Does NO TIME TO DIE have the best ending in the franchise?

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  • Posts: 3,272
    GetCarter wrote: »
    The ending of NTTD is dumb. Not so much because James Bond dies but because the movie is poorly executed and doesn't earn the moment.

    To a lesser extent I cannot deny feeling some inertia at the concept of Bond dying. It just doesn't fit the DNA of his character - always on top, always an escape plan.
    NTTD hasn't got better with age
    In any case I feel as though they put all the good character beats into Casino Royale and had nowhere to go after that.

    Nihilism and redemption? QoS

    Mortality? SF

    I dunno what SP was trying to do. They were out of ideas for Bond.

    So what's left? Ah, let's kill him.

    The Craig era is a classic example of diminishing returns. It really is.

    Yes I agree with this.

    I watched The Dark Knight Rises again recently, and although Nolan wanted to finish off his own arc story for the Batman with Bale, he still didn't want to kill him off outright at the end.

    TDKR could very easily have gone down the path of NTTD but chose not to, and I think the film is a lot better for it. Had NTTD ended with Craig still alive, but concludes with an ending where we know this has brought the curtain down on Craig's reign, it would have been a lot better for it too. The film didn't need to go that far.

    NTTD hasn't got better with age. If anything, it now sits firmly alongside the likes of DAD at the bottom of my list, something I never thought would ever be possible in the Craig era, which showed so much promise when CR was released.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,368
    GetCarter wrote: »
    The ending of NTTD is dumb. Not so much because James Bond dies but because the movie is poorly executed and doesn't earn the moment.

    To a lesser extent I cannot deny feeling some inertia at the concept of Bond dying. It just doesn't fit the DNA of his character - always on top, always an escape plan.

    In any case I feel as though they put all the good character beats into Casino Royale and had nowhere to go after that.

    Nihilism and redemption? QoS

    Mortality? SF

    I dunno what SP was trying to do. They were out of ideas for Bond.

    So what's left? Ah, let's kill him.

    The Craig era is a classic example of diminishing returns. It really is.

    Craig's Bond would've done well in listening to Q of the Brosnan era:

    "I've always tried to teach you two things. First, never let them see you bleed."
    "And the second?"
    "Always have an escape plan."

    Bond failed on both those fronts in NTTD.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 7,999
    Nobody is perfect.
  • edited January 2023 Posts: 2,005
    Technically Bond failed on those fronts too in Die Another Day’s pre title sequence.
  • SIS_HQSIS_HQ At the Vauxhall Headquarters
    edited January 2023 Posts: 3,382
    It's not him getting bleed and escape, I do get that Bond is a human being too, it's just the way it's handled, the execution.

    His death felt unrealistic with those missiles dropping to him, that scene made his possible death in the Goldfinger laser table more a bit realistic :))

    There's so many better and realistic things to kill him off, because I thought they're trying to make the Craig Era more grounded, but it failed on that, because it's still ended on an Over The Top outing!

    No Time To Die is no different to the likes of Die Another Day, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker and etc. Which were accusing of being cartoonish and fantasy (and to the lesser extent, Over The Top and Campy), NTTD is no different to that due to how exaggerated it is.

    It's just exaggerated and over the top, heck some of the numerous scenes in NTTD made the sinking CGI Venice Building in Casino Royale a bit realistic too.

    No Time To Die is for me now, the campiest, over the top outing of the Craig Era, moreso than SPECTRE.

    If they failed at something, it's trying to make Craig's Bond realistic, grounded and down to earth.

    Edit: they really failed at this aspect, and it's also because in the way he dodged those bullets, flipped those rovers, the donut thing he made in the PTS, him being confident all the time and him not feeling any fear (something that we saw the Classic Bonds felt in some various situations).
  • SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷ Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria
    Posts: 1,282
    Ambiguity! Ambiguity! Ambiguity! That's what NTTD's ending needed.
  • GoldenGunGoldenGun Per ora e per il momento che verrà
    Posts: 6,757
    CrabKey wrote: »
    No question. It's just a book, just a movie. Not real life. In the scheme of things, does it make a bit of difference who or what Bond is or if he dies? Just as long as it makes money. But here's the thing for me. As much as I love OHMSS, Bond and Blofeld meeting for the first time again after YOLT was the start of the timeline/continuity chaos. Is it best to ignore that stuff and just enjoy each film as they come without reflecting on what came before? Probably. Perhaps none of this would have mattered much to me had the series improved immeasurably and become more entertaining. I still like Bond films, but they're not as enjoyable as those early films.

