No Time to Die (2021 James Bond film). May include spoilers!*

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by shokhead, Nov 27, 2017.

  1. Joker to the thief

    Joker to the thief Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Sure, but my main point is that you've used ad hominem attacks throughout to delegitimise any opinion that doesn't agree with yours, most commonly that anyone that thinks the ending was a mistake is 'over-emotional,' 'handwringing,' or of a 'delicate disposition' and that people will change their minds when they can just calm themselves down enough, and the posts in conjunction read to me like you were trying to minimise any criticism by effectively saying that those that disagree are part of that same anti-woke toxic fandom (and that couldn't be further from my own politics so I bristled at it), and the final post seemed to be suggesting that anyone that didn't like the ending is an old-fashioned, outdated, traditionalist - if I misinterpreted that, then I apologise, but my point was about the reliance on ad hominem attacks (directed against a person, rather than against what that person says). I'm simply pointing out that art is subjective and while you may disagree with someone's response and are free to argue your point, I don't think it is right to keep claiming people are somehow not in control of their emotions because they take a different position to you.

    One other thing I would point out with the ending is that here in the UK these movies are regularly shown on TV on a Sunday afternoon - Sunday afternoon movies is how many of us were introduced to Bond (like you, I'm in my 30s and Goldeneye was my first in cinema Bond, but I had seen many on TV as a child) and at a young age. They're still shown regularly during the day (even the Craig films) and enjoyed in that manner. The producers are aware of that. Yes stories should be told in the best way for them, but it's a bit like if they made a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd shot, killed and ate him - entirely realistic, but maybe not appropriate for Bugs Bunny given its intended audience and the genre of story its telling (which to me, for Bond, is escapist fantasy). I'd hate to see a man ski down a mountain chased by multiple villains shooting at him, jump off the edge and open up a Union Jack parachute just as you thought he was about to plummet in an Ingmar Bergman movie (although I love Bergman), but I thought it was great in The Spy Who Loved Me.
     
  2. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    John Barry didn’t get on with the Norway boys, fine with DD.
     
  3. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US

    And i was thinking about my complaint about the video game narration. "Bond your mission is to enter Blofelds lair, disarm the lasers...." WT! Since when does Bond NEED A COMMITTEE to go on a mission! Everyone gathered around worrying about him? Bond doesn't need any stinking guidance. Bond swims, climbs, parachutes or walk and and MAKES ALL HELL BREAK LOOSE ALONE! That's James Bond!! He gets the job done alone!


    Not that it mattters to you
    when you've got a job
    you've got to do it well
    you've got to give the other fella HELL!
     
  4. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Here's my favorite really dumb question: Does everyone in Spectre share the same DNA?
     
  5. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    Ok. Fair points. And no I don't believe everyone that has a problem with the ending are hardline traditionalists or the sort. I'm probably not as eloquent as I could be. So I'll try to keep that in mind in the future. I still think ultimately a lot of the worry out there will be for nothing...but I will shut up about it for now.

    I think audience's, particularly young audiences , are much smarter in that regard and I don't think the ending will ultimately be a problem.

    Escapist fantasy movies can indeed sometimes have bittersweet endings. See, Avengers Endgame. Escapist fantasy doesn't always mean no one important dies and everything is ok. Young people survived watching Iron Man and Black Widow die. It made them sad (heck it made me sad). But guess what? They're still gonna watch and rewatch and enjoy the earlier Iron Man/Avengers movies and the future and they will still watch and enjoy the Bond films and will continue to watch and enjoy the future Bond installments. It's not going to be that large of an obstacle.

    I would argue out of all the Craig era films , NTTD is the most "Escapist fantasy " film of the 5 film cycle and much more reminiscent of the classic era films..Ending aside.

    Even there, its not like Bond gets killed, bad guy wins, millions die, fade to credits. Nor does Bond die in some comical anticlimactic way or in a gruesome and demeaning way. He dies saving the world as he always has. He saves millions of lives, including those of his friends and his family and literally dies in a blaze of glory like a mythological hero. The world turns on, his friends at MI6 toast fondly to his memory, and his family are alive and will presumably live happily ever after.

    That's hardly like Bugs Bunny being summarily slaughtered and eaten by a hunter with a speech impediment, right?

