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jordoalejandro · 1 year

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No Time To Die: One Year (And Change) Later

You know what's weird? I thought I'd written in my review of No Time To Die in the Films I Saw list earlier this year that I was considering writing up a full post with more of my thoughts about the film later on. But I just went back to read what I'd written and it's not there. I must have removed it in later drafts of the list, probably because I didn't want to pressure myself in even the most minuscule way to do some more work. Pretty smart, past me.

Anyway, I had been thinking of watching the film again and writing this post. I was originally going to do it not long after the list because I had access to the film during award season but I couldn't get myself up to watch it again and so that came and went. Then I thought, maybe I'll do it for the one year anniversary of the film's release. Give it twelve months to sit with me and try again. But I didn't have free access to the film and didn't have it in me to pay for it, so that also came and went. Then, a few weeks ago, it was on one of the movie channels during a free Thanksgiving weekend so I recorded it. And it has sat on the DVR for weeks now. A few days ago, I finally decided to bite the bullet and watched it again.

The long and short of this story being: my God was I not looking forward to this. I went to see Skyfall three times in the theater. Three! That's not something I do. I barely go to the theater and only rarely have I ever seen something more than once in the theater. That's how much I was into that film. I saw Spectre twice. Despite its faults and long runtime, I went twice to the theater to watch it. No Time To Die was sitting in my house, for free, multiple times this year and I didn't touch it until I forced myself to. Off the bat, that's just not the kind of enthusiasm a Bond film should elicit. A Bond film should be like a roller coaster. You should have your blood pumping. You should be laughing. (I guess screaming on a roller coaster. It's not a 1:1 comparison. Whatever. Stick with me.) You should be thrilled. And when it's done, you should want to turn around and ride it again.

I will say this, having watched No Time To Die again, I didn't find myself blinking my way through the second half of the film in disbelief this time, at least. I wasn't hit with the same sense of, let's say, for lack of a better word, horror, that I was while watching it in theaters. I was mostly just bored. Without the shock of witnessing for the first time some of the weirdest things happening in a Bond film in the franchise’s long history, it’s really just kind of dull. Is that an improvement? It's probably a lateral move.

Okay, let me get into it. This is going to be full spoilers blazing. You've had a year and change to watch it.

I'll start by noting that the first hour of No Time To Die is actually pretty good.

I did find myself a little annoyed this time with the opening to the opening: the flashback to Madeleine's childhood. It goes on for a little while and the horror elements are cheap. But whatever. It's a needed scene and there's nowhere else to put it.

The Matera piece is a great pre-title sequence. The Spectre raid of the London lab is fine, though the Obruchev character is out of control, in both this sequence and the film in general. For 90% of his screen time he plays like a Roger Moore-era cartoonish villain and then, right at the end, he starts spouting insane racist genocidal stuff towards the Black woman with the gun who has his life in his hands. It's like the writers got to the part in the script where they had to kill him and were like, "Aw, this is like killing a clown. It's more sad than anything. I’ve got an idea: what if he starts going all racist eugenics on Nomi for no reason. Bingo. Now that's a man who deserves to be kicked into acid!"

James Bond retired in Jamaica is solid stuff, leading to the Cuba sequence which is the high point of the film for me. It really sings. The action, the humor, the music. Bond has more chemistry with Paloma than he does with Nomi or Madeleine (which is a problem given where we have to get to emotionally later in the film; he also, by the way, has more chemistry with Moneypenny in their brief interactions) and the way they work together to complete the mission is a lot of fun. This is about the hour point in the film and where it takes a downturn.

The boat scene with Obruchev, Leiter, and Ash is sloppy. Ash gives up the game almost immediately and Obruchev gives him up for no reason. But, fine, we need Ash and Obruchev to run off and we need to kill Leiter. (I mean, do we need to kill Felix? It almost feels like it's done because: why not? We're already killing a bunch of legacy characters in this thing. What's one more?) Done. Bond and Leiter's final exchanges work and it's a nice send off to Jeffrey Wright, who was very good in the role.

