"No Time to Die" is all about endings, bringing Daniel Craig's 15-year run as James Bond to a
close. It's a sprawling epic that's both action-packed and tragic; it also does
something no Bond movie before it has ever done. This is the ending of "No Time to Die" explained.
Every Bond movie has an extravagant villain with an even more elaborate plan for world domination.
"No Time to Die" has new threat Lyutsifer Safin, a megalomaniac with a grudge and
a peculiar worldview who thinks of himself as a kindred spirit to Bond.
"License to kill… I could be speaking to my own reflection."
Earlier in the film, Bond traces a Russian scientist to a SPECTRE meeting in Cuba.
There, he discovers that Blofeld is still running the shady organization
from behind bars through the use of his bionic eye.
Blofeld attempts to use a bioweapon that's been acquired from the scientist,
Orbuchev — a genetically targeted virus made of nanobots called Project
Heracles — to kill Bond. But Orbuchev, at the behest of his true boss Safin,
reverses the programming of the weapon to kill every member of SPECTRE in attendance instead.
Safin saves Bond's life as he once did for Madeleine Swann, Bond's estranged lover. When
Madeleine was a young girl, Safin sought revenge against her father, Mr. White, for killing his
family. He killed Madeleine's mother but chose to spare her life, a mercy he uses for leverage later
in the film to make her a pawn in his successful plot to kill Blofeld and end SPECTRE forever.
Bond has been suspicious of Madeleine since the film's opening scene,
when she led him into a trap at the grave of Vesper Lynd. But Bond soon realizes the trap
was entirely Blofeld's plan to drive them apart. Seeing that she has been used by outside forces,
Bond runs to Norway to find Madeleine, and finds a big surprise awaiting him.
Five years pass in "No Time to Die" from the film's harrowing opening breakup between Bond
and Madeleine to the main thrust of the story. But when Bond reunites with Madeleine and
apologizes for the time they've lost while apart, he discovers she has a daughter, Mathilde. Though
Madeleine initially insists he is not the father, it is very clear she is not telling the truth.
After he meets his daughter, Madeleine fills Bond in on her past with Safin,
how he saved her life and has a strange obsession with her,
and how his parents used to be the chief poison makers for SPECTRE.
Bond, with help from Q, is able to track Safin to his base on
an island in murky international waters between Russia and Japan,
where he is manufacturing Project Heracles on a grand enough scale to deploy it globally.
But before Bond can embark on his mission to kill Safin and stop Project Heracles from
spreading further, Safin and his men come and kidnap Madeleine and their daughter.
Bond must infiltrate Safin's island with the help of the new 007, Nomi,
while trying to avoid sparking an international incident and causing even more trouble for MI6,
the agency that helped develop this deadly weapon in the first place.
Bond and Nomi storm Safin's base, neutralizing Orbuchev
and mowing their way through Safin's henchmen. Bond is able to reunite with the kidnapped pair,
and also he now knows for certain that one is indeed his daughter.
Nomi gets them off the island to safety so he can get to the center of the base and disable
the blast door shielding that protects Safin's operation from outside harm.
M is prepared to authorize a surgical strike of missiles to destroy Safin's island and prevent
Project Heracles from being deployed, but it can't be done until Bond destroys the defense system.
It's a suitably harrowing, nail-biting sequence, complete with a ticking clock of inbound missiles.
But in his final altercation with Safin,
Bond is exposed to a version of the bioweapon that's genetically locked to Madeleine's DNA.
In killing Safin, Bond dooms himself, because if he makes it off this island
and comes into contact with Madeleine or his daughter, he will infect and kill them both.
Resigned to his fate, Bond lowers the island's defenses and says his
final goodbyes over comms to the love of his life and the daughter he never got to know.
James Bond is dead. Long live James Bond.
Back at MI-6 headquarters. M eulogizes Bond by sharing a drink with Nomi, Q,
Tanner, and Moneypenny. Over the course of the last few films, each of these former colleagues
has developed their own meaningful rapport with Bond, and the knowledge that he died saving the
world, cut off from a daughter he didn't even know he had, weighs heavily on the entire group.
Elsewhere, Madeleine drives off into the sunset with daughter in tow,
still struggling with loss. But looking at her daughter, who she remarks has James' eyes,
she promises Mathilde to tell her a story. A story about a man named Bond ... James Bond.
So what happens now?
"Do I look like I give a damn?"
James Bond has never died in a movie before,
despite 24 previous films full of near-death experiences.
Because of the franchise's murky continuity, none of the other Bonds' final outings were
creatively conceived that way. Up until "Casino Royale" intentionally rebooted the series,
the first twenty movies essentially followed the same James Bond.
But with "No Time to Die" being imagined from the outset as Craig's final outing,
the filmmakers felt free to tell a story with far more finality than any Bond movie before it.
But just because this Bond is dead doesn't mean James Bond himself is being retired.
The last message in the credits echoes what so many other Bond movies before it have promised:
"James Bond will return..." Not "007." James Bond. That basically proves we'll
be getting another reboot of the character in the next Bond movie.
Leading up to "No Time to Die," new entries in the Bond franchise have elicited think pieces
about whether or not Bond can still work onscreen in a changing world.
"Man talk."
"No Time to Die" proves you don't have to drastically change Bond as a person — instead,
you need to change the world around him and create drama out of that juxtaposition.
Whether the next take on Bond is a drastic departure or a careful
refinement on what has come before, the bold conclusion for "No Time to
Die" has set the stage for Bond to endure. Here's to the next 25 movies.
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