    To put James Bond in the same category as a wiseguy cartoon rabbit is almost an insult to 007..but I'll let it slide ;)
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2021
  6. dolstein

    dolstein Senior Member

    Location:
    Arlingon, VA
    +1 I don't think they'll do it, because I think it's probably just easier for them to keep making the same kind of movie with lots of high tech gadgets and lots of explosions. They want to make
    I find the idea of doing these as period pieces very appealing. And yes, they've pretty much exhausted what they can do with a modern Bond.
     
  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Naw, I know a little bit about EMP's. It's bullspit. In fact, I object to an ear-sized transmitter/receiver/microphone/speaker that can work in an underground tunnel. Trust me... it don't work for more than about 20 yards. There's a lot of silly stuff like this in movies where you kinda have to shrug and go, "eh, that's silly, but let's move on." Bond films have been filled with this crap for 60 years.

    One small example: in You Only Live Twice, Blofeld has a giant rocket that he somehow manages to launch and land on an island in Japan, and he can take it up to outer space and capture American and Russian orbiting spaceships. And Blofeld even has the ability to watch the spaceship grabbing the manned ships on a monitor. But then you ask: "wait a minute. The monitor shows Blofeld's ship and the other spaceship. Where the F is the camera? A third spaceship?" There's a lot of stuff like that in these films that make you roll your eyes. If I noticed stuff like this in the theater when I was 12, you know the writers knew it, too, and just let it go, hoping nobody would scrutinize it too much.

    I've worked on a lot of movies where I'd turn to the director and say, "hey, that made no sense. What about XYZ?" And the director would answer, "yeah, but hopefully the audience won't notice it." Or "c',mon... we're not making a documentary here. This is just entertainment!" How far can you push our incredulity? There's a fine line with movies, even with Bond films.

    Very well-said -- I agree 100%. I actually got a little choked-up in the theater, because I said, "damn -- this is a guy who went out on his own terms, and won even as he died." If I was an ad writer, I would've said, "it's the only way to live."
     
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  8. Mr D

    Mr D Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    I don't know if I like the idea of remaking the original stories or not. They already tried with Never say Never. There would be too much comparison and complaining when the story deviates as it likely would. I say don't go there. Doing a period cold war story set in the 60's may be fun and work but then it would have to be a bunch of middle aged white guys all smoking and womanizing and how would that play today with everyone so sensitive about such things?

    I say just give us new stand alone missions that are serious, yet believable with a bit of humor. The new bond can grow and evolve without having to serialize it. And keep em coming, with a new movie every 2-3 years. 5 movies in 12-13 years, then reboot.
     
  9. shokhead

    shokhead Head shok and you still don't what it is. HA! Thread Starter

    Location:
    SoCal, Long Beach
    When was the last reboot?
     
  10. Mr D

    Mr D Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    2006
     
  11. Joker to the thief

    Joker to the thief Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    He's already stopped the nannites when he makes the informed choice to commit suicide. Not only that, but it is strongly implied that by launching the missiles M may have started a war with multiple other nations, so Bond has hardly saved the world at the end - he's just taken what he considers to be the lesser of two evils (this is quite far away from the more definitive ending of Avengers Endgame where it is abundantly clear that the world has indeed been saved). In fact if a war does go ahead, Saffin will have completed his poorly defined (one of the big weaknesses of the movie to me is the motivation of the villain, and, in fact Saffin in general) plan of random purification - ok, not through the nannites, on a smaller scale and he won't live to see it, but he's still by-and-large won. This is a movie where Bond thoroughly loses, where he fails to save the world and leaves it in a worse state than he found it, and without him there to keep protecting it. Plus, I think Marvel fans are pretty aware from decades of it happening in comics (and something that turns me off that universe), death in Marvel is far from permanent. Death in Bond has always been permanent, and if they reverse that Bond may be back, but I won't.

    My point with Bugs Bunny is not that they're the same thing, but that the type of story you're telling and audience expectations narrow the available and appropriate story choices. It's the same reason you can't have a slasher movie where no-one dies, or an adventure movie that takes place entirely in someone's kitchen. Bond movies have largely been escapist fantasy until now (the books I would not describe in the same way), and that does create certain genre expectations. The fun with Bond until now has been "well how's he gonna get out of this one?" and even when they've killed off other characters, Bond has always won the day, which doesn't really happen here.

