No Time To Die: Has 007 Live and Let Died?

As Daniel Craig's curtain call 'No Time To Die' wraps filming, maybe the writing's on the wall for every incarnation of Bond, namely the more you do, the worse it gets

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga and Daniel Craig on the set of 'No Time To Die' (CREDIT: EON/MGM)

by Jack Linsdell

I've written extensively about the James Bond franchise as regular readers will know, mostly because I'm a die-hard fan whose grown up with 007 as a child, and like most men, still wishes he could be Bond in real life as even as an adult. Joking aside, that's why I've been following the production of current 007, Daniel Craig's alleged final performance as the British spy in No Time To Die, coming into cinemas April 2020. But, if rumours are to be believed and facts to be accurate, it appears that Craig, like all the other actors to play Bond, is falling into the mistake that the more films you do, the worse your credibility gets when it comes to playing Ian Fleming's popular hero.

When Craig took over from Pierce Brosnan in early 2005, Bond had yet another clean sheet to build from after the franchise had once again descended into chaos. It's no secret that Brosnan's Die Another Day was perhaps one of the worst 007 movies in the franchise's (at that point) 40 year history, so when Craig's well-talked about and critically adored debut Casino Royale gave people a stylish, gritty and character-accurate action-thriller courtesy of Goldeneye director Martin Campbell Bond was, well...re-born. The follow-up Quantum of Solace (the first direct sequel in the series apart from maybe From Russia With Love), was less well received, but still none the less a well-made and entertaining action movie, that tied up Casino Royale's loose ends nicely and nailed the 007 character again. I like it more than you I imagine, but I'd rather have a movie that gets Bond's character right, over achieving artistic merits elsewhere instead. Craig's third outing Skyfall was seriously flawed and a return to the more light, spectacle-first, escapist Bond adventures of Roger Moore's era, but it's first half is mostly faultless, it looks stunning and even when it's nose diving, it still nails Bond's character. Things only take a seriously wrong turn with 2015's Spectre, in which it's still unbelievable to think this film was one of the most expensive films ever made, considering it's script and direction is some of the worst to ever grace the cinema screen, yet it's even more unbelievable to think that this is a Daniel Craig 007 flick. It was a big departure from Casino Royale in style, tone, character-depiction and quality, and has left Craig coming back for one more (No Time To Die) to try and end on an all time high.

That brings us to the upcoming No Time To Die, which has been riddled in controversy and production setbacks from it's initial conception to the post-production process it's just gone in to, making everyone (especially me) deeply concerned that it's quality will be more akin to Spectre than Casino Royale. It doesn't help that the film has been endlessly rewritten by numerous writers during production, especially when Christopher McQuarrie can write and direct the sublime Mission: Impossible - Fallout all on his own, and it's still known that despite having shot the movie, the filmmakers are still trying to figure out the story. Considering they've had five years of pre-production to write and develop the movie, I'm very concerned at what they've actually been doing for all that time if not working on the script. Anyway, that's the core reason why we're only a little under four months out and have still yet to see any form of footage or a trailer. It's poor, but look, as long as the rumours aren't true and they can figure it all out before it comes out, then I'll be happy.

But, I have very bad feelings about No Time To Die and I'd love to be proven wrong in April next year, but so far all the signs are pointing to Craig's tenure dipping in quality with every film. It also shows that maybe no Bond actor that makes it past three movies is capable of doing a fully high-quality Bond flick, unless you're Roger Moore. Every Bond actor's best movies have come at the beginning of his tenure. Sean Connery's best are his first two Dr. No and From Russia With Love, Pierce Brosnan peaked with his debut Goldeneye, and even Timothy Dalton whose two films are some of the best in the series, started to lose it with his second and final movie Licence to Kill. Only one-hit-wonder George Lazenby has managed to succeed in having a 100% quality rating with the much loved On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Only Roger Moore is different, whose first two were dire, fourth, sixth and seventh were variations of "fine, I guess", leaving his best being numbers three (The Spy Who Loved Me) and five (For Your Eyes Only). This says that had Craig had walked away after the exponential $1 billion-dollar success of Skyfall, his third movie, we may be having a different conversation, and at least giving him a quality rating of 80% instead of well...50%.

What this means is this. I can't wait for No Time To Die to prove me wrong. If it does, it'll break another franchise record. For those that don't know, director Cary Joji Fukunaga is the first director in the series to get a screenwriting credit (he's co-written this one, although QOS's director Marc Forster was technically the first as he did uncredited rewrites of that movie's script) for what that's worth. But, if the movies any good, especially better than Skyfall and Quantum of Solace, then it'll be the first time in the series that an actor's final film wasn't one of the worst in the series, apart from George Lazenby of course. So, can No Time To Die give Craig a redemption by taking his Bond back to the sharp-dialogue, gritty and realistic action and entertaining storylines set as precedent by Casino Royale? Considering his debut was one of the series' best movies on a "mere" $150 million budget, and No Time To Die has apparently $245 million, then no. But, let's see in April 2020.