    Exactly. I personally don’t mind some of the concepts here, but the main problem
    Ambiguity! Ambiguity! Ambiguity! That's what NTTD's ending needed.

    I agree.

    Personally I’m not against the concept of Bond dying, but they forgot what made the older films so elegant and stylish.

    Look at how understated Tracy’s death was and how that still remains the single most moving moment in the series.

    Now it all has to be:
    1. Spectacular and over-the-top
    2. Emotionally on-the-nose

    So what we got, regardless of how poorly written the movie already was up to that point, was an ending that almost literally tells us how to feel, not helped by Zimmer’s swollen riskfree music, during a big old explosion.

    This all betrays the fact that they aren’t able to convey real emotions, they have to explain to the audience that ‘this is all really sad you know’.

    An ambiguous ending would have at least kept things a bit more understated.
  • SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷ Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria
    Posts: 1,282
    Definitely @GoldenGun I'm not a fan of Bond dying....but if it must be done, make it stylish and ambiguous, because Bond is all about style after all.
  • edited January 2023 Posts: 988
    NTTD hasn't got better with age. If anything, it now sits firmly alongside the likes of DAD at the bottom of my list, something I never thought would ever be possible in the Craig era, which showed so much promise when CR was released.

    Perhaps the overall consensus, a few years down the pike will simply be "two films too many". It certainly seems that opinions on NTTD have cooled on here over the past year.

    And, I'd have loved an ambiguous ending. Horowitz With A Mind To Kill style.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    edited January 2023 Posts: 7,999
    Ambiguity! Ambiguity! Ambiguity! That's what NTTD's ending needed.

    Nah, that would have been an act of cowardice by the filmmakers to hold back on making Bond’s death explicit.

    Sometimes you gotta break some eggs.
  • SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷ Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria
    edited January 2023 Posts: 1,282
    Ambiguity! Ambiguity! Ambiguity! That's what NTTD's ending needed.

    Nah, that would have been an act of cowardice by the filmmakers to hold back on making Bond’s death explicit.

    Sometimes you gotta break some eggs.

    But the subtle rumble when James Bond Will Return showed up on screen, looked like the filmmakers telling us not to worry, that Bond isn't dead. I think if they were super-bold about the ending, James Bond Will Return should have appeared without the rumble like in previous instalments.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 7,999
    The rumble you heard was ColonelAdamski’s fist pounding the desk.
  • slide_99slide_99 USA
    edited January 2023 Posts: 648
    GetCarter wrote: »

    In any case I feel as though they put all the good character beats into Casino Royale and had nowhere to go after that.

    This much was clear by Skyfall because they kept negating the ending of Casino Royale by knocking Craig's Bond back to square one with each new movie.
    CR: He has become Bond because he's realized how cold the world of espionage actually is and that he can't trust anyone.
    QOS: Wait, he's not Bond yet. First he has to get over Vesper (even though he already did that in CR's ending, that was the whole point of it), then he's really James Bond.
    SF: Actually he's still not Bond yet. First he has to get over his unresolved childhood trauma and get M, Q, and Moneypenny into their classic offices, now he's really, truly ready to be James Bond finally... even though he's suddenly old for some reason.
    SP: Whoa, hold your horses, pal, he's not REALLY Bond yet. Like Moneypenny says, he's just getting started four movies into his tenure. Now he has to defeat his evil adoptive brother and conquer his Jungian shadow or whatever, then he's really, truly, finally James Bond. Oh wait, actually he retires.
    NTTD: Uh yeah now we're just going to kill him off. We get to reboot this thing and try again, right?