    I liked the movie, I just found the ending a bizarre choice in a continuous franchise and given that Bond is escapist fantasy.
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2021
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  12. JohnG

    JohnG PROG now in Dolby ATMOS!

    Location:
    Long Island NY
    I didn’t stay for the credits, does this on have the banner James Bond Will Return??
     
  13. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Yeah, it does. I find it kind of disingenuous to kill off a character and then immediately say he will return. Usually when a series gets rebooted, it's because a new creative team comes on and is either trying to recover from a disastrous movie in the franchise, or has a new vision for how to continue. But for the same exact creators to both end a series and promise to reboot it in one breath, cheapens the whole impact of the death and makes it seem like a marketing gimmick. I guess there's a slight chance the next movie takes place in the same continuity, further in the past, but that seems unlikely. And I think we know Bond isn't going to survive somehow, and continue on with an actor of Craig's age. If the Craig series was supposed to be a self-contained Bond universe, with no connection to the rest of the canon, I wish they had somehow made that clear from the beginning.

    I rank the movie overall in the middle of Craig's Bond series. The action and the villains were pretty good I think. The action was very much in the car chase, gunfight, fistfight realm, without too many of the kinds of jaw-dropping stunts the series used to be known for, but it was very smoothly executed. The villains' scheme was pretty interesting and seemed trendy with the kind of modern technology that's being talked about now. Maybe more trendy than they even knew when they filmed it, now that the conspiracy theory is out there about the COVID vaccines containing government nanobots.

    I thought it didn't entirely escape the bloated feel of the Craig run. The story could've been greatly simplified. There's no reason the MI6 needed to be involved in the production of the bio-weapon. The whole MI6 crew seemed to be shoved into the movie as fan service. Bond could've and should've gone this adventure more solo, since it was such a personal story anyway. He could've gone from the attack on the Spectre party to interrogating Blofeld to getting to the island without the aid of MI6. If he needed some help, Ana de Armas' character could've been the one who he partnered with on the island, instead of having her disappear while the movie bloats up with more characters. Just bring in MI6 for a "funeral" cameo at the end. We certainly didn't need another rushed "the world is on the brink of war" subplot thrown in at the end like we also saw in Wonder Woman 84.

    The writing and logic of the movie wasn't as tight as it should've been. Why was Swann still staying at her childhood home where she could be easily discovered by the same people who targeted her family before? How do characters just randomly find each other in the right place at the right time, like the daughter finding Bond and Swann in the villain's HQ? I think Bond walks into a random bar at one point, and both the villain and an MI6 agent are already in there. How can Bond find every room he needs to in the villain's HQ based on directions like "go up?" The idea that Bond would lose his cool and choke Blofeld was pretty silly, and clearly only there to make the plot happen the way they wanted it to happen.

    Ultimately, I think this movie still shows that the Craig series needed a lighter touch to really work. There's a lot of heavy personal drama put in here, but it's not all that convincing, especially in a world of killer nanobots and poisonous plant gardens. This is melodramatic writing, where the characters get into soap opera situations based on contrivances of the screenplay more than natural human behavior. The actors do a good job selling it, but we're still firmly in the kind of familiar soap opera territory that we've seen before in movies like Star Wars, Superman Returns and Indiana Jones 4, with the hero meeting a child that he isn't aware belongs to him. This is the kind of cliche that occurs in movies all the time, while being almost impossible to happen in real life. The ultra-serious tone of this movie doesn't quite gel with the preposterous nature of the plot.

    They're still doing the Chris Nolan Dark Knight approach with this series, but I don't think it's what I'm really looking for anymore from a movie like this. The world's gotten pretty dark lately, and I'm looking for some escapist fun to put a smile on my face, something more like the older Bonds.
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2021
  14. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    Yes! Yes it does..
     
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  15. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    There was that Baby Herman cartoon that opened Who Framed Roger Rabbit though, "Somethin's Cookin'." :p
     
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  16. Joker to the thief

    Joker to the thief Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I completely agree with all of this and think you've stated it far better than I would have. Something I've found strange with the Craig run is how they've simultaneously leant into realism with Bond, while heightening the cartoonish-ness of the villains, and reviving some of the more pantomime elements of the Connery era (I'm looking at you Spectre) - it makes those elements stick out like a sore thumb and highlights just how silly they are, and - for me at least -pulls you out of the world a little.

