Maebh Springbett
Since the it’s release on 30th September 2021, having been originally scheduled for April 2020 and subsequently delayed on three occasions over the course of the pandemic, No Time to Die has proved to be worth the wait.
Mounted anticipation for the latest edition to the 59-year franchise exploded last weekend as the movie opened in a record (previously held by Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker) 772 cinemas across the UK and Ireland. Taking £25.9 million it is also the highest grossing within the first weekend of any 007 movie to date, overtaking Spectre at £19.8 million and Skyfall’s £20.2 million. As a result, No Time to Die is the biggest movie of the year in the UK after only four days trumping huge releases like Marvel’s Black Widow.
In the US, however, takings from opening weekend on 8th October preceded expectations with $56 million, making it the lowest earning of Daniel Craig’s performances since Casino Royale in 2006. The movie is due to be released on 29th October in China when the level of its global success will become clear. Currently Skyfall holds the title as the most successful Bond movie internationally having grossed $1.1 billion in 2009. But since audiences having been forced to hold fire for almost eighteen months it is entirely possible that No Time to Die will break the global record.
‘Subconsciously and consciously, we’ve been trying to write a Bond theme for our whole lives’
No Time to Die features the classic 007 title sequence to the song of the same name written and performed by Billie Eilish. Released in February 2020, the song won Eilish a Grammy last year for Best Song Written for Visual Media and her first number one single in the UK. Eilish, the youngest artist to ever have written a theme song for a Bond movie, explained at the Grammys that she and her brother Finneas O’Connell had always aimed to work on the franchise: ‘Subconsciously and consciously, we’ve been trying to write a Bond theme for our whole lives’.
Director Cary Joji Fukunaga as well as screenwriter and Fleabag-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge have brought the longest ever Bond movie with a 2 hour and 43 minute running time to the big screen with a number of familiar faces and some new ones. Opening with a young Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) in her childhood home in a snowy landscape in Norway, the audience is introduced to Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) who after murdering her mother saves Swann from drowning in a frozen lake, shedding some light on her unexplained past, previously alluded to in Spectre, which threatens both Bond and their relationship. It is later apparent that Safin has hijacked MI6’s ‘Project Heracles’, a bioweapon which uses DNA to infect its target with nanobots which can kill in seconds but are harmless to anyone else, which we later learn he has been mass-producing and intends to unleash globally killing millions. Eventually Bond learns the details of Swann’s past but defeating Safin comes at a high price.
‘The villain is unable to escape the past for which they often seek revenge’
Rami Malek, famous for his Oscar-winning performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), plays the new Bond villain, Safin. Whilst Malek embodies the role as a jumpy, nervous outsider perfectly, the character has faced criticism due to their facial scarring. This has been a consistently used movie trope, aiming to portray a sense that the villain is unable to escape the past for which they often seek revenge, which disregards the implications it may have for viewers with facial differences. Disability campaigners have rightly protested against the use of villains with face scarring which have appeared in multiple Bond movies. Author Jen Campbell tweeted with the release of No Time to Die: ‘This time two villains with facial disfigurements. Lucky us.’ This is by no means exclusive to Bond, but it is surprising that this outdated stereotype has been repeated in this latest instalment to the 007 franchise with Safin.
‘Lynch is the first woman of colour to embody the role of 007’
It is even more surprising when considering that No Time to Die has shown a huge amount of progress in terms of its representation of women. The movie is refreshing in Bond’s lack of sexual harassment of his colleagues. When Bond encounters CIA agent Paloma (Ana de Armas) in Cuba there is none of the flirtatious bar talk or ensuing sex scene we have come to expect. Instead, this brief ordeal shows Bond working with Paloma on equal terms and respecting her skill as an agent. The inclusion of women of colour is also prominent with the role of Nomi, who inherits the position of 007 while Bond is in exile, played by Lashana Lynch. Best known for her part in Captain Marvel (2019), Lynch is the first woman of colour to embody the role of 007 which is a massive milestone in a franchise that has been entirely dominated by white men. In an interview with Bazaar Lynch describes how portraying the authentic Black experience was always her priority: ‘I searched for at least one moment in the script where Black audience members would nod their heads, tutting at the reality but glad to see their real life represented.’ The choice to cast Lynch in this role faced backlash when it was revealed in April 2019 and the actor was forced to delete social media apps for a week in order to avoid hostile comments. Nevertheless, No Time to Die shows promise for a further inclusive franchise in the future.
Featured image courtesy of GR Stocks from Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
Maebh Springbett
While Head of Entertainment for Empoword Journalism, Maebh works in the Careers department at the University of Reading. Their writing focuses on music and has been published by the likes of Music Is To Blame and Dead Good Music. They aspire to work in non-fiction publishing.