I was genuinely very confused about what Safin, the villain of the final Craig bond film NO TIME TO DIE was even trying to do. So I rewatched it, read up as much outside content as I could and think I pieced it together
It’s a shame because there’s genuinely interesting ideas but the movie itself barely explores them and just implies them at most
First the obvious stuff the film actually does show
>Safins family make advanced poisons for Spectre, eventually Blofeld sees them as loose ends
>Safin’s parents are killed by Mr White using a toxin, safin survives but is scarred and lives for revenge
>safin is only 20 years old in the opening scene in 1998, where he kills Whites wife and saves/spares his daughter while seeking revenge
>Heracles, the nano hot program that kills peoples with specific genes it’s ordered to, is actually developed by British intelligence, safin just stole it
>proceeds to use this to murder Blofeld with it, along with all the other leaders in spectre. Leaving him the only one left to follow
First part made sense, the next part I think I got the gist of now
>Safins plan is actually to PREVENT groups like spectre happening again by using these targeted killing nanobots to take out their leaders whenever they make waves without collateral damage
Next post is most about theories and underdeveloped ideas I think the movie had for one reason or another
 |
 Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
|
he was supposed to be Craig-continuity dr No just like Waltz was Blofeld
>uses noah mask
>secret underground lab on island
>heart on the other side just like dr No
for whatever reason they dropped this idea
the movie went through so many changes its like 3-4 movies merged together into one big mess
there are cool scenes and ideas (i love cold war era bunker at the end) but its incoherent plot fricked everything up
the shootout scene is like the one redeemable part of the movie
also blofeld having a robot eye
I agree. Literally too many similarities and references for it to be a coincidence. I just think they decided to drop the name Dr No because
A) revealing Blofeld in Spectre was lame. It meant nothing to Bond because he still just knew him as Oberhauser. Bond fans would have know Waltz was Blofeld the second the title dropped and Waltz was announced. And casuals wouldn’t get why him saying he is blofeld is a big deal in tne first place
B) calling him Dr No specifically would cause people to complain he isn’t accurate enough. E.g. he isn’t part Chinese, he isn’t missing hands, his goals are different
The fact they specifically had him shot in the heart, and then had him pop up fine is proof to me he is this versions No. because No got shot in the heart and survived because he had that condition where your heart is on the opposite side of your body. This is just too be a coincidence and no other reason to have him get shot like this
Blofeld has been played by a lot of people and imitated to death but Dr. No, arguably the most truly influential Bond villain, has been untouched and left with Joseph Wiseman's glorious performance. I'm glad they left Julius No alone but maybe it would have saved this movie.
The nanobots originally were supposed to be a gene targeted virus but then le covid happened so they changed it all, ruining the movie.
that's so cringe
>the movie itself barely explores them and just implies them at most
No Time to Die is the first Dark Souls of movies, it has no plot or themes, just little implications of what is going on without any clear evidence to the viewer, many of which are found in outside material.
So why is Safin having this so scary? He never indicates who would be killed by this. It’s all left vague as frick
They refer to mass deaths or genocides a few times but never say who or why they’d be targeted
One random henchman says to the black agent woman they could target west Africans if they want. But there’s no reason to believe this was some serious plan rather than taunting her
Ideas they clearly wanted to play with heavily
>Safin is Bonds complete counterpoint. Both actually want to improve world. Both have tragic loss of parents. Both have sympathetic side where they try to save girls who have hurt them (literally in water in these movies too)
>Its only referenced ONCE in the entire movie but as Safin inherited everything Spectre had after he killed their leaders. He basically has all the world security services info in his hands. And dna of anyone he could want for his nanobots to target
>Safin essentially wants to become God and manipulate the world without outright ruling it. Just smiting those he dislikes, giving the nanobots to those who pay homage to him, sit in his lair and watch the world go by
Next things the movie may have cut, or just been too lazy to explore, or was altered
Like
says, it seems extremely likely to me that the original idea was about genetically engineered viruses rather than nanobots. And this was deemed too sensitive given COVID happened and people seriously believe China may have been genetically engineering a virus and fricked up
>"I think.. you're right. I think we are the same. We both know what it feels like to have everything taken from us before we're even in the fight. It would have been nice to have a.. a chance? Hm? Don't you think? We all should get a chance. But this thing that you're building, it puts everyone, the whole world, on a battlefield. Nobody gets a chance."