    Another thing I found odd in the movie was the logic of having Madeline as a young child and Saffin as a grown adult in the opening sequence. There's a 4-year age gap between Rami Malek and Lea Seydoux in real life, and - perhaps more importantly - they look around the same age on screen. I, mean, you could argue it as a neat inversion of Holllywood's traditional tendency to have a woman only slightly older than the male lead play his mother (see North by Northwest), but that didn't make it any more convincing while watching it.
     
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  17. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    I didn't say it was scientifically accurate. I was just going with the context clues of the film in regards to why the EMP watch didn't destroy Bond's ear piece. Again as you said, most of Bond's gadgets don't/can't exist in the real world and that's been the case for almost 60 years.


    I do get why some people are reacting so negatively to Bond's demise here. It's never fun to see a childhood hero die, even if this was at the end of the day, just one variation of said hero in a closed cycle story arc. It's a near taboo with Bond. I get that. If I wrote this movie, I probably would have had a Dark Knight Rises style cop out where we see Bond is in the Aston Martin with his girls as they drive the countryside...the fairytale happy ending and I'd be wrong.
     
  18. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Two of the best moments were Craig crushing the American guy and the other 00 killing the scientist. But it seems like those should've played as funnier moments. They play a little too cold. because the whole movie is so dark, and the characters are so stoic and serious. But the one time they try to insert some random comedy in, when Lashana Lynch's character starts questioning if Bond has taken the 007 moniker back, it plays as much too silly, like something from a sitcom.

    I know Craig said they were getting away from comedy in his run because of Austin Powers. But I think we're in a different era now, and we need a lighter tone to return in future Bond movies.

    Maybe they thought his scars would cover up his aging? But I couldn't tell he had aged at all from the opening to later in the movie. Maybe his mask should have stayed on during the opening, and we'd only hear his voice and see the edge of his chin through it.
     
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  19. Joker to the thief

    Joker to the thief Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I think this is the crux of the disagreement - whether you see it as variation and a closed cycle. I - and I suspect I’m not alone - see The Eon bonds as a continuous character where the dates and actors have changed for practical reasons, but the continuity has remained and it is clear it is intended to be the ongoing adventures of the same character - and Eon through the years have played into that interpretation throught their callbacks to past adventures and callbacks to things like Tracy Bond’s death. They’ve also played into that with their decannonisation of never say never again
     
  20. PH416156

    PH416156 Alea Iacta Est

    Location:
    Europe
    Conney in DAF looked a lot older. He was just 41, 4 years since YOLT but looking at him, you could say a decade or more had passed.

    Craig said several times that the physical aspect is one of the reasons why he's leaving, his body can't take it anymore.

    I saw the Graham Norton special with him, Seidoux, Malek and Lynch and he said that he starts training six months before shooting begins for a Bond movie (he speaks as it's ordinary business but there have been 3 Bonds in the last 10 years).

    The rest of the time, he said: "I eat and drink". And it shows.

    He aged considerably from Quantum to Skyfall already.

    Spectre should've been a 2014 release but EON waited for Mendes to end his work at the Royal National Theatre. And another major gap after Spectre because Craig wanted to stay with the family and the baby daughter. Good old Cubby would've shown the door and pick somebody else.

    Making the right choices and without waiting for the whims of spoiled movie stars, the Craig era should've ended in 2014 or 2016. Nobody was expecting a pandemic but we should've had a new actor by now, prepping his second film.

    I'm under the impression he let himself go...ending his ride 5,6 or 7 years ago would've been fine. I watched him (usually with Malek doing promo interviews here and there and his face is becoming fuller and fuller).

    Spot on about him already looking older and tired in Spectre.

    That's the 50y.o. Craig at the 2018 BAFTA Awards (public event, not some stolen paparazzi pic), same age as Roger Moore when he made "The Spy who loved me" and Brosnan on "Die Another day". Moore still looked decent at 54 when he did "For your eyes only" and Brosnan still looked great at 53-54

    [​IMG]

    That's Brosnan at 51 in 2004 with Naomie Harris, incredibly she hasn't aged a bit in 17 years

    [​IMG]



    There was space for one more Brosnan movie before the reboot and keep the franchise active.

