It was supposed to hit cinemas in April, but Daniel Craig’s final bout as James Bond has been postponed to November due to the pandemic. Much mystery surrounds the plot of No Time To Die and how the star’s 007 will bow out. However, director Cary Fukunaga has teased a Casino Royale link to the movie.
Speaking with Empire, the filmmaker said: “Because it’s Daniel’s last movie, I wanted a sort of emotional heart to it.
“He started off in Casino Royale a pretty tough character, but he falls in love.
“But for the rest of the films, that heart is pretty closed down.
“I wanted to see if I could open it back up again for the final film.”
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James Bond fans will remember Craig’s first 007 movie Casino Royale saw 007 falling in love with Vesper Lynd.
However, she turned out to be a Spectre agent who betrayed him and ended up letting herself drown at the end of the movie.
Since then, as Fukunaga says, Bond’s heart is “pretty closed down”.
Now the last time we saw 007 was at the end of Craig’s fourth Bond movie Spectre, in which he had quit the Secret Service.
We then see the former couple reunited at MI6 and it looks like they’ll need to work together to take on this new villain Safin.
But with this tease of Bond re-opening his heart for the final film in Craig’s tenure as 007, perhaps some redemptive healing is in store for the hardened spy?
Certainly, No Time To Die intends to complete the story that Casino Royale began in 2006.
Speaking with Inquirer.net in 2018, Fukunaga said: “In terms of what I can bring to change the character, Bond is on a character arc that started with Casino Royale, and I will be carrying that on.”
The director added: “There will be changes, I am sure. As in any story, a character has to change in order [to have] a narrative.
“[But] there will be the things in the Bond-verse that you have come to expect.”
No Time To Die is released in UK cinemas on November 12, 2020.
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