5 Wild Assumptions We've Made From The New 'No Time To Die' Trailer
The new (and final?) trailer for No Time to Die is here, and while much of the footage has been seen before (although not these 17 things), there are some revealing flashes of new action. It's not a huge amount to work with, to be honest, but we've managed to draw a few confident guesses out of it.
Safin is Dr No
He has to be, right? The rumour mill has been spinning for a while now, thanks to the villain’s use of a Japanese Noh mask, his suspiciously blank backstory, the Jamaican setting, hints that Rami Malek gave in the promo run, and the fact that his menacing character appears to be a proper world-conquering, lair-owning throwback to super villains past. This man is no measly hacker, no rogue agent – he’s hell-bent on killing huge swathes of people, in the Dr No mould. Lashana Lynch says as much when she tells Bond that he (presumably Safin) is “going to kill millions". When he has a tense stand-off with 007 in the trailer, Safin says: "We both eradicate people to make the world a better place. I just want to be a little tidier."
When we put the question to Rami Malek earlier this year, he said: "I heard that. Am I? I mean, isn't that an exciting thing to consider all the way up to the release?... There is a resurgence of an Ian Fleming influence on this film."
Dr Julius No, of course, is the legendary villain in the first film in the Bond franchise in 1962. Played by Joseph Wiseman, he was killed off by Sean Connery’s spy. Or was he?
Ana De Armas’s screen-time will be limited
Director Cary Fukunaga created a role for Knives Out star Ana De Armas on Daniel Craig's advice, after he took over the directing reins from Danny Boyle, but it doesn’t look to be a particularly pivotal one.
“Obviously I was jumping all over the place and very excited,” she said at the time. “But I needed to be sure it wouldn’t jeopardise all the work I’d been putting in, that it wouldn’t ruin everything. And the Bond women have always been, for me at least, unrelateable.”
She plays Paloma, a CIA agent at the beginning of her career, and we see a little bit more of her performance in the new trailer – brandishing a submachine gun, kicking a henchman and unfurling a tuxedo. Fans are worried that we won’t be seeing much more than that, however, even when the film is released. She’s seen wearing the same cocktail dress in every No Time to Die trailer and screenshot so far, indicating that it’s set to be something of a bit-part.
Which is a shame! Her chemistry with Daniel Craig in Knives Out was very fun, and we were excited about the pair picking back up where they left off. We’ll have to see.
Bond will be feeling his age
We’ve seen that clip of Daniel Craig’s Bond leaping over the bridge many a time now, only a thin cable offering a lifeline from certain death, but we haven’t seen the immediate aftermath until now. He clatters into a wall and crashes to the ground, looking a bit frazzled and, well, not very Bond-like.
A previous incarnation of the character would have seamlessly transitioned into a roly-poly, or whatever the classy version of a roly-poly is. Maybe he would have checked his watch and straightened his tie. But this is a different Bond; an older, post-retirement Bond with a lifetime of bruises and broken bones. This small sneak peek at the character’s physical vulnerability could be a theme that runs through No Time to Die.
This is a modern Bond, but with some throwbacks
Did you catch that little musical ode to Sean Connery's Thunderball around 30 seconds in? As much as Bond is attempting to modernise – especially with the depiction of female characters – it will still be paying plenty of homage to previous films and books. As Malek mentioned, the influence of Ian Fleming will be strongly felt in No Time To Die – and not just because Bond has a Jamaican bolthole, akin to the late author's Goldeneye estate in Oracabessa Bay.
He'll have to work with Blofeld if he wants to save the world
This one isn't so wild. The Spectre villain, played by Christoph Waltz, reveals as much during the trailer. “James, fate draws us back together," he says, handcuffed in a high security institution. "Now your enemy is my enemy.”
So Safin and Blofield are at odds. Will Bond team up with someone he can't trust? Can he trust anyone, for that matter? In the trailer, Felix tells 007 that “It’s harder to tell the good from bad, the villains from heroes these days". Then the screen cuts to Ana De Armas's character. Hmmm, interesting! In any case, we can't imagine that Blofield will still be in custody by the movie's end.
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