Five Quick Random Thoughts About NO TIME TO DIE (Patreon)

The State of Bonding - A day after I saw No Time To Die I was talking with a friend who was in their mid 20’s. And he was talking about how little he, nor his friends, cared about James Bond. It just wasn’t even a thing on their radar. While I’m sure it’s true of a lot of older, long-running properties, it’s perhaps more true for this series than folks realize. With Spectre being sort of a non-event and the recent pandemic push for this film, it’s been NINE years since Skyfall came out. Entire childhoods go by in this time (and to that mention, these films used to be much more kid-friendly). Plus it’s just the regressive nature of the material, not just because Bond’s historically been a dinosaur and the series was full of indulgent sexism, but I can think of few things so catering to the gender binary. I’m not surprised just how much people don't care about it…

But it still feels odd considering how much I felt like I grew up with James Bond. Whether it was how much my Dad liked them (and grew up with them himself), to TBS marathons, to VHS rentals, I had Connery, Lazenby, Moore always on my television screen. Heck, Dalton’s debut felt like a formative experience when I was a young kid. As such, I’ve always carried a lot of thoughts about it in my head. I wrote a giant James Bond column series ten years ago that I’m honestly afraid to go back and read because I’ve changed a lot in a decade and I’m sure my thoughts on it have too. But there’s a few grand notions that still linger. The first is the character is interesting because it’s like “staring into a boner incarnate,” where you get to see the one series still absolutely coasting on a certain kind of male wish-fulfillment. One where kids can be smooth, debonair, and worldly. But within those constructs, the best Bond films have Bond girls who dont just match his agency, but are alive with entire personalities. And in turn, Bond always lets part of himself go to them. The other weird lesson you learn is that “every film is an over reaction to the perceived faults of the last.”

I never even wrote about it, but Spectre is a shockingly hollow and ineffectual film, let alone an entry in the Bond canon. If you trace the history of influence, back when we were coming off of Quantum of Solace’s Spectre-tease, “the fans” were mad Skyfall didn’t get into all that, so they went full Blofield with the new round. And in doing so they invoked more of Austin Powers: Goldmember than anything people actually wanted (and perhaps showed that Deakins had more to do with the compelling nature of that film than what Mendes brought to the table? But perhaps that’s unfair). Point is, going into No Time To Die there was kind of nowhere to go but up...

Basic NTTD Appraisal - Overall, I liked it! Especially that first hour. It’s gorgeous. For all its length, it often moves at a clip. And Cary Fukunaga (the first American to ever direct a Bond film! A huge deal!) brings so much to life with his counter-intuitive, yet completely functional approach to mise-en-scene. It’s like every time he picks an angle, I’m like “huh, that’s an odd spot for a-OOH that works!” It’s part of what really makes his work so damn exciting. The film gets to be romantic and have real moments of fun (like everything about the Ana de Armas sequence). The film also does fun referential things that don’t feel cloying. Like Bond’s pad is apparently a copy of Fleming’s real life Jamaica pad “Golden Eye.” And from certain lines to music cues, it harkens a lot back to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is not just my favorite Bond, but another outlier that allowed for genuine emotional flourishes. Yes, like most modern movies it gets bogged down in second act stuff, but it more or less throws us where we need to be by the climax. And with that, let’s talk about the big stuff [major spoilers for the next paragraph]

So Daniel Craig gets the hard out, huh? Now plagued by the literal inability to get close to the people he loves, he opts for the hero’s sacrificial death. You know, all that rugged, noble stuff. I will say that Craig plays it sincerely and I think it’s well executed (the eyes even got a little watery). But it sort of raises this whole question about what we want out of these movies. Do we want the lionizing death? Do we want such naked vulnerability? Upon exiting, my friend joked “It had everything you want in a bond film! Long escort sequences with a child! Bond saying “I love you” multiple times. His death. You know, Bond stuff!” For me, I roll with it because you have the kind of understanding that this ain’t gonna happen that much, if ever again. It’s an allowance for the moment. A time and place to say goodbye to whatever this Craig era has really been (and FWIW, there was only one film I unabashedly loved in his run and that was Casino Royale). But overally, I think it works. It’s certainly a way to be at peace with however it changes from here. But there’s only one real thing in the movie that I bumped up against…

