NO TIME TO DIE Sept. 3, 2020 Trailer – Analysis & Perspective!

Podcast Episode

NO TIME TO DIE Sept. 3, 2020 Trailer – Analysis & Perspective!

Join Dan and Tom and Vicki as they dive into the new No Time to Die trailer released September 3, 2020!  

 

Join Dan and Tom and Vicky as they dive into the new No Time to Die trailer released September 3, 2020!

The focus is “perspective” and how that works when dealing with “good” and “bad” here in the film, and how that could be handled.

So tune in now!

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No Time To Die is now scheduled for a November 2020 release, after the April 2020 delay due to the worldwide pandemic.  

Plenty of speculation of what will happen in the film – we have about 6 podcasts out on No Time To Die already!  The biggest
question is:  What will happen to Bond?   Will he survive?  Die? Be Dying?  Will someone big, who we are used to, die?

James Bond has been around since Ian Fleming first published “Casino Royale” in 1953.   He has been on television with Barry Nelson playing an American version of Jimmy Bond, in the 1954 production of Casino Royale.  The first actor to play Bond on screen.   Then Eon Productions took over striking a deal with Fleming to produce James Bond movies, and Dr. No was the first one they produced, released in 1962. It was an immediate hit.    About $1 million to produce, and it grossed over $59 million!

Eon continued to produce James Bond movies, and No Time To Die will be their 25th film in the franchise. Over the decades, they grossed at the box office over $7 billion.  And then there are licensing fees, DVD and Blue Ray sales and more that bring in revenue.

The formula, although changed gradually over the decades, has worked well for Eon Productions.   It has made them a lot of money, has gained them tons of recognition around the world, and continues to be a juggernaut.   Skyfall (2012), their 23rd movie, grossed over $1 billion at the box office.   And Spectre, in 2015, grossed over $878 million dollars.   So, this franchise is strong and continues to grow in popularity and in making money.   Which is a good thing.

So, now we have No Time to Die, the 25th entry, scheduled.   And speculations abound.  Many serious reports that Bond will survive, and others that he will die.   Now, if you are Eon Productions, which has successfully tweaked Bond’s character over the decades, reducing his misogynist tendencies and womanizing, and make him more in tune with the brave new world.  

And, as of the last film, Spectre (not one of the fans’ favorite films in general), they still grossed over $879 million. Not bad, right?

 

You’re in a meeting with Eon.  Where should the franchise head?

So, now suppose you are sitting in one of the Eon meetings where they are deciding what to do next.   Are you raising your hand saying, “I think what is best for the business is if we kill off Bond in our next release?”

Well, if not you, who?  Danny Boyle?  And what is the argument?

“I think in Bond 25, we should kill off Bond and start afresh with a new 007 – perhaps a woman.   It would fit the social narrative of our cultures now, and we can gain a large part of the female audience that we lack so much now.   The male audience will continue to come to see the “Bond” movies because they are used to it and will want to see how the new 007 develops. We can merchandise lots of clothing and other items around the new 007 who is female.   We won’t lose out massive Bond audience if we do this right.”

What happens if you’re wrong?

Well.   What if you DO lose your audience – your multi-billion-dollar business might be competing with Charlies’ Angels instead of dominating the spy movie world.   What happens if the new 007 is NOT accepted?  IF people want Ian Fleming’s Bond still around – after all, THAT is the whole basis of the James Bond franchise – the original Ian Fleming manuscripts.

 Yes – James Bond has changed over the decades as we have said. He is becoming more of a good social citizen.   But we must remember, a spy by nature is two-faced.   When we talked to Roberto Schaefer, Director of Photography for Quantum of Solace, he said as much.   A spy is something else in the known world and an undercover assassin in the dark underworld.   So, how much do we want him to change IN the dark underworld where his business takes him? Do we want a completely different spy? A nicer spy in this dark world?  

Then what?

Basically, what else do we demand to be changed in the character of James Bond?   Let’s make a list.

  1. He is still too much a misogynist.  So, we must get rid of that.
  2. He still does not have enough respect for women.  So, we must change that
  3. He has been a cold-hearted killer.   Shooting and killing people who are unarmed, like Professor Dent on Dr. No.  We can’t have that.
  4. Bond knows how to do everything.  He can fly any craft, drive any vehicle, get out of any jam, disarm bombs – is anyone THAT good?  He needs to be more realistic. 
  5. And on what an agent makes, how can Bond afford the best clothes, the best food and drink, the best of everything?  MI6 isn’t paying for all that stuff, are they? Unrealistic.   Need a more grounded agent – grounded in the real world.

And if we change all of this in Bond, no one will accept this new iteration of Bond.   So, maybe we switch to a whole new spy.  A female “Bond-like” character.

This is all possible. With the delay of No Time to Die, we have more time to speculate. 

Our thoughts

Now, if it were SpyMovieNavigator making this decision, we would do one of two things.

Leave Bond alone.  People for decades have been loving James Bond in the movies, so leave him alone.
Sure, tweak some things as you have done in the past.   The faithful audience can accept that people, even spies, change over time.    And James Bond in the movies, HAS changed over time, and the last couple of Bond movies were the highest-grossing box office Bond films ever.   So, there is plenty of reason to stay the course.

If you are going to introduce another MI6 agent to take Bond’s place – a complete replacement – then do it as an experiment.  Do NOT kill off Bond.  Ian Fleming left us hanging at the end of his novel, “From Russia With Love, not knowing if Bond would survive the poison unleashed upon him by Klebb.   In No Time to Die, do a similar thing then, if you must.  Leave us hanging.

If you KILL off Bond, and the new agent replacement for 007 is NOT accepted, what do you do?   Now, if this were science fiction, you have no problem.   Because no one ever dies in science fiction.  You can write anyone back into the next script. 

