No Time To Die — Review Thread

to get a finale arc.

If the movie hadn't ended with Bond dying there's a decent chance this would be my second or third favourite of the Craig era. Especially because there is a window for a far more appropriate ending in my opinion, if James had survived but still been exposed to the virus, meaning he could never see Madeleine or his daughter again. So, he returns to MI6. He can't see his loved ones because it would kill them (a nice metaphor for how Bond always brings death to the women in his life) and soldiers on as 007. This would also give greater weight to Nomi returning that number to Bond, this notion that this is who he is inevitably meant to be. It's brooding and tragic, which is appropriate for Craig, and also fits in nicely as reflection on the series as being everlasting.

I'm definitely closer to just being anti-killing Bond on principle, but ultimately I agree, it could potentially work, but it's an ending that really needs to be earned. And this movie does not do that.

James abandons her in the coldest possible way in the opening and completely cuts her off for five years and it turns out she has his kid. And when they finally come back together, she barely seems mad at him. We can talk about the problematic writing of women in these movies, but I'd argue that's a very egregious sign of a weak and submissive character. Just because she isn't as aggressively sexualized and knows how to use a gun does not a progressive character make.

I don't see Tracy or Vesper putting up with that shit.

No Time to Die will forever be remembered as the one where James Bond dies at the end, sacrificing himself to definitively thwart the villain's scheme. The death of James Bond is inherently something my 007 loving ass did not want to see but setting aside the unhinged fanboy part of myself, I still don't think this ending works. More specifically, this ending is so reliant on the film's weakest elements to the point that it makes those shortcomings impossible to ignore. First off, this ending really needs you to buy into the romance between James and Madeleine and I emphatically don't. The actors don't have nearly the chemistry that Daniel Craig and Eva Green did and I never feel this passionate love the movie really wants you to feel. Madeleine is also just kind of a boring character, mostly lacking in personality or individuality. I find it very telling that James abandons her with child for five years and she barely seems mad at him for it. I don't see Tracy or Vesper putting up with that shit. The other issue is the film's villain, who full-on sucks. He's basically meant to be a Stromberg/Drax type who yearns to create a new utopia through mass destruction, but his actual motives and goals beyond revenge on Blofeld are very unclear. It doesn't help that Rami Malek's performance is boring as hell. Maybe this is still a fanboy criticism but I feel like the villain who succeeded in killing James Bond should have been a bit more worthy of that honour.

The weak romance and villain are problems throughout the film that I was mostly able to ignore in the moment, but the ending demands they get substantial attention. Moreover, much as killing Bond feels like a bold and ambitious storytelling choice, it's also ultimately a lie. The credits themselves admit that "James Bond Will Return" after all, likely within a couple of years. This is not an ending to the character so much as it is a goodbye to Daniel Craig, one that's so overwrought and melodramatic that it took me out of the story entirely. I don't feel like I'm watching the conclusion to a character, I feel like I'm watching a masturbatory love-letter to a specific actor. Previous Bond films never put much thought into giving a send-off to the James in question, but there's something admirable about how each and every Bond prior gracefully bowed out and made space for the new guy to inherent the mantle of the series. No Time to Die does the exact opposite. This ending being such a hard closing of the door further stacks the deck against the new guy when he inevitably comes around. Again, I could probably accept this if the actual story to deliver this ending was really moving or thoughtful or well-executed, but it just isn't here.

Is it fair for me to be so negative to a movie I mostly enjoyed in the moment strictly because I hated the ending? I don't know, maybe not, but the issue is less that "the ending is just so bad" and more the entire movie seems to exist to bring us to this concluding point. So for it to fail, the whole fails. That all said, time might be kinder to this movie than I'm being now. The last time I had a fanyboy-infused pathological rejection of a movie was The Dark Knight Rises (a clear influence of No Time to Die) and I've come to really love that movie in spite of its messiness, so who knows. There's certainly a lot to like here. In addition to the kind things I said in my opening paragraph, I also quite liked the opening title sequence, Lashana Lynch is a very strong screen presence, and Ana de Armas's brief appearance is as delightful and fun as you've heard. But on the other hand, there are other issues I haven't really discussed, like how giving Bond a cute daughter feels a transparently desperate effort for unearned emotional weight or how a subplot about M's complicity in the villain's plan amounts to nothing. Then there's the fact that Naomie Harris is mostly wasted here, though that's probably inevitable when casting an actor of her caliber as Moneypenny and then just keeping her a secretary.