No Time to Die (Spoiler Heavy)
Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2021 9:00 am
I repeat - this thread is for those who have already seen the film or have heard about the most significant events in it. My recommendation is that you see it before continuing on.
Now.
I saw this the other night and have some particular observations about how it seems to have lost its direction - or perhaps better, how what it did was simply - well - odd.
Firstly however, I thought that the film was good enough in its own way. I've not been a massive fan of Craig's Bond - I think it was too influenced by the Bourne films from the outset, taking away the humour and slightly camp 'over the topness' for which the film's had become famous. Gritty is all well and good, but with Bond you require more. But having said that, the film began well and kept me onboard for most of its 163 minute running time. I had a brief spell, in the latter part of the film where I felt it was becoming a bit 'by the numbers', but this was short-lived and soon left behind.
I thought that the main villain played by Rami Malik was a serviceable baddie, but was somewhat undermined by the odd presence of Ernst Stavro Blofeld languishing away (like Julian Assange) in Belmarsh Prison. Quite why this 'Spectre' element was included in the film at all I fail to get. For some reason our main baddie decides to kill off the entire group of previous Bond baddies in one fell swoop (achieving in the first ten minutes of the film what MI6 have failed to achieve with Bond and numerous other sidekicks in the last half century) - but leaving just Blofeld and one other thug alive. Why he decided to keep this last going is a mystery - excepting that he has one sort of mechanical eye that connects with a similar one that Blofeld has, that lends him a suitably Bondish 'weird villain sidekick' status ala Odd-job or the giant with the teeth.
The fantastic Christopher Waltz as super-villain Blofeld was criminally underutilized - I mean criminally! In the brief moments we spent in his time (after a suitably Hannibal Lector style entrance) his dialogue was banal, his makeup bad and neither Waltz's capabilities or the possibilities of the character he was playing were remotely touched upon.
But then we get on with the film. A pretty neutered Bond has fallen in love, knocked out a sprog (he suspects, but is not confirmed until used as one of the tear-jerkers at the end of the film), meets a couple of high-kicking girls (one, his replacement 007) neither of which he gets into the sack despite being effectively single, and then dies.
Yes dies. Bond dies. In this film - I repeat for those who's ears seem to be deceiving them - Bond dies.
It's all very emotional, the baddie played by Malik (who's name I can't remember, but has nothing of the ring of Goldfinger of Blofeld about it) has poisoned Bond so he can never touch his daughter, who (I think) he is about to kill along with the rest of humanity (have I got this right?) which seems a bit of a waste of time (the Bond poisoning I mean) with some kind of nanobot delivered super-disease. As a result Bond realizes that he has to die when the island on which all this transpires is blown up, which it has to be in order to save the world from the deadly disease (or a large part of it at least) - and so he elects not to escape, but rather to spend his last moments out on the surface of the island talking to his love (the mother of his child) in a schmaltzy exchange of heart string plucking, before going skyward in an explosion of thirty or so hypersonic missiles sent n by Q, or M (or some other letter of the alphabet).
And that's it After sixty odd years of films plus another decade of books, Bond is no more. You sit rooted to your seat as Louis Armstrong croons "We got all the time in the world" and the credits roll and as the tears sit behind your hyper-emotional lids or even roll down your flushed or popcorn stuffed cheeks they end.
And as you rise from your seat in the now near empty cinema. One final sentence flashes up on the screen. James Bond Will Return.
What the fuck!
You Bastards!
You put me through all of that tear jerking, all of that heart string plucking, all of that Bond going up in smoke stuff and then don't even show us the motherfucker escaping. I mean? What was the point of all of that non-Bond falling in love and getting a daughter and all, that emotional final telephone call when in fact the bastard was just planning how he would roll aside at the last moment, escape the blast of nine hundred megatons of high explosive landing next to him, dissapear into the shadows (neatly avoiding any child maintenance payments, and carry on shagging! It simply doesn't fit with that enigmatic sentence at the end; makes a mockery of the whole ending of the film!