But this is not science fiction.

Where have we seen this before?

But wait.   Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did it with Sherlock Holmes!  Sherlock Holmes died in “The Adventure of the Final Problem”, after falling off Reichenbach Falls.  Sherlock Holmes.  Dead.   And fans did not like it!  They were outraged!

So, after pressure from his publisher and the public, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “brought back” Sherlock Holmes in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, which was
a prequel to Holmes’ death in “The Final Problem”. So, he really was not brought back from the dead.   Yet.
They COULD do the same with Bond. Bring back Bond, if the new non-Bond 007 is a flop – in a series of prequels.  

But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle finally did bring Holmes back to life, in a series of short stories, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”.

So, maybe EON Productions can bring back James Bond in a similar manner.   He dies, let’s say, in No Time to Die.  The movie-going public is outraged and rejects the new 007 in the next film released.   A board meeting.   Eon decides, we must bring Bond back.  And, they fabricate a screenplay that does just that.  It is possible.

And would the public accept it?  Yes, of course!  They did for Sherlock Holmes and they will for Bond!  

And that takes us to … To die or not to die?  That is the question . . . that may not matter!

So, it seems:

  1. If Eon Productions kills off Bond in No Time to Die, they could probably bring him back to life somehow in a future movie, that is either a prequel or he is resurrected and is alive again to “Die Another Day.”  Or, perhaps the new 007 is even more popular than James Bond, and he remains dead as long as the money is rolling in. 
  2. If they leave us hanging, with Bond appearing to die, or dying at the end, then Eon could easily choose to do what they want next.
  3. If Bond survives, then life goes on.  And so does the Bond franchise.

So, it looks like Eon Productions can do whatever they want in No Time to Die, and all will be fine for them.   Sure, some rough waters could be ahead, but they can always return to calm seas.  

For us James Bond 007 fans, let’s see what they do.  But, whatever they do, let’s just chill out.  In fiction, where you write it and it is done, anything can happen. 

 

 

 

 


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No Time To Die Oscars Trailer Reaction!

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We examine the new scenes that are in the trailer and try to make sense of what is happening in each new scene and what it might mean for the entire film!

It’s a quick listen, so download it now!  And please subscribe to our Cracking the Code of Spy Movies channel through your favorite podcast app!

Click here to watch the trailer.

 

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Tom Pizzato:                      00:02                     Hi, this is Tom Pizzato and Dan Silvestri from spymovienavigator.com — the worldwide community of spy movie fans – spy movie, podcasts, videos, discussions, and more. If you like our podcast, please give us a five-star rating on iTunes and Google Play. That helps us a lot like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram too. When you have feedback and idea for a podcast, something you want to say, just click the big red button on our website that says, “send us a voicemail” or send us a message from our Facebook page. We may include it on our show

Dan Silvestri:                     00:33                     In No Time to Die, it is time for somebody to die. We’ve watched the No Time to Die trailer a lot, we’re intrigued. The photography, special effects, lighting also enticing and yet not all that revealing or is there something to be revealed here on several of the main characters?

Tom Pizzato:                      00:55                     Now, pretty much the rest of this podcast is going to be pure speculation. We don’t know until April what happens, Dan. So, that said, we’re going to look at the strengths and weaknesses of some of the speculative scenarios and possible directions that EON might take with No Time to Die.

Dan Silvestri:                     01:12                     Yeah. And we’re going to look at what are the potential character plot twists here that might unfold in No Time to Die. We’re going to speculate with the rest of the world and let’s have some fun. So let’s go look at a few of the main characters here. That’s what we’ll do. Nomi, Bond, Leiter, and Swann. As we know, there is a ton of rumors and speculation flying about what will actually happen in No Time to Die. The world.

Tom Pizzato:                      01:39                     Beautiful thing about speculation, huh?

Dan Silvestri:                     01:41                     Yeah. The world is going nuts with this movie, so I think it’s going to be, it’s going to be a huge hit. They’ve done a great job of getting all of us to talk about this pretty much nonstop since the trailer came out. So we’re going to jump right in with the speculation too. And as Tom said before, send us your speculations. We’d love to hear your insights and speculations. Send us a voice message on our website, or message us through Facebook and we’ll include your comments in one of our future shows. That’ll be fun.

Dan Silvestri:                     02:11                     For Nomi, played by Lashana Lynch, of course, there has been the most speculation and we’re going to have some fun with that.

Dan Silvestri:                     02:19                     Four things can happen we think with Nomi: One) she could really be introduced as the next 007 and really replace James Bond going forward in the franchise.

Tom Pizzato:                      02:24                     Yeah Dan, How really likely is that?

Dan Silvestri:                     02:30                     That’s a good question. Well, she is introducing the trailer as we know as a double agent and she’s been gone for two years. We know she’s a badass. She’s already had to make two kills to get her double-O status.

Tom Pizzato:                      02:48                     I love, I love that requirement. It’s like you got to kill two people and then we make you licensed to kill.

Dan Silvestri:                     02:55                     Which is kind of weird but okay, so we know she’s, she’s already tough and then we hear her be a badass in the trailer when she tells bond though “the world has moved on commander bond. So stay in your lane. You get my way, I’ll put a bullet in your knee. The one that works.” I thought she’s fantastic. She delivers those lines with authority. Beautiful. So I think this reveals a lot about Nomi. A) she’s in control. You get in my way. So she’s got a way, she’s authorized to get her job done and does not want interference from Bond.

Tom Pizzato:                      03:36                     And it’s interesting Because Bond is used to getting things his way.

