After lengthy delays due to the pandemic, Daniel Craig’s fifth and final appearance as James Bond is nearly here. No Time to Die had its world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall yesterday, setting the stage for a new actor to take on the mantle of 007. Ben Whishaw, who has played gadget-mastro Q since Skyfall, told Variety that the franchise needs to change more than just its leading actor to keep up with the times.
“If they want to continue with this character and the franchise, I think you can explode it and do anything,” Ben Whishaw said. “I don’t know what that should be, but it seems to me like it should be something quite radical, something really different. It’s got to change; it’s got to keep changing. We’re in different times now.” Since the very first James Bond film back in 1962, the franchise has largely followed a familiar formula, and for many, that familiarity and adherence to tropes is part of the charm. The girls, the gadgets, the maniacal villains; they’ve all served Bond well. The series has certainly received more than a few reinventions over the decades, but Whishaw thinks more is needed in order to push the franchise forward.
There will always be people who want it to stick to the way it was whenever ago, and they’re important, because they love these films. But I think you can do both. You can honor the character and the tradition, and you can push it forward, too. And I think you have to, if it’s not just going to become a kind of museum piece.
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The world is certainly a different place since Daniel Craig was first announced as the new James Bond back in 2005, so it will be interesting to see what path the franchise will take when producers begin searching for the next 007 in 2022. Until then, I can’t wait to see what sort of surprises No Time to Die has in store for fans.
No Time to Die will continue on where Spectre left off, with James Bond having left active service to begin a new life with Dr. Swann (Léa Seydoux), but Bond is soon brought back into action when Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) comes calling to enlist his help in searching for a missing scientist. When it becomes apparent that the scientist was abducted, Bond must confront a danger the likes of which the world has never seen before in a villain (Rami Malek) armed with dangerous new technology. The film also stars Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas, Christoph Waltz, Ben Whishaw, Naomi Harris, Rory Kinnear, and Ralph Fiennes, with Cary Joji Fukunaga directing from a script he co-wrote with Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
No Time to Die will hit theaters in the U.S. on October 8, 2021, so be sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray!
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