With the announcement that the latest James Bond film is having its release pushed back a third time so that it could end up reaching cinema screens two years after originally planned, anticipation around the project will only grow. However, the stakes have also been precariously raised because if the film is a let-down, many people won’t feel very forgiving even if the makers are delaying it for the right reasons, supposedly giving audiences the chance to see it in its natural surroundings of a cinema when they are no longer a risk to public safety post-Covid19.
There are multiple reasons why No Time To Die was already going to be an important entry in the series. Firstly, it is Daniel Craig’s swansong as Bond. He has surpassed other actors in the role including Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton by making five and, having debuted in 2006, is the longest reigning 007, overtaking Roger Moore and his unflappable eyebrows who amassed an impressive 12 years.
Secondly it will bring an end to the story arc of the reboot of the franchise that began when Craig came on board in Casino Royale in 2006. The reboot has delved into Bond’s origins and psyche far more than before and it’s been an interesting ride.
However, this story arc has also been problematic and arguably poorly executed. Casino Royale served as an origin story for Bond and launched a new foe in the shape of the organisation by the name of Quantum. The second film Quantum of Solace was very much a direct sequel or a fifth act of the previous movie but, perhaps due to the screenwriters strike during production, it was a puzzling and disappointing follow up. The reboot was already on shaky ground two films in but one always hoped the battle with Quantum would provide a lot more content.
Alas, four years passed and all the momentum from the very popular Casino Royale had gone. In 2012 along came Skyfall which was unique. The producers had put their trust in an A list director in Sam Mendes. It was Bond’s 50th anniversary on the big screen. On top of that, the reboot was now about to bring back Moneypenny and Q but kill M. Yikes! Yet it was mostly a success despite the tone being a little out of kilter with the two previous entries featuring Craig. In those he’d portrayed the agent as rough around the edges and inexperienced. By Skyfall he’s world weary and creaking, representing the character in general as opposed to the rebooted version. Nonetheless, it was an exhilarating and memorable film which got the series back on track.
Three years later, Mendes was back in the chair for Spectre which was when things really went wrong and demonstrated how the quality has ebbed and flowed so much during Craig’s era.
Skyfall had been stand alone as in it didn’t reference Casino Royale nor Quantum of Solace. Nor did it include a villain from those films or any plot continuations. It was almost a reboot of the reboot if you will. Spectre however picks up only a matter of weeks or months after the events of Skyfall and a cryptic video recording made before her death enables M to tip off Bond about a mysterious organisation who turn out to be SPECTRE. The viewer might remember them from classic Bonds like Thunderball and From Russia With Love. Presumably if they remembered them from Diamonds Are Forever, they wouldn’t have watched any other film in the series subsequently.
So SPECTRE, like James Bond himself, were rebooted. Logical one might say, although it does raise the prospect of other retro villains being revisited. Mr Wint and Mr Kidd? Maybe not.
Sadly, in a bid to try pulling all the previous Craig films together, it’s revealed that Quantum were a branch of SPECTRE and that Silva, the villain of Skyfall with no stated allegiances or paymasters previously, was also one of their agents. How convenient. Who else was on the SPECTRE payroll perchance? Scaramanga? 006 – everyone’s favourite Yorkshire spy? Gustav Graves? His nostrils?!
One suspects the writers were certainly on the payroll to deliver a nefarious scheme to destroy Bond for good.
And it got worse.
If the reboot had been undermined in that what went before didn’t add up, another twist completely undermined the origins of the series as a whole. The head of SPECTRE is Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Oh okay that’s fine, we knew that from either the novels or the earlier movies like You Only Live Twice or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. What we didn’t realise however, was that Blofeld knew Bond as a teenager and, due to being jealous of his relationship with his father, he’s put together a criminal conglomerate with the sole intention of making Bond’s life a misery by bumping off his girlfriend (Casino Royale) his lover (Quantum of Solace) and his boss (Skyfall).
This, of course, raised more questions than answers.
If Blofeld was so keen on torturing Bond, then the subsidiary of SPECTRE that was Quantum clearly didn’t get the memo. They not only let him off the hook several times in the earlier movies but they blissfully let him live on to the ripe old age he is in Skyfall where he’s smug and cranky while drinking too much booze and knocking back too many prescription pills. Wouldn’t take much would it? Quick stab in the back as he stumbles home from the casino.