We head to London and the film enters a lull. Bond spends the next 40 minutes or so meeting with people, arguing with M, and accidentally killing Blofeld in what is another really sloppy scene. The whole thing is written towards getting Bond to grab him and it still doesn't work well. This section of this film has very little life to it. Just moving pieces around and setting up the third act.

Bond then goes to Madeleine's childhood home in Norway and is introduced to Mathilde. I don't think I physically rolled my eyes in the theater when this happened but mentally, that's where I was. This leads to an extended chase sequence which is fine. It looks good but isn't exactly the most thrilling.

And finally we head towards the big finale at Safin's island base. I think there are multiple things working against this final act of the film.

One: the setting. This is sort of minor in the grand scheme of things wrong with the film, but the set design feels lacking for this whole finale. It's dark concrete on dark concrete on dark concrete. You never really get a sense of the space, mostly because it all looks the same. It's just not a particularly interesting place. Even the pieces that should stand out, like the lab with the acid pools or the poison garden just look like more concrete enclosures. There's a long one-take shot near the end that doesn't feel as neat as it should because it mostly features Bond running up a dark stairwell. Oners that are really cool -- like the one that opens Spectre -- often take you through multiple places, showing a whole world opening up as the scene plays out. A better setting wouldn't have fixed the bigger problems but at least it would’ve been nicer to look at.

Two: Safin. His goals are all over the place. He mentions to Mathilde that she'll grow up on the island like he did, so it seems his long term plan is to stay on that island with Madeleine and Mathilde and produce the killer nanobots. When he talks to Bond later, he offers him the opportunity to leave with Mathilde if he leaves him to his island, so it seems like he still wants to be there even though people know he's there. Seems untenable. Even if he's lying to Bond and plans to kill him before he leaves, surely others know of his location now, too. He later talks to Bond about wanting to eradicate people in a tidier way. And wanting the world to "evolve." Classic Bond villain psychopath stuff. So maybe that's the plan. Mass extinction. Or targeted extinction based on DNA. But then moments later, he talks about his "first buyers" arriving at the island soon. These two things seem at odds with each other. You can either be a mass murdering villain, intent on killing millions to shape the human race as you see fit, or you can be an arms dealer villain, selling your weapon to the highest bidder. But you can't be selling a weapon with the power to kill anybody on the planet in any quantity desired and still think you're in control in some way of what will happen after. Unless it's just like an overpopulation thing and all he cares about is that a bunch of people die. Doesn't seem like it because he never says anything resembling that. So what's the stuff with the buyers? If that's his end goal, why lie to Bond and talk about wanting to be a god and all that? Doesn't gain him anything. And what does he need buyers for? Does he need money? For what? Is the subterfuge the point? Again, for what reason? There's no clear goal here and, by the way, no clear immediate threat.

The back half of this act is about Bond running through the lair opening blast doors so that missiles that have already been launched can destroy the base. Never mind that Bond already blew up the lab that had all of the important stuff. There's a sort of ticking clock created by the idea that Russian and Japanese forces are converging on the island and if they get there? I don't know. Maybe they'll take the nanobots for themselves? Safin, as mentioned, seems to have no further short-term plans than selling the weapon to buyers. (If that's the immediate threat, maybe the missile launching battleship that's in the vicinity could take care of those people when they try to leave the island?) Basically the question that needs to be asked is why now? Why must Bond act at this moment to stop an imminent threat? That question is not really clearly answered. It's almost like the writers just threw a bunch of different things at the wall hoping that in the chaos, you as a viewer wouldn't question too much why missiles had to be fired at that very moment. The Russians are coming. The Japanese are coming. The buyers are coming. The missiles are coming. It sort of works. I didn't question it much the first time watching, though I also had no idea what Safin's plot and motivations really were then and still don't after a second viewing.

