SPOILERS AHEAD FOR “NO TIME TO DIE”
A few months on from release, the final Daniel Craig-led James Bond entry “No Time to Die” has now had its time in the sun for people to react to it.
Of course, one of the most talked-about aspects is the ending and the film’s director Cary Joji Fukunaga has finally gone on the record with Empire about the decision to have Bond die in a hail of missile fire, a noble sacrifice to stop a nanobot virus from spreading across the world (and killing both Madeleine Swann and the pair’s child).
The film also makes it very clear he’s dead with no cheating or last-minute saves. Fukunaga says it was a matter of taste in regards to why they chose to see Bond engulfed in a smoky fireball rather than see him blown to pieces:
“I wasn’t trying to be obtuse with it. I wanted to be clear with it. But I wanted it to be tasteful. We didn’t want that shot in Terminator 2 where you see Sarah Connor turning into bones. But we wanted to show that he wasn’t going to jump down a sewer at the last second. So that wider shot of the island being pummeled was a mixture of macro and micro. The full effect is, ‘Yes, he’s gone, but he succeeded in making sure none of [those] weapons would go on into the future.'”
Fukunaga also spoke briefly about the final shot with Madeleine and her child driving into a tunnel, mirroring the 007 gun barrel sequence. Fukunaga says: “It felt like closure, like closing off the past and closing off the story. It’s that last sentence in a paragraph in the last chapter of a book, just to try to make it feel satisfying.”
“No Time to Die” is available now on VOD.
