Jump to content

SPOILER TALK: NO TIME TO DIE (2021, Cary Fukunaga)


Jay

Recommended Posts

If they're really planning on having this be the 007 series after this, no longer James Bond, I am officially out for good.  I'll always have the Moore/Dalton/Brosnan films I love and that's enough I guess.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He, he. Well, the question has been gnawing on me since I saw the film, so thankful that a spoiler thread was created to discuss this. I tried to google it, but all that came up was a body count on how many Bond has killed, or Bond actors that have passed away. Nothing about previous Bonds dying. I vaguely remember that Bond's wife dies at the beginning of OHMSS, but Bond girlfriends have passed away regularly. Not sure about the man himself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not surprised with Bond dying. It was rather predictable, specially after I heard the OST and the last track is very tragic (if you like Inception's Time or Dark Knight Rises' Rise, you'll like that one). 

 

I haven't watched the movie yet, but I really don't care about spoilers for this film. On the other hand, I'll wait until I saw Dune to open the spoiler thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's as if the title of the movie already reveals the secret. If the question is "Will there be more James Bond movies as we know them?", the answer is -- if inserting an extra comma -- "No, time to die".

 

I wonder if the black woman that takes over the 007 moniker in the film, will be the future "Bond" in this #forcedrepresentation culture of ours? I dread the thought, but it wouldn't be that farfetched.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the next Bond turns out to be a woman, the internet will become simply hell on Earth (even more than it already is). Twitter will be the place for an EPIC battle of trolls in favor and against that.

 

It'll be even worse than when The Last Jedi was released.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just came back from NTTD. I absolutely loved it!!! Some people won't appreciate the last quater of the film. But I thought it was 👌🏼. Production, cinematography, direction, action & acting are all superb! Zimmer's score is another thing I love. I'm a big Zimmer fan, so this for me was great!! Not a lot of bery important music missing. Lot of suspense music is not on the album. The album as it is, is really strong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, crocodile said:

As for killing Bond, I don't think it will mean we'll see Bond-less movies after this. It feels more like a self-contained continuity. It starts from him becoming 007 and then dying at the end. Very Nolan thing to do. They'll probably start from scratch next time. 

 

That's plausible, although if they do that I hope they don't make it like an origin story type of movie.  Just hit the ground running with him already being 007 super spy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I liked it, not as good as Casino Royale but better than the terrible Spectre and the overrated Skyfall.

Craig is great on this one and the sleek action and humor made it feel more like a Bond movie than his previous entries. 
The finale was predictable although I was expecting at some stage that Bond would end alive but in self exile not to kill Madeleine and their daughter. 
But I hope that the series returns more to self contained adventures than this kind of forced - after the fact continuity that tried to make the films connected and seem more important/relevant on an emotional level than they can actually be.

Liked the soundtrack and the title song, but the song was kind of underused and I felt the inclusions of We Have All The Time In The World were a bit forced - pure fan service without much actual meaning.

 

ps.: why can’t they get the gunbarrel right in these movies? (although this one was an improvement over Spectre’s and Quantum)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After sleeping on it, my opinion hasn't changed. It's a clunky mess...but not devoid of fun. It wasn't as focused as Casino Royale, or as refined in terms of direction as Sam Mendes' films, but still definitely way more entertaining than both Spectre and Quantum of Solace (perhaps even combined). Because it tries to be everything at once there is a lot of material in there that works. It's bound to. And, make no mistake, there is a lot of stuff in this film. I will watch it again at some point.

 

One thing I'm definitely really happy is Daniel Craig. For a Bond, he got to do a lot with the part and, even at the shittiest, I still believed the guy. And the same is the case here. All three female leads are memorable and quite excellent too.

 

Karol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Right then.

First the good stuff - the action's mostly decent, the bad guy's eeeeevil plot is suitably bonkers and genuinely world-threatening (and Malek is reasonably creepy, if a little underused ... he is also not, I can confirm, Dr No 2.0). Nomi's relationship with Bond consists mostly of one-upmanship (womanship?) bantering, I was pleased to see. De Armas is a delight, and I wish she'd been in it more. Zimmer's score is fine. This is undoubtedly Craig's 'lightest' Bond performance, he even has a few of the old-style one-liner 'groaners'.