Dan Silvestri:                     03:39                     Yeah. So they’re already making her a very, very strong double-O. And B) she’s comfortable with her threat to put a bullet in his knee and would likely do it if she had to. I think she’d say, yeah, fine. You know what? Bam, there ya go. You little bastard. So wow. You know unlike Jersey numbers in sports that are sometimes retired for great athletes, maybe the 007 number is not retired just because Bond retires. So Nomi may be introduced as 007. That was a big rumor in the beginning. And of course, they didn’t tell you that in the trailer. But obviously, she’s not James Bond or the next James Bond. And Barbara Broccoli once said: I always feel that Bond is a male character. That is just a fact. We have to make movies about women and women’s stories, but we have to create female characters that are not just for a gimmick that turns a male character into a woman. And she took, she said that at the Bond 25 launch in Jamaica. So yeah, obviously 007, a woman, is not going to be James Bond. It’s like, okay, that’s pretty clear. And no matter, you know, Barbara Broccoli could say that all the time because that’s going to be true. You’re not going to have a female 007 as James Bond.

Tom Pizzato:                      05:02                     Okay, so, with that then Nomi is not going to be James Bond in our opinion then. Right?

Dan Silvestri:                     05:09                     Well, she’s not going to be James Bond. She could be 007 and she could replace James Bond. That’s what we’re speculating on here.

Tom Pizzato:                      05:16                     So this is one of the four areas of speculation.

Dan Silvestri:                     05:19                     The question is, will she be the franchise 007 agent in continuing 007 movies with no Bond or will James Bond return?

Tom Pizzato:                      05:31                     Well then that would lead us to speculation two, which would make the first one be absolutely impossible. Well, our speculation two then, the first one is that she becomes the next Bond. The second way to look at the next 007, replacing Bond. Then the next thing then would you know, you take the opposite of that. She could die in this movie.

Dan Silvestri:                     05:54                     We’re going to talk about that next. So Hey, here’s our second option: Nomi will die in this movie. Like Tom said. Okay, look, somebody has to die in this movie.

Tom Pizzato:                      06:05                     Well, why does somebody have to die? It’s No Time to Die. Nobody should be dying.

Dan Silvestri:                     06:09                     I know, but somebody is going to die and it’s going to be someone other than the character played by a Rami Malek, Safin. Is it Safin? I think that’s how you pronounce it. No one’s ever said it that I’ve heard. Somebody else is going to die. So could it be Swann? Could it be Nomi, it could be Felix. It’s happened before, obviously, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service his wife gets killed. He’s lost his love before, Bond. And we’ll talk about this a little bit later because he’s basically, Bond has had a tragic life. I mean, he’s got a pretty tough life, but let’s see. But maybe if it’s Nomi who will die, but wait, here’s our thought: EON Productions is going all-out to create this very powerful double-O agent in Nomi. And as Barbara Broccoli just said, as we just talked about, Hey, she wants to make movies about women and with strong women’s stories and so on. So that isn’t just a gimmick. So we think, look, you’re putting all this effort into No Time to Die for Nomi to be in this film as a strong double-O agent. EON has invested a lot into developing this female agent in the, in the modern world of advancing women’s causes and status and so on. So she gonna die. Ah, ah, yeah. I say probably not too.

Tom Pizzato:                      07:32                     All right. So we went with the thing that she replaces 007 she becomes a new 007. We then went to the speculation of she would die. So then what’s the third area of speculation we needed to tackle?

Dan Silvestri:                     07:46                     Well and I kind of like, I like these last two that Nomi will achieve equal status to James Bond in Bond films to come. This is what I think would be brilliant. And she’ll stay on as a powerful woman, double-O agent to maybe team up with Bond on cases in missions in the future or have parallel stories going on with Nomi and Bond in the same movie and teaming up at some point. This seems to be a very good idea to us at spymovienavigator.com and to us on our show here, Cracking the Code of Spy Movies. Why? It really is a perfect solution. Bring Bond back. Again they still have the issue that if he retired because of his age. As we said in the previous podcast, how do you bring them back? I mean, they do hint openly that he’s older and he’s been gone a while and so on here, but it’s the movies so they can bring them back. Right. Casino Royale was a reboot.

Tom Pizzato:                      08:44                     You know, they, they bring in new Bonds over time. So I mean they can do that

Dan Silvestri:                     08:48                     and look what they did with Casino Royale, you know, that was a reboot, but it wasn’t a reboot to 1962 it had modern technology.

Tom Pizzato:                      08:55                     It’s not just technology and also brought modern things. I know the game they’re playing, Texas Hold ’em, it’s not Chemin de fer.

Dan Silvestri:                     09:02                     That’s a good point. Yeah. So yeah, and with our willing suspension of disbelief is like, yeah, okay, we’re going to accept it and go with it. So we’re fine with that. We just love Bond. Judy Dench was still M again, you know, in the reboot and through Skyfall. So yeah, it could be done.

Tom Pizzato:                      09:25                     The weird thing to me about Judy Dench being M in the reboot. Is that the way they did this whole Daniel arc. With these stories going back to Casino Royale and then going forward with this whole series of related movies. You had nothing there about Tracy dying, about Tracy at all and her dying yet in previous Bond films, prior to Daniel, there were references made to the fact that he had a wife before.

Dan Silvestri:                     09:57                     Well, I’m going to give him a break here and say, Hey, this was a reboot and maybe these first four movies with Daniel Craig here are you know before that happened. So again, it’s the movies. They could do whatever the hell they want and we’ll eventually say, yeah, that’s okay. So anyway,

Tom Pizzato:                      10:17                     It’s EON Productions all bow down.

Dan Silvestri:                     10:20                     I mean, they’ve taken things out of order the whole time ever since they started with Dr. No. So with the order of the books versus the order of the movies with Quarrel getting killed in the Dr. No movie, the first movie. But, so anyway, we think this would be great though. You have two equal double-O agents that EON Productions can do whatever the heck they want with going forward. Wow. Yeah, I think that’s great.