>"The thing that no one wants to admit is that most people want things to happen to them. We tell each other lies about the fight for free will and independence, but we don't really want that. We want to be told how to live. And then when we're not looking... People want oblivion. And a few of us are born to build it for them. So here I am, their invisible god. Sneaking under their skin."
>"You know that history isn't very kind to those who play God?"
>"And you don't? We both eradicate people to make the world a better place. I just want to be a little... tidier. Without collateral. I want the world to evolve, yet you want it to stay the same. Let's face it... I've made you redundant."
>"No, not as long as there are people like you in the world."
Essentially Bond knows his line of work is incredibly fricked up and prefers it be limited as much as possible to those who choose to engage in it, whereas the nanobots effectively turn all civilians into weapons and soldiers by having them inadvertently spread death to certain targets.
Imagine just how paranoid and damaged societies and civilisation would become at that point when all humans are potential vectors for death
This is too heavy and convoluted for a Bond film. Another reason why the Craig movies are the worst era of Bond, bar none. This is stuff that should be in a Metal Gear Solid game or something of the like.
I agree, hence why this shit was so confusing.
Looking through the production history and seeing how many damn rewrites and alterations it went through in a relatively short period even before the Covid alterations makes me think the script is just a shit show
Bond movies are so easy to make. You have the formula, just add some stuff in it that's cool but not complicated and that's it. Endless money machine forever. They wanted to make some gay Nolan movie. This whole nanobots stuff seems like the kind of stuff he'd go for.
I think a few controversial ideas they only BARELY touched on but likely were in earlier drafts
>Safin heavily dislikes not only Spectre, but various governments and their security intelligence agencies, seeing them as being just as corrupt and evil. He would target government leaders, all spies, all undercover operatives etc. hence why they remind you he has the USB from way back in skyfall with the names on it
>while Safin himself has no racial views on eugenics or something. He simply says he wants to tidy things up. If a group paid enough I see no reason why he WOULDN’T agree to let them use their virus against say, Ashkenazi israelites, or people with west African genes, or Koreans etc. this is the only reason to believe “millions” are going to die like they keep saying but never clarify who
Both the idea of killing government and intelligence officials because they’re corrupt/evil. And the idea of selling racial cleansing to the highest bidder were too scary for the studio I guess.
All this would be kino in something that's not a Bond film. It's so out of place and dumb and also way too politically charged even though I find the ideas intriguing in and of themselves.
It's a pity because you can see with just a few tweaks it actually could have been a pretty decent film. Maybe not Bondkino, but certainly above average enough to be a satisfying send-off for Craig instead of the turd we got.
NTTD would have been decent if they didn't kill Bond off. No need for it in any way beyond insane ideological reason.
We shall see. If the new bond is non white or a woman or some shit then clearly they just wanted to kill the white man symbolically
Otherwise I will take it on the face of it that they wanted this to be the definitive end to this specific saga of the franchise. So when they make the next one it can be a fresh reboot with no expectations of previous people showing up
Unlike the Craig movies where they kept M from the Pierce Brosnan movies for example.
Likewise hopefully they cast a relatively young actor so we don’t get one film where he’s a rookie, then “I’m too old for this” for the other five movies like Craig did.
