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This is, uh, more or less what happens in the movie already.
They should have cut the "careless" line after M says "....and now we know what C stands for."
Ruined one of the best jokes of the series.
With the last line taken out it reminds me of the 'there's a four letter word, and you're full of it' line that crops up in at least two Bond films, which is arguably much more crude.
Yeah I'm not keen on those; they're not particularly clever but sort of dressed up to make it seem like they are.
Fair. Maybe it’s just my sense of humour.
Personally I’m holding out for a film where Bond turns to a villain and tells him to go and f himself like in the GF novel, haha.
I meant past intelligence and not new up and coming stuff. Like previous "Five Eyes" data
The threat should have made more visceral (a CNN report about South Africa doesn't cut it). It works well in the Mr. White post-poisoning scene, but the film needed a lot more of that element.
The issue with SPECTRE's grand evil plan is that it doesn't really exist in the movie, and the movie itself is unconcerned with it. Same as NTTD.
They have duped the nine nations into collaborating on a shared intelligence gathering system which SPECTRE designed, installed and have complete access to. And what do they want to do with it? I dont know, and the film sure doesn't.
It's not an idea that wouldn't work, for example:
1. SPECTRE take over the system and immediately lock the nine nations out of it. Major intelligence outage in the western world and SPECTRE either use it to commit terrorist acts, or extort the countries in order to get it back (a bit like Thunderball).
2. They use to to feed false or doctored information to different countries, causing a rift or threat or war or something.
3. The system is already in place at the beginning of the movie, Bond is sent on a mission using false information SPECTRE have planted in the system, and he unravells this as the mission goes one. False/Doctored information is used to try and discredit Bond (a bit like AI and deepfakes are used today) causing issues of trust, traitors etc.
With CR, QoS and SP, it is really clear what the villains want to achieve. It isnt with SP and NTTD and I hope it is something Bond 26 fixes.
I like that analysis, @Mallory. I especially like point 3. It would have given the film a bigger sense or urgency. Now I'm going to dream about that. ;-) Well done, sir!
I think it is scary as a concept but I agree it could have done with being given more shape, and your point 3 is a good one as the threat is always stronger when we see it in action, ideally affecting Bond himself. As an example I think that's why the nuclear bomb threat in Goldfinger hits harder than in Thunderball: in TB we don't see the bomb or even the city it's about to destroy, in GF Bond is actually chained to the thing.
Time for the big one! The final film in the series goes under the missed opportunities microscope.
Premiering in 2021...wow it's been three years already? This would mark the end for Daniel Craig as Bond. A director was dismissed due to creative differences. A Premiere was postponed on multiple occasions due to the pandemic. This film was a lightning rod when it was released due to the ending where after 25 adventures James Bond dies.
What are the missed opportunities of No Time To Die?
Phoebe Waller Bridge was brought in to enhance the female voices of the film. The producers were forced to use the sets that had been assembled for the first director. We return to Italy again. Blofeld comes back for a cameo as does Felix Leiter (spoiler, he dies too). Bond gains a daughter but loses his double-o-7 moniker.
Lots going on and we certainly can't say this movie plays it safe. But I have to ask what are the missed opportunities of this film?
Missed opportunities might be music choices with the soundtrack, or a casting choice, was a character under-developed? Was a story thread left hanging? Did the script make some leaps of logic?
Lets dive in and discuss the missed opportunities of No Time to Die!
#2 is the final scene at Safin's lair. Why Bond goes alone to open the missile doors instead of Nomi is not well explained and him being beat by Safin feel wrong as Safin does not seem a physically imposing or cunning villain. Never mind the whole "I love Madeleine" subplot that is quickly dropped (and doesn't really make sense). This bit ties into #1 a bit as well: we'd forgive this if we get direction from Safin.
#3 is Bond's death. It feels wrong for me for Bond's death to be relatively inconsequential. It feels like if would die prematurely, he would do so willingly in the climax of a battle endangering millions (like proposed in the Moonraker novel), or as a villain getting the better of him after the plan is defeated (like I suppose in FRWL). Instead, Bond dies tying up loose ends, the plan pretty much vanquished and the villain dead. Bond dying impacts nothing but our feelings, and we don't even get the feeling that he's been bettered or out-thought. This is especially worse because of #1 and #2. The series' worst villain is responsible for the gimmick that makes Bond give up. The fight is confusingly explained and justified and presented.
Many have this near the bottom (albeit this all works for some) but I can guarantee if NTTD had Bond run off into the sunset instead of a poorly done death, most (me included) would have it midtable.
