The highly acclaimed James Bond series featuring Daniel Craig concluded this October with the premiere of “No Time To Die,” and Bond fans at WJ waited with a bittersweet sense of anticipation.
The film begins with the separation of Bond and his love, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), due to her associations with the villains that are after Bond. As the movie progresses, Bond gets closer to figuring out how to conquer the villain, which eventually allows him to find his way back to Swann and the child he never knew he had.
The inclusion of a theme song in each Bond movie has been a lasting tradition throughout the series. “No Time To Die,” sung by Billie Eilish, had high expectations to fulfill since it was preceded by previous hits and theme songs “Skyfall” (Adele) and “Writing’s on the Wall” (Sam Smith). The song’s title and lyrics fit the movie’s theme and perfectly capture the adventure that Bond will experience. However, some students preferred previous Bond theme songs.
“I personally like Adele’s song the best because “No Time to Die” was too mellow while “Skyfall” had a strong and powerful part to it,” senior Noah McPhee said.
“No Time To Die” introduced the first female 007 in any James Bond movie. Although Nomi (Lashana Lynch) will not be the next James Bond, as the directors decided it would only be a man, she is the first Black female 007 agent. Nomi uses her authority as the new 007 to ridicule Bond when he wants to return and take on the new mission of defeating Safin (Rami Malek). Despite their tension in the beginning of the film, they eventually learn to collaborate and use their individual strengths to become even stronger together.
“The relationship between Nomi and Bond was really comical. Even though they were being attacked, they still were able to be sarcastic and humorous,” sophomore Lyn McKaig said.
Cliffhangers are useful in gaining the return of audience members, but addressing them in the following film can cause confusion, with different plots occurring simultaneously. Saving the world is one of the main plot lines in each Bond movie, but the additional storylines can cause dissatisfaction when directors don’t execute them well. Villain characters from previous films, such as Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) from “Spectre,” had to be terminated. Directors thus used the new villain’s deadly poison to kill him off. Although the directors were able to incorporate those cliff hangers into the new movie, it created too many threads for many audience members to follow.
“I felt like the plot was a little confusing and all over the place. It seemed as though the directors were trying to close all the side storylines from previous films, rather than just focusing on solving the main issue,” junior Ida London said.
The question of who would be portraying the new James Bond arose when Daniel Craig announced he would not film any more Bond movies. These films have been known for Bond having invincible abilities and always finding a solution for a seemingly unsolvable issue. Despite having bullets flying at him from every direction, Bond accomplishes to save the world by the end of the movie. Regardless of the success, his death was quite shocking as Bond is usually undefeatable and somehow never dies. Unfortunately, to let him off the series, Bond needed to somehow disappear from the plot, and the directors chose to kill him off. Even though he dies, he dies knowing that Swann and his daughter are safe and that he has saved the world.
“The ending was upsetting because any hero dying is sad, but I have a suspicion of who will be the next Bond, James Bond,” senior Sinead Longsworth said.
