It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Made you feel it, did he?
He didn’t have a choice.Those gunshot injuries he sustained were so severe that he was screwed either way.Had the missiles not hit,he would have died soon anyway.
That film made it clear that Logan was on borrowed time.He had grown so old that the adamantium on his skeleton had begun to break down,poisoning him.His healing factor could only do so much.It was only after taking a shot of super serum that gave him the strength to fight on one last time at the climax.
Yeah sure. Safin didn’t hit vital parts. Craig Bond survived worse situations, like the ridiculously high fall in SF. Anyway, even Cary stated that he deliberately chooses to die instead of leaving the island… because you know, that’s what makes the finale dramatic and tragic… and thematically poignant but perhaps this is too much to ask.
“We always have a choice”.
The hazy circumstances surrounding Bond's death are one of the reasons this particular attempt at killing Bond on screen doesn't work so well for me. If Bond was fatally shot by Safin then what significance does the Heracles scratch hold? What does it matter if he can never see Madeleine or Mathilda again? He can't anyways. He's been fatally shot.
The conversation with Q leads us as viewers to believe that Bond can make it off the island after having successfully completed the mission and that he may even be considering such until Q confirms for him that for him to see either Madeleine or Mathilda again would be the death of them. So he chooses to get taken out by the missiles—not for the sake of the mission but because it would mean a life without Madeleine or Mathilda.
It's a kind of romantic notion—choosing death over the prospect of a life without the ones you love—but it doesn't feel true to Bond, who always* has been devoted to Queen and country. Could not Bond have thrown himself into the ocean and lived to continue serving his country without Madeleine or Mathilda? Could he not once more have become the secret agent? The man who was only a silhouette? The man whom a life of true happiness would always elude?
The film tries to frame Bond's death as both a heroic sacrifice for the mission and a heroic sacrifice for his family without making entire sense under the veil of Zimmer's tragic music. It's another casualty of too many cooks in the kitchen, too many creatives throwing their ideas into one moment in the film and hoping to have it all. It's ultimately one of those moments in the series you're better off experiencing emotionally rather than thinking about too deeply.
*with temporary exceptions when things have gotten personal (i.e. LTK)
Edit: However, I will concede that Craig's Bond is a very different version of Bond as getting out of the life of a secret agent actually has been a running theme throughout his run. So maybe this was a perfect ending after all. He's so dispirited he quits the service at the end of Casino Royale before Vesper's message leads him to Mr. White. He's so dispirited after getting shot on M's orders at the start of Skyfall he becomes a ghost for three months. Then he officially quits the service after finding true love at the end of Spectre. Ostensibly, after completing this one final mission in No Time to Die, he would have quit again to be with Madeleine and Mathilda. I doubt returning to the service was ever an option for him at all.
From Variety:
If Bond leaves the island, he would effectively doom Madeleine and Mathilde to a gruesome death once the Heracles virus inevitably passed from him to them. Faced with an impossible choice, Bond stays and dies in the missile strike.
Fukunaga: A bullet, like an anonymous bullet, I remember that one. But it just seemed like a conventional weapons death didn’t seem appropriate. Given how much he had been able to escape from everything else, the fact that it would just be a bullet that always had your name on it from the beginning, as a sort of the thematic element seemed, while realistic, for Bond it had to be something even beyond that — like the impossible, impossible situation.
Craig:I think the important thing was that we all try to create a situation of tragedy. The idea that there’s an insurmountable problem, there’s a greater force at play, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. And the greater force being Savin’s weapon. And that it [kills] the only thing that Bond wants in life, is to be with the people he loves and that he can’t be with them, and therefore, there’s nothing worth living for. And he would in fact endanger their lives, and that’s the last thing on earth he wants to do. So that element was incredibly important to sort of thread in there, because it couldn’t feel like a random act. It had to have weight — without it, it wasn’t gonna work. And if we hadn’t have got that weight, I don’t think we would’ve done it. We would’ve found another way of ending it.
I think it's this notion of Bond giving everything up that people feel is out of character.
Anyway, I don't think there was ever any way of him escaping. There's a shot when he gets to the top of the ladder where you see the land stretch out in front of him. There's no way he'd have managed to get that far in the short space of time. I'm sure that shot was intentional.
Anyway, speaking about personal assumptions just for fun, I’m pretty sure he would’ve been able to make it. Why? Because he’s James Bond and because he would’ve been fueled by the most powerful motivation ever in his life.
Q and the medical staff I'm sure could have come up with a treatment/cure/or fix for whatever that nanotech virus nonsense was
Yep, this. What's interesting too is that not only are any of his wounds not mentioned in the movie, but none of them are being referenced by any of the cast/crew when discussing the ending. They all are affirming that Bond made a specific choice. Think it was Barbara who called it the ultimate sacrifice. Craig is in an interview saying that they didn't want it to be just a random suicide.
Also, it is set up for him to make a getaway if he had wanted to. There are two boats next to the glider. Nomi only takes one. Both are seen when Bond and Nomi arrive at the base and when Nomi leaves with Madeleine and Mathilde. He had a boat available. After he re-opens the doors and asks Q if he can remove the nanobots, he's heading towards two options - the ladder or the stairwell that he already ran down to exit the base when ordering Q to launch the missiles. He chooses the ladder when Q affirms the nanobots can't be removed.
