No Time to Die [SPOILERS]

[Jonathan101]

So yeah, they just killed James Bond.

Oh, and he had a kid too.

The two laziest ways to change / end a long running character like that- children and death.

The Craig films are basically in their own little "sandbox" (since they kept using that word); they aren't tied to the original 20 films, and they obviously aren't going to be part of any future James Bond movies unless they do a spin-off with the new 007 (who might be a different Double-0 going forward since she gave the number back to James, not that it amounted to much).

Anyway, film was decent but the last twenty minutes were pretty bad. You never learn what the main villains' plan or motivation is beyond vagueries- he wants to kill millions of people to make the world a better place, but how he plans to deliver it or who he is targeting or how he came to these conclusions are all left unsaid. Modern action movies are often written during production and this definitely feels like an example of that.

Bond's death and the aftermath are pretty melodramatic- he's injured and left unable to touch his girlfriend or daughter due to nano-poison, and he has some trouble opening a missile silo from the 50s (which, given the power of modern missiles, seems pretty unnecessary) so he just chooses to sty behind and let himself be blown to smithereens. The bad guy also literally came out of nowhere- last time he saw him he was seemingly leaving his evil lair and had a bunch of goons with him, but he returns at the 11th hour by himself just to shoot and fight James Bond only to be killed.

Action scenes are fine but none are especially memorable and one or two things seem to strain credibility- the film can't decide if it wants to be an over-the-top classic Bond epic or the modern gritty Craig Bond drama so it tries to do both and doesn't do too well at either.

Better than Spectre, but not exactly worth the wait.

[clearspira]

So yeah, they just killed James Bond.

Oh, and he had a kid too.

The two laziest ways to change / end a long running character like that- children and death.

The Craig films are basically in their own little "sandbox" (since they kept using that word); they aren't tied to the original 20 films, and they obviously aren't going to be part of any future James Bond movies unless they do a spin-off with the new 007 (who might be a different Double-0 going forward since she gave the number back to James, not that it amounted to much).

Anyway, film was decent but the last twenty minutes were pretty bad. You never learn what the main villains' plan or motivation is beyond vagueries- he wants to kill millions of people to make the world a better place, but how he plans to deliver it or who he is targeting or how he came to these conclusions are all left unsaid. Modern action movies are often written during production and this definitely feels like an example of that.

Bond's death and the aftermath are pretty melodramatic- he's injured and left unable to touch his girlfriend or daughter due to nano-poison, and he has some trouble opening a missile silo from the 50s (which, given the power of modern missiles, seems pretty unnecessary) so he just chooses to sty behind and let himself be blown to smithereens. The bad guy also literally came out of nowhere- last time he saw him he was seemingly leaving his evil lair and had a bunch of goons with him, but he returns at the 11th hour by himself just to shoot and fight James Bond only to be killed.

Action scenes are fine but none are especially memorable and one or two things seem to strain credibility- the film can't decide if it wants to be an over-the-top classic Bond epic or the modern gritty Craig Bond drama so it tries to do both and doesn't do too well at either.

Better than Spectre, but not exactly worth the wait.

Killing James Bond isn't necessarily a bad thing as heretical as it sounds. It avoids the bullshit of 1964 Sean Connery technically being the same man as 2001 Pierce Brosnan. We all know that he's coming back one way or another. I just hope two things:
1) We don't need another origin story with the next Bond.
2) Its not an excuse to introduce a black, trans, Muslim, lesbian Jennie Bond with one leg.

One question as I haven't seen it: Do we actually see his body? Or are we in store for a ''that's not what cock-a-doody happened'' moment on the next film?

Tbh, I haven't rated the Daniel Craig movies all that highly. I liked Casino Royale. It was obviously Bourne inspired but Die Another Day was bloody awful so they needed to do something. But with every film they just became stupider and stupider. I think overall my scale would go thus:
Sean Connery.
Roger Moore.
Pierce Brosnan.
Timothy Dalton/Daniel Craig.
George Lazenby.

[Jonathan101]

Killing James Bond isn't necessarily a bad thing as heretical as it sounds. It avoids the bullshit of 1964 Sean Connery technically being the same man as 2001 Pierce Brosnan. We all know that he's coming back one way or another. I just hope two things:
1) We don't need another origin story with the next Bond.
2) Its not an excuse to introduce a black, trans, Muslim, lesbian Jennie Bond with one leg.

One question as I haven't seen it: Do we actually see his body? Or are we in store for a ''that's not what cock-a-doody happened'' moment on the next film?

Tbh, I haven't rated the Daniel Craig movies all that highly. I liked Casino Royale. It was obviously Bourne inspired but Die Another Day was bloody awful so they needed to do something. But with every film they just became stupider and stupider. I think overall my scale would go thus:
Sean Connery.
Roger Moore.
Pierce Brosnan.
Timothy Dalton/Daniel Craig.
George Lazenby.

We don't see his body but it would be pretty unlikely for him to survive given how badly injured he was, how many missiles hit the island AND that he clearly was committing suicide.

It's not so much "that" he died, so much as his death felt pretty hollow and forced and was needlessly melodramatic.