    The "becoming Bond" aspect worked so well for CR that they tried to do it with every movie, apparently because they didn't feel that simply giving Craig a normal mission would work for him. It points to a lack of confidence on the part of the filmmakers that they couldn't just have Craig BE James Bond from start to finish in a single movie, even though I think he could easily have pulled that off.
    The Craig era is a classic example of diminishing returns. It really is.

    Agreed. Many false starts, empty promises, and missed opportunities.
  • Agent_Zero_OneAgent_Zero_One Ireland
    edited January 2023 Posts: 554
    slide_99 wrote: »
    GetCarter wrote: »

    In any case I feel as though they put all the good character beats into Casino Royale and had nowhere to go after that.

    This much was clear by Skyfall because they kept negating the ending of Casino Royale by knocking Craig's Bond back to square one with each new movie.
    CR: He has become Bond because he's realized how cold the world of espionage actually is and that he can't trust anyone.
    QOS: Wait, he's not Bond yet. First he has to get over Vesper (even though he already did that in CR's ending, that was the whole point of it), then he's really James Bond.
    SF: Actually he's still not Bond yet. First he has to get over his unresolved childhood trauma and get M, Q, and Moneypenny into their classic offices, now he's really, truly ready to be James Bond finally... even though he's suddenly old for some reason.
    SP: Whoa, hold your horses, pal, he's not REALLY Bond yet. Like Moneypenny says, he's just getting started four movies into his tenure. Now he has to defeat his evil adoptive brother and conquer his Jungian shadow or whatever, then he's really, truly, finally James Bond. Oh wait, actually he retires.
    NTTD: Uh yeah now we're just going to kill him off. We get to reboot this thing and try again, right?

    The "becoming Bond" aspect worked so well for CR that they tried to do it with every movie, apparently because they didn't feel that simply giving Craig a normal mission would work for him. It points to a lack of confidence on the part of the filmmakers that they couldn't just have Craig BE James Bond from start to finish in a single movie, even though I think he could easily have pulled that off.
    The Craig era is a classic example of diminishing returns. It really is.

    Agreed. Many false starts, empty promises, and missed opportunities.
    I don't think he's Becoming Bond in SF so much as going through an arc as Bond, working his way back after the bullet and burnout and finding a new dedication to the job at the end. He doesn't 'suddenly' become old, he goes through 4-6 years of constant active service, reflecting the gap between films. In the modern world, at that point he's absolutely a veteran who's ability to keep doing the job indefinitely might be called into question after the mauling he takes in the PTS.

    In SP Craig is doing his most Classic Bond performance from the very beginning. That's his starting point in the movie. His end is deciding to pack it in with Madeline.

    I do think SP undercuts SF's ending though when considering that it's not only the very next film, but supposedly takes place only a few months later in universe.
  • edited January 2023 Posts: 2,742
    slide_99 wrote: »
    GetCarter wrote: »

    In any case I feel as though they put all the good character beats into Casino Royale and had nowhere to go after that.

    This much was clear by Skyfall because they kept negating the ending of Casino Royale by knocking Craig's Bond back to square one with each new movie.
    CR: He has become Bond because he's realized how cold the world of espionage actually is and that he can't trust anyone.
    QOS: Wait, he's not Bond yet. First he has to get over Vesper (even though he already did that in CR's ending, that was the whole point of it), then he's really James Bond.
    SF: Actually he's still not Bond yet. First he has to get over his unresolved childhood trauma and get M, Q, and Moneypenny into their classic offices, now he's really, truly ready to be James Bond finally... even though he's suddenly old for some reason.
    SP: Whoa, hold your horses, pal, he's not REALLY Bond yet. Like Moneypenny says, he's just getting started four movies into his tenure. Now he has to defeat his evil adoptive brother and conquer his Jungian shadow or whatever, then he's really, truly, finally James Bond. Oh wait, actually he retires.
    NTTD: Uh yeah now we're just going to kill him off. We get to reboot this thing and try again, right?

    The "becoming Bond" aspect worked so well for CR that they tried to do it with every movie, apparently because they didn't feel that simply giving Craig a normal mission would work for him. It points to a lack of confidence on the part of the filmmakers that they couldn't just have Craig BE James Bond from start to finish in a single movie, even though I think he could easily have pulled that off.
    The Craig era is a classic example of diminishing returns. It really is.