And jumping off of all of this: why Safin? Leiter, Blofeld, and James Bond all die because of Safin in this film. What is it about this character that feels appropriate to cause all of this? He had a vendetta with Blofeld, sure, but really had nothing to do with Bond. Not that, if I'm being honest, there's really a villain I'd probably be okay with killing Bond, but Safin is essentially some random guy. He's a step above Bond being killed in a mugging gone wrong on the streets of London.

Bond films are no stranger to weak villains or vague plots, but if you’re going to kill Bond off, if you’re going to do one of the most controversial things in franchise history, these things had better be razor sharp.

Three: Madeleine and Mathilde. I'm not necessarily questioning why Bond would sacrifice himself to make sure they're safe. I get it: love. But rather why make this writing decision for the character? In the same way I look at Safin and think, "This is the guy that finally kills James Bond?" I look at Madeleine and Mathilde and think, "These were the two characters Bond gave up everything for?"

This is not entirely the fault of No Time To Die. It starts with Spectre, a film I do enjoy even though it, too, falls apart after the midway point. Lea Seydoux is a good actress, but the chemistry was just never really there between her and Daniel Craig. There are moments in Spectre where you can almost see it (staying at L'Américain and during the train ride after) but it never reaches a point where you honestly believe he'd give up everything for her. It comes nowhere close to the chemistry Craig had with Eva Green in Casino Royale, which is sort of the baseline that must be crossed for this story to work (especially given that’s where this movie starts). Spectre ends with Bond seemingly giving up his life as a spy to be with Madeleine, so it's tough (or perhaps impossible) for No Time To Die to write its way away from that, especially if this is the ending it's going for. (So maybe that says something about the ending it goes for? More on that shortly.) Where No Time To Die's fault lies is that it does just about nothing to build on the relationship or strengthen it in a way that it absolutely needs. Bond and Madeleine fight and stay separate for most of the film and then there's one scene, at Madeleine's childhood home, and essentially one Bond monologue that's supposed fix all of that and make us understand she's the love of his life. The monologue is fine, but I don't think Craig delivers it entirely convincingly and it's overall just not strong enough to get us where we need to be.

And Mathilde. Bond has very little interaction with her. What we see is cute, but nothing especially deep. For the back half of this film to work, we, as an audience, have to accept that as a father he would immediately and entirely love his child. And we do! We accept that logic on a simple biological level. That parents love their children. My complaint is not really with that. We never question why Bond would make the sacrifice at the end for Madeleine and Mathilde, but for us to actually feel something about it, you can't simply rely on that. You have to give us a deeper connection. There’s no “I love you 3000” here to really gutpunch us emotionally.

Bond films have long borrowed from other popular films of the time and there have been similar recent uses of this trope – the hero choosing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their newly discovered child – in films like Logan and Avengers: Endgame. Let's look at Endgame for a second and see why it worked for a character like Iron Man. For one, the threat was much clearer and more immediate. We established an entire movie prior that there was only one way for the heroes to win, and that was for Iron Man to snap away Thanos and his army at the cost of his own life. We knew while watching the scene that if he didn't do it then, Thanos would take the stones back and reclaim control of the universe. The hero must do X or else the villain will do Y. That's just the basics. But looking deeper, examining it from a character standpoint: when Iron Man dies, we see why it fits for his character. This is the appropriate end to Tony Stark's arc. He begins as a partying billionaire playboy who cares only about himself and, through the course of several films, becomes a hero who is so selfless, he sacrifices his own life to save the universe (and child/wife/friends). Furthermore, he has a whole separate arc about parenthood. He grows up with an extremely cold relationship towards his father, which slowly thaws, leading to an incredibly moving scene in Endgame where he's able to speak to his father and, now, as a parent himself, is able to understand him as a person even better. It beautifully sets up the idea of what you'd sacrifice for your child. Furthermore furthermore, Tony Stark is a character who cares about the legacy he leaves. When he realizes it's weapons of war in the first film, he sets out to change it. By his last film, his legacy is one of sacrifice and love, carried on by those he cared for and who cared for him.