BUT ... this is maybe the most sexless Bond had ever been. They don't even have him try it on with Lynch and get rebuffed (could've had a bit of fun with it in the dialogue '007 tries to sleep with 007 ... it's true what they say about your ego!').

And even allowing for the fact that Craig's films are their own self-contained arc and it was a bit of unused Fleming, BOND SHOULD NOT BE A PARENT.

And also (and most damning of all) HE (and Felix and Blofeld) SHOULD NOT FUCKING DIE! You're not meant to leave the cinema after Bond kinda deflated. I hung on right to the end of the credits just to ensure that the 'James Bond Will Return' credit appeared (it does), because I honestly wasn't 100% sure.

And no tribute credit to Sean and Roger seemed like a pretty poor oversight. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, danbeck said:

Liked the soundtrack and the title song, but the song was kind of underused and I felt the inclusions of We Have All The Time In The World were a bit forced - pure fan service without much actual meaning.

 

I thought it had meaning. First, because it relates directly to that quote (or some variation thereof), second because it's almost used in an ironic way when you get to the end of the movie. They certainly did NOT have all the time in the world.

 

6 minutes ago, Sweeping Strings said:

And also (and most damning of all) HE (and Felix and Blofeld) SHOULD NOT FUCKING DIE! You're not meant to leave the cinema after Bond kinda deflated.

 

Deflated is a good word to use. It's not a film you'd like to return to very often, since everyone pretty much dies. Then again, I'm not a Bond fan and don't watch a lot of them again in the first place, so more of a non-issue to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't grow up with the Connery, Moore & Brosnan Bonds. But with Craigs. I've seen all the movies and in their films Bond is indeed more of a ladies man.

But why does Bond have to be a 'sexy' movie. Why does it matter if the movie is sexless.

 

Ana De Armas' character is a lot of fun!! Small but great role.

Lea Seydoux is the emotional side of the movie.

Lashana Lynch is Bond's equal in many regards. But very much her own character. But this is still Bond's film. None of the female characters overshadow Bond and the movie doesn't try to do that at all. They all complement each other. The women to Bond, and Bond the women. The movie didn't need the sex angle.

 

I really like the more grounded 'real' take on Bond. And I do love the old movies. But Craig's Bond from the start was very different. It was more about him as a person, and less about the crazy villains and plans and ladies.

 

I know that giving Bond a child is not going to fall right with everyone, but for me it made him a very real character (even if he is fiction and actaully does horrible things).

 

Craig's been my Bond my whole life. His movies were very different from all the other Bond films and that's exactly what I like so much. I'll miss him as Bond, but I am also very curious and excited to what the future of James Bond looks like

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Thor said:

 

I thought it had meaning. First, because it relates directly to that quote (or some variation thereof), second because it's almost used in an ironic way when you get to the end of the movie. They certainly did NOT have all the time in the world.

 

 

 

I think I didn`t express my impressions correctly. It is not that it has no meaning at all, it has - but I still think it would work better without quoting the theme of OHMSS and using the theme from this movie. The use of the theme in these scenes felt forced to me, to emphasize too much a connection, and took me out of the movie in those scenes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suppose those kinds of experiences are subjective. I tend to love quotes like this -- creates comfort in the sense that I'm watching something that's part of a tradition. A lot of people had issues when Carlos' theme/the Dies Irae was finally used in DR. SLEEP, but I absolutely loved it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Thor said:

I suppose those kinds of experiences are subjective. I tend to love quotes like this -- creates comfort in the sense that I'm watching something that's part of a tradition. A lot of people had issues when Carlos' theme/the Dies Irae was finally used in DR. SLEEP, but I absolutely loved it.

I loved that quote! With the repeat of scene from the opening of The Shining and that music playing very loud I got shivers in the theatre.

 

I also liked when Zimmer quoted Vesper's theme, I like thematic use when appropriate. But IMO, subjective of course, the OHMSS quotes felt forced.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It felt forced to me too. Like they're relying on the memory of a superior score and movie to do the heavy emotional lifting instead of doing on its own merits. That's always a problem for me with the nostalgic callbacks in long running movie franchises

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The sort of film I need to rewatch to make a fair assesment of, but which I don't really want to rewatch.