    Agreed. Many false starts, empty promises, and missed opportunities.
    I don't think he's Becoming Bond in SF so much as going through an arc as Bond, working his way back after the bullet and burnout and finding a new dedication to the job at the end. He doesn't 'suddenly' become old, he goes through 4-6 years of constant active service. In the modern world, at that point he's absolutely a veteran who's ability to keep doing the job indefinitely might be called into question after the mauling he takes in the PTS.

    In SP Craig is doing his most Classic Bond performance from the very beginning. That's his starting point in the movie. His end is deciding to pack it in with Madeline.

    I do think SP undercuts SF's ending though when considering that it's not only the very next film, but supposedly takes place only a few months later in universe.

    For what it's worth I never really saw Craig's Bond having an arc where he 'becomes Bond'. It's just an incarnation of Bond which shows him at all the stages of his career as 007.
  • Agent_Zero_OneAgent_Zero_One Ireland
    edited January 2023 Posts: 554
    007HallY wrote: »
    slide_99 wrote: »
    GetCarter wrote: »

    In any case I feel as though they put all the good character beats into Casino Royale and had nowhere to go after that.

    This much was clear by Skyfall because they kept negating the ending of Casino Royale by knocking Craig's Bond back to square one with each new movie.
    CR: He has become Bond because he's realized how cold the world of espionage actually is and that he can't trust anyone.
    QOS: Wait, he's not Bond yet. First he has to get over Vesper (even though he already did that in CR's ending, that was the whole point of it), then he's really James Bond.
    SF: Actually he's still not Bond yet. First he has to get over his unresolved childhood trauma and get M, Q, and Moneypenny into their classic offices, now he's really, truly ready to be James Bond finally... even though he's suddenly old for some reason.
    SP: Whoa, hold your horses, pal, he's not REALLY Bond yet. Like Moneypenny says, he's just getting started four movies into his tenure. Now he has to defeat his evil adoptive brother and conquer his Jungian shadow or whatever, then he's really, truly, finally James Bond. Oh wait, actually he retires.
    NTTD: Uh yeah now we're just going to kill him off. We get to reboot this thing and try again, right?

    The "becoming Bond" aspect worked so well for CR that they tried to do it with every movie, apparently because they didn't feel that simply giving Craig a normal mission would work for him. It points to a lack of confidence on the part of the filmmakers that they couldn't just have Craig BE James Bond from start to finish in a single movie, even though I think he could easily have pulled that off.
    The Craig era is a classic example of diminishing returns. It really is.

    Agreed. Many false starts, empty promises, and missed opportunities.
    I don't think he's Becoming Bond in SF so much as going through an arc as Bond, working his way back after the bullet and burnout and finding a new dedication to the job at the end. He doesn't 'suddenly' become old, he goes through 4-6 years of constant active service. In the modern world, at that point he's absolutely a veteran who's ability to keep doing the job indefinitely might be called into question after the mauling he takes in the PTS.

    In SP Craig is doing his most Classic Bond performance from the very beginning. That's his starting point in the movie. His end is deciding to pack it in with Madeline.

    I do think SP undercuts SF's ending though when considering that it's not only the very next film, but supposedly takes place only a few months later in universe.

    For what it's worth I never really saw Craig's Bond having an arc where he 'becomes Bond'. It's just an incarnation of Bond which shows him at all the stages of his career as 007.
    Yeah, pretty much.

    I'm sympathetic to those who critique the CR-QOS jump though, because they do adjust where he is mentally from smiling at Mr. White and signalling with the Bond theme that the man himself has arrived to bullshitting either M, himself, or both about Kabira. It can be said to make sense in universe, but it is a shift for the audience.
  • Fire_and_Ice_ReturnsFire_and_Ice_Returns I am trying to get away from this mountan!
    edited January 2023 Posts: 23,102
    NTTD is easily the worst ending to a Bond film, Bond dies FFS and its a convoluted cluster...

