Talk about a job that should practically be done for you. Who would ever think that the concept of everything you’ve ever known being totally obliterated would become stagnant and boring when it comes to movies? Or in real life, for that matter. People hear about the odds doubling of an asteroid hitting the planet seven years from now (from like 1% to 2.1%, but still), and they turn into Polka Dot Man from The Suicide Squad and think, I hope so. Except they’re smiling, and it’s like… whatever, we all have bad days. The Pale Blue Dot, and all that. But when it comes to large-scale spectacle movies, the end of the world has almost become the default in modern blockbusters, especially superhero films. So much so that they had to move to destroying the universe because the world is almost passe.
Ponder this in the throne room of your mind castle for a second: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had double the stakes of Avengers: Infinity War and just as high stakes as Avengers: Endgame, and nobody talks about it. The Guardians were able to save the entire universe and single-handedly defeat God-tier Wyatt Earp, but the cast of every single Marvel movie had to team up to bring down the guy who didn’t even live long enough to see the third act of No Country For Old Men. But speaking of cowboys and aliens, let’s talk about what No Time To Die did right!
The Daniel Craig movies are like the reverse of the original Star Trek films in that the odd-numbered ones are great, but the even-numbered ones are weak. No Time To Die, however, is the one holdout where most people seem to think it’s really, really… good. Not great. Much of that hesitancy usually revolves around its main villain, Safin—a character whose name you’ll instantly forget after reading this. Point of order, we had to Google his name to be 100% sure that was actually what his character was called. Fun Fact: His first name is Lyutsifer, which is just adorable. They tried; they really did.
You might not believe this based on the previous nagging, but this comes from someone who thinks the character gets way more hate than he deserves. He’s not an overly complex villain—though he’s way more interesting than Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld in Spectre, and yes, we will go on record having said that—but he has all the hallmarks of what make Bond villains so fun. Secret lair, distinct wardrobe, evil plan, all that good stuff. Plus, even though he doesn’t have much to do, Rami Malek still gives it his A-game. Most people argue that his plan is more interesting than the character himself, and we won’t argue with that. In fact, his plan stands out because it has world-ending stakes, and you can feel the gravity of the situation. Because of the escalation of smaller stakes of the previous four movies, Safin’s plan feels unique and gives it the weight necessary when discussing the end of the world.
Looking back at the previous films, each installment has relatively small stakes, at least by blockbuster standards. It’s similar to Phase One of the MCU leading into the first Avengers film. All the heroes had to test their mettle in their own stories, but none of them were tasked with saving Earth until The Avengers. So when they finally had to team up, it felt like a worthy cause. It’s the same thing with Bond and his preceding movies. In Casino Royale, Bond is trying to keep a terrorist from getting money to prevent hypothetical future terrorist acts. Quantum of Solace is about… the price of water in Bolivia? Is that right? Does anyone remember Quantum of Solace enough to refute or confirm that? Anyway, Skyfall is about MI6 agents potentially being outed in the field and a cyber-terrorist trying to kill M. In Spectre, the big threat is that the organization Spectre exists, and… that’s bad. Also, there’s a sibling rivalry and something about eyes being important.
In each case, Bond tries to prevent the deaths of specific groups of people or to stop supervillains from continuing their dastardly deeds. Come to think of it, only Skyfall involves the risk of people dying, and those are MI6 agents, so they’re already taking their chances every day they go to work. In Spectre, Bond is worried about saving Madeline Swann because her dad asked him to and because he’s a fan of recurring players in Wes Anderson films (his boss being one of them). Within each movie, the potential body count at the hands of the villain is often relatively low or merely hinted at. It’s more the threat of someone powerful being out there and causing havoc being the intimidating factor. That’s what makes Safin’s plan feel different.
No Time To Die introduces the concept of nanobots, which could run the risk of seeming like a bombastic, leaning into science fiction threat but manages to make it feel like a grounded and plausible menace. The idea is that once an individual comes in physical contact with the nanobots, they become deadly to whomever the nanobots are targeted. It’s also demonstrated on Blofeld and the remaining members of Spectre that the weapon doesn’t just kill people. It kills them violently, and it could happen to anyone. Q explains that the nanobots could be lethal to something as hyper-focused as a singular person or as broad as an entire ethnicity. The expository scene of Q explaining this to the MI6 Scooby Gang gives the nanobots the appropriate amount of dread to sell the severity of the weapon. It’s a quiet scene with a low, tension-filled score, and Craig’s subtle performance shows that this is something that Bond has never faced before, and he understands that this is a scary predicament. If Bond is scared, we, as the audience, should be too. Especially considering Bond coming out on top is never guaranteed in the Daniel Craig films.
Something that doesn’t get brought up often is that Craig’s Bond is good at his job but doesn’t always win at the end of the day. In the best of them—meaning Casino Royale, Skyfall, and to a certain extent, NoTimeTo Die —there’s this melancholic feeling at the end of Bond winning the battle but losing the war. In Casino Royale, one of the best things about the story is that Le Chiffre had Bond beat by the end. Le Chiffre getting killed and Bond and Vesper living through the ordeal (not so much Vesper) was entirely out of Bond’s control. He gets to have his cool “The name’s Bond. James Bond” moment at the end, but he still lost and didn’t have a gameplan to get out of his torture scene—or “Pistol-whipping” as we like to call the ordeal (think about it, you’ll get there).
Vesper also dies, which is like… okay, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but Bond and Vesper have no romantic chemistry whatsoever, and the last twenty or so minutes of the movie are a slog to get through—that being said, the ending is epic. The same thing happens in Skyfall. Bond kills Silva at the end, but Silva still succeeds in having M killed—albeit indirectly—and there’s no resolution with the list of MI6 agents still being out there, so we can just assume everyone is dead. By the end of Spectre, Bond had about a 50% success rate when it came to actually saving the day. So, once it gets to No Time To Die, there’s a tangible possibility that he could lose.
This is the benefit of the gradual escalation of the entries in the franchise and making the lead character fallible. If James Bond saved the world four times in a row when it got to round five, there wouldn’t be any tension as an audience member about whether he’d come out on top. If you know in advance that the hero is going to win on account of his face being on the poster, you’re not going to be as invested as when they’re the underdog, and success isn’t a guarantee. So, when tasked with saving the world for the first time, it feels like Bond is prepared but out of his element. You can trust he’ll win, but you don’t know for sure, and you know what’s at stake if he doesn’t. That’s what ultimately makes it more satisfying when he does succeed… for the most part. He still dies at the end.
