No Time To Die (Bond 25)

[Old Nehamkin]

Yeah looks cool. Plane that goes underwater. Yes, good. This is the kind of thing that Bond films should have in them.

[Thomas]

And a villainous scheme that threatens

Spoiler alert

millions

[close]

. Going big bolshy Bond for Craig's final outing.

[frajer]

Bloody hell, that looks great. Daft and spectacular. Looks like all involved have remembered Bond films work best as escapism, not a dour dwelling on the life of a miserable spy.

[Old Nehamkin]

Yeah, I'm cautiously excited that they seem to be taking a bit of a step back into the big, maximalist action-adventure territory they've largely ceded to the Mission Impossible films for the last 20 years. Hopefully this film is as grand and romantic as the trailer makes it look and there isn't too much leaden continuity-wallowing or a boring MI6-bound B story that feels like an episode of Spooks.

[idunnosomename]

I'd watch the new trailer, but I simply do not have the time

[dissolute ocelot]

Having sung its praises upthread, I rewatched Goldeneye and it's got great bits but is 70% daft as a brush. Sorry everyone.

Goldeneye has some great set-pieces, a theoretically excellent cast, and a potentially interesting story, but it seems somehow to fail miserably to put it all together. Maybe it's that Bond destroying Moscow in a tank and Alan Cumming mugging frantically don't fit well in a film about British historical guilt and ancient loyalties and betrayals. Maybe it doesn't communicate a sense that the world is in imminent danger, or any tension or urgency. Or maybe it's that Brosnan is kind of a vacuum with no personality (despite how often Dench and others insist he has a personality). Or maybe it's just Sean Bean being exceptionally Sean Beany.

[Lord Mandrake]

Brilliant trailer, exactly the kind of thing that had me doing Partridge Bond moves when I came out of the Camden Odeon as a ten year old having seen Living Daylights with my nan.

[Thomas]

I've visited a fan wiki to remind myself exactly of how Spectre retconned the previous three films:

It also turned out that Le Chiffre was a pawn alongside White, Dominic Greene and Raoul Silva, all of them used by Ernst Stavro Blofeld as part of his true plot to inflict psychological pain on Bond and conquer the world.

That really is monumentally stupid, isn't it? There's no way you can watch Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall, and satisfyingly imagine that Blofeld is somehow vaguely 'behind it all' solely for the sake of personally upsetting James Bond (presumably not bothering to author any pain between 2006 and 2012).

Take Le Chiffre alone. Banker to dictators and terrorists. Fine. So the idea is that Blofeld gets Mr. White to hire Le Chiffre on behalf of a Ugandan terrorist, just on the minuscule off chance that MI6 will send his newly qualified brother along to investigate (and on the even slighter off chance that he will suffer finely tuned 'psychological pain' rather than simply dying/succeeding). Did he also specifically plan for Bond to meet and fall in love with Vesper?

Stupid. Not even good stupid, like sliding down a hill on a cello.

[popcorn]

Yep it is utterly unsatisfying as a twist. More patronising than electrifying.

It's one of those plot elements that's so unconvincing you can't even really accept it as canon, if you know what I mean. It might as well be a crap fan theory you found on Reddit.

[greenman]

I suspect a lot of it comes down to Blofeld being grafted onto the script when the Thunderball rights issues were sorted out, a cheap way to try and link him into Bond. Another problem I'd say they had is that Spectre is still rooted in the kind of villainous ambition of the Craig era which is a level below the world domination we expect from the character. Malik in the new film does look like a return to the apocalyptic level badguys of the Moore era.

[thecuriousorange]

Daniel Craig (52) is almost the same age Sean Connery was in Never Say Never Again (53). That's on TV now and he looks about sixty.

EDIT: Sean Connery was 52 when it was filmed. I guess it really is time for Craig to hang up the cummerbund, although he could pass for mid-forties.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Roger Moore managed to play the role until he was 58! There's movie stars around that age (Tom Cruise (58), Brad Pitt (56), Keanu (56) who don't look out of place in action roles. Liam Neeson is almost 70! I think Craig has been fed up with the role for years now, but I think I'd quite happily do another one for the £20 million he was paid. Or for free.