    They are so indecisive how to kill Bond they set up multiple causes of death, its really poor.
  • Posts: 386
    slide_99 wrote: »
    GetCarter wrote: »

    In any case I feel as though they put all the good character beats into Casino Royale and had nowhere to go after that.

    This much was clear by Skyfall because they kept negating the ending of Casino Royale by knocking Craig's Bond back to square one with each new movie.
    CR: He has become Bond because he's realized how cold the world of espionage actually is and that he can't trust anyone.
    QOS: Wait, he's not Bond yet. First he has to get over Vesper (even though he already did that in CR's ending, that was the whole point of it), then he's really James Bond.
    SF: Actually he's still not Bond yet. First he has to get over his unresolved childhood trauma and get M, Q, and Moneypenny into their classic offices, now he's really, truly ready to be James Bond finally... even though he's suddenly old for some reason.
    SP: Whoa, hold your horses, pal, he's not REALLY Bond yet. Like Moneypenny says, he's just getting started four movies into his tenure. Now he has to defeat his evil adoptive brother and conquer his Jungian shadow or whatever, then he's really, truly, finally James Bond. Oh wait, actually he retires.
    NTTD: Uh yeah now we're just going to kill him off. We get to reboot this thing and try again, right?

    The "becoming Bond" aspect worked so well for CR that they tried to do it with every movie, apparently because they didn't feel that simply giving Craig a normal mission would work for him. It points to a lack of confidence on the part of the filmmakers that they couldn't just have Craig BE James Bond from start to finish in a single movie, even though I think he could easily have pulled that off.
    The Craig era is a classic example of diminishing returns. It really is.

    Agreed. Many false starts, empty promises, and missed opportunities.

    Agreed, and thanks for the laughs :)

    The Craig era is a real Frankenstein’s monster.

    Mining profundity in Bond’s psyche worked spectacularly in Casino Royale but galloped way out of control after that.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 12,914
    The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.

  • edited January 2023 Posts: 386
    The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.

    I’d be happy for Bond to merely exist in a taut espionage thriller in exotic locales at this point.
  • brinkeguthriebrinkeguthrie Piz Gloria
    Posts: 1,400
    THE worst. Have him drive down the road in the AM, into the sunset. "To all 007 fans everywhere, thank you for having me, -Daniel" scrawled across the screen. Fade to black, theme up, James Bond Will Return. I love 75% of the movie. The last 25% I will -never- watch again.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 5,921
    GoldenGun wrote: »
    CrabKey wrote: »
    No question. It's just a book, just a movie. Not real life. In the scheme of things, does it make a bit of difference who or what Bond is or if he dies? Just as long as it makes money. But here's the thing for me. As much as I love OHMSS, Bond and Blofeld meeting for the first time again after YOLT was the start of the timeline/continuity chaos. Is it best to ignore that stuff and just enjoy each film as they come without reflecting on what came before? Probably. Perhaps none of this would have mattered much to me had the series improved immeasurably and become more entertaining. I still like Bond films, but they're not as enjoyable as those early films.

    Exactly. I personally don’t mind some of the concepts here, but the main problem
    Ambiguity! Ambiguity! Ambiguity! That's what NTTD's ending needed.

    I agree.

    Personally I’m not against the concept of Bond dying, but they forgot what made the older films so elegant and stylish.

    Look at how understated Tracy’s death was and how that still remains the single most moving moment in the series.

    Now it all has to be:
    1. Spectacular and over-the-top
    2. Emotionally on-the-nose

    So what we got, regardless of how poorly written the movie already was up to that point, was an ending that almost literally tells us how to feel, not helped by Zimmer’s swollen riskfree music, during a big old explosion.

    This all betrays the fact that they aren’t able to convey real emotions, they have to explain to the audience that ‘this is all really sad you know’.

    An ambiguous ending would have at least kept things a bit more understated.

    Like the ambiguous death in DAF?
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,447
    How is it ridiculous? We’re talking about a fictional character, not a historical figure.

    How is it not ridiculous? They kill him, and they say he's not dead.