This is just not James Bond's character. He would die for a mission, for Queen and Country, because he's always recognized himself as a tool. As something meant to serve the greater good and if he dies in pursuit of that, so be it. The saddest I felt in the aftermath of Bond's death was the scene back in M's office, where his coworkers are toasting him. You know why? Because those are the relationships Bond has fostered. Those are the people who you really believed were closest to him and if Bond were to truly die, that's the sort of tribute you'd expect him to want. Leave me a scotch and get back to work. This is why Bond drinks and womanizes and has so few actual connections. He lives a life where everything is temporary because he never knows how long he has. And it's not like this hasn't been reinforced through these Craig films. Vesper's death in Casino Royale was brutal on Bond, and his first major lesson about attachments in this line of work. At the end of Quantum of Solace, he reinforces that idea by not killing Vesper's former lover and leaving her necklace behind. Skyfall sees Bond losing his surrogate mother and ends with him recommitting to the job "with pleasure." So having Bond, near the end of Spectre and through most of this film suddenly caring about family, or love, or legacy? It's trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. It's trying to make Bond a character he isn't. Safin, while holding Mathilde hostage, says to Bond, "Life is all about leaving something behind, isn't it?" The James Bond of 24 films prior wouldn't agree to that. Why now is he a character that feels this?

Ultimately, I think square peg round hole is the problem here. No Time To Die tried to force its way to this end point.

It already had the Madeleine character from Spectre and she's going to be the woman Bond would die for, despite their relationship not feeling any more significant than any other Bond girl relationship. And Bond has a daughter now, and despite never expressing any kind of desire for offspring or interest in leaving behind a piece of himself, he's now deeply invested in that.

And Blofeld is back, despite being a weak villain. Let's jam him and Spectre back into things. (This is part of a different problem of the producers committing to the continuous storyline, making it feel like they can't abandon anything from a previous Craig film, even if it wasn't exactly working. And Spectre itself was another square peg round hole situation, as they used the organization because they finally got the rights back to it after decades, even though the Bond films had already established Quantum as the shadowy organization of the series. Trying to explain how Quantum and Silva from Skyfall fit into the Spectre organizational charts was one of the weaker parts of that film.)

And they cast Rami Malek. And even though he doesn't seem a good fit for this role, he was a hot actor at the moment, and they worked hard to get him and so they had to use him. And they had already used Blofeld and there's really no greater Bond foe, so Rami Malek's Safin will just have to be one who ends Bond.

And, most importantly, they had Daniel Craig. And by all accounts, he wanted out. And he was promised many years ago that they'd kill off the character with him so he would be 100% out. And so they just pushed forward. They pushed towards this ending: with a villain that didn't make sense for it, a love interest that didn't get there emotionally, and a plot that was not fully baked because, my God, that square peg is going to get through that round hole, whatever it takes. It’s not a recipe for success. And again, this is a huge decision. This is perhaps the boldest storytelling decision in the franchise’s history. Why are you approaching it like this?

So, where do we go from here?

Well, first, a new Bond needs to be picked. He should be in his 30s or early 40s at oldest. Someone who can carry the mantle for fifteen years. I think the most important thing the next Bond actor has to have, more than the looks or the body or anything like that, is a love for the franchise. It has to be someone who really wants the role. Look, Daniel Craig was reluctant to take the role and has said that after Casino Royale he was already looking for a way out. I honestly don’t believe he hated the role as much as many people believe he did, but I don’t think he loved it. I don’t think he saw it as more than just another job. It doesn’t mean he didn’t care, but it’s like this: these films take months and months to shoot and they can be grueling shoots. Lots of stunts, lots of travel. Then you have to start promoting it around the world for several more months. That ends, you have a little time off, and then the pre-production cycle begins for the next one. It’s the nature of a franchise. Finding someone who is up for it means getting these films on a more regular cycle. One every two years would be nice, but it shouldn’t ever go longer than three years between films. And if you have to beg the actor to return between each film until he’s mentally ready (or browbeaten down enough) to do it, you’re wasting time.