 

I had always appreciated the solemn atmosphere of the Craig Bonds, and it persists here, so that's a plus. But the storytelling is very cluttered: it starts out as a continuation of Bond's run-in with Spectre from, errr, Spectre, and over halfway through it morphs into something completely different. The main antagonist doesn't appear out of the blue, but lacks sufficient build-up and I for one couldn't follow along as to what his motivations were. He's fairly creepy, but the personal dimension to his rivalry with Bond isn't as pronounced as it had been in Skyfall or even in Spectre.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Plotwise I agree that the motivations of the main antagonist seems weak and not clear enought.

It is clear why he wants revenge against Spectre, but other than that he does not seem to have an issue with Bond and what are the reasons he plans to kill millions? /or in fact what he wants is to profit with his weapon? (As he mentions buyers comming in the end) it is all very unclear.

 

Also this Marvel/Game of Thrones trend of killing main characters to give emotional weight to the film as a "big finale" is a bit annoying. 

I don't have a specific problem with the killing of Felix (it added emotional weight to Bond's FYEO car moment to avenge him) or even with the killing of Bond (that was unnecessary but worked at that point in the plot).

But the killing of Blofeld was a mistake IMO. Safin had killed all Spectre and forced Madeleine to kill Blofeld. She does not do it (but Bond ends up doing it on the same occasion - so for Safin it would be mission accomplished and probably he would never know if it was Madeleine or Bond who killed Blofeld).  Therefore, what is the reason for Safin to go after Madeleine if Blofeld was killed as he wanted? Was he in love with her? Now he wanted to kill her? He was after Bond not her? (which would make no sense since he had no issue with Bond). If Madeleine had failed to kill Blofeld, Safin would have a reason to go after her at that point in the movie. 

But in any case, even if some of these killings make sense, the killing of 3 traditional Bond characters and exterminating all Spectre in a single movie seems pushing a bit too much.

 

But overall I think the good parts compensate for the weakeness and this is Craigs 2nd best Bond movie after Casino Royale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, danbeck said:

It is clear why he wants revenge against Spectre, but other than that he does not seem to have an issue with Bond and what are the reasons he plans to kill millions? [...] what is the reason for Safin to go after Madeleine if Blofeld was killed as he wanted? Was he in love with her? Now he wanted to kill her? He was after Bond not her?

 

This; all of this. I have no idea what's the motivation for all of this, and in that way the entire film after the death of Bloefeld is anticlimactic.

 

2 hours ago, danbeck said:

Also this Marvel/Game of Thrones trend of killing main characters to give emotional weight to the film as a "big finale" is a bit annoying. 

 

Funny that we now think of this as being a Marvel thing. In the 90s through to the early 2000s, it was very popular to give the hero a martyric death, and some of those films are my all time favourites. I don't think Marvel did it well, and I don't think this does it particularly well.

 

Game of Thrones is different: its not martyric, its tragic; or is supposed to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Uh, I thought the thing with Marvel was that their characters didn't die often (which is a whole separate issue). Unless we're talking strictly about it being a trick they use specifically in grand finales, to which: is that even a recent trend? I feel it's always been a thing for some big show to kill off its major players.

 

Even then, given how self-contained and "subversive" the Craig iteration has been, I feel like it'd be odd to want to recast in a universe that already relies far more on continuity than the prior EON films. Assuming they want to wipe the slate clean to get things back to even more normal for the series, it's probably not a bad way of doing it in terms of making this specific version have closure.

 

(Also, didn't "Blofeld" die in one of the Moore films? I don't want to hear the technicality of "they didn't name him on screen for legal reasons, so it doesn't count.")

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The shoot outs seemed pretty inspired by John Wick. And somehow the movie Had that weird mood changes oscilating between being depressingly sad and serious and being silly and super cool.

And yes, I as well didn't really get the motivation of that mini Thanos.

And all the musical quotes from Her Majesty's Secret Service and other old Bond movies didn't make sense. It just didn't let the movie have its own musical Identity. 

Anyway, it's over now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, HunterTech said:

Unless we're talking strictly about it being a trick they use specifically in grand finales, to which: is that even a recent trend? I feel it's always been a thing for some big show to kill off its major players.

