NO TIME TO DIE (2021) - First Reactions vs. Current Reactions

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  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited October 2021 Posts: 14,861
    I'm hoping Madeline has done the thing most canny parents do and secretly had a stunt double in a cupboard at home for just such an occasion :)
  • HildebrandRarityHildebrandRarity Centre international d'assistance aux personnes déplacées, Paris, France
    Posts: 467
    The doll is not named Dou Dou. A "doudou" is the generic French term that a kid uses for their comforter. You're missing all the real subtleties from the plot!

    Anyway, if Mathilde finds her doudou in the water, it might not be a good idea to get some rag doll that was in contact with some problematic nanobots.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 5,921
    Why did they have to kill Dou Dou?!? I'm never going to see a Bond film EVER AGAIN!
  • RyanRyan Canada
    Posts: 692
    The doll is not named Dou Dou. A "doudou" is the generic French term that a kid uses for their comforter. You're missing all the real subtleties from the plot!

    Anyway, if Mathilde finds her doudou in the water, it might not be a good idea to get some rag doll that was in contact with some problematic nanobots.

    Excellent point. Now that would make the plot even darker. Poor old Bond thinking he's freed them from harm only to have them pick up the doll he's been in contact with after he's gone.
  • FeyadorFeyador Montreal, Canada
    Posts: 718
    Simon wrote: »
    matt_u wrote: »
    I feel some people here seem to miss the point. Bond chooses to die because he didn’t want to live that life without his family.

    Pretty sure his plan involved getting off the island. He didn't choose to stay, he was beaten. Once the silo doors started to close, he was never getting away. There was no choice involved, he was bested by a foe, who on the scale of Bond Villainy, was not all that great.

    And had taken at least three bullets, by which time he was barely able to climb that ladder that lead him to the rooftop. It wasn't suicide.
  • HildebrandRarityHildebrandRarity Centre international d'assistance aux personnes déplacées, Paris, France
    Posts: 467
    Ryan wrote: »
    Excellent point. Now that would make the plot even darker. Poor old Bond thinking he's freed them from harm only to have them pick up the doll he's been in contact with after he's gone.

    Exactly. It's actually called in storytelling Chekov's doll, the finest narrative incarnation of Chekov's gun.
  • RyanRyan Canada
    Posts: 692
    On an unrelated note to the doll - I can't stop thinking about a lot of the M scenes in the film. They got some of the biggest laughs among the audience of my second screening.

    Bond's "my God your thirsty today" line, M dropping the F bomb, and then M telling Q to shut up. Bond's "another child" quip got a good reaction as well.

    I really liked how the humour was played in this film. I'm assuming that's PWB's touch (not too familiar with her work overall).
  • DonnyDB5DonnyDB5 Buffalo, New York
    edited October 2021 Posts: 1,755
    I don’t understand why people are making such a huge deal about continuity. I dragged a couple of my friends to see NTTD with me & they are definitely not hardcore Bond fans like I am. They seemed to understand the concept just fine. Craig’s Bond story has concluded. The next story will be a clean slate. None of them seemed disappointed that this is the end of James Bond altogether, because it is t. It’s the end of Daniel Craig’s James Bond. Alternative timeline.

    Like someone said above regarding Halloween. Same Michael Myers, just alternative timeline ignoring all the old sequels. Easy, easy concept, and a popular trend in cinema nowadays.
  • WhyBondWhyBond USA
    Posts: 65
    Just saw it. didn't like it. The death was a cheap move to try a shock factor ala Logan, Tony Stark or the Marvel universe. So Bond could not die after getting shot multiple of times so let's have him die by a barrage of missles. James Bond is not Solid Snake.
    The story was too bloated and too many characters. Safin had no reason for his plan. The emotions were at an all time high and it was tedious.
    Say Craig Bond is in a different timeline but there were so many references to the past films.
    The locales, action, cinematography were excellent. The first hour was some of the best stuff. It all fell apart after and the story arc dating back to CR made no sense.
    They have ran out of ideas. Went as far to reference Foxdie from MGS and nanobits from Everything or Nothing. The title is even from a villains mouth telling Bond he is just in time to die.