I know they’re obsessed over how bond is “problematic” with women and must be “fixed” but nobody watches these movies that thinks like that to begin with so frick it. If they need to make Bond even MORE progressive then let them, it’ll just underperform and die on them
If ATJ is the actor they're looking for, I'm optimistic. He's young, snappy and energetic and can deliver a quip and pack a punch and is English ())()(). So that's something. Personally, a clean slate is ideal but it's a shame Fiennes/de Armas have to get the boot too. I'd keep Fiennes as M due to him having chemistry with the new Bond actor in another movie and de Armas as another Bond girl. The continuity should not matter to Bond at all. It should be strictly episodic.
>The continuity should not matter to Bond at all. It should be strictly episodic.
I agree but I’m certain the studio who owns Bond loves the idea of a cinematic universe because every fricking studio does since the MCU
And I think they believe part of the reason the craig movies were successful financially is them being one large story and connected, (even though it was poorly thought out and only connected via the power of retcons)
But yeah IMO the best Bond stories can be watched entirely on their own and you get the whole story in that movie. You don’t need added context from 2 movies prior.
I think they have the idea audiences are more likely to watch the sequel if it’s in a series with the story continuing on, and think they can have their cake and eat it too by also making the film as accessible to new people at the same time even though that makes it feel awkward most of the time
The capeshit fad has died completely. People are now healing and want clear and episodic entertainment. I think with superheroes dead, Bond is prime for a massive comeback and be the biggest movie franchise along with Avatar as long as they cast ATJ and make a decent movie with cool stuff, hot girls and no pozz. It can be generic in story and plot as can be but put cute girls, good music and cool action and people will flock to it.
>>"The thing that no one wants to admit is that most people want things to happen to them. We tell each other lies about the fight for free will and independence, but we don't really want that. We want to be told how to live. And then when we're not looking... People want oblivion. And a few of us are born to build it for them. So here I am, their invisible god. Sneaking under their skin."
This is so cringe, like something a teenager would write.
He's right though until that last lame bit.
what an ugly homosexual that actor is. hate him and shame the series ended according to his will
Also probably final post.
I think it’s very clear they wrote this film backwards. Starting with the concept that Bond HAD to die, then working back to figure out why he can’t survive
Because it does make a certain measure of sense in the final product even if you think it’s shit and bond shouldn’t die
>if he leaves the island and talks to ANYONE. He will spread this deadly contagion. It won’t kill just anyone. Just keep spreading.
>at that kind of rate, it doesn’t matter if it’s in six months or 25 years. Eventually Bonds wife and daughter would get infected and die
>refusing to leave the island and getting nuked to prevent this specific strain spreading at all is the only way to ensure they’re safe
The fact they’re NANOBOTS makes this much more idiotic.
>we see just how close you need to actually be to infect someone, direct touch or so close you’re breathing on them with bond and blofeld
>in this SAME MOVIE Bond gets given an EMP generating watch by Q that destroys electronic devices
>Bond could escape. Stay isolated. Inform MI6 of the situation so he can be collected by agents in sealed suits
>once Bond is in a secure lab, use much more powerful EMP’s and magnets over and over to destroy any nanobots in his system
If this was an organic virus instead it’d have made more sense
They wanted to kill him because Craig is still mind broken by the global ridicule he received in 2005 and this was his frick you not realizing of course this was giving them a golden bullet to forever mock him to shreds.
>If this was an organic virus instead it’d have made more sense
I agree, I had assumed that they changed this partway through production because they didn't want to be accused of plagiarizing MGS but it makes more sense if they wanted to steer clear of something resembling COVID. It might not have even be a matter of sensitivity, perhaps they didn't want it to come across as deliberately topical. It was definitely a waste of Rami Malek, great performance but half-baked story.
It really sucks because he had an intriguing sense of mystery about him for the first half.
Then after Blofeld dies so anti climactically Safin basically runs out of things to do and becomes an afterthought from then on. Just chilling in his lair
And for all the “we are not so different, you and I” speeches they did a very poor job at actually making them seem similar.
Also it’s just kind of bizarre what we are meant to take from his weird infatuation with Madeline and her/bonds daughter. Does he love her? Does he want them as a surrogate family because his was murdered? Is he just a weirdo?