    If WB were able to make 8 insanely successful Harry Potter movies in 10 years, no reason why EON couldn't do the same. I'm perplexed regarding the Amazon deal, but I don't see Bezos happy with a movie every 3, 4 or 6 years.

    Picking a guy pushing 40.y.o. and making 5 movies in 15 years means showing the actor noticeably older compared to the previous film
     
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  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That ain't gonna happen. We live in different times. Bear in mind the last Austin Powers movie was 20 years ago.
     
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  22. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    I think Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation had the lighter tone I'm talking about. That was an incredibly fun, breezy spy film, that by no means became a self-parody. But the hero was allowed to poke fun at himself in some scenes. There was witty banter back-and-forth between the characters. And the characters were allowed to use deadpan humor to deal with the tension. It was still able to feel exciting, suspenseful and dangerous when it was supposed to. Rogue Nation didn't weigh itself down with heavy drama or life-changing events in the characters' lives. You had a good time watching it because you could tell the actors were having fun, and you never felt like the movie was going to hit you with anything too dark or depressing. Like in older Bond movies, the stunts looked incredibly dangerous, but you never believed the heroes' lives were really at risk. That would be my template for the tone of the next Bond "reboot."
     
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  23. PH416156

    PH416156 Alea Iacta Est

    Location:
    Europe
    The MI stunts were incredibly dangerous and real, Tom Cruise performed that stuff himself, something that puffy Craig (a much better actor, though) could only dream.



    I read somebody's NTTD review online and he said "At the end of a Bond movie, I used to exit the theater punching air and cheerful, not depressed"

    On a happier note, great article about the DB5 sequence. Enjoy!

    A star is reborn: Behind the scenes of No Time to Die with the DB5
     
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  24. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    Ok....so if its supposed to be one continuous story...explain the fact that the previous Bond movies dealt with SPECTRE and Blofeld...and now these movies were dealing with an entirely different Blofeld who happens to be Bonds foster Brother and a SPECTRE he didn't know even existed until last film. Are we to believe Bond has faced two different SPECTRE organizations and two different guys named Ernst Stavro Blofeld? And if its one guy, how the heck did he come back from getting dropped to his death in to a smoke stack?

    Also, note Craig's films never mention Tracy or Bond being previously married. You get the impression there was just Vesper and now Madalyne Swann with everyone in between being a passing fancy. If Tracy existed and he was married...you would think it would have come up at some point, especially since Blofeld killed her. You would think Blofeld would bring it up to taunt Bond. So either everyone has amnesia regarding Tracy, or she was retconned away.

    Not to mention having Judy Dench M at the beginning of Bonds career, then a few other Ms...and bam! Judy Dench M meets Bond again for the first time.

    To be fair, circa SKYFALL the Craig films have played it a bit looser with its continuity, and I chalk it up to being the 50th anniversary installment and Sam Mendes wanted to use the Astin Martin from Goldfinger and portray Bond as having been an agent with a lot of miles on him. If one wanted to via creative head canon, perhaps one could have placed the pre 2006 films back into continuity somehow in the space of time between QoS and Skyfall. It sorta kinda works....but barely.


    However, both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solice drew a pretty clear and solid line underneath itself and previous instalments continuity wise, and SPECTRE established that Bond was encountering Spectre and Blofeld for the first time which pretty much erases or greatly alters the events of the entire Connery run save maybe for Goldfinger. Yeah you can perhaps work around it and come up with various possible solutions to make it all work to your satisfaction...but again it requires basically having to use head canon...and you are welcome to do so.

    Still the facts on the table and what we see on screen and all the contradictory stuff points to one fact....the Craig films are a separate canon to the pre Craig films and while we are following the same character at his core, and some events may overlap here and there, Daniel Craig's James Bond isn't the same James Bond that Connery,Lazenby, Moore,Dalton and Brosnan played. Its a parallel timeline.
     
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  25. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Barry didn’t get on with them as he wanted ( and got ) typical JB Bond motifs added to the songs arrangement. That was last good Bond tune ... although Casino Royale is pretty effective, more rock song esqe.
     

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