They definitely will either a) reboot James Bond, b) bring him back through a b*llshit explanation or c) continue the series with a different character like the female 007 (I think this is unlikely and she didn't really do anything special in this film, but it is possible).

Moore was older than Connery, so if you imagine that Connery-Bond was just a little bit younger than he looked and Dalton-Bond just a bit older, most of the timeline works, even if Brosnan would just be a very good looking 60-something. But I do like the timelessness of "James Bond" , the sort of sliding scale that Marvel comics work off of.

There has been speculation that they might not only reboot Bond but reboot him to the 60s and make all future Bond movies a period piece- that "could" work, but it's a little bit imperfect.

[Thebestoftherest]

I mean do they need to kill him offf to reboot the series. Just have a new bond series with a new bond actor and never mention the other ones in any meaningfulway.

[McAvoy]

I do wonder if killing off Bond will start off the whole 'James Bond 007' as his code name he takes on. It's a old old theory.

[Jonathan101]

An old and terrible theory that never made any sense.

What possible benefit would there be to naming your secret agent after another secret agent?

[Winter]

An old and terrible theory that never made any sense.

What possible benefit would there be to naming your secret agent after another secret agent?

I much prefer the theory that Bond is a Time Lord that somehow ended up on Earth. Think about it, those like Q or M are noted to be different people while Bond is always Bond with the same memories, personality traits and even have the same reaction to things like talking about his wife. The Craig incarnation of Bond can fit with this as it can be assumed that something went wrong and he was demoted and had to become a 00 again.

Note that that Judi Dench's M is pretty much the exact same character from the previous Bond films, even mentioning the Cold War and acts as if she's known Bond for a long time even though he only recently joined MI6 and others act as if Bond has been with MI6 for a long time even though in this continuity he's only been with them for a couple of years yet everyone acts as if it was longer then that.

Also, Bond's reaction to older tech like the classic car, he acts as if he's used this before even though the odds of that are unlikely and Bond's annoyance at the less flashy tech used in Skyfall and Specter as if he's used to using something more over the top. Q even mentions an Exploding Pen and that they don't use that sort of thing anymore.

The only issues with this theory on Blofeld in Specter as his story doesn't work with what we got in the original films and Felix who is also very different and the fact that Craig's Bond seems to have never heard of Specter. However, the last point could be explained as something going wrong with Craig Bond's regeneration which caused some memory loss, even the Doctor tended to forget things (he did need a journal to keep track of everything) and the Blofeld and Felix could just be related to the former characters.

Honestly, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume that Bond and DW share a universe or that they are in different universes as other realities are canon in DW and that Bond was dropped off on Earth as a child to protect him during the Time War.

[Jonathan101]

Note that that Judi Dench's M is pretty much the exact same character from the previous Bond films, even mentioning the Cold War and acts as if she's known Bond for a long time even though he only recently joined MI6 and others act as if Bond has been with MI6 for a long time even though in this continuity he's only been with them for a couple of years yet everyone acts as if it was longer then that.

Actually, she is canonically a different person from Brosnan to Craig. It isn't explicit on-screen, but she has two different real names in supplementary materials (Barbara Mansfield and Olivia Manning, respectively). Referencing the Cold War only shows her age (pretty sure Judi Dench remembers it herself, after all) and she doesn't act like she has known Bond a long time in Casino Royale- she acts like a teacher frustrated with a talented but disobedient student.

As for Bond being a Time Lord...well, Timothy Dalton played Rassilon so...

[CharlesPhipps]

To be fair, Ian Fleming killed James Bond twice. It just didn't stick because, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, the character was bigger than the writer's control over him. That and Sir Ian noted that it was probably bad form to have James Bond dead when he had just gotten his movie deal (Doctor No and From Russia with Love were the only movies he lived to see).

Mind you, my feelings on the subject of the Craig series can be summarized as, "They really doubled down hard on the absolute shit of SPECTRE." I appreciate the attempt to tell a continuing story arc but the story was derailed from Quantum of Solace onward when they decided not to make Vesper's lover the main villain.

[Jonathan101]

To be fair, Ian Fleming killed James Bond twice. It just didn't stick because, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, the character was bigger than the writer's control over him. That and Sir Ian noted that it was probably bad form to have James Bond dead when he had just gotten his movie deal (Doctor No and You Only Live Twice were the only movies he lived to see).

Mind you, my feelings on the subject of the Craig series can be summarized as, "They really doubled down hard on the absolute shit of SPECTRE." I appreciate the attempt to tell a continuing story arc but the story was derailed from Quantum of Solace onward when they decided not to make Vesper's lover the main villain.

Dr No and From Russia With Love, you mean.

Yeah, the plots of these movies are all over the place- unsurprisingly, most of them were written on the fly, and Craig is credited as co-writer at times.

I think it makes sense that Vespers' lover was just a random agent rather than the main villain, but I do think they could have done more with him, making him a henchman of the main bad guy or something rather than just a guy thrown in at the end.

Bond dying isn't really the issue though, just the lame and melodramatic way he goes out. The other thing is that this locks the Craig films into their own little continuity, which makes all seem like a Daniel Craig vanity project.