 

Well, in the case of Marvel killing-off characters is more about cutting the actors' loose...

 

"Well, we need to cut Robert Downey-Junior loose, but we can't just have his character disappear or sit out the next film, so lets just kill him off..." which is probably one of the reasons I don't like the (few) deaths in the MCU.

 

Here, it was more letting Bond go off with a bang.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@HunterTech- Yes, Moore's Bond drops 'Blofeld' down an industrial chimney from a helicopter in the pre-credit sequence of for Your Eyes Only. Probably a middle finger in the direction of Kevin McClory who had won the legal battle for the 'full' usage of the character at the time.   

I just found resurrecting him in SPECTRE only to kill him off in NTTD kinda ... weird. Was never keen on the 'Brofeld' angle that SPECTRE introduced either (I'd be fine with the next phase of Bond giving the 'personal' angle a rest, tbh). 

Here's a thing ... the 'Bond being saddled with a kiddywink' thing was first mooted for Quantum Of Solace, it was to have been Vesper's and Bond was to have felt responsible for it. When you're recycling rejected story ideas from probably the 'messiest' film in the franchise's history ... well. I dunno. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I went to see it this afternoon. 

 

On the whole, I quite liked it. It's fucking long... and feels like it... but I admit it's fairly well paced. I lost track of how many action set-pieces there are; there's a lot. The first half is more engaging though, up until Felix's death.

 

Tonally, it's a bit all over the place. It's both the silliest and the most melodramatic of all Craig's outings. His death wasn't an enormous surprise but I didn't expect it to be so over the top. It reminded me of THE ROCK with the levelling of Alcatraz... I was kinda expecting Bond to walk off in the distance (like Connery in that film). :D 

 

Ana de Armas is the best character in it by far. You can completely tell she's having fun playing that - unfortunately brief - role and it really introduces some much needed fun into that Cuba set-piece.

 

Score-wise, I'm impressed. The Barry nods and the appearance of Vesper's motif from Casino Royale feels very welcome, if not slightly forced. Action music was a little generic but the angry Arnold-esque brass is very clear in the mix and is a refreshing change from Newman's more restrained action style in the previous two instalments.

 

Overall, I'll put this behind CASINO ROYALE and SKYFALL but way ahead of SPECTRE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE.

 

***1/2 out of ***** 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By the way  I think, they could bypass the whole discussion about the next Bond and just continue the series with Lashana Lynch as the new 007, like she was already introduced. This would be not the worst option. But let's see what they are going to so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

just continue the series with Lashana Lynch as the new 007, like she was already introduced.

 

The film takes a verynon-commital approach to this idea of setting her up as the next Bond. It starts off like that, but then it kinda gets swept away as the storytelling gets busier.

 

Anyway, if that happens, Twitter's gonna have an aneurysm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

EON have stated more than once that Bond won't be female. And rightly so ... the discussion's ridiculous in the first place, IMO. If you do that, it's clearly not 'James' Bond anymore and you have strayed SO far from the origins that it's a different franchise altogether. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 03/10/2021 at 1:51 PM, crocodile said:

What I find really funny about Daniel Craig movies is that we never really see Bond in his prime, other than that opening sequence in Skyfall. It's two movies of him being a hotheaded upcoming agent and another three of him suddenly being old and irrelevant. And it almost seems like he spends half of the series being retired or rogue in one way or another. Another thing that sticks out like the last three movies are heavy on honouring the Bond legacy and being quite meta. They don't seem to be able to just move on and feel the need to comment on the past. I suppose it is standard in the life of modern blockbuster franchise. I also find it really hard to believe that he becomes a loving family man after using two women in Mendes' films in quite horrible ways.  I still enjoy the films for the most part but if you're going to treat as a character study it's a very rocky road. 

 

Karol

Season 4 Success GIF by The Office

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Saw it last night.

 

The ending was absolutely terrible. 

 

Either they went for cheap sentiment as some sort of homage to Daniel Craig leaving (a la  Iron Man) or more likely, they killed off the Bond character as we know him because a straight  British middle-aged womanizing guy can't exist in the post #metoo era.