The idea he has an obsession with power and control and preventing or delivering death due to his parents being murdered while he survived and was forced to live on without them as a child is kind of interesting but not nearly enough motive to push his nonsense plans forward
It almost felt more like a plot that would have been befitting someone like Silva (if he hadn't been killed off). In which case all the "we're not so different" shit would have fit better.
The Chinese market was still considered super important only five years ago. And if they’d kept the original plot the Chinese government would have banned it/refused release.(and since they locked down hard for so long they couldn’t release there anyway)
If you watch the movie and pay attention. They ONLY say nanobots or talk about nanomachines via CGI inserts, or actors talking off screen. We never see an actors face saying nanobots
Why? Because the plot is about a genetically engineered virus. not nanobots. The whole poison lake to gestate it thing is a lot weirder when they’re meant to be machines
They clearly rushed a new edit in post production late on. Cut whatever scenes couldn’t be kept because they said virus. Added new context CGI scenes showing the Nanobots. Then got Rami Malek and Craig to do some quick ADR voice acting to add literally what, 3 or 4 short lines about how they’re totally nanobots
The virus was a secret and the Russians were about to hit the island and reveal to the world that the British made this weapon
The missiles were just a way to destroy all evidence
Had there been no Russian subs bond wouldn’t have died
isnt this the movie that replaced bond with a Black person sheboon?
>STOP NOTICING THINGS
You know, nobody talks about how bad the henchman battle was. Lasted about 30 on a flight of stairs, pathetic really.
Daniel Craig is too old to do big stunts and given the way they shot it a stunt double wouldn’t have worked
Even worse was Craig making Brosnan quips with that guy's eye. Awful shit. Craig does not have the suaveness and charisma in any way shape or form to make those lines work. I love how they remembered to make Bond act like Bond with the wrong actor in his last movie after 20 years. Barbara is insane.
>Even worse was Craig making Brosnan quips with that guy's eye. Awful shit. Craig does not have the suaveness and charisma in any way shape or form to make those lines work. I love how they remembered to make Bond act like Bond with the wrong actor in his last movie after 20 years. Barbara is insane.
Makes sense when you see who they paid to write the quips
>Phoebe Waller-Bridge was hired to revise dialogue, work on character development and add humour to the script
>At Daniel Craig's request, Phoebe Waller-Bridge provided a script polish in April 2019
I hate Barbara but it's easy to see how she was influenced and led astray by Craig. He inserted all the pozz and evil. I hope with him gone, Barbara goes back to not caring much and just letting the movies happen but clearly she'd rather let Bond die with her boyfriend Daniel. Frick's sake with this woman.
It's not, it's making fun of that exact premise. A weird pseudo political/philosophical macguffin in a Bond film that takes itself seriously and stupidly ashamed of the legacy so it devolves into fricking insane crap like this. We're just making fun of it.
She was the center of the last Indiana Jones disaster. We need her deep lore.
I like how they thought the old Bond villain names were too sillly, so they named their guy Lucifer Satan
Then there's a villain named
Raoul Silva
Like some fricking footy player. Embarrassing era for movies, not just Bond.
I am going to ump the thread because I find it interesting but cant read it because is almost 4 am here and wanted to follow the Oscars.
Will write these questions that maybe you answered already.
1) I didnt get him, he seemed like he just wanted to take on Spectre then he became a world threat,
2) he wanted to spare [Lea Seydoux] character and then she changed idea,
3) was going to let the little kid touch the flower and die, wanted to kidnap him and then just let him go.
The answer to all of that is that it's not supposed to make sense because the Craig era is an insane nepo baby woman making movies so her crush gets millions playing pretend and that's it. She's a cuckqueen. Watch Brosnan like a real man and forget Craig exists.