Presumably Silva too wasn’t present at the vanguard meetings in SPECTRE towers as Blofeld expressed his desire to see Bond killed. Indeed, he of silly blonde hair dye decided he had beef with M (what a small world) and went on a revenge mission which 007 got embroiled in. Silva, despite his knowledge of long closed London tube stations, Photo-shop and remote country houses in the Scottish highlands, ultimately failed and, while doing so, did not once mention his employer was Blofeld. Strange huh? I mean, he was not afraid of a chin wag or bragging now was he?
It’s fair to say, what unfolds in Spectre was not a plot reveal that had been planned as far back as 2006. All roads were not leading to that moment. It was merely a hurriedly shoehorned idea following the makers getting the rights to use SPECTRE and Blofeld after years of legal wrangling.
Due to a dispute with Kevin McClory, who claimed co-writing Thunderball with Ian Fleming, using them had not been possible since 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. They’d tried to resolve things, even preparing to use them as the villain in The Spy Who loved Me before settling for a carbon copy in the shape of Stromberg.
The politics continued once Connery signed up with Warner Bros and McClory to make a rival film Never Say Never Again which was a remake of Thunderball thus featuring Blofeld. Bond supremo Cubby Broccoli pre-empted that with a scene depicting the death of a Blofeld doppelgänger at the start of For Your Eyes Only two years prior. Therefore, with decades of struggling to unlock Bond’s biggest enemy for future films, it was crazy that he returned in such a stupid manner in Spectre. So stupid that it reminded one of the plot of Austin Powers Goldmember where we discover that Powers actually went to school with his nemesis Dr Evil. When you’re copying the plot of the films parodying your own film series, there’s a problem.
Which is why No Time To Die could do with being released sooner rather than later so to either end the misery of a reboot that has come off the rails so badly, or to preserve some credibility with a more plausible entry. Currently we are in a limbo land when we would rather move on for better or worse.
The much-watched trailer for No Time To Die doesn’t instil confidence that the fifth and final film in the reboot will be a fitting end to an era that was graced with Casino Royale and Skyfall, two films that were heavyweights in the series. The general consensus is that Bond has retired or is AWOL again (he’s either gone rogue or missing in each of the last four movies, playing bar games with scorpions, hacking MI6 databases and stealing cars in the process). Blofeld is back but in very much the same capacity as Silva was for parts of Skyfall in a Hannibal Lecter sort of way. There’s some bloke who is an enthusiast of Phantom of The Opera who appears to be the main antagonist meanwhile a secret from Madeleine Swann’s past is what is causing all the strife. Indeed, she now looks to be in a perilous state of mind. The smart money is on her having been subjected to hours of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals as a child but who knows?
The concern is that, while trailers can be misleading, it could be just as ill-judged as Spectre and, in another attempt to pull the reboot together for the conclusion, there might be a whole host of coincidences and contrivances that are all too convenient.
The delay might help the makers as audiences and critics alike won’t ponder any discrepancies too closely because the other films were a while ago now. However, it also means that the future of the franchise is one to wonder about. If No Time To Die does get released this year, it will mark the biggest gap between films since Licence to Kill (1989) and GoldenEye (1995). That time, the series returning appeared unlikely for a while and once it did, the baton had been passed from Dalton to Brosnan. Now things are different and while the gap was always unusually long, the extra time was beyond their control to some extent. Yet with the reboot coming to an end, where next for the series, if anywhere?
It seems unlikely the makers will want to bring an end to it all. The money involved is too great. But figuring out what to do now the reboot is presumably over and who to cast will surely take a while along with the dust settling from Covid19.
The problem with rebooting any film franchise is that if the changes were substantial, which they were in this case, then going back to something more conventional seems pointless and undermines the reboot. Would they be more audacious and come at the character from a new angle? That is why No Time To Die needs to be merciful to the series as a whole and not rewrite the mythology or origins too much. The Blofeld twist has hamstrung the movies of a different era and arguably wasted a good opportunity for a recurring villain. But if No Time To Die contains plot elements which are similarly as irreversible for the series, any future films could be hampered by them.
In the past, the makers of the Bond films have taken their strong followers for granted (Roger Moore dressed as a clown anyone?) and treated 007 like a cash cow. In this instance, one hopes that their stubbornness to keep delaying the film and not stream it, is because the product is worth it. Rather that than them holding on for grim life because they want to maximise takings on something that certainly was not worth the wait.
Athon 