Spoilers Really Can Ruin Your Movie Experience | Live Science.
It’s a mixed bag, but spoilers usually don’t ruin a movie for me.
Movies ruin movies for me.
There have been a few instances where spoilers have gotten me to watch a movie I would’ve otherwise dismissed, but nearly all of my favorite viewing experiences have come from going into films almost completely blind–sometimes not even knowing the genre.
The Trailer for Green Knight sold me on the movie, but I wished there were certain scenes not shown in the trailer. When the scenes happened I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t come as a surprise … arrgh
never forgive, never forget!
I thought this was a cute review. Not only does she seem to like the movie, she scatters little name-checks throughout the article.
The A.V. Club didn’t seem to care for it as much.
BBC gives it five stars. Homers!
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210928-five-stars-for-no-time-to-die
Can’t wait for this to hit streaming in 2022.
I thought it was great. Slightly too long at the end but not annoyingly so. I do think the main villain feels underwritten and not particularly threatening. I really don’t get how we went from his origin to the solution he engineers. That’s common to another of the bad guys that appear along the way.
The action is all excellent and some really good stuff in all of the locations they use. It keeps the slightly more ‘real’ feel that they started in Casino Royale.
Lots of great performances but I really enjoyed Ana de Armas turn, both her performance and the character. Jeffrey Wright was also outstanding.
Fitting (and brave) end and it will be interesting to see how they can pick it up.
I was left, though, wishing Daniel Craig was keeping the role.
I haven’t seen this yet but Craig has become my favorite Bond. Connery was great but those movies haven’t aged well.
It will be interesting to see who they get for Bond now. I think Idris Elba is too old unless they only want him for a couple of films.
Sam Heugan of Outlander wants it but I don’t think he can do it. I recently saw him in a Die Hard type of movie, Red Notice, and he didn’t really carry the film well.
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.