>1
He was a world threat in the sense he threatened the established order and society as we know it
No government could openly oppose him once his virus was out there primed to be programmed to kill whoever he wanted. He could kill all of congress, the senate and the president without firing a bullet
Would he? Who knows. But a lot of people would get killed and the governments of the world rendered powerless in the face of one dude essentially. Nobody would have faith in authority to protect them
>2
Safin seemed to want a replacement family for the one he lost as a child. While James had the good fortune to be handsome and taken the time to fall in love and have a kid, Safin spent his whole life planning his revenge. No time to actually get a wife and kid (I’m sure he could get a wife just from being mega rich and powerful even with messed up skin)
After the girl bites him he sees Bond in her, and no longer wants her. Assumes she will die, or get away. Either way it doesn’t matter to him. Neither did Madeline once he realised they weren’t gonna be his happy family (he even tried using the hypnotic tea to make her compliant)
>3
See above. Safin planned to use the plants effects to make them obedient and reliant on him but saw it wouldn’t be that simple. I think IRL the plant is a poisonous one but they say it’s a hypnotic In the movie so I’m assuming that’s what they meant
Also like the other guy said. The movie was just a poorly written mess. The FOUR different authors of the screenplay and many edits post production make it feel schizophrenic
Such intriguing concepts for a Bond film. A shame.
Yeah there’s interesting ideas on paper they’re just so undercooked they’re raw and hard to find in the actual movie lmao
Bond villains should never be this heavy handed. Elliot Carver represented some topical and slightly heavy themes about fake news and information manipulation but they never leaned into it too much like they tried here. I suspect the next Bond villain will be some Nazi dictator who wants wait for it to have a white ethnostate. Oh the horror.
Carver worked because in spite of all the fricking heinous shit he does, he's just a megalomaniac who's in it for the money and fame. A lot of the good Bond villains have pretty mundane motivations: Goldfinger wants to corner the market on gold bullion, Trevelyan just wanted to pull a heist, Le Chiffre just wanted to make some money manipulating the stock market, Silva was a petty homosexual wanted to torment the mentor who betrayed him and the guy he felt he was replaced by, etc.
Shit like Hugo Drax's plan to destroy society and repopulate the world with Nazi supermen, or Gustav Graves' space laser to destroy the world, or Quantum/Spectre's le-all-powerful-shadow-government shenanigans are always dumb as frick.
Trevelyan also wanted revenge against the British government for sending the Lienz Cossacks to the Soviets
thanks, that is satisfying enough.
Aston Martin being incredibly healthy right now without a Bond film seems anticlimactic. The F1 team are just building a new HQ.
Blame Barbara. If she wasn't dumb and incompetent, there'd be a new Bond film already out or coming very soon. She's letting the biggest movie franchise sit and rot no doubt pissing off Bezos who bought MGM solely for her to sell the Bond rights.
This thread is deep lore for a...Bond movie? Weird.
I remember watching the trailers, and in the opening scene I legit thought this villain was supposed to have some kind of regeneration superhuman ability. homie got shot like six times including in the head and survived and was fine
Then as all this sci fi bullshit was introduced I thought it could be true but turns out no he was got shot in the chest and was fine
The whole God complex he has was the most interesting part (and clearly intentional as others point out, his name is literally lucifer Satan)
Which makes the part where they casually say “the buyers are here” and they brush past the fact he’s just gonna sell these genetic coded death nano bots to whoever wants them seem moronic
Why would he do this instead of keeping them for himself to use? He doesn’t need the money. He has a private island fortress compound and an entire private army.
Maybe he just wanted to encourage chaos to spread by giving groups the means to kill a few hundred thousand people at a time or something… but they never explain so any ideas like this are just shit viewers have to invent to justify it
This is a movie written and produced by women. Stop thinking about it.
Why’d they have him “in love” with Madeline if he met her when he was 20 and she was 8?
Because if Safin doesn’t kidnap Madeline and try to cuck bond there really isn’t a reason for Bond to try and stop Safin at all.
