James Bond 007 "No Time To Die" Intl. Trailer (Spoilers)

[Nutso]

In No Time To Die, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.

[IanKennedy]

That looks good.

[Graham Kennedy]

I'm in two minds about what they're doing with Craig's Bond.

Previous Bonds have generally been very standalone movies. Not completely so - you get M and Q and Moneypenny and Blofeld and such, but for the most part any given Bond movie is separate from any other.

But now they're making the Craig movies into linked stories. I'm not sure why they're doing it - I guess because like everyone else they see Marvel making just alllll the money and figure audiences would like linked Bond movies. I even wonder if they might not be thinking "spin off movies" with the new lady 007? They did try that for Halle Berry's Jinx, after all.

I'm not dead against that as such, I'm just not sure if it's a good idea to mess with a winning formula. Especially because I don't get the impression that they planned this from the start. Spectre did a lot of "Haha, it was ME who was behind all those villains in the previous films!" which honestly didn't work for me because it felt like they were trying to fit Blofeld into stories that were constructed without him in mind at all.

But with those misgivings, this does look pretty damn good in the trailers. I'm definitely up for giving it a chance.

[Captain Seafort]

Previous Bonds have generally been very standalone movies. Not completely so - you get M and Q and Moneypenny and Blofeld and such, but for the most part any given Bond movie is separate from any other.

There have been a few direct references beyond the main central characters - You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever and OHMSS effectively formed a trilogy, the sheriff Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun doesn't really count as a recurring character in the way Felix does, and both The Spy Who Loved Me and License to Kill referred back to Mrs Bond.

[Graham Kennedy]

Yes. And now and again you get little things like the time Brosnan's Bond walked through a storeroom containing stuff the previous Bonds had used. But what I'm saying is that even within one actor's run of Bond, the movies were largely independent of one another. They hold some elements over, you get occasional elements like Blofeld popping up in multiple films, but they're not an ongoing story in the way that the Harry Potter or Marvel films are. But now they seem to want to go there.

Personally the way I regard the Bond movies is that each new actor is a franchise reboot. The rebooted version holds over some aspects of previous versions, though. So the M that is Craig's boss is not in fact the M that was Brosnan's boss. It's the same actress playing the same "M, head of MI5", and could even have the same name and elements of the backstory... but Craig's M never knew a 007 agent called James Bond who was played by Brosnan.

Likewise in the Moore era, the On Her Majesty's Secret Service movie never did happen - but something like it did happen, that we never saw. Possibly even the exact same events, just with a younger Roger Moore instead of Lazenby.

It's really the only way to make sense of it.

[AlexMcpherson79]

I see it as a mix of that AND the theory that had been making the rounds, Lazenby's line "this didn't happen to the other fella" basically kicking off a whole "hang on, is 'James Bond 007' the codename, not just '007'? So Connory's Bond and Lazenby's Bond are actually two different people, and Lazenby WAS talking about Connory's Bond in-universe, and not a fourth-wall breaking moment"

So we're in the situation where, if THIS was the case...

Craig is 'yet another' 'James Bond' in a long line of 'James Bonds', though in his case he was actually born with the name and so when MI5 were looking for the next 007 and found him, MI5 just rubbed their hands and cackled or something and thought 'obvious choice, dont even need a name change!'. For him, there have been other James Bonds who WEREN'T really called James Bond, just used it when they were 007. (This is due to Skyfall establishing he is actually called James Bond). So There was a guy who looked like our Sean Connory who was the post-WWII James Bond, he did have missions that went something like his films. There was another James Bond who looked like our actor, George Lazenby, and he did get married... though I also go with the subtheory that at some point he ended up looking like Roger Moore, and he was the Oldest of the James Bonds when you consider age during career as James Bond.

So Its a "Multiple bonds" version of your 'pseudo continuation+reboot' theory

edit:
So basically, the films WE see are best left as "Dramatic Reconstruction" or "Based on a True Story" type thing, in that the ""real"" events probably weren't as depicted, with actor changes not just, well, actor changes, but changes between Bonds. And yes, Lazenby and Moore in this case 'played' the same bond.