  • edited October 2021 Posts: 295
    DonnyDB5 wrote: »
    I don’t understand why people are making such a huge deal about continuity. I dragged a couple of my friends to see NTTD with me & they are definitely not hardcore Bond fans like I am. They seemed to understand the concept just fine. Craig’s Bond story has concluded. The next story will be a clean slate. None of them seemed disappointed that this is the end of James Bond altogether, because it is t. It’s the end of Daniel Craig’s James Bond. Alternative timeline.

    Like someone said above regarding Halloween. Same Michael Myers, just alternative timeline ignoring all the old sequels. Easy, easy concept, and a popular trend in cinema nowadays.

    It's a big deal because Bond is dead at the end of Bond 25 but magically alive at the start of Bond 26 and the sheeple film goers are supposed to just accept it and pay 20 quid to see it. That's why you need to respect continuity not (rude word!) about with it!!!

    And there is no such narrative device as an alternative timeline. Barbara Broccoli never said the Craig era was alternative reality Bond. There is only one cinematic James Bond. Never Say Never Again and the spoof Casino Royale don't count.

    We're gonna have endless Bond realities? Lol
    Oh boy. Crazeeeeeeee.🤪 Unless Bond escapes death at the start of Bond 26, the timeline and continuity is messed up. And it's so silly to have Bond die and then he's alive with a new face in the next film.

    Eon have lost the plot. Gone radio gaga. 😂
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    So do we all now agree that it was "when her secret comes out it will be the death of you"? :D
  • HildebrandRarityHildebrandRarity Centre international d'assistance aux personnes déplacées, Paris, France
    edited October 2021 Posts: 467
    Halloween is not the best comparison, as the recent sequels still regard the original as canon and dismiss most of the sequels to make a claim that they're the true continuation of the story.

    A better equivalent would be superheroes and comic books. As I've said in another thread, there have been several versions of Batman onscreen, we're now in the middle of a third continuity for Spider-Man in less than twenty years, with a fourth parallel one if we think of Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (which also introduces a lot of other alternate timelines for comedic purposes).
    For Bond, we've had the novels (with or without the post-Fleming works), a long stretch of films that went from Dr. No to Die Another Day with five different actors that maintained some semblance of continuity, then the reboot starring Craig that turned out to be a five-entry miniseries, with a proper beginning and end, and now we're reaching some uncharted territories, except that it will a third filmic continuity.

    What happens in one continuity doesn't really affect what takes place in another one. Book Bond ultimately avenged Tracy's death. For the first timeline of film Bond, it was some unfinished business. Then, in the Craig timeline, he met instead Madeleine, and he was the one who died. Maybe in the next continuity, the main story will be with a character from the novels, one from the classic films, one from the Craig years, or be something original.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 12,914
    The doll is not named Dou Dou. A "doudou" is the generic French term that a kid uses for their comforter.
    At the same time, I believe the on screen subtitles applied to Mathilde are capitalized. Indicating it's the name the child applied to the doll.

    Kind of like the dog named Dog appearing in Big Jake. Later, Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior.

    4056ed9449f2ee1eaa01ee8f9e7863b4--john-wayne-movie-characters.jpg
    tumblr_pptls4PFPv1sm085eo1_400.gifv

  • HildebrandRarityHildebrandRarity Centre international d'assistance aux personnes déplacées, Paris, France
    edited October 2021 Posts: 467
    As I'm French, I've seen a version that didn't have any subtitle for Mathilde's lines. But I think that the translator who was in charge of the English subtitles wasn't aware that it was a generic term.

    French Wikipedia entry for doudou

    It links to "Stuffed toy" as the English version.

    I once had a cat who basically had his own doudou. He kept for months around him a stuffed article in the shape of an heart, a piece that must have come from some gift shop, and would carry it between his jaws without trying to tear it apart.
    But he definitely had no name for it.
  • slide_99slide_99 USA
    edited October 2021 Posts: 648
    DonnyDB5 wrote: »
    I don’t understand why people are making such a huge deal about continuity. I dragged a couple of my friends to see NTTD with me & they are definitely not hardcore Bond fans like I am. They seemed to understand the concept just fine. Craig’s Bond story has concluded. The next story will be a clean slate. None of them seemed disappointed that this is the end of James Bond altogether, because it is t. It’s the end of Daniel Craig’s James Bond. Alternative timeline.