    Okay, they say he'll be back, but it'll be a different character. But it's still the same character. Just in a different 'timeline'.
    Look, I can see everyone here's great with it, and I'm obviously stuck in some alternate universe myself where I expect the makers of any movie I see to be honest with their narrative if they expect me to invest one iota of emotion in the movie.
    But seriously, can you imagine them saying 'Spartacus will be back', after the end of that movie? Or 'Scarface will be back'. You know, you've just seen them die.
    This is why I keep going on about sci-fi and comic books. Because they've done it there, they can do it with Bond and everyone in the world is okay with it but me.
    If they kill Ethan Hunt off, would it be okay to to say he's not dead at the end, and will be returning with a different actor in an alternate universe? I suppose it would to most.
    But anyway, as everyone says, it's only a movie. And if the next Bond author makes Bond gay, or a woman, it's only a book. Why bother caring?

    If you must draw comparisons to other movies...

    1) Spartacus is a historical figure. You treat those differently than fictional characters. Or not. Even then, films can allow themselves whatever freedom they choose to 'mess' with historical facts.

    2) Even then, Spartacus and Scarface are characters in, at best, a couple of films. James Bond is a character in a big franchise, i.e. a 60-year old film series, a 70-year old book series, tons of comics, video games, and more. He's been played, voiced, written, drawn, 'conceived'... by many different people who all put him in specific eras (the '40s, '50s, '60s, ...) as if the other incarnations of Bond don't even exist. We can at least establish that various 'versions' of Bond exist.

    3) Was it 'silly' to suggest that James Bond "will be back" at the end of NTTD? Well, we can argue about that. They could have ended the film without these words. But James Bond was always going to come back anyway. Pretty much everyone in the audience could at least have guessed that there would be a Bond 26 at some point. And in a few years from now, when that film has been released, the words "James Bond will be back" will make perfect sense, at least in a fourth-wall sort of way.

    4) Look, @ColonelAdamski, we're never going to agree and that's fine. But let us agree about one thing. The words are shown when the film is virtually over. Most people don't care about anything that comes after the final frame. So maybe we're getting worked up over something that's not really essential to the enjoyment of the film anyway.
  • GoldenGunGoldenGun Per ora e per il momento che verrà
    Posts: 6,757
    echo wrote: »
    GoldenGun wrote: »
    CrabKey wrote: »
    No question. It's just a book, just a movie. Not real life. In the scheme of things, does it make a bit of difference who or what Bond is or if he dies? Just as long as it makes money. But here's the thing for me. As much as I love OHMSS, Bond and Blofeld meeting for the first time again after YOLT was the start of the timeline/continuity chaos. Is it best to ignore that stuff and just enjoy each film as they come without reflecting on what came before? Probably. Perhaps none of this would have mattered much to me had the series improved immeasurably and become more entertaining. I still like Bond films, but they're not as enjoyable as those early films.

    Exactly. I personally don’t mind some of the concepts here, but the main problem
    Ambiguity! Ambiguity! Ambiguity! That's what NTTD's ending needed.

    I agree.

    Personally I’m not against the concept of Bond dying, but they forgot what made the older films so elegant and stylish.

    Look at how understated Tracy’s death was and how that still remains the single most moving moment in the series.

    Now it all has to be:
    1. Spectacular and over-the-top
    2. Emotionally on-the-nose

    So what we got, regardless of how poorly written the movie already was up to that point, was an ending that almost literally tells us how to feel, not helped by Zimmer’s swollen riskfree music, during a big old explosion.

    This all betrays the fact that they aren’t able to convey real emotions, they have to explain to the audience that ‘this is all really sad you know’.

    An ambiguous ending would have at least kept things a bit more understated.

    Like the ambiguous death in DAF?

    I was thinking more about the one in the FRWL novel :)
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,368
    THE worst. Have him drive down the road in the AM, into the sunset. "To all 007 fans everywhere, thank you for having me, -Daniel" scrawled across the screen. Fade to black, theme up, James Bond Will Return. I love 75% of the movie. The last 25% I will -never- watch again.

    I'd be all for a return to this, though I'm not sure how lucrative such a direction would be in today's large scale action movie world. They could always include a couple of really tremendous and unique setpieces to balance it all out but I watch something like DN and am desperate to see Bond return to that style.
  • MajorDSmytheMajorDSmythe "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."Moderator
    Posts: 13,882
    NTTD is easily the worst ending to a Bond film, Bond dies FFS and its a convoluted cluster...