Tom Pizzato:                      10:45                     I think that that, that’s a really good concept. So we’ve covered three of the four scenarios of what we think might have with Nomi. Let’s go ahead and get to the fourth one. And this one’s kind of Disney-like when you were talking to me about this one… You were talking about using Nomi and extending the double-O brand and creating a spinoff, which is different than what you were just talking about in the third scenario. Which is where they were like co-partners almost. It’s, you’re talking about in this fourth scenario, maybe they’re using this to spin off this Nomi character into a whole new series of movies.

Dan Silvestri:                     11:23                     Yeah. And I think that’s a possibility. Why not? I mean, others have done it and sure. It’s another investment in extending your brand and hoping this new brand extension works and that costs money to do all that. But Hey, they might be, and then they’re competing head-on with Atomic Blonde and Anna and all these other female spy movies. So, Hey, it’s a possibility, I think.

Tom Pizzato:                      11:52                     Yeah. But those movies did not make nearly the money as Mission: Impossible or a James Bond film.

Dan Silvestri:                     11:57                     Yeah. But they’re going to, this is going to have the Bond brand really. So it is a different scenario. I mean it’s possible. Is it likely? I don’t know. But it’s a strong scenario and it could happen. What do I like to happen? I think it would be fun if they actually did it and then they can either both, they could be cameos in each other’s movies and stuff. It’d be kind of cool.

Tom Pizzato:                      12:20                     Well the thing that intrigues me about this idea is that EON Productions could actually start getting to some kind of an alternating schedule. So like we’re having to wait five years for this movie. So if they could sit there and say, okay, every other year we’re going to put out a Nomi movie or a James Bond movie and alternate through there that gives them the time to do the development they need to do whichever character and whichever story. And still, be able to get out more frequently than this five-year hiatus gives us,

Dan Silvestri:                     12:54                     Yeah, that’s a good point. And that would be kind of fun. Everybody would say, Hey, wow, this is kind of cool. So that’s the end of our Nomi treatment. There are four different scenarios that could happen with Nomi and in this next film, No Time to Die. So we’re gonna look at James Bond now. Okay. Yeah. Lots of speculation as we just talked about in the Nomi treatment. What can happen to Bond?

Tom Pizzato:                      13:17                     Of course, Dan, he is going to die and they’re going to just wrap up the series.

Dan Silvestri:                     13:20                     Yeah, there you go. He dies and that’s, that curtain comes down, end of Bond – boom. EON Productions as a $7 billion franchise based on Bond. Right. The longest-running film franchise in history at stake here. Yeah. So they could make Bond die in this movie. Ah nah. I’m thinking. No.

Tom Pizzato:                      13:45                     Well you know they supposedly, the reason they changed directors was because the other director wanted to kill Bond off.

Dan Silvestri:                     13:53                     Yeah. But there was very strong speculation early on, before the trailer even came out, about Bond dying in this movie. They even said, Oh, you have Moneypenny hovering over Bond at the end and Bond looks like he might be dead. And she says, this is No Time to Die and then boom, it ends. That was one speculation. So is he going to die in this movie? No. Could he be dying in this movie? Yeah, I think that’s a possible scenario that he could be dying at the end of this movie. And

Tom Pizzato:                      14:26                     so that’s, that’s kind of along the lines of what we talked about in our previous podcast and in January where we were talking about, you know where James Bond was like Coca-Cola and why this is No Time to Die.

Dan Silvestri:                     14:39                     Yeah. So I mean, again, we’re looking at all sides so he could die or they could leave us hanging, whether he’ll live on to fight another day, you know, this is a nice little close for them to say, well, we don’t know. I mean Ian Fleming did this in “From Russia with Love”, the novel he wrote, he got poisoned at the end. You didn’t know if Bond was going to survive or not at the end of the novel.

Tom Pizzato:                      15:07                     we talked about that in that last podcast as well.

Dan Silvestri:                     15:10                     Yeah. So I mean this could happen. So, okay. So if EON wants time to think about what they’re going to do next with Nomi and the, you know, female, double-0 agent, this would give them a lot of time to think whatever.

Tom Pizzato:                     15:16                     And Bond in general, what do they do with the fact that they’ve got this guy who’s old and retired now?

Dan Silvestri:                     15:27                     This could be a very neat little scenario for them: a dying Bond. Okay, so we’re going to see, that’s another possibility. Here’s another one. He stays retired even after getting pulled back in by Leiter and MI6 and we’re still left wondering what will happen to 007 or Bond or Nomi? Well, maybe he stays retired as we said before, EON does have a problem bringing a retired Bond back if he’s too old. Well, they do. It’s like, okay, well now we bring back a young Bond How’s that fit in? Another reboot? Nah, I don’t think so.

Tom Pizzato:                      16:05                     Well see. I actually, I disagree with you on that, but go on.

Dan Silvestri                      16:08                     yeah, you think they could reboot it again?

Tom Pizzato:                      16:10                     Absolutely. I mean that’s, they’ve done that right?

Dan Silvestri:                     16:13                     Oh, can they. Yeah. I said, can they? Oh, of course they can. It’s the movies, but yeah, I just don’t see them doing it. But would we accept it? Yeah. Yeah, we would probably accept it. We’ll just have, suck it up and accept that Bond came back younger and this whole retirement thing was maybe a future concept, but maybe the new movies are just prequels to there. I’m retiring in this movie. They can do whatever the heck they want and we’ll, we’re going to go with it. We’re going to, we want more Bond movies. We, so I dunno. It’s fun guessing.

Tom Pizzato:                      16:50                     And that’s all we’re doing.