    Like someone said above regarding Halloween. Same Michael Myers, just alternative timeline ignoring all the old sequels. Easy, easy concept, and a popular trend in cinema nowadays.

    Why does the next film have to be a clean slate to begin with? Was anyone confused when Moore took over after Connery? Dalton after Moore? Brosnan after Dalton? Has there ever been a clean slate to begin with? Brosnan had Llewellyn's Q. Even Craig had Dench's M. NTTD's ending doesn't tidy anything up, it only further confuses everything. The Bond franchise only works across multiple eras because Bond doesn't ever die onscreen.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 12,914
    As I'm French, I've seen a version that didn't have any subtitle for Mathilde's lines. But I think that the translator who was in charge of the English subtitles wasn't aware that it was a generic term.

    French Wikipedia entry for doudou

    It links to "Stuffed toy" as the English version.

    I once had a cat who basically had his own doudou. He kept for months around him a stuffed article in the shape of an heart, a piece that must have come from some gift shop, and would carry it between his jaws without trying to tear it apart.
    But he definitely had no name for it.
    Yes I understand the point @HildebrandRarity. At the same time as received in US theaters, presenting Dou Dou as a proper noun on screen becomes canon as a name. To me it's a charming childlike approach to it.

    And if my memory is incorrect someone can redirect.

  • HildebrandRarityHildebrandRarity Centre international d'assistance aux personnes déplacées, Paris, France
    edited October 2021 Posts: 467
    We have the same experience with the beginning of The Big Lebowski, due to Sam Elliott's thick accent that the translators didn't really crack. "Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you" sounded a lot like "Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you", and the translators assumed it was "bar" (which exists in French) with the meaning of "counter".
    Years afterwards, it was fixed in the subtitles, but for years, when I watched the film, the monologue was about a man-eating counter, which made it even more surreal. And which is still part of the film as far as my first impressions and memories go.

    But I really digress now.
  • Ryan wrote: »
    On an unrelated note to the doll - I can't stop thinking about a lot of the M scenes in the film. They got some of the biggest laughs among the audience of my second screening.

    Bond's "my God your thirsty today" line, M dropping the F bomb, and then M telling Q to shut up. Bond's "another child" quip got a good reaction as well.

    I really liked how the humour was played in this film. I'm assuming that's PWB's touch (not too familiar with her work overall).

    I agree, there's some great humour. At our local cinema tonight, there were a lot of chuckles (including mine), when Bond and Moneypenny turn up at Q's home and Bond looks at the cat and says "You know they come with fur these days". I love it.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    We have the same experience with the beginning of The Big Lebowski, due to Sam Elliott's thick accent that the translators didn't really crack. "Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you" sounded a lot like "Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you", and the translators assumed it was "bar" (which exists in French) with the meaning of "counter".
    Years afterwards, it was fixed in the subtitles, but for years, when I watched the film, the monologue was about a man-eating counter, which made it even more surreal. And which is still part of the film as far as my first impressions and memories go.

    But I really digress now.

    I’m enjoying these; good facts! :)
  • Posts: 226
    This was really close to being something quite good and it's frustrating because a couple things derailed it. Rami Malek is lame and just blankly mumbles the whole time. They really should have just made Blofeld the main villain again, in the scene where Bond does the double take when he's in jail I thought he was going to be gone which would have been a perfect set-up. In a similar vein the villain scheme was too over the top for how seriously the movie took itself. The more tongue in cheek movies can get away with stuff like that but not Craig's. Casino Royale was pretty much about moving money around, Skyfall was just about embarrassing MI6 and assassinating M, and if something like the Nine Eyes thing in Spectre actually happened I wouldn't be that surprised. But the fantasy "garden of death" stuff here did not work.

