MOVIE NEWS – Daniel Craig has finally broken his silence on the shocking No Time To Die ending. Ever since No Time To Die hit cinemas, Daniel Craig has been mum on the fate of his version of James Bond, until now

 

SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses the ending of No Time To Die, currently available to rent and buy digitally. Please do not read this if you have not seen the film.

If audiences knew anything before “No Time to Die,” it was that Daniel Craig’s fifth James Bond film – and the 25th (official) Bond film – was also Craig’s final film as the dashing secret agent. At first glance, this was not unusual: Bond, played by Sean Connery in 1962’s Dr. No, has been played by six actors in the last 59 years, making the Bond films the longest-running film franchise in cinema history, and will live on forever.

What most viewers didn’t expect, however, was how Craig concluded his time as Agent 007.

In the film, the main villain, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), comes into possession of Heracles, a microscopic weapon designed by the British government to target a specific individual using DNA-guided nanobots. They can harmlessly pass through anyone, often unintentionally, just by touching skin, and Safin has modified the weapon to attack the DNA of entire families. Worse still, he mass-produced it on his secret island with the intention of killing millions of people.

With no known antidote or cure for Heracles, Bond orders a missile strike on Safin’s island, then fights off a small army of Safin’s goons to ensure the missiles reach their target. But then Safin steps in and infects them both with a special strain of the Heracles virus, designed to kill Bond’s great love, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) – and all her relatives, including Mathilde (Lisa-Dorah Sonnet), her daughter and Bond’s five-year-old daughter.

If Bond were to leave the island, he would effectively condemn Madeleine and Mathilde to a cruel death after the Heracles virus inevitably spreads to them. Faced with an impossible choice, Bond stays and dies in the missile strike.

Although James Bond’s creator, author Ian Fleming, has attempted to kill off the character in his books, this is the first time Bond has died on screen – a huge turnaround for a franchise that has lived on the promise that James Bond would always return.

Remarkably, however, Bond’s death remains virtually untouched for most viewers who see the film. This is at least partly due to the silence of Craig, director Cary Joji Fukunaga, and longtime Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson about the film’s ending – until now.

In a Variety Streaming Room interview recorded in early December, Craig, Fukunaga, Broccoli and Wilson spoke at length for the first time about the decision to kill Craig’s Bond. Below is an edited transcript of that portion of the conversation.

“It was 2006. Barbara and I were in a car on our way home from the Berlin premiere of Casino Royale. Everything went well. People loved the film. It looked like I would have a chance to be in at least one more sequel. I asked Barbara: “How many more films do I have to apply for?”. […] She said, “Four”, and I said, “Oh, okay. Can I kill him in the last one?” He didn’t mince words, he said, “Yes”. “So I agreed with him on the spot and said, ‘I want to do it in that spirit’,” said Craig, who could only imagine the end of his James Bond career in the film. Why? Because he wanted to end it in such a way that when he left, anyone could take the baton from him.

The rest of the awards season Q&A – including how the filmmakers used the rich history of James Bond films to make “No Time to Die”, from set design and music to script and performance – will be revealed on 6 January.

Source: Movieweb