Dan Silvestri:                     16:51                     Yeah. So here we go. And then I think the last possibility for Bond, in No Time to Die, is he comes out of retirement and he stays out of retirement and he’s reassigned his 007 number. If it’s been reassigned, we don’t really know that for sure yet. Okay. That’s, that’s cool too. I think that would be all right. So again, the age thing still lingers over his head and this scenario though, but again, fill in the blanks and future movies of the younger Bond this strong Nomi, eh, it could be done. So he comes out of retirement, stays out of retirement and we got Bond back and a strong female double-O agent. Not bad.

Tom Pizzato:                      17:31                     Yeah. I’m not into that idea. I actually think, I actually think that uh, number one makes the most sense: Him dying and you know, gives EON time to see what public reaction to the movie was. And how they brought Lashana in and try to figure out what that Nomi character can do for them. So it gives them, it gives them some wiggle room and we’re all about analytics these days. What are the analytics from the moviegoers on this and how do we take it? The dying scenario to me gives them the most flexibility.

Dan Silvestri:                     18:11                     Yeah, it does. It does. All right. Now we’re going to take a look at Felix Leiter. This is a fun one. Felix Leiter has appeared in nine Bond films of the 24 prior to No Time to Die, this will be his 10th appearance. Seven different actors played Felix lighter. But Jeffrey Wright will have the most appearances as Felix Leiter at three with No Time to Die.

Tom Pizzato:                      18:38                     As an aside, Ian Fleming developed the name Felix Leiter from the middle name of a friend, Ivar Felix Bryce, and Leiter, which was a surname of another friend.

Dan Silvestri:                     18:47                     He did that a lot where he took,

Tom Pizzato:                      18:49                     and we’ve talked about that in other when we did our whole thing on the Ian Fleming manuscripts. How he did that a lot in his writing.

Dan Silvestri:                     18:57                     Yeah. So anyway, Felix here has been a big part of Bond’s life and in the trailer for No Time to Die, Felix comes to Bond who was retired and says to him, I need a favor, brother. You’re the only one I trust for this.

Tom Pizzato:                      19:14                     Well, and what I love about that is that means this has to be something really covert because he can’t trust his CIA brethren.

Dan Silvestri:                     19:22                     Yeah, that’s a good point, Tom. Because he is in the CIA. And Bond’s the only guy he could trust and Bond is retired. So yeah, this is big. So that’s pretty good. So Bond’s, strong bond with Felix is what seems to really jostle bond out of retirement and into this chase again. So yeah, so that’s a good point. He’s coming to Bond, not the CIA, his other cohorts in the CIA, but to Bond for this special mission. So

Tom Pizzato:                      19:55                     he’s going to bring Bond back out of retirement. But what’s going to then happen with Felix? Right? What are the options?

Dan Silvestri:                     20:03                     We’ve got a couple of things that could, that could happen to Felix. One is Felix entices Bond out of retirement. They succeed in their mission together and Bond feels like, Hey, this retirement thing is overrated. I’m back. This is a plausible scenario. Likely, I don’t know, probably not.

Tom Pizzato:                      20:25                     But retirement is a good thing.

Dan Silvestri:                     20:28                     Well why not? I mean, why not? He could be enticed out of it and think, eh, what the heck, I’m coming back.

Tom Pizzato:                      20:34                     Okay, so then Felix and Bond go on. Save the world in future movies.

Dan Silvestri:                     20:39                     Yeah.

Tom Pizzato:                      20:40                     Okay.

Dan Silvestri:                     20:41                     The other scenario would be, and I’d be disappointed, Felix dies.

Tom Pizzato:                      20:48                     (sighs)

Dan Silvestri:                     20:48                     Again, someone has to die. Maybe it’s Safin. Maybe it’s Felix and Safin. And maybe Felix comes to Bond and says he needs him. And in between that meeting and Bond unretiring Felix is killed. That would get Bond out of retirement in a heartbeat. Remember in Licence to Kill where Bond goes rogue to carry out his personal vendetta against Franz Sanchez who fed Leiter to the sharks. I mean if he gets killed, Bond would definitely come out of retirement to go retaliate and get whoever killed Felix Leiter.

Tom Pizzato:                      21:27                     That’s true.

Dan Silvestri:                     21:27                     Right. So this might be a very strong case.

Tom Pizzato:                      21:32                     The interesting thing is you’re referencing Licence to Kill, which is Felix having prosthetic leg and stuff like that. This is nowhere into the Daniel Craig things. So this whole, he went to seek revenge with his personal vendetta Either happens before the Daniel series starts or the Daniel series just totally ignores the past.

Dan Silvestri:                     21:54                     Yeah. It paints a picture of the portrait of James Bond and what he is and what we would do and what he’s willing to do.

Tom Pizzato:                      22:03                     And the fact that he had such a strong bond with Felix in License to Kill. We know that he’s got a strong bond for this guy.

Dan Silvestri:                     22:10                     Yeah. I mean, I hate to see Felix go, especially Jeffrey Wright. I think he’s been terrific.

Tom Pizzato:                      22:14                     Oh, he’s been absolutely wonderful. Now the interesting thing too for me here is in “Live and Let Die”, which was Fleming’s second novel. It’s actually where he wrote about Leiter getting mauled. Right. So that whole scene in License to Kill actually comes out of Fleming’s second book. And I mean even the line “he disagreed with, with something that ate him”. That was actually in “Live and Let Die”: a note pinned to Leiter in “Live and Let Die” that they just took into License to Kill.

Dan Silvestri:                     22:49                     Yeah. EON Productions and their screenwriters have done this kind of thing a lot. And, pretty well though

Tom Pizzato:                      22:57                     And the other thing though is that Fleming in that book was originally was going to have Leiter die and he had to be convinced to keep him alive. So Leiter dying really to me doesn’t sound too far-fetched. Although again, as we’ve mentioned, these story arcs are a little weird, his character does live on in some of the Bond continuation books. Yes. So where are we in time is the interesting part to me here.