[Captain Seafort]

It's certainly an interesting theory - one I've heard before, with the exception of Lazenby and Moore being the same individual. The latter adjustment would certainly explain Moore's Bond reacting the most aggressively when her death is mentioned. The key issues as I see them are a) Leiter's reference to Bond's marriage, which fits very well with OHMSS, and Tracy's headstone in FYEO giving her surname as "Bond".

[Graham Kennedy]

There are two issues I have with "Bond is a code name." One is that it breaks my credibility limit that they just so happened to hire a guy whose real name was the code name.

The other is that... well he's meant to be a secret agent. Having code names that your secret agents regularly use is just a ridiculously stupid thing to do. He might as well go around introducing himself as "My name is Bond, James Bond. You know, the MI-5 agent."

Of course one could say the same thing of a secret agent who goes around using his own name all the time.

[AlexMcpherson79]

Is he a secret agent though? Really? Look at Brosnan-era films.
Goldeneye: The villain is a former 00 that Pierce Bond worked with previously.
Tomorrow Never Dies: The Villain's squeeze is a former lover of Pierce Bond and he Probably figured that Bond was a spy in the first place, otherwise that just makes his 'check the surveillance' scene a bit creepy.
The World is Not Enough: The Co-Villain is a stockholm-syndromed Damsel that Bond rescued (...?) so, again, not a secret to the villains.
Die Another Day: The Villains already basically met him on the opening-sequence mission.

... it's kind of incredibly suspension-of-disbelief breaking, when y ou start looking at it like that. The people he 'Spies' on already know he's a spy, and if you see him in a more 'special operations'-esque mission instead of 'suit and tie spy', then you KNOW he's probably never met the villain or other people there. :p

[Nutso]

In one of the Timothy Dalton 'Bond' movies, the one with the drug dealer, Felix has a wedding and Felix's bride offers Bond the garter, to which he sadly declines. She asks Felix if she said something wrong, to which Felix replies, "He was married once, long ago," so I had always thought that the stories were connected, since I knew of Bond's short marriage at the end of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

[AlexMcpherson79]

Ha, I've read a theory that Dalton's Bond is a post-plastic-surgery-altered Moore Bond, and wasn't the start of his first movie a training mission? If so, that would be post-surgery certification to get his License to Kill ba... back... hm. checked, nope. ... anyway. This makes for four bonds:

Connery - He'd be the War/Post-War Bond, and retired. In my head, I see that he'd have been 007 since World War II, and 'retired' in the mid-60s.
Lazenby-Moore-Dalton - He took over from the Connery Bond, and after his wife died, had some time off (during which Connery returned before going back to retirement or died or something, I dont think I've watched Diamonds are Forever and theres a trivia entry for it on imdb that suggests connery bond died at the end...) anyway, on returning (moore appearance), he's noticably different because he's, basically, let himself go (but not in getting fat). Like, some people just suddenly seem to age a lot in a short time type of thing, and he gets back into work to distract from why. Eventually, he's mistaken for a much older man (because moore IS quite a bit older, 12 years older than lazenby) so during a second vacation, goes on a health trip and stuff, and suddenly we end up with Dalton - a bit of nip-tuck here, facial reconstruction there... Felix treating it as the LMD Bond's mid-life crisis. (Lazenby born in 1939, if the LMD bond is the same age, then by 1985's A View to a Kill he's 46... moore's bond as a seperate character would be 58!!!), Finally, in his Dalton Appearance, he's looking more like he's 40 than late-50s.) That also means that his hair is died black, unless he found a fountain of slight youth. This one is KIA'd. The job became his life, basically, and in his 'mid-life crisis' seemed to have gone a bit ruthless, and it backfired.
Brosnan - took over from the LMD Bond not long after LMD was KIA, and one of his earliest missions was the one we see at the start of Goldeneye. He's been heavily active since then, with the change of M occuring just prior to the start of the bulk of that film. (So the M back when there was Sean Bean still as 006 was male) He'd have been late-30s when he started, and almost 50 when he 'retired'.
Craig - The Daniel Bond here, similar age range as the active Bond - late 30s to approaching 50. (Daniel Craig was born in 1968... he's 51, so he's older for No Time To Die than Brosnan was for Die Another Day). Lets say that, on paper, he wasn't the best pick for the next 007... but M decided she actually liked picking someone who already answered to 'Bond', and as for the rest, well. (Didn't we see a scene where he earned his 00 status? Dryden)

