[The following contains spoilers for No Time to Die]
Daniel Craig says he was satisfied with the way his Bond tenure ended in No Time to Die. Craig’s fifth go-around as James Bond would prove to be a momentous one, as the long-running franchise took the unprecedented step of killing Bond in the movie’s explosive finale.
Craig of course first donned James Bond’s tuxedo in the 2006 series-reviving hit Casino Royale. The series had its ups and downs after that however, reaching an arguable low ebb with Quantum of Solace before rebounding with Skyfall. Box office success was the one consistent throughout Craig’s tenure though, as best exemplified by 2015’s Spectre, which took in $880 million despite not being well reviewed. All good things must come to an end however, and so Craig elected to finally walk away from Bond after No Time to Die.
Clearly Eon and company wanted to give Craig a huge send-off and they certainly succeeded in making things memorable when they elected to send his Bond off into the sunset by literally blowing him up in the movie’s final scenes. As for Craig himself, he recently spoke to the podcast No Time to Die: The Official James Bond Podcast about the way his character wrapped up and said his final Bond film was “really very, very satisfying.” He elaborated (via NME), “There were lots of different ideas that came and went and some of it stuck. The through line of this is family [and] love, plus the fact we had an end so it was about hanging the film off that.”
The family angle in No Time to Die was of course introduced by the revelation of Bond having a daughter by his former lover Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux). This obviously raised the stakes for the character throughout the film as he found himself not just battling the usual bevy of bad guys but ultimately trying to protect his family from the movie’s main villain Safin (Rami Malek). Some fans may indeed not have appreciated this extra element as it strayed away from the standard Bond formula, in which 007 is only concerned about defeating his enemies while having a bit of fun along the way and doesn’t have any personal connections to other characters complicating things. But Craig clearly thought the movie needed Bond to forge these deeper bonds and have something more immediate to fight for than the somewhat abstract idea of saving the world. And frankly, recent Bond films have already leaned into this idea, with Bond having deeper relationships with characters like Vesper Lynd, while also having more personal connections to villains like Blofeld.
Regardless of whether one agrees with the decision to give Bond a family in No Time to Die, there’s no question that the movie packed more emotional punch than the average Bond film, and the explosive climax was a truly stunning development that left the movie with a greater resonance than most Bond adventures. Now the challenge for Eon is to replace Craig and move the Bond series forward after wrapping up an entire era in such memorable fashion with No Time to Die.
Source: No Time to Die: The Official James Bond Podcast (via NME)