No Time To Die marks the fifth and final appearance of Daniel Craig's James Bond, and while this version of 007 has a more concise history than the prior incarnation of the British secret agent, his adventures are no less eventful. Craig took over the role of James Bond starting in 2006's Casino Royale and though he falls short of Sean Connery and Roger Moore's 7 films as 007, Craig holds the record as the longest-tenured James Bond after 15 years playing the role. Meanwhile, No Time To Die will pit Craig's 007 against a new villain, Safin (Rami Malek), and will wrap up lingering plot threads from 2015's Spectre.
Casino Royale was a complete reboot of James Bond's movie canon, wiping clean the continuity that began with Sean Connery in 1961's Dr. No and concluded with 2002's Die Another Day starring Pierce Brosnan. Influenced by the success of Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon's leaner and meaner Jason Bourne films, James Bond's producers decided to start anew with the 21st Bond movie, which adapted Ian Fleming's first 007 novel, Casino Royale. Screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis depicted the origin story of a younger and rawer James Bond, who wasn't yet the invincible gentleman spy fans knew from the previous films.
Casino Royale was a massive blockbuster, which was followed up by the less successful Quantum of Solace in 2008. Writer-director Sam Mendes then took control of 007 and he guided 2012's Skyfall to a billion-dollar box office gross while also touching upon Bond's history in ways not even Casino Royale did. Mendes returned with 2015's Spectre, which disappointed critically and at the box office after Skyfall's zenith, but it also retconned all of Craig's prior films into a defined continuity, unified by the reboot of Bond's greatest adversary, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz).
The long-delayed No Time To Die, directed by Cory Joji Fukunaga, purportedly concludes the saga of Daniel Craig's James Bond, which would also give 007 something he's never had in his two-dozen films: a defined ending. The timeline of Craig's Bond films is fuzzy since the films don't necessarily 'happen' the same year they were theatrically released, and the extended wait for No Time To Die, which was supposed to release in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic, leaves when exactly the film's 'present day' is as an open question. Regardless, Craig's James Bond has aged as he lived through his cinematic adventures, and the 007 films from Casino Royale to No Time To Die utilize a serialized timeline.
Before Casino Royale: James Bond's New History
Drawing from the history found in Ian Fleming's novels, Skyfall established that Daniel Craig's James Bond was orphaned by the time he was 12 years of age. James' parents, Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix, were killed during a climbing accident. James lived in his family's Scotland lodge, Skyfall, before he was adopted by Hannes Oberhauser, an Austrian climbing and skiing instructor, as retconned by Spectre. James' foster brother, Franz Oberhauser, grew up resenting Bond's closeness to his father, and this animosity continued into their adulthood.
Franz murdered his father and ran away, taking his mother's maiden name and restyling himself as Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Years later, Blofeld re-emerged as the secretive leader of the global criminal network called Spectre, which employed numerous adversaries of James Bond over the years. Meanwhile, Bond's military career in the Royal Navy led him to join MI6 and he qualified for the top-secret Double-0 branch. Bond earned his license to kill in the pre-credits sequence of Casino Royale, completing two assassinations to officially join the British Secret Service as agent 007.
Casino Royale: Bond Falls For Vesper Lynd & Learns About Quantum
James Bond's primary mission in Casino Royale was to stop Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a private banker to terrorists. 007 was sent to play a high-stakes game of poker at the Casino Royale in Montenegro, wherein Bond was to learn more about Le Chiffre's operations as well as executing the villain. Bond's stake in the game was provided by Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who worked for the British Treasury. James also became allies with a French spy named Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) and CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright).
James fell in love with Lynd but he soon learned that she was under the thrall of the same shadowy organization Le Chiffre worked for. Le Chiffre himself was executed by Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), a high-level operative of the same organization Le Chiffre worked for. Vesper committed suicide and James believed she betrayed him and never truly loved him. However, Bond located Mr. White's phone number in Vesper's cell phone. Paying Mr. White a visit, 007 shot the villain in the leg and took him captive.
Quantum of Solace Wraps Up Casino Royale's Plot Threads
Quantum of Solace takes place immediately after the closing moments of Casino Royale as James Bond and M (Judi Dench) learn that Mr. White's organization is more far-reaching than they imagined, including hiding agents within MI6. Bond follows a trail to Bolivia where he encounters an environmentalist named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) who tried to have his ex-lover Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko) murdered and is plotting to overthrow the Bolivian government.
Before Bond foils Greene's plot, he follows Dominic to an opera in Austria, where he infiltrates a high-level meeting of Quantum, the global criminal network that employed Greene and Mr. White. Bond later interrogates Greene about his employers before he and Camille leave Dominic to die in the Bolivian desert. Bond also gains an understanding of what Vesper Lynd was up against in Quantum and he forgives her after locating and arresting Vesper's former boyfriend, Yusef Kabira (Simon Kassianides). Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace were a two-part story that seemingly ended until Spectre retconned both into Craig's 007's saga's macro story.
Skyfall Explores James Bond's Origin And Kills M (Judi Dench)
Years after Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace, James Bond is accidentally hit by friendly fire by Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) during a mission in Istanbul and believed dead. Bond survives and lives a life of alcoholic excess before returning to action when a cyber-terrorist named Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) targets the United Kingdom and M, specifically. Silva is revealed to be a former Double-0 agent out for revenge against M, who, in turn, must defend her agency's actions to the British government's oversight.
Bond captures Silva and returns him to London, only for Silva to reveal it was all part of his master plan. After Silva escaped, 007 decides to personally protect M by bringing her to Skyfall, his isolated childhood home in Scotland. With the help of the groundskeeper, Kincade (a role intended for Sean Connery but played Albert Finney), Bond fights off Silva's assault on Skyfall but the villain kidnaps M and she is mortally injured. Bond kills Silva but is unable to save M's life. Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) becomes the new M and James Bond returns to full active duty with MI6, completing Skyfall's soft reboot of Daniel Craig's 007 movies.
Spectre Retcons Quantum & Bond's History With Blofeld
Spectre opens with James Bond on an unauthorized mission to Mexico City pursuing an agenda left to him by the late M. As Bond hunts down his target, Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona), the new M finds an adversary in Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), who wants to shut down the Double-0 branch in favor of a global surveillance network called Nine Eyes. In Rome, 007 infiltrates a top-secret meeting of Spectre, which is overseen by Franz Oberhauser, James' former foster brother. Bond escapes Rome despite Oberhauser's hitman, Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista), and finds Mr. White, who directs Bond to protect his daughter, Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), before he commits suicide for fear of Spectre.
Bond and Madeleine follow a trail left by her father to the desert headquarters of Spectre, and they meet Oberhauser, who reveals himself as Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld also informs Bond that he has been "the author of all of your pain" for his entire career, and that Quantum and all of his prior enemies were all working under the auspices of Spectre. Blofeld is also behind the Nine Eyes program, which would being all of the world's key intelligence agencies under Spectre's control. Bond escapes Blofeld's death trap and flees with Madeleine back to London after they destroy Spectre's base. Blofeld kidnaps Madeline again, and 007 survives one more death trap before finally capturing Blofeld. Choosing not to execute his 'brother,' after Blofeld is apprehended by MI6, Bond retires as 007 and leaves the British Secret Service with Madeleine. Daniel Craig's James Bond's story will conclude in No Time To Die but it remains to be seen what will 007's ultimate fate will be.