>MI6 were the ones responsible for the virus in the first place, Safin just stole it and made it targetable to genes
>Safin’s only acts thus far was killing Spectre and Blofeld, Bonds enemies
>Safin literally saved Bonds life by reversing who the virus targeted secretly when they tried to use it to kill Bond at the spectre meeting
So after Blofeld dies, only Bond has any real motivation to try and stop Safin because it’s personal even though it’s a suicide mission, and MI6, the CIA and whoever else are smart enough to realise they cannot stop Safin at this point so it’s probably smarter to just negotiate with him
The point of the movie is to tell you you're a dumbass for taking the vaccine they are trying to kill you and you're too busy watching movies they knew the global depopulation agenda was happening when the movie was released so the title is ironically about them getting away with it and if you happen to be smart you have "No Time to Die" and refuse the vaccine. It was a test and you all failed. Heracles is the covid vaccine meant to deliver nanotechnology to kill the non-elect with the flip of a switch. This was outlined in Resident Evil 6. Bond dying is to tell you to wake up to the real world where heroes can't do anything to stop evil people from moving forward with their plans. And there's a black woman. It's all meant to demoralize you knowing you can do nothing about it.
I too am demoralised by black women
>a real schizo entered the thread
>you’re too busy watching movies
This is a board for television and film, what the frick did you think people are gonna talk about
The leaked Sony emails about the development of Spectre are quite illuminating as to how these kind of things happen. The script gets input and notes from dozens of people and get written and rewritten, and if they’re not careful they run into their own production deadlines and end up working with what they have and writing and rewriting on the fly.
In some of the Spectre emails IIRC they basically admitted even though they wanted to rework it more, after a certain point the major set pieces and locations were locked in for logistical reasons, so they had to work around what they had.
It sounds like similar happened here - Fukunaga has openly said they were still writing in post production, they’d film scenes with people talking generally about subjects that hadn’t been decided on yet. I’m betting that why Safin’s story doesn’t hang together very well.
I’m still convinced they were originally going to reveal that Safin is Dr No but decided against it, and were left having to cobble together some kind of half baked story for him with the footage they actually had available to use.
Funny thing is when his map of targets comes up. They’re almost all in Europe or the USA. The Russian on here translates to “number of victims”
So the line from the mole implying blacks will be targeted is just straight up bullshit.
For some reason some small hot spots in Mauritania in west Africa, Mexico, Libya etc
Asia and Southern Africa and australasia? completely zero attacks.
South America had ONE red dot
After all their fearmongering over the countless deaths this would cause. 2 million spread out over all these countries that add up to over a billion people is kind of laughable. The flu kills more.
WHO THE FRICK IS HE KILLING IN THIS SCENARIO
For some
Can we focus on how No Time To Die ripped of Metal Gear Solid? MGS1 introduced nanomachines, the little injected machines, that can kill selected people on contact? And they specifically infect the main character, who goes in and infects his brother, who dies from it.
MGS4 takes this even further. The main character is infected by nanomachines, and despite there being people at home waiting for him, he has to kill himself, to stop them from spreading. Okay Snake gets better and gains 6 more months to live, but the gist of the conflict is the same.
This is a nice antioscar bunker. This film was at least more well done than Spectre
How is it that Craig had one good film at the start, and only shit after that? One of the worst Bond runs ever.
What about skyfall?
It was shit.
>"Dr. No, time to die!"
Walked out the cinema then and there
Spectre and NTTD are my favourite Craig era Bond movies. They're the ones that feel like the other Bond movies I grew up watching.
All I know is he's meant to be luicifer
A man walks into a gay bar
Awful movie
i just wish this film didnt have the pointless fat sheboon.
Or at least she was hot and not trying to be bond and showing up all the time for no reason
If Bond had slept with her, her inclusion would be excusable but of course he's a. Cuck who doesn't even try to charm her.
He has really bad acne scars
it is a shitty movie. try not to think about it too hard.