When is a Trailer more than just a Trailer? When it’s JAMES. BOND!
So, Bond 25 or rather No Time to Die. It’s been a long (5 years, give or take) and rocky (Danny Boyle departure; relentless rumours; on set injury) road. But here we are. Finally. Welcome, James!
Don’t get TOO(7) excited. This is just a trailer, remember. But we are just 4 months away from the film’s release and this is quite revealing as a first look. The plot is not given away but you get enough here to keep the fan community in speculation until the whole thing is out next year.
My thoughts? Well, it’s BOND! So I LOVE it! GREAT to have him back, frankly. And anything produced by Barbara Broccoli is excellent. I’m certainly left satisfied and still curious and there is a solid sense of the kind of film we are getting. Looks epic, ‘dark’ in the proper sense (high emotional stakes; night shoots) but also fun (the cars! the action! the stunts!) and indeed fun-ny (note the downbeat /deadpan delivery of the immortal line..’Bond..James..Bond’; Daniel Craig CAN do comedy when it’s ironic). Waltz’s Blofeld is back, as is Lea Seydoux (yes!) and it looks like some ret-conning of yet continuity with SPECTRE is therefore at hand?
Minor quibbles? I don’t ‘buy’ Lashana Lynch here. Sorry. There is something stilted in her delivery /accent and a deficit of charm in the character, as though trying to emasculate 007? Her role really ought to have been consolidated into Naomie Harris’ Moneypenny as that was the character arc set up in Skyfall (a film this one owes a lot to, it seems, in theme / design /tone?).
One might cite a similar syndrome at work here to the recent Star Wars sequels but in reverse? where the former have rushed a conclusion they did not earn in terms of character familiarity ( 4 years; 3 movies, minimal interaction?) etc. So here, with Bond, we get Q and 007 enjoying some sort of banter that simply does not work, given that they have only met a few times in previous movies, one of which was almost 5 years ago now?
There is a curious hint of the Gothic and possibly, at a guess, some sci-fi tropes, even and whilst that is original and brave for the Craig era, it can go wrong very easily (Die Another Day).
All in all, though? AMAZING! EXCITING! I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THIS MOVIE!
And Rami Malek looks set to be a GREAT villain amidst masks, sewers, ice, snow and cobbled sunlit, dusky street chases against our hero. I bet he will be the best Bond baddie since Robert Davi.
WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER BOND.
JAMES MURPHY WILL RETURN
