No Time To Die
I'm actually amazed they killed James Bond. Of course we all know that "James Bond" isn't dead, there will be many more movies, but - this iteration of him is dead, dead, dead. And that is shocking, because it's never happened before. Nope. It really never has. Bond lives, because Bond the character continues on in the movies, gets rebooted in the actor even though the supporting players remain the same or swap around a bit (Judi Dench's M for both Brosnan and Craig; Desmond Llewelyn's Q for Connery, Moore, Dalton AND Brosnan, I'm pretty sure). This cast of supporting players is so extremely specific to Craig's definitive Bond movies that I wonder if any of them will be back at all?? Whishaw is young enough to carry Q on, if he so chooses, and same with Fiennes and Harris as Mallory and Moneypenny. And Rory Kinnear as Tanner. But will they want to??? IDK! I'm so curious to know where it all goes next. And they have a 007 already, technically, so. How will that get sorted? Another soft reboot? Treat it as a new 'universe'? Or have we literally already seen the next "James Bond?" (This all makes me think of that long-running theory that "James Bond" is only a code word, not a real person.)
Overall I thought this movie was excellent, even if I generally despise the entire love interest schtick. I disdain it for personal reasons, not story reasons, but romance often drags down otherwise tight plotting IMO, and I'm not a fan. This one felt ripped right from...Avengers Endgame, LOL. Okay, Tony Stark! What, a five year time jump, a young daughter, and having to save the world through personal sacrifice?? Come on. I can't. But the funniest moment in this movie BY FAR was Bond stuttering and stumbling over ALMOST saying "...my family." LOL he couldn't, that was amazing and worth the price of admission. I love the arc this expresses for Bond - that he loved and lost, misplaced his trust, and then tried again, loved and shoved her away (due to his previous lack of trust), and still loved her truly, and was loved in return. An all too brief moment of bliss, because we all know, Bond doesn't get to be happy. It was never going to work out. But I liked this softened up version of Bond, where Daniel Craig got to be sassy and soft and funny and deliver his lines with a lightness we haven't seen before. It was delightful! And it also seemed fitting that of course, he's LITERAL poison to those he loves; they would never be safe, and his death frees them, to some extent, even as it deprives them all of the joy of that thing he can't even admit he has.
I grieve the loss of Felix Leiter. Going back to how this set of players was specific to Craig's Bond - Jeffrey Wright is by far the best, and my fave, of all the Felixes there have ever been. He was always sort of a very real CIA guy, kind of schlubby and shady, down and dirty doing the work, in contrast to Bond's suave and smooth MI6 agent. He was a genuine joy, and it was really moving to hear Bond say of him, "I had a brother." *cries a little*
Also amazing: a canonically queer Q, who was cooking dinner for a male date when (as usual) Bond barged into his life, and then BOND STAYED. I mean, 00Q was a Bloody Big Ship (TM) for a while, and then it died down, and now the embers are roaring back because of how well fed we were with tiny morsels in this film. That bit where Q pretends he hasn't seen Bond, and M tells him to cut the shit, that he knows Bond is staying at Q's, was enough to feed this starving fandom for another year or so, and YAY FOR THAT. :D In general, Q got a lot more to do this time out, and more to react to, and a bit more of a life with his weird music and his hairless cats (OMG I DIED LAUGHING) and his apparent conquering of his fear of planes, and his reporting to work in his pajamas, it was fanfic sprung to life. And since it'd be easy to ensure Bond didn't "die" and since in canon he can't touch either Madeline or his kid, well. LET THE SHIP SAIL, PEOPLE.
Moneypenny was underutilized, but Mallory got some great, grim scenes, reminiscent of the very best of Madame M's moments of sacrificing her agents for the greater good, and he captured all of that well. Fiennes does so much with the bits he's given, it's a thrill to watch.
The plot was eh, but THOSE ACTION SCENES were FIRE. Daniel Craig takes such a beating in those scenes, you can see there's no stunt man in many of them because there's never a cutaway, his face is never hidden; it's him going over desks and through walls and whatnot. Probably not rolling down stairs, but whatever - he's not a kid anymore, and he still carries it off spectacularly.
HUGE PROPS to Ana de Armas as the extremely competent and charming "Three weeks of training!" Paloma and Lashana Lynch as an utterly badass 007. I could truly watch a movie built around the two of them. LOVED THEM BOTH.
Rami Malek: totally wasted in that role. The real villain here was an engineered virus, not any human. SPECTRE was wiped out. Blofeld was dead. (Another waste, really, tho that one scene he got was great.) Also did not ever care about Madeline Swan, her tragic backstory, or whatever. At all. So these bits were less great for me.
So many nice nods to the past of these films, the franchise and its history - the portraits of past M's on the wall; Felix and his cigars; the car; Vesper Lynd. And more. All of that made me feel warm and fuzzy.
Gosh, so much happened in this movie. I came away sad that they killed off my fave Bond of all time, but I feel about that much like I felt about the death of Tony Stark in Endgame - I have several movies to watch again and again, and sometimes, it's just right for the character to go out in a blaze of glory. True to who they were, what they stood for, and how they "lived" on our screens.
And Q is queer! Let the fix-its commence.