    They are so indecisive how to kill Bond they set up multiple causes of death, its really poor.

    I have said similar in the past. I do have a problem with Bond dying, I will be upfront about that. That is why I haven’t watched NTTD, nor bought the DVD, since seeing it on the big screen. I wouldn’t have such a problem with it, if there were an ambiguity to it. But the po-faced goofyness of having Bond being also poisoned, when that ultimately doesn’t make any difference. Bond had already been mortality wounded, with the missile strike imminent. He wasn’t getting off that island, when he could barely climb the ladder.
  • SIS_HQSIS_HQ At the Vauxhall Headquarters
    Posts: 3,382
    NTTD is easily the worst ending to a Bond film, Bond dies FFS and its a convoluted cluster...

    They are so indecisive how to kill Bond they set up multiple causes of death, its really poor.

    I have said similar in the past. I do have a problem with Bond dying, I will be upfront about that. That is why I haven’t watched NTTD, nor bought the DVD, since seeing it on the big screen. I wouldn’t have such a problem with it, if there were an ambiguity to it. But the po-faced goofyness of having Bond being also poisoned, when that ultimately doesn’t make any difference. Bond had already been mortality wounded, with the missile strike imminent. He wasn’t getting off that island, when he could barely climb the ladder.

    True, they should just have just Bond get weak from that gunshot and multiple wounds then him escaping the island would take more time that the missiles were now on board, he just ran out of time.
  • VenutiusVenutius Yorkshire
    edited January 2023 Posts: 2,895
    Yeah, but there's no sacrifice in that. The nobility of it is in Bond choosing to stay on the island in order that Madeleine and Mathilde can live. It's a pointless death without him making that sacrifice.
  • Fire_and_Ice_ReturnsFire_and_Ice_Returns I am trying to get away from this mountan!
    Posts: 23,102
    NTTD is easily the worst ending to a Bond film, Bond dies FFS and its a convoluted cluster...

    They are so indecisive how to kill Bond they set up multiple causes of death, its really poor.

    I have said similar in the past. I do have a problem with Bond dying, I will be upfront about that. That is why I haven’t watched NTTD, nor bought the DVD, since seeing it on the big screen. I wouldn’t have such a problem with it, if there were an ambiguity to it. But the po-faced goofyness of having Bond being also poisoned, when that ultimately doesn’t make any difference. Bond had already been mortality wounded, with the missile strike imminent. He wasn’t getting off that island, when he could barely climb the ladder.

    I bought the digital copy of NTTD I don't get beyond the pre title sequence when I watch it now. I only recently watched the ending again as it was on ITV when I was at work. I was appalled by his death, this film is getting worse for me as time passes. The nods to OHMSS increasingly smack of creative bankruptcy, I don't like that I feel this way as the film technically has a lot of positives.
  • SIS_HQSIS_HQ At the Vauxhall Headquarters
    edited January 2023 Posts: 3,382
    Venutius wrote: »
    Yeah, but there's no sacrifice in that. The nobility of it is in Bond choosing to stay on the island in order that Madeleine and Mathilde can live. It's a pointless death without him making that sacrifice.

    I mean the sacrifice there is to Bond save Madeleine and Mathilde, get them off the island and out of Safin's reach, that's the most important of it at the time, with Bond thinking that he could be with them but Safin gunshot him and he still trying to escape the island, because he's willing to be with them, but he already didn't have any strengths to do so, and he just runs out of time, as much as he tried, the destiny decided that it's his time.

    That's a lot more sad than what we've got, because it's really tragic, that he tried but it can't, think of it like the Titanic situation with Jack sacrificing for Rose so she could live and kept warm with Jack dying from the cold by guarding Rose, it's not forced, the way it's happened, it's natural.

    And the title would've make much more sense in that Bond was thinking that he have "no time to die" because he needs to be with his family, but the tragedy was he can't.

    He saved his family from Safin, sacrificing his own life to save them by going to that island and taking them out of that lair.
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