    I liked nearly everything else about it. It's a really good enseble. Craig of course, Seydoux, Fiennes, Waltz, Lynch, and AdA (who would have been a really good main Bond Girl) were all good. The action scenes were good. Despite the dull, mumbly Billie Eilish song it's one of the best title sequences they've ever had. Zimmer's score is fantastic and deserves a nod.

    Loved that they played the old Louis Armstrong song over the end credits, one of many OHMSS callbacks. I waited to the end and yes, it said "James Bond will return".

    I did have fun with it seeing it in the theater for the first time, but I rewatch my tenish or so favorite Bond films every few years (planning on doing a bunch over Christmas this year) an this isn't going to be one of them going forward, it's more middle of the pack. Since I was one of the only people on the planet who liked it I would have been fine with him going out with Spectre.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    mtm wrote: »
    So do we all now agree that it was "when her secret comes out it will be the death of you"? :D

    That might be the one thing we *can* all agree on now. ;)
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    mtm wrote: »
    So do we all now agree that it was "when her secret comes out it will be the death of you"? :D

    That might be the one thing we *can* all agree on now. ;)

    :))
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    edited October 2021 Posts: 7,518
    @CountJohn personally I'd say that's another case of blaming the actor for something that wasn't their fault. Safin was a half-baked villain, for sure (like Blofeld before him in Spectre), but I think he did well with the material given to him (like Waltz before him in Spectre). Where improvement needed, was writing.

    I had a thought for a cool backstory for Safin:
    Perhaps he and his family lived in an impoverished, overpopulated part of the world and were struggling to make ends meet. Enter Mr. White, an agent of Spectre, who comes to them and promises that his organization will give them a new place to live, money, food, everything they could have dreamed of. Safin's family can't imagine what Spectre's motivation to help them would be, but they're in no position to say no.
    Mr. White then brings them to their island where they live and have all the things that were promised to them. But the cost is that Spectre was using the family to test their biological weapons on, a horrific cost indeed. The family suffers at the hands of Spectre, but a scarred Lyutsifer survives and escapes.
    It could have gone a bit of the way to defining his motivation to rid the world of a large percentage of the population (more resources to go around, same old dream), and his motivation against Spectre.

    Why would Spectre send White to obtain this family in particular? I hadn't gotten that far yet, but maybe they weren't picky and just picked them at random. Maybe Father Safin had some connection to Mr. White / Spectre (tried to make a deal with them before, or something). Anyways, just a thought.
  • DCisaredDCisared Liverpool
    Posts: 1,329
    mtm wrote: »
    So do we all now agree that it was "when her secret comes out it will be the death of you"? :D

    halcyon days :))
  • edited October 2021 Posts: 51
    Nice job getting that username, I'd have thought it would have been taken by now!

    Haha I randomly got it immediately after mi6.co.uk moved here (before the Bond 24 title was unveiled). Haven't commented much since then though.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    SPECTRE wrote: »
    Nice job getting that username, I'd have thought it would have been taken by now!

    Haha I randomly got it immediately after mi6.co.uk moved here (before the Bond 24 title was unveiled). Haven't commented much since then though.

    Lucky duck (or cuckoo)!
  • RyanRyan Canada
    Posts: 692
    As I'm French, I've seen a version that didn't have any subtitle for Mathilde's lines. But I think that the translator who was in charge of the English subtitles wasn't aware that it was a generic term.

    French Wikipedia entry for doudou

    It links to "Stuffed toy" as the English version.

    I once had a cat who basically had his own doudou. He kept for months around him a stuffed article in the shape of an heart, a piece that must have come from some gift shop, and would carry it between his jaws without trying to tear it apart.
    But he definitely had no name for it.
    Yes I understand the point @HildebrandRarity. At the same time as received in US theaters, presenting Dou Dou as a proper noun on screen becomes canon as a name. To me it's a charming childlike approach to it.

    And if my memory is incorrect someone can redirect.

