic. No underwater-based Villains etc But they got convoluted again.

I agree with you mostly, but the movie justifies this. The nanobots spreads. Once Bond is out of that island, it’s only a matter of time until they find their way to Mathilde. Unless he doesn’t touch anybody for the rest of his life.

Nanobots. REALLY? At least it is not Moonraker right???

Right, but the implication was that it needed direct skin contact. So as far as infectious diseases go, pretty manageable, especially for somebody who had become a hermit anyway. Maybe it’s a risk you don’t want to take, but it at least seems worth considering for more than two minutes.

Actually, I now wonder about the repeated delays and no streaming. Maybe it wasn’t just about getting the the theaters open, but about avoiding PR issues with releasing a movie about a deadly infectious disease while the pandemic was still on. And they couldn’t fix it with a reshoot of edits since the exact details of the scheme were so integral to the character plot.

Certainly not. It’s taking everything, including the nanobots, very, very seriously.

I did wonder about it too. I actually wonder, since the present day stuff opens with references to smallpox and Ebola, if the agent wasn’t supposed to be a genetically engineered virus and was changed to nanobots in post.

I think you’re right. Some other parts of the setup would make a lot more sense like that, such as the island. Manufacturing nanobots in a rusty WW2 facility by having a bunch of people standing in a pool and stirring the water with poles did seems quite odd…

God that’s good.

Ok, I apologize for going in blind here - haven’t read the thread (or seen the trailer) as I want to avoid spoilers before watching the movie.

However I WOULD appreciate just a quick heads up if its beneficial to rewatch Spectre before going to see this film? Basically I only have extremely vague memories of that one, so if this movie connects / builds on Spectre, I guess I should reacquaint myself. I gather Blofeld and his girlfriend show up again, thus knowledge of those two figures seems to be relevant…

I don’t think it’s a requirement (I didn’t) but may be beneficial.

ok, thanks!

The train fight is worth re-watching. :)

I recommend rewatching Spectre. It would have helped me figure out what some of the character connections are.

There are also references to Vesper Lynd who appeared in Casino Royale.

Wow! I really enjoyed the movie up until the absolute end. Craig’s 2nd best Bond outing. Action felt gritty in a good way. Liked the bridge of classic and more realistic bonds. Great score and use of old and new music. A little too Hans Zimmer am I watching Batman or Bond? Ana de Armas was awesome, wish she had, had more screentime Rest of the cast was good. Rami Malek is such an interesting actor. I can’t tell if he’s amazing or awful, but I enjoy watching him. Things I’m confused by Rami’s not Dr. No except he’s totally Dr. No… and Jason Vorhees. How do you survive so many bullets to the chest?. Q being gay, don’t care other than it just seemed like a forced choice that did absolutely nothing for the character or story other than to say he we’re woke and hip (see Sulu in Star Trek Beyond I’m confused by the nanobots. You’ve got a watch that emits an emp for gods sake and they can’t disrupt the nanobots. Seemed silly. Finally, you don’t kill James Bond. I know. Bond will be back, but just kind of dumb. All in still very enjoyable. Jsnell, I agree with your thinking on the bond delays.