Warning: This article contains spoilers for No Time to Die.
For the first time since the release of No Time to Die, Daniel Craig has spoken about its controversial ending. No Time to Die, which is the 25th film in the enduringly popular James Bond franchise, finally came to theaters in October 2021 after many delays. Not only was the film delayed by a change in director when Danny Boyle passed the torch to Cary Joji Fukunaga, but it was also one of the first films to have its date delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its intended April 2020 release came right at the beginning of massive global theater closures, and No Time To Die had its date moved further down the schedule no fewer than five times overall.
However, No Time to Die did finally grace the silver screen, raking in nearly $775 million worldwide. In the end, the film left the character of James Bond in a particularly precarious position. When Bond is infected with an ineradicable dose of nanobots designed to kill his beloved Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) and their daughter, he has no qualms about sacrificing himself to make sure the villainous Lyutsifer Safin's (Rami Malek) facility was destroyed once and for all. Obviously, because it is a major spoiler, Craig hadn't spoken about the ending during interviews at the time.
During a Streaming Room conversation with Variety about the ending of the No Time to Die, Craig finally spoke for the first time about the tragic climax of the arc of his version of James Bond. After he jokes that one of the original plans was to have Bond eat a "bad oyster," Craig gets serious and breaks down how important it was to craft a moment with emotional impact, detailing why the character found himself in such desperate circumstances. To "create a situation of tragedy," it "had to have weight," otherwise they would have had to find an entirely different way to end the film. Read the full quote below:
If you stay to the end credits, it definitely says, “James Bond will return.” So all is good…
I think the important thing was that we all try to create a situation of tragedy. The idea that there’s an insurmountable problem, there’s a greater force at play, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. And the greater force being Savin’s weapon. And that it [kills] the only thing that Bond wants in life, is to be with the people he loves and that he can’t be with them, and therefore, there’s nothing worth living for.
And he would in fact endanger their lives, and that’s the last thing on earth he wants to do. So that element was incredibly important to sort of thread in there, because it couldn’t feel like a random act. It had to have weight — without it, it wasn’t gonna work. And if we hadn’t have got that weight, I don’t think we would’ve done it. We would’ve found another way of ending it.
With this emphatic ending, Craig has left the character once and for all. The studio will have no recourse but to recast the character for the next outing, which has led to much speculation about who will be the next actor to fill the tuxedo. Although Lashana Lynch appeared in No Time to Die as the new 007, she is not playing a version of James Bond, so casting is still underway with producers still left with no idea what their next move is.
Considering that Craig has wanted to quit playing Bond for some time, it speaks to his commitment to the fans that he made sure his final outing had such an emotional impact. No Time to Die is the first film to ever kill off James Bond, so it had a lot riding on that moment being handled properly. Fan reactions will vary according to taste, but the fact that they balanced their options and made sure to deliver an ending that rang true to the character is certainly the best-case scenario for such a momentous decision.
Source: Variety