Felix and his army going to attack the island with help of Nomi and Paloma. Bond have end with Nomi. For long time there let us believe Madeline was bad. She died.
Blofeld killing Safin as gift for his brother. The movie end with burned face of Blofeld. Keep in mind that the Blofeld behind window in Spectre in Mi6 and Blofeld we see die is mabey not same Blofeld at the first meeting at lair in Spectre. Mabey even Blofeld with cats is not him.
In little bit of Joke i said Polama should have taken M's flying car and saved Bond.
Opportunities for Bond 26:
Return of Dominic Greene and Camile. Camile has simalar story as Madeline and after i watched NTTD i am curious or producers/writers consider to tell her story about Medrano and missing story of her history with Greene. Before there let him return (there have people everywhere: So also man at other side of Tanner phone and in the desert.). Before there deside to tell Madeline story and let Bond die.
Safin part of Quantum/working for Greene. Like as in FRWL when it turn out DR No working for Blofeld.
Blofeld return in Bond 27 played by another actor. It wil be Diamonds Are Forever again with Blofeld having various faces. Behind The Mask/Face, wall, door is very inportent theme.
No Good About Goodbye by Shirley Bassey (even for end credits) or title song of Radiohead wil be more logic for Bond 26.
She's the new 007 in a run of films which began with us seeing Bond become 007: was there no bookending to be done there? No passing of the torch, a contrast to be made with Bond as a rookie?
That's a great point. They start out adversarial and then we have this mentoring thing out of the blue. On their first meeting she seems to be needling him when they've never met before. While I was glad that she wasn't shown to be superior to Bond and out doing him at everything, her character has no real arc or development.
Imagine a version where Ash or someone looks set to be her ‘Vesper’, and Bond stops history repeating. I guess that might be quite a lot to pack in, but it feels like there was a rhyming scheme being set up there that they didn’t use.
The motorbike jump, Bond should have been getting chased and then got away from the bad guys by jumping the wall
Paloma should have been in the film longer
A small one, but I wish they kept that harpoon shot in Jamaica
Have Nomi be a traitor, a final battle 007 vs Bond would have been cool and given Lashana more to do.
Spend more time in Matera and Jamaica, less in London.
Make more use of the V8 Vantage and the Atlantic Road.
Not kill Bond at all. They had two better Fleming inspired endings they could have used, FRWL and YOLT. An ambiguous ending would have been easy to rewatch.
But one thing I though was a real shame, was that it was the first Bond film to come out after Covid, and one of the first major films to get people back in cinemas, and it wasn't a fun romp where people could come out the cinema walking ten foot tall and punching the air.
Obviously the producers weren't at fault for this - the film was made before the world went to shit - but it would have been a wonderful experience to have been given a James Bond film where he emerges victorious at the end of a thrilling adventure which excited us all.
After the previous two years of closed cinemas and no evenings out and us worrying about our friends and family, we could have done with a Bond film that was a less dour. A bit more Moore, basically.
A car should have flown off the Atlantic Road a la QoS.
I think they did a commendable job in adapting YOLT as best they could.
However, YOLT is such a unique and special novel in the canon: Bond's brokenness, his impossible mission, the obsession with death in Japan, the samurai suit, Blofeld's madness, the "question room," etc. They *really* need to adapt it properly, someday, all in Japan, when they have an OHMSS-level loss leading into it from the previous film.
I realize that it's a thin novel, plotwise, but it is an achievement in how it caps off the series, even with its cliffhanger.
Very much agree. Anything from that novel, I think, would be a nightmare to adapt. Fleming’s creative brain was on another level when writing it. Thin on plot, but he stuffed it with melancholy, getting over loss, losing one’s way, alcoholism, a villain that’s gone insane with his megalomaniacal plot of dominating the sad populous (like Bond), who visits his Garden Of Death. It’s such a crazy novel…
To make matters worse, that part was written so well in the book. It's one thing copying the words from Fleming, it's another thing capturing the spirit, (which I agree, they did do several times in the Craig era).
It's kind of like a nightmare Bond is having after Tracy's death.
Great way of describing it.
It’s a great novel, and I get the sense it was on the producer’s minds a lot during the making of SF and NTTD. They’re not adaptations as much as they understand it and take a lot of its ideas (even in terms of the villains of both films I like how Silva and Safin both slide into mania, personal obsession and I suppose evil, while Bond is able to navigate his personal obstacles, which I find very YOLT-esque).
In a way it’s for the best it’s a novel thin on plot and big on ideas because so much can be taken from it.