The Malek Question - So I like Rami Malek. I think he absolutely nails this kind of aw shucks, wide-eyed terror of dealing with rebellious kids in Short Term 12.  I think his withdrawn expression of depression in Mr. Robot works (though I bounced off that first season eventually). But given the success of things like this, there’s an odd thing that sometimes happens with an actor where we think they can do something they can’t necessarily do. Whether it was from direction or performance, his Freddie Mercury didn’t reach inhabitation to me and instead stayed in imitation (and as much as I loathe to make assumptions, I worry he got that Oscar because people thought he was actually singing?). And here you can see what they’re trying to do in creating a big villain that mirror’s Bond’s pain, but the execution of Lyutsifer Safin doesn’t quite add up for me.

I know I don’t get to talk about acting that much, but only because it’s kind of hard to talk about. Here, Malek has this vague accent and this aloof, unblinking affectation that I feel like is supposed to play terrifying and detached… but it doesn’t land. If only because I can never track what he’s trying to play at a given moment. Like even when a character is supposed to be reserved, you want to see the choices of reaction when another person talks. It doesn’t matter how subtle or how steely, acting is really about subtle communication not just through the grand gestures, but more through control of micro-expressions (this is something Craig does very well in the Bond role, for example). But I just lose so much intentionality here. It feels like a performance getting lost and turning insular; one meant to be “disconnected” but actually too disconnected from what’s happening on screen. And I really wish it got reigned in somehow. Especially because we’ve seen him do it before. But while we’re here with Safin, there’s another big thing I want to talk about with this character / a lot of characters in this series…

On Disfigurement Tropes - I spend a lot of time talking about the danger of inherited tropes. Whether its Femme Fatales or default milquetoast Heroes, we are actually talking about things are built off centuries of toxic viewpoints and ugly assumptions. Story notions that echo on down and become so commonplace that people don’t question the obvious 1:1 harm of the association. I mean Dungeons and Dragons had “evil races” up until last year. These things are real. And they should be rejected completely.

Enter the “disfigurement” trope. Something that goes back to Richard III or even earlier, there’s this unfounded belief that a character having some physical irregularity makes one resentful of us and therefore engage in evil! They’re rejected by society so they must get vengeance on society! Or something! It is, quite frankly, garbage. Even with Richard III it turns out he had a normal case of scoliosis that didn’t really affect his life at all. But it doesn’t just stop people from engaging in that thinking, it makes us use all these things casually to make villains “read evil” constantly. Scarring. Illness. Even Cleft palates. We’ve often used these as short-hand, full-well knowing the real villainy rests inside our “normalcy” and our hypocrisies. We talk about all this as if the greatest villains of this particular world aren’t old, plain-looking white men with 2 dollar haircuts (and yet, even that is an assumption because you could look at David Byrne and assume the same thing). The point is, it’s all gotta go. Especially for a Bond series that loves to use this harmful trope more than any other.

The Future of Bonding - Now that that’s a wrap on Daniel Craig, we have the essential question of the franchise: what now? Especially because this part of the series was so hell bent on serializing the story and building continuity - but the great joy of the series is that you can entertain both soft and hard restarts alike. So do we put another figure right into this set, established universe with Fiennes and Q? Or do we scrap it all and start over now that the story with this particular character has been told? Truth is I have no idea what “the people” at large want at this point, nor even how much of the “Bond audience” is even left. The one thing I know is that the Bond series, at its worst, clings to archaic tradition and drags its heels in a petulant way. And at its best? The Bond series holds onto the romantic parts of its history and evolves with a sense of vulnerability and plain old gumption. But even then, we’ve never truly seen it get upended. Especially in a way that doesn’t play to that core indulgence. I dunno what will happen (I’m not a member of the Broccoli family). But I think it’s time for a bit of reinvention.

After all, sometimes the most exciting thing is a blank page.

<3HULK