    I agree. To me it's akin to naming a doll "Dolly" or that sort of thing. Even if it's a case of mistaken translation, I think it works perfectly fine.
  • DwayneDwayne New York City
    Posts: 2,598
    AstonLotus wrote: »

    Ah, the usual fandom menace pricks. I can guess what’s in it without clicking the video and giving it a hit. Let me guess, it’s “woke” because Bond only has sex with one woman (funnily this has already happened before NTTD) and that it features a black woman with the 007 designation.

    OH NOES!

    Aston, you appear to at least have a semblance of intelligence so it’s kind of sad that you fall for this incel crap.

    Agreed @MakeshiftPython. This was the second video of this type that I have watched, and in both cases, they insist that the only reason NTTD wasn’t totally “woke” was because they reshot part of the movie after complaints.

    In the middle of a worldwide pandemic, EON was able to refilm major scenes and redub dialogue without the whole world knowing about it! Of course…….
    =))
  • edited October 2021 Posts: 66
    Feyador wrote: »
    Simon wrote: »
    matt_u wrote: »
    I feel some people here seem to miss the point. Bond chooses to die because he didn’t want to live that life without his family.

    Pretty sure his plan involved getting off the island. He didn't choose to stay, he was beaten. Once the silo doors started to close, he was never getting away. There was no choice involved, he was bested by a foe, who on the scale of Bond Villainy, was not all that great.

    And had taken at least three bullets, by which time he was barely able to climb that ladder that lead him to the rooftop. It wasn't suicide.

    I viewed this as another Craig era subversion of a Bond trope. If Bond had been racing back to close the doors, been shot three times, killed Safin, opened doors, and made it out with ten seconds to spare while still managing to survive his wounds, the public would have mostly widely accepted it as okay because Bond can't die. He always survives. He always finds a way. He is immortal. He makes it out of every impossible life-threatening situation and saves the world. (Just see many arguments on this thread that make this very point in order to offer critique of this movie.) But he didn't. Because of the nanobots. The insertion of that plot point changed everything. This Bond was never going to fulfill the Bond trope of surviving the impossible because he didn't want to live without his family. So I viewed it as the writers' way of presenting the audience with the familiar while showing that this Bond is very much not familiar. He wanted a life with his family not just any life at all.

    All this to say, if we would be willing to accept him surviving those clearly fatal wounds to service a "Bond always survives" plot, then I'm not sure we can use the same wounds to discredit his choice in the plot we were given.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    edited October 2021 Posts: 12,914
    BlondeBond wrote: »
    Feyador wrote: »
    Simon wrote: »
    matt_u wrote: »
    I feel some people here seem to miss the point. Bond chooses to die because he didn’t want to live that life without his family.

    Pretty sure his plan involved getting off the island. He didn't choose to stay, he was beaten. Once the silo doors started to close, he was never getting away. There was no choice involved, he was bested by a foe, who on the scale of Bond Villainy, was not all that great.

    And had taken at least three bullets, by which time he was barely able to climb that ladder that lead him to the rooftop. It wasn't suicide.

    I viewed this as another Craig era subversion of a Bond trope. If Bond had been racing back to close the doors, been shot three times, killed Safin, opened doors, and made it out with ten seconds to spare while still managing to survive his wounds, the public would have mostly widely accepted it as okay because Bond can't die. He always survives. He always finds a way. He is immortal. He makes it out of every impossible life-threatening situation and saves the world. (Just see many arguments on this thread that make this very point in order to offer critique of this movie.) But he didn't. Because of the nanobots. The insertion of that plot point changed everything. This Bond was never going to fulfill the Bond trope of surviving the impossible because he didn't want to live without his family. So I viewed it as the writers' way of presenting the audience with the familiar while showing that this Bond is very much not familiar. He wanted a life with his family not just any life at all.
    And to me @BlondeBond the film paused to celebrate the fact Bond understood he had that. Against all odds and his history he did find love and a family, now that exists for all time. On screen he clearly appreciated those things.

    Earlier in the film Felix mentioned returning to his family with another tale of saving the world. It wasn't meant to be, and played up his loss.

    Still another connection in the dialog is the proposal by Felix and others it's a good life and similar sentiment. Bond DID live an exceptionally good life on many sides, surely that's true for most all of us even if we don't stop to assess it that way.


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