I love this film, and I find all of the thrilling and emotional beats of the film to still hold up every viewing including the ending. After Bond puts his family on the boat and charges off, I've got edge-of-my-seat tension built up until the moment he's shot even though I know what's coming. I am also still finding much to appreciate about the thought put into the writing. On my last viewing, I noticed that Madeleine asks Bond, "Can you forgive her....for us?" in Matera. And at the end Bond says to Madeleine, "I have to finish this....for us." Both moments when they have a past to put behind them so they can have a future yet heartbreakingly neither successful. Love this mirroring.
But because he carried a weapon that would have potentially killed millions including those he loved, that was it. He was succumbing to his wounds rather than trying to brush them off like in many other instances. He’s choosing to face his own mortality.
My third viewing, and my best yet. Damn this film moves fast considering it's runtime.
Craig is fantastic and the direction ditto. This time I noticed the scars Bond gained in SF. Nice attention to detail.
Only one duff film out of 5. Not too shabby sir...😁
Going forward I think it’s a dangerous place to be letting the actor portraying the character have so much input and giving them producer credits. By the end DC was more of a producer who also played Bond rather than the other way around.
Why is that a problem?
No - it IS true. He mentioned it on the latest Interview Variety magazine did - link here: https://feature.variety.com/mgmunitedartistsreleasing/no-time-to-die?fbclid=IwAR22m1XMR7jmRIbslj3mZR3TRVLl3EW_Hqi6AK1H7IVTrrD_3F6-qRsDpAY
He mentioned how right back at the beginning after CR he said to Barbara Broccoli that he’d like to kill him off. She agreed to it and told Michael G Wilson the plan.
Michael mentioned that they thought SP was Daniel’s last film and they managed to get him back by agreeing the ending.
I think you might be right on the money with this astanill. I suspect there's many here who will disagree thhough.
The Craig era is the first time the actor has become bigger than Bond, that's for sure.
But if Craig's condition for making NTTD was that Bond died at the end or he didn't make the film, surely that does make it the only reason it happened? Craig's not said that it was a deal-breaker as bluntly as that, but there's been several inferences. MGW had vetoed the idea before, too, so something significant had to have been at stake for him to acquiesce this time. Craig agreeing to do the film only if Bond died would certainly meet such a significance threshold.
There was never “a plan” to kill him off back in 2006. Craig just (almost jokingly) mentioned to Barbara after the Berlin premiere that at the end of its run he would’ve loved to kill off Bond, since he was contracted to make “at least four movies”, and she told the idea to MJW and P&W.
After that episode this thing was never ever even further discussed. P&W stated that entering work on NTTD in 2017 they even forgot about this anecdote.
SP was the last film in Craig’s contract and his death at the end was never even mentioned.
The notion that they “planned to kill him since 2006” is just wrong.
It just felt fitting for this finale.
Yep.He’s clearly dying already by the time he climbs to the top of that ladder.Those gunshots were very severe and he was clearly bleeding out.He can barely stand while he waits for those missiles to hit but the ‘ noble sacrifice “ just doesn’t work because it was badly executed.If they wanted him to have a noble death and sacrifice then they shouldn’t have depicted him getting badly shot.
The whole point of the end, rooting back even into SP, is that Bond chooses his fate.
1. The significance of the poisoning is that it personalizes his final sacrifice, and ultimately makes it more satisfying dramatically. Whereas the concepts of "saving the world" or doing it for "Queen & Country" are just too abstract for any great viewer involvement emotionally and may go some way to explaining why the conclusions to so many Bond films are disappointingly rote.
2. I disagree with your assumptions behind the second paragraph above. Note that Zimmer's funereal "Final Ascent" begins as Safin explains what he has done with the targeted nanobots and just before Bond touches the scratches on his right cheek that signal his horrified awareness of its implications. It was from this moment, in first watching the film, that I felt fairly certain that Bond wasn't going to survive. And afterwards, in thinking about it all, his death does register with me as thematically consistent with the entire tragic trajectory of the previous four films. However serious it was discussed at the time, I think that it makes sense in retrospect that the principals involved might have considered this outcome as far back as 2005.
3. I view the conversation with Q a little differently. Bond already knows the answer to the question he has asked with wearied resignation. Q confirms that for us. When he then says to Q in a subdued manner, 'Its alright ... it's alright', it suggests to me the weary acceptance of his imminent death and that the only course of action is to accept his fate.
4. You (and others) say he chooses death. But this is highly ambiguous at best. No where do we see or hear him clearly make this choice. When Bond says to Madeleine, "I'm not going to make it," as he climbs the ladder, does the expression on his face as he says this indicate "choice?" Perhaps.
Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, it's ambiguous at best ... we're not privy to his thoughts. It's a plausible inference, however; but just as plausible, and perhaps not so different, is his acceptance & resignation in the face of imminent death.
I admire the filmmakers for showing Bond get blasted to oblivion. Bond fans should be grateful for having filmmakers make those kind of decisions.