Dan Silvestri:                     23:27                     The continuity thing has never been the biggest issue with the Bond series. Again, it’s our willing suspension of disbelief. It’s like, yeah, okay. It’s a little mixed up, but somewhere in there that makes sense somehow. But it may be the time now and maybe there’s another CIA operative that Bond will get close with and develop a relationship with in the future and whatever. And of course, Nomi is there to maybe be a presence for the MI6 for a long time. But this relationship with Felix and CIA and so on, I’d hate to see it end here, but that’s another possible scenario for Felix and one that sounds pretty strong.

Dan Silvestri:                     24:13                     All right. Lastly, we have to mention Swann. She’s either believable or not in the trailer. When she says to Bond, “Why would I betray you? In general, and this is my opinion, when people answer questions with another question, they’re covering something up and they’re really not answering your questions.

Dan Silvestri:                     24:33                     Like it’s like, why would I betray you? That doesn’t answer anything. It’s putting a question on you, so that’s clever for a trailer especially. Because we have no idea what’s going on and that’s good. So what are her dark secrets that they have not explored yet? It kind of says that in there. We haven’t gotten to your secrets yet. This is an exciting part of the trailer and, it makes us keep wondering throughout the trailer and till April. What’s going to happen?

Tom Pizzato:                      25:04                     We’ll find out in April.

Dan Silvestri:                     25:05                     Yeah. So what’s the first scenario for Swann? So maybe it’s all a mix-up. Here’s one possible scenario with Swann. Swann, though her father was a SPECTRE operative is clean. Tracy Di Vincenzo was clean in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, even though her father, Draco, ran a criminal organization.

Tom Pizzato:                      25:25                     So, now actually the interesting thing to me here is there’s been no acknowledgment of Tracy in the Daniel Craig arc. We’ve talked about this a couple of times. Is Swann a Tracy replacement? She’s got a dirty dad, she’s clean, do Bond and Swann get married and then she meets an unfortunate end. Is this, I mean, are they going to really do that kind of mirroring of what they did in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with Madeline instead of Tracy?

Dan Silvestri:                     25:58                     Yeah. So if she’s clean, that’s a possible scenario, right? He ends up marrying, or maybe he did marry her. We don’t even know. You’ve been gone for a long time. Yeah. But the scene here, when she’s opening the box with the Phantom of the Opera mask, I mean that’s the eerie part that makes you question this whole scenario. Is she clean or not clean? Which is,

Tom Pizzato:                      26:19                     I love that when she opens that up.

Dan Silvestri:                     26:21                     Yeah. So you don’t really know. Was this in her possession all along or did she just happen upon it or did somebody?

Tom Pizzato:                      26:31                     Maybe she got it mailed to her. Maybe Safin sent it to her.

Dan Silvestri:                     26:34                     her and she’s just opening it. We don’t know. That’s the big question here.

Tom Pizzato:                      26:38                     That’s what I love about this part of the trailer is the look on her face when she opens that thing up and she’s like, and she looks at that mask. Is it “hello old friend” or is it, “what the heck is this?” Or “I know what this is and Oh my, I don’t like where this is going to go.” All three of those are possible with the expression she has on her face.

Dan Silvestri:                     26:59                     I look at her face and I think, Oh, she’s thinking, Oh no, I gotta do this. You know, that’s what I’m looking for. I’m thinking she’s looking at that going. Okay, shoot, I gotta do this. So I don’t know. So that’s one possible scenario. So the second scenario is maybe Swann is not so clean and she’s maybe infiltrated MI6 as a double agent. When Bond sees her in the hallway of MI6 when he says he won’t lose his control.

Tom Pizzato:                      27:26                     Yeah. He has that pause as he sees Nomi and Swan walking together.

Dan Silvestri:                     27:32                     Yeah. And he’s shocked. Is he doubting his control now that he’s seen her? That maybe she’s working for MI6 based on what he actually knows about her and that we don’t know yet. Oh, that’s also a possible scenario.

Tom Pizzato:                      27:46                     Well, I especially because the interesting thing to me is in Spectre when Swan and Bond meet Blofeld, there does not appear to be any recognition between Blofeld and Swann. Yeah. And so, but her dad worked for Spectre. Yeah. Mr. White. Yeah. So it’s

Dan Silvestri:                     28:09                     so Bond keeps getting involved in these people that have, uh, underworld connections. I, yeah. Why does he do that?

Tom Pizzato:                      28:16                     Yeah, exactly.

Dan Silvestri:                     28:18                     Anyway, this scenario, if this is a scenario where she’s not so clean, it cannot end well. Really cue the music. Maybe we will hear her Swann song as she ties.

Tom Pizzato:                      28:30                     Oh, Dan, you didn’t go there.

Dan Silvestri:                     28:34                     All right. So this would not be the first time Bond would lose his woman for one reason or another. This did happen to the other fellow because Bond is the other fella, Casino Royale 2006 he loses Vesper in the movie and in the novel by Fleming. Of course, like we just said On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in both the movie and the book he loses his wife Tracy. In Fleming’s book, “Moonraker“, Bond loses the woman at the end. He says I was going to take you off to a farmhouse in France. Her name is Gala, says to him, “I’m sorry I can’t oblige.” “Well, goodbye Gala.” And they, they go off, he loses her and later, you know, he’s talking about this is as though man, this, could have been a good relationship. Even in the book “Diamonds are Forever”, Bond really falls for Tiffany Case, but soon she’s out of his life.

Tom Pizzato:                      29:29                     He falls for all of these women.