[Graham Kennedy]

Is he a secret agent though? Really? Look at Brosnan-era films.
Goldeneye: The villain is a former 00 that Pierce Bond worked with previously.
Tomorrow Never Dies: The Villain's squeeze is a former lover of Pierce Bond and he Probably figured that Bond was a spy in the first place, otherwise that just makes his 'check the surveillance' scene a bit creepy.
The World is Not Enough: The Co-Villain is a stockholm-syndromed Damsel that Bond rescued (...?) so, again, not a secret to the villains.
Die Another Day: The Villains already basically met him on the opening-sequence mission.

... it's kind of incredibly suspension-of-disbelief breaking, when y ou start looking at it like that. The people he 'Spies' on already know he's a spy, and if you see him in a more 'special operations'-esque mission instead of 'suit and tie spy', then you KNOW he's probably never met the villain or other people there. :p

Well in reality Bond is... well, nothing, because nobody does the kind of things Bond does in reality.

But he seems to be a lot of things. Since the 00 agents are "licensed to kill", technically he's an assassin. But he's obviously not just an assassin, because he's often sent to investigate things. In Casino Royale he's investigating a bomb maker in an attempt to learn about the organisation behind him, and M is pissed off that he just resorted to simply killing the guy even though that's what 00s are for. Realistically somebody else should have been doing the investigating and Bond would have been called in when it was time to put a bullet in somebody's head. Other times we've seen him break into places to blow up drug stashes, or photograph documents, or whatever. He's basically a generic "dirty tricks" guy who does whatever. But he does go undercover a lot in previous films, and he does get called a "secret agent" a lot.

Incidentally, I wonder if the real MI-5 has such people. Clearly the Russians make a habit of knocking off people they don't like, so they have something like "license to kill" employees. And we know Mossad does such things, or at least has. But does the CIA and MI-5 do it, at all? They deny it - but then they would, wouldn't they?

If such people do exist, I bet that no matter what they're called officially, behind closed doors they call themselves 00 agents.

[Nutso]

I've always wondered because Americans, before Brosnan and Craig, would pick Sean Connery as the best, or their favorite Bond. Whom do the U.K., and others of course, pick as your favorite Bond?

And if you're curious, Timothy Dalton was always chosen as the worst.

[DarkMoineau]

Incidentally, I wonder if the real MI-5 has such people. Clearly the Russians make a habit of knocking off people they don't like, so they have something like "license to kill" employees. And we know Mossad does such things, or at least has. But does the CIA and MI-5 do it, at all? They deny it - but then they would, wouldn't they?

If such people do exist, I bet that no matter what they're called officially, behind closed doors they call themselves 00 agents.

Well technically it's MI-6, not MI-5. And I would be surprised 00 does not exist, even if in another form... in France we have Service Action, part of DGSE (French MI-6, DGSI for MI-5), used by the president when Commando can't be used. spies who are not officially assassins but we know thanks to failed missions, they can kill or sabotage with no issue like in Rainbow Warrior affair.

On another topic,

I grew up with Brosnan so he's my favourite... But I would pick Moore as the worst, as he is the more caricatural. Dalton is a proto-Craig. Peoples were not ready for that at that time. But Dalton and Craig are great actors with a convincing portrayal of a character that, it's true, take distances with Connery way to play Bond, that Brosnan followed.

[Graham Kennedy]

Damn, I always get MI-5 and MI-6 mixed up.