Connery said himself in interviews that he always looked 10 years older than he was, definitely thought he was older than 32 in Dr. No.

[mothman]

Is this the approved Bond thread? Apparently the runtime has been confirmed as 2h43m, the longest Bond ever.

I've decided I want to see this in the cinema. There's a reason for that - it was going to be the next film me & MrsMoth went to see together, after Knives Out in January 2020 (we don't go to the cinema much). But I'd prefer a less-than-packed theatre to sit in for three hours; pondering whether to wait a week or two...

[Blue Jam]

Yes, I really want to see this in the cinema as well. Been avoiding cinemas because I don't fancy spending an unbroken 90-180 minutes of wearing a mask, plus I've got a VR headset at home which gives me the cinema experience minus the mask and the sound of popcorn and the smell of hotdogs.

Bond is a bit special though, really want to go to the Dominion in Edinburgh for the proper experience.

[Mister Six]

Yeah, I'm cautiously excited that they seem to be taking a bit of a step back into the big, maximalist action-adventure territory they've largely ceded to the Mission Impossible films for the last 20 years. Hopefully this film is as grand and romantic as the trailer makes it look and there isn't too much leaden continuity-wallowing or a boring MI6-bound B story that feels like an episode of Spooks.

All my thoughts, pretty much.

[popcorn]

Haven't they had about ten villains in a row now whose premise is "we're brothers"?

[An tSaoi]

Connery said himself in interviews that he always looked 10 years older than he was, definitely thought he was older than 32 in Dr. No.

Holy fuck. He's my age in that? Jesus.



This makes me feel young and old at the same time.

[mothman]

Someone at work told me that the companies that had product placements in this are stressing now because their featured stuff (cars, tech, clothing) is all last year's models.

[Kelvin]

Someone at work told me that the companies that had product placements in this are stressing now because their featured stuff (cars, tech, clothing) is all last year's models.

I remember a lot of Bond themed adverts in the early weeks of lockdown, presumably because - unlike the film - they couldn't push it back.

[Dex Sawash]

, the longest Bond ever.

[mothman]

I suppose I should have expected that. Oh wait, I did.

[phantom_power]

Stop getting Bond long!

[gilbertharding]

Has anyone listened to the podcast Kill James Bond, at all? It's a bit hacky and zoomerish, but fairly amusing anyway.

[hamfist]

I am subbed to it on Patreon, tickles me a lot ! Their Cars 2 ep was sublime

[Povidone]

Nice to see they thought that "cunt in a hurricane" line from the Spectre trailer was worth bringing back for the trailer for this.

[Old Nehamkin]

Has anyone listened to the podcast Kill James Bond, at all? It's a bit hacky and zoomerish, but fairly amusing anyway.

I see them pop up on my twitter feed now and then but they always seem a bit too smugly contemptuous of the Bond films and people who like them for me to feel very interested in checking out their show. Do they go much further than just sort of pointing and laughing at the movies for being old and dated and not reflective of modern progressive values or whatever? It just feels a bit fish in a barrel.

[gilbertharding]

It is a bit like that, to be honest. I can't listen to it when my wife is there, because she'd just tell me it's shit (which I already know). But, the funny bits are funny - unlike the similarly premised 'Masters of Our Domain' Seinfeld podcast.

[mothman]

I still listen to Smershpod but it doesn't half get on my nerves a lot of the time. The host plainly doesn't know a lot about James Bond - it's frequently obvious he's never read any of the books - and displays a telling lack of intellectual curiosity. And whereas he had some good guests on (Samira Ahmed for one; and the double act of actors Alastair Petrie and Rufus Wright) but all too often they're C-list comedians who think being clever but pretending to be stupid for comedic effect will get them on Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown. And all the recent episodes - I presume lockdowns have been a factor - have featured the one same comedian whose entire act seems to be that he's Welsh.

When it's good (any episode with the aforementioned guests; some of the "sidePods" such as The Long Good Friday one) it's good. But when it's bad (those comedians; any episode that isn't about a Moore Bond, especially the Craigs, which seem to annoy the host) it's dire.

[kalowski]

Hope they call it No Time To Diet like that Robbie Coltrane film.

[Magnum Valentino]

The Al Murray and Sanj Kohli Smershpods are excellent, get em!