In fact I think that should indeed be the title of the next film - Carry on Shagging - because that's what this ending made of the whole thing - a damn Carry On film!
(But one worth seeing. )
Now.
I saw this the other night and have some particular observations about how it seems to have lost its direction - or perhaps better, how what it did was simply - well - odd.
Firstly however, I thought that the film was good enough in its own way. I've not been a massive fan of Craig's Bond - I think it was too influenced by the Bourne films from the outset, taking away the humour and slightly camp 'over the topness' for which the film's had become famous. Gritty is all well and good, but with Bond you require more. But having said that, the film began well and kept me onboard for most of its 163 minute running time. I had a brief spell, in the latter part of the film where I felt it was becoming a bit 'by the numbers', but this was short-lived and soon left behind.
I thought that the main villain played by Rami Malik was a serviceable baddie, but was somewhat undermined by the odd presence of Ernst Stavro Blofeld languishing away (like Julian Assange) in Belmarsh Prison. Quite why this 'Spectre' element was included in the film at all I fail to get. For some reason our main baddie decides to kill off the entire group of previous Bond baddies in one fell swoop (achieving in the first ten minutes of the film what MI6 have failed to achieve with Bond and numerous other sidekicks in the last half century) - but leaving just Blofeld and one other thug alive. Why he decided to keep this last going is a mystery - excepting that he has one sort of mechanical eye that connects with a similar one that Blofeld has, that lends him a suitably Bondish 'weird villain sidekick' status ala Odd-job or the giant with the teeth.
The fantastic Christopher Waltz as super-villain Blofeld was criminally underutilized - I mean criminally! In the brief moments we spent in his time (after a suitably Hannibal Lector style entrance) his dialogue was banal, his makeup bad and neither Waltz's capabilities or the possibilities of the character he was playing were remotely touched upon.
But then we get on with the film. A pretty neutered Bond has fallen in love, knocked out a sprog (he suspects, but is not confirmed until used as one of the tear-jerkers at the end of the film), meets a couple of high-kicking girls (one, his replacement 007) neither of which he gets into the sack despite being effectively single, and then dies.
Yes dies. Bond dies. In this film - I repeat for those who's ears seem to be deceiving them - Bond dies.
It's all very emotional, the baddie played by Malik (who's name I can't remember, but has nothing of the ring of Goldfinger of Blofeld about it) has poisoned Bond so he can never touch his daughter, who (I think) he is about to kill along with the rest of humanity (have I got this right?) which seems a bit of a waste of time (the Bond poisoning I mean) with some kind of nanobot delivered super-disease. As a result Bond realizes that he has to die when the island on which all this transpires is blown up, which it has to be in order to save the world from the deadly disease (or a large part of it at least) - and so he elects not to escape, but rather to spend his last moments out on the surface of the island talking to his love (the mother of his child) in a schmaltzy exchange of heart string plucking, before going skyward in an explosion of thirty or so hypersonic missiles sent n by Q, or M (or some other letter of the alphabet).
And that's it After sixty odd years of films plus another decade of books, Bond is no more. You sit rooted to your seat as Louis Armstrong croons "We got all the time in the world" and the credits roll and as the tears sit behind your hyper-emotional lids or even roll down your flushed or popcorn stuffed cheeks they end.
And as you rise from your seat in the now near empty cinema. One final sentence flashes up on the screen. James Bond Will Return.
What the fuck!
You Bastards!
You put me through all of that tear jerking, all of that heart string plucking, all of that Bond going up in smoke stuff and then don't even show us the motherfucker escaping. I mean? What was the point of all of that non-Bond falling in love and getting a daughter and all, that emotional final telephone call when in fact the bastard was just planning how he would roll aside at the last moment, escape the blast of nine hundred megatons of high explosive landing next to him, dissapear into the shadows (neatly avoiding any child maintenance payments, and carry on shagging! It simply doesn't fit with that enigmatic sentence at the end; makes a mockery of the whole ending of the film!
In fact I think that should indeed be the title of the next film - Carry on Shagging - because that's what this ending made of the whole thing - a damn Carry On film!
(But one worth seeing. )