On 04/10/2021 at 4:34 PM, GerateWohl said:

By the way  I think, they could bypass the whole discussion about the next Bond and just continue the series with Lashana Lynch as the new 007, like she was already introduced. This would be not the worst option. But let's see what they are going to so.

 that would be the worst option . I think that was the intention but there was already massive backlash and they probably re-shot parts of the movie in the 2 years it was delayed so they left it more ambiguous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, King Mark said:

Saw it last night.

 

The ending was absolutely terrible. 

 

Either they went for cheap sentiment as some sort of homage to Daniel Craig leaving (a la  Iron Man) or more likely, they killed off the Bond character as we know him because a straight  British middle-aged womanizing guy can't exist in the post #metoo era.

 that would be the worst option . I think that was the intention but there was already massive backlash and they probably re-shot parts of the movie in the 2 years it was delayed so they left it more ambiguous.

 

No. Barbara Broccoli said that Bond will never be a woman. This wasn't some director's choice. 

 

My biggest problem with the plot is I am not sure why the Blofeld parts matter. The entire first act could have been used to build up Safin but instead they wasted on chasing the Blofeld angle that ultimately didn't matter. I like the movie overall, but for the final film, I think there wasn't enough time to introduced another villain-owns-an-island type plot. They should have just made Safin the new leader of Spectre and have Bond finish them off for good to end the series. Safin's motivations were unclear as hell too. Like his technology was cool, but what was his issue with the planet again? 

 

Bond dying was ok. I didn't mind it but I rather he died for Madeline or to save England or something. Having Safin suddenly appeared out of nowhere (why did he come back alone?) and poison him makes his death a bit anti-climatic. I also really wished they make use of everyone better and not have them sit in an office/ship in act 3. 

 

Technically, Sandgren's cinematography was beautiful and Zimmer's score works fantastic in the film. A lot better than the album imo. I also applaud the editors and the director for maintaining my interest for nearly 3 hours. 

 

Overall I like it, but it wasn't the send off that I envisioned. All the Daniel Craig movies are good but nowhere near as good as they could have been. I guess I don't get Broccoli and Wilson's love for Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. They never truly wrote a complete product in any of the Bond movies. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apart from the unclear motivation of Safin my biggest issue was in that serious plot these gags out of nowhere and the cool comments from the female agents. That didn't really fit for me. It was like the tone and mood of the movie was falling apart, and the movie was breaking suddenly into some kind of parody. So, this joking and seriousness didn't work well together.

In combination with Q and Moneypenny this joking works better. But the rest didn't for me.

 

But I think, I said it before, for the last part of a filmseries like that, I really whished Star Wars 9 would have been half as good as No Time to Die. So, if I look into that direction I am more than satisfied with this Bond movie. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Meh, I didn't mind the jokes. Even very serious films have surprising amounts of humour. The whole film can't be all the same, tonally: there need to be variation.

 

Its really just the plotting that was incredibly over-complicated and difficult to follow; and the whole thing is just anticlimactic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What a weird film. All the returning characters, including Craig himself, had completely different personalities to the previous movies. I could never really get into it - it was as if different actors were wearing bodysuits and masks of all of the characters and making a parody.

 

Very messy. Tonally all over the place. Cinematography, editing and pace was all over the place. Felt very odd.

 

Near the bottom of the pile. Casino Royale and Skyfall are the good Bond's of the Craig era. Quantum is forgettable. Spectre is boring. NTTD is just...a mess.

 

That said, there was a single awesome moment, when Bond crushes Ash with the SUV. And the stairwell fight was pretty good, even though it felt like I was watching James Wick.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Saw it yesterday, well it's quite a confusing movie. I didn't felt that it was too long, it strangely have a nice flow but at this end I was wondering what the hell the threat was about. There is simply too much characaters that have unlinked purposes and who disappear from one scene to another without real repercussions.

 

The villain is sadly uninterresting so are his second handmen and the family story didn't do much for me. About Bond's death well it was no surprise so didn't do anything for me either.

 

Billie Eilish song has a great instrumentation, nice lyrics but damn I can't stand her wispering

 

Two really good points though:

  • HZ music is quite nice although it doesn't sound original at all (lot of old JB themes reprises, plus some Dark Knight)
  • Ana de Armas (:wub:) best character of the movie who bring the best sequence of the movie and one of the best Craig's sequence
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.