NO TIME TO DIE
NO TIME TO DIE I The trailer for Bond 25 is here, and Daniel Craig’s going out with a bullet.
Notes on the first trailer for Bond’s last mission, with Cary Joji Fukunaga.
I’ve always been a fan of miniguns!” laughs Cary Joji Fukunaga. The director of the landmark 25th Bond film has just screened No Time To Die’s debut trailer to a giddy Teasers, but for all the excitement surrounding Rami Malek’s mysterious villain, the return of Blofeld, and the weight that comes with sending Daniel Craig’s 007 on his final mission, first and foremost on our mind is that Aston upgrade.
“I built one of the Goldfinger Lego DB5s when we were first writing the screenplay,” smiles Fukunaga, who clearly enjoyed his first weeks on the job after replacing Danny Boyle in late 2018. “One of the things that made me realise with the machine guns was having them behind the orange signal lights does not make sense in the real world. I said, ‘What if we added them to the main headlights?’”
This attention to detail, reverence for the past and eye to the future encapsulates Fukunaga’s approach to No Time To Die. Set five years after Spectre, it sees Bond coaxed out of sunny retirement by CIA pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). It’s a road that leads him to Malek’s Safin, a man “armed with dangerous new technology”.
For Fukunaga, No Time To Die represented not just another Bond film, but the end of an era. “I was trying to figure out: from Casino [Royale] to this story, what can we tell as a complete arc?” That meant a greater commitment to continuity than ever before, including the return of Spectre’s
Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), the first of Bond’s many love interests to straddle two films since Sylvia Trench in Dr. No / From Russia With Love.
Also returning is Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld, who is taking a page out of the Hannibal Lecter playbook, (“He’s in a maximum security prison. But in terms of being a cannibal…” Fukunaga chuckles). As for Safin – who covers his scarred face with a Japanese Noh mask – does Fukunaga agree with Bond’s accusation that he’s playing god? “Every villain does,” Fukunaga retorts. “They see themselves higher than everyone else. They’re pulling the strings. There’s an entitlement there, and a playfulness.”
Long-serving MI6 favourites will also return, but it’s the new additions that will leave Bond shaken and stirred, including Lashana Lynch’s 00 Nomi – who has “ambition and skill” to match Bond – and Ana de Armas’ uzi-packing Paloma. Just don’t call her a femme fatale. “We tried to subvert that as much as possible,” says Fukunaga. “Phoebe WallerBridge and I spent a lot of time discussing, ‘How do you make what people expect out of this iconic Bond character surprising, but fun, intelligent and a person in their own right?’” Surprising, intelligent, fun… nobody does it better than Bond. JF
‘FROM CASINO ROYALE, WHAT CAN WE TELL AS A COMPLETE ARC?’ CARY JOJI FUKUNAGA
ETA | 2 APRIL / NO TIME TO DIE OPENS LATER THIS YEAR.