Next, you need better planning. The producers decided to make the Craig films one continuous timeline. It’s not, on its face, a bad idea, but I think too many people look at the MCU and think, “Oh, that works. We’ll just do that.” We’ve seen more franchises fail at doing this than succeed. If you want to tell a continuous story over five, six, seven, maybe more films, you have to plan these things out. They tried to wing it with these Craig films and ended up with five Bond films where we see Bond: 1. Begin his career as a 00 agent, 2. In the next week or so after he became a 00 agent, 3. Years later when he’s considered over the hill but recommits himself to the job, 4. Retiring as an agent by the end of the film, 5. Dead. What kind of arc is this? Over Craig’s tenure we see his first few weeks and his last years. We also saw his villains go from Le Chiffre, a member of a shadowy organization, to Quantum, the shadowy organization, to Silva in Skyfall, which just ignored all that Quantum stuff because who cares, to Spectre, which says actually all that Quantum stuff was important, it’s somehow related to a larger Spectre thing and Spectre is the real big bad, a super evil organization that has been planning everything, to No Time To Die, which tells us no, lol, nevermind, Spectre is all dead because this Safin dude showed up. Again, what is this arc? It’s clearly pieced together on the fly.

Basically, if you want to be like the MCU, you’d better be like the MCU. That means a strong producer (or two in this case) with a clear vision and plan. Smaller name directors you can control and who can fit your vision. And a multi year story mapped out by a team of writers. Personally, I don’t think that team should include Purvis and Wade. Look, it’s almost impossible to tell which writer is responsible for what from the outside. These movies have multiple credited writers and even more uncredited writers. But I know this: Purvis and Wade have done seven Bond films now – some of the best reviewed and worst reviewed of the franchise – and it’s enough. (For what it’s worth, their only solo credited Bond film is Die Another Day, make of that whatever you will.) They’ve had their shot. They’ve made their contribution. There are so many talented writers in this world, it’s time to let new ones take a crack at it. (I say this knowing full well the producers seem to love these two. They’ve let other people take a shot at a screenplay only to have P&W come right back in and add their magic touch to it. So my assumption is they’ll be involved in the next one, you know, to get the ball rolling with whoever the new guy is. Oh, and that first one has some level of success. What’s it going to hurt to let P&W take a pass at a second draft on this new one…)

In my opinion, I think they should return the franchise to its roots. Films that mostly stand alone. You can maintain some connective tissue with recurring side actors, maybe a recurring villain if there’s a story there, but I think the films need to get back to just being fun two and a half hour stories. Look at Skyfall for inspiration. It’s the second highest rated Craig film on Rotten Tomatoes (92% to Casino Royale’s 94%) and it grossed over $1.1 billion worldwide (almost double what Casino Royale grossed and $200+ million more than any other Bond film). I don’t think there’s any magic or mystery as to why. It's not really connected to the other Craig films. It doesn’t need to be. It’s clearly not something people were clamoring for. It’s just the right combination of a great villain, great settings, great visuals, great music, and great action scenes. There’s a strong director at the helm who has a love for the franchise and put that love into the film. (It’s when they sort of dragged him back in to do a second one that they started to run into problems.) It’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s just doing everything a modern Bond film should do. Find directors and writers with a love for the franchise and let them make their Bond movie.

We’re 25 films into the Bond franchise now. I understand there’s always the thought in the back of one’s head that something vastly different needs to be done, some new twist must be presented so it doesn’t feel like we’re doing the same thing over and over again. But that’s not really the case. Bond movies just need to execute. They need to do the job they’re expected to do and people will love them for it. You have 25 films now to reference. To look back on and figure out what worked and what didn’t. Use them. Don’t overthink it too much.

Let Bond be Bond.

#writings

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