Everyday thoughts, but not every day

Bondbots

After several postponements, No Time To Die has finally made it to cinemas, two years later than planned. Early reviews suggest that it's both better, and worse, than some had feared. On the plus side, it's not the hatchet job to the character that early marketing had suggested. Whether this is because the marketing was misguided, or whether the excesses had been walked back by the producers in the intervening period, is anyone's guess. I really don't care.

The TLDR, high-level executive summary goes like this:

  1. Stuff happens.
  2. Eventually, Billie Eilish mumbles her way through the dreariest theme song imaginable.
  3. A naughty person develops a bioweapon; lethal nanobots, that infect like a virus and are targeted to the victim's DNA. I shit you not.
  4. Stuff happens.
  5. All of the SPECTRE agents in the entire world convene in one room.
  6. Bond joins them.
  7. Someone releases nanobots, killing all of the SPECTRE agents in the entire world, but leaving Bond unscathed.
  8. Felix Leiter is killed.
  9. Blofeld dies after Bond infects him with nanobots.
  10. Stuff happens.
  11. Bond becomes infected with nanobots targeted against Madeleine and their daughter, so he can never come into contact with them again. This makes him sad.
  12. The bad guy's lair is attacked with missiles.
  13. Bond makes no attempt to escape. For he is sad.
  14. Bond dies.
  15. End.

The franchise had become a joke, thanks in no small part to the ever-increasingly outlandish storylines. So, 2006's reboot, with Casino Royale, came as a breath of fresh air. At last, we had a grounded, realistic Bond and a believable story. This Bond was weary, worn down by life in the secret service, and not an inveterate lothario. It continued, more or less, through to SPECTRE. Admittedly, Quantum of Solace received some criticism for a lacklustre threat and villain, but I enjoyed it, in part because those aspects were actually credible.

So, how do the producers round out Daniel Craig's story arc? Nanobots. Fucking nanobots! That, right there, is some egregious Moore-/Brosnan-era magical bullshit device. How could the franchise have regressed so badly? Words…words truly fail me. (SMH)

The problem with the nanobot plotline, other than being lazy spooky-sounding science for the masses, is the paradox that it introduces. At the SPECTRE convention—organised by Blofeld from his high-security prison cell, by other outlandish means—it was Bond who was the intended target. But the naughty person switched Bond's DNA out, and reprogrammed the nanobots with DNA from all SPECTRE agents around the world. The villain intends to deploy the nanobots as a WMD, but they're targeted against specific victims' DNA. Consider the implications for a WMD, just for a moment—clue: a WMD has to be, by definition, indiscriminate. And this is the plot for the film culminating in Bond's death. His final mission. It's all so tragically low-energy and inept; as if the lessons from the identity-changing gene therapy of Die Another Day had never been learnt, after all.

What's so disappointing is that the core plot and character arc, culminating in Bond's death, could have been serviced still by a credible threat. As a MacGuffin, the nanobots explain the entire elimination of SPECTRE in Bond's presence, and why Bond resigns himself to his final fate. But the first of these isn't really necessary, and the second could have been easily achieved through other means. Compared to conventional NCB weapons, nanobots make an unrealistic WMD. Alternatively, the writers could've introduced an environmental catastrophe, which would've been right up Craig's street of soy.

I don't know who among the story writers came up with this shit, so I'll blame all of them. Fuck you, Neal Purvis. Fuck you, Robert Wade. And fuck you, Cary Joji Fukunaga! Of course, they couldn't have done this without the producers' agreement. So, Chris Brigham; Barbara Broccoli; Daniel Craig; Andrew Noakes; David Pope; Gregg Wilson; and Michael G. Wilson, fuck you too!

All of which simply confirms that Bond, showing compassion towards his foster brother, before walking off with Madeleine at the close of SPECTRE, is the better way to end Craig's tenure. A four-film story arc, from origin to retirement. No Time To Die never existed.

I feel like a parent talking to a wayward child: I'm not angry; I'm just…disappointed. (sad)

When apportioning blame for the nanobot farce, I assumed that Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was brought in for screenplay rewrites, and the country line producers had nothing to do with it. Other than making the best of a bad lot.