Dan Silvestri:                     29:31                     Well he doesn’t, not in a serious way. He likes them all and he wants to have sex and whatever with them all. But in some of these cases, he really falls for them. Like this could be a love kind of thing. In Tiffany Case’s case, he really thought and he tells, it tells M, I think in from “Russia with Love”, he thought they could’ve gotten married, but she runs off with some American military officer and goes back to America. So again, he loses somebody he really cared about. It’s happened to Bond a lot. And so I think sometimes in both the films in the, in the novel Bond does not get a woman. We always think he always gets his woman. He does not always get his woman. And in this particular case, maybe Swann is another one that for one reason or another will get away or be killed. I don’t know.

Tom Pizzato:                      30:29                     All right. That’s possible. We’ve looked at the scenarios then of what could happen, what we think could happen to Nomi, to Bond, to Felix and to Madeline.

Dan Silvestri:                     30:39                     Yeah. And we know somebody who is not the evil bad guy is going to die. I just know that

Tom Pizzato:                      30:48                     (laughing) You just know it. Dan, this is what is the beauty of speculation.

Dan Silvestri:                     30:52                     Yeah, of course. It’s speculation. We don’t have any inside info here. We’re just speculating like the rest of the world. So who will it be? Send us your thoughts right now by sending us a voice message from our website. It’s spymovienavigator.com. Hit the big red button on the right of the screen that says “send us a voicemail” and we’ll put you in our next podcast about No Time to Die. Let’s see who can speculate the best. Go do it now. Send us a message we want to hear from you.

Dan Silvestri:                     31:20                     Did people like the trailer? Overwhelmingly it seems people like the trailer. In fact, most people love the trailer. We did a little poll on Twitter about the trailer of course, not a scientific poll and overwhelmingly those who responded mostly rated it ‘A’ with some ‘B’s. Nobody didn’t like the trailer and we loved the trailer. They did a fabulous job on the trailer. We can’t wait to see the movie.

Tom Pizzato:                      31:48                     Now, Dan, I think you and I have to go to London to see it. Because it releases there before it releases in the US that week in between the two

Dan Silvestri:                     31:55                     That might be fun. Let’s do it. I got to see this, right when it comes out.

Dan Silvestri:                     32:01                     Alright, let’s go to London and see it before it opens in the US that might be fun.

Dan Silvestri:                     32:08                     This has been Dan Silvestri and Tom Pizzato. We’re finished with our speculating. Head to our website now to send us the voice message with your speculations and guesses and you will be on our show and keep listening. We appreciate it very much. Let’s keep Cracking the Code of Spy Movies together.

 


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James Bond is Like Coca-Cola, Which Is Why For Him, This Is No Time to Die

Related: NO TIME TO DIE:  Why You Cannot Kill Off James Bond.  Or could you?

Related: No Time To Die Trailer Discussion – A Quick-Fire Look

Contributed by: Dan Silvestri and Tom Pizzato - Spy Movie Navigator

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This article is based on the podcast Spy Movie Navigator did with the same name.   You can listen to this podcast here: (link). 

This article is based on the podcast Spy Movie Navigator did with the same name.

With No Time to Die on the horizon, there is lots of speculation about whether James Bond will survive this mission and whether Nomi, Lashana Lynch’s character, will indeed take over the 007 moniker and become the Double-O agent in future films. Rumor and speculations have been flying worldwide since EON Productions started filming. But as we know anything can happen.

Nomi’s Name

First of all, let’s look at Nomi. We think that’s a variation of Naomi. You can look it up. There are lots of different variations, but Nomi is a name from Hebrew-Japanese origin and it means beautiful, pleasant, delightful. Well, that’s a great name for a front and center Double-O agent’s intro here for Lashana Lynch. And from the No Time to Die trailer, Lashana Lynch is, all of that and tough.

In the trailer when she looks at his other knee and says the one that works, It’s like when she’s going to shoot him in the knee if he doesn’t stay in his lane. Yes, she’s tough.

But Nomi, if you’ll listen, you’ll say it slowly – NO-MI or NO-ME. Maybe her role will be short-lived. Will she survive this mission? Or could it be KNOW-ME, like we need to get to know her as we’ll be seeing her in future movies?

But these all speculations based on wordplay, but we’re all wondering whether Bond will survive, but there are a couple of other things really here.

We don’t know if the screenwriters are into numerology. We tried to find out and I couldn’t find out. In our research, there wasn’t anything that said, ‘yeah, they’re into numerology’. However, if you look into this a little bit, Nomi in numerology is eight, and that means power. It’s the great or marked ability to do, act or accomplish something. It’s a possession of control or command over others. Authority.

And the second big thing here is sacrifice, surrender or destruction of something prized for the sake of a higher claim. How does this fit Nomi in this movie so far? Well, there are a lot of interesting things here.  Is she going to sacrifice her life or is she going to sacrifice Bond’s life for a higher claim by authority, a higher goal? There’s some good stuff in here.

A skeptical view of the name Nomi is to look where we’ve seen the name in other movies. We’ve only found one other movie character with that name, that wasn’t in Asian cartoon, and that was Elizabeth Berkley’s character in the movie Showgirls. We don’t know if it was Elizabeth Berkley’s interpretation, the director’s interpretation or whatever, but she was just a nasty character that you really didn’t want to see anymore. So let’s just hope that the Nomi in No Time to Die is much better than the Nomi was in Showgirls.

We know she’s going to be tough. We know that for sure from the trailer. She was terrific in the trailer. She was good, but there always seems to be something in names. Writers are good at this kind of stuff. That’s why the Hemingway references in Licence to Kill and what we thought about with the bell in the No Time to Die trailer referencing “For Whom the Bell Tolls, are important to examine. We discuss the “For Whom the Bell Tolls” reference in our podcast on the No Time to Die trailer.  You can listen to that here (link). 

The Dove
Paloma is the character portrayed by Ana de Armas. What does Poloma mean? It means dove, which is a symbol of peace. So, is she going to have a character role in this film that’s going to be more like on Bond’s side or what? We don’t know, but these writers think of this stuff like we’re thinking of this stuff.

Coca-Cola’s Secret Formula

Bond is like Coca-Cola. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The Coke formula was secret. No one person knew the entire Coca-Cola formula for a hundred years. It’s locked in a safe and people know pieces of it and then they know or put their pieces together and they make the stuff.

The Pepsi Generation

So, in 1963, the maverick and creative genius Alan Maxwell Pottasch launched the ‘Pepsi Generation’ campaign. It was the first major advertising campaign to associate a product with a lifestyle rather than features.

The model before this was to talk about this product this feature, that feature, so this is why you should buy it. This campaign associated the product, Pepsi, with a lifestyle. So they had commercials showing young people skiing or having fun on beaches. And again, it was a lifestyle they were connecting to and not, not the product features. You’re going to live like this.

This made Pepsi a strong competitor to Coca-Cola. There’s a great article on this that came out right after Alan died. It’s called “Creative Father of the ‘Pepsi Generation’ Turned the Lifestyle into a Selling Point” by Betsy McKay on August 4, 2007, in The Wall Street Journal. Here’s a link to the article: (link).

So, here you see a product marketing campaign against a major competitor, Coca-Cola based on associating its product with the younger generation. And it pigeonholed Coca-Cola as the has-been product for the older generation. They never said that explicitly. They never had to, but it worked brilliantly and they had slogans like, “You’ve got a lot to live. Pepsi’s got a lot to give” – just brilliant stuff.

I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke

Coke fought back in the 70s with its own “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” campaign, which was a huge hit. The man responsible for this campaign was Bill Backer. Bill Backer created the campaign and Billy Davis and Roger Cook actually wrote that song.

But Coke nonetheless was still feeling their market share slipping.

Taking The Gloves Off
Pepsi initially didn’t outright say Coke was the older generation in their initial Pepsi Generation campaign. They kind of implied that.

If you fast forward to the 1990s: you had the Mac versus the PC commercials. This was really in-your-face and not subtle. Did Pepsi’s next move inspire those commercials?

In 1985 Pepsi created an ad attacking Coca-Cola as a relic. There is an archeologist somewhere hundreds of years in the future. And he’s digging up something and it’s a Coke bottle and he’s like quizzically looking at it like, what the hell could this mean? You can see how brilliant this ad is. It won all kinds of awards. It was spectacular. You can find it on YouTube here: (link).

Now Pepsi has Coke cornered. They had to do something.

What Does This Have To Do with James Bond?

We titled this article to imply we would talk about James Bond and No Time to Die, so far we’ve been talking about the cola wars between Coke and Pepsi.   Let’s see where this intersects with today’s James Bond and No Time to Die.

Let’s Change It

In 1985, Coca-Cola decided because the Pepsi generation was eating into their market share, they had to do something. And they came up with the New Coke. They came up with a new formula that they were going to put out there to compete now with Pepsi in a better way, and to become more responsive to the world, to the market, to the new generation, to the new way of doing things.

Pepsi made Coke a relic an out-of-touch-with-reality-dinosaur. Now we’ve heard Bond referred to as a dinosaur in Goldeneye: “I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur — a relic of the Cold War”, M said to Bond. This a little connection. It’s going to get bigger.

Coke was still number one, but Pepsi was eating the market share. That wasn’t good for Coke. So, they changed their formula. Mistake, right? 13% of soda drinkers liked the new formula. Epic implosion for Coke.

Pepsi jumped all over Coke in commercials, consumers protested and wanted the old Coke back and less than three months later, Coca-Cola announced they were bringing back the old formula as Coke Classic.

Was this a colossal failure on the Coca-Cola company’s part? Clearly, they spent millions of dollars on the New Coke campaign and formula.  But they got a lot of press. They got millions of dollars worth of press out of this. And when they brought back the old formula, because consumers were screaming for the old formula again, that was big news.

The Changing World for Bond

EON Productions is looking at the landscape of the world today: with the #Me Too movement, the focus on the power and leadership of young girls, the focus advancing women’s causes. EON Productions has decided not to call Bond Girl Bond Girls anymore, but Bond Women and so on. All of this is now connected. Why? To be altruistic? Probably not. They weren’t doing all this to be altruistic.

We think they were thinking: Well the market is responding in a certain way. Like the Pepsi and Coke markets responded. We must remember that half of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies had better worldwide revenue numbers than the BOND movies introduced since Mission: Impossible released in 1996. Listen to our podcast The Spies Who Loathe Me for a discussion of how MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE is battling the Bond franchise (link).

EON Productions is feeling the heat and you know we still have this Bond guy who is a womanizer and all of his faults. We think they want to broaden the interest in their base: not just men who love Bond movies. But to expand it to the millennials and the younger generation to women and so on.

Dave Holcomb talked a little bit about that on the podcast we did on his book: “His World Never Dies – The Evolution of James Bond”. We have an interview with Dave in our podcast with the same name (link).

Other filmmakers have women spies front and center. Films like: Atomic Blonde, Salt, Charlie’s Angels, Spy, Anna, Red Sparrow, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Get Smart all had a woman spy in a lead role.

Some of these movies were making money. They are all trying to capitalize on highlighting women in these lead roles. EON Productions wants to tap into what is happening today in the real world and not be the Coca-Cola bottle found and examined quizzically a few hundred years from now.

Is EON Productions Changing Its Formula?

Will EON Productions truly change the formula in this movie: No Time to Die? This would be a change after 58 years or so, and not a hundred like Coke. But it looks like they’re doing it. So have EON Productions, taken the 1985 version of Coke as a model?

Let’s hope they learned.

Lots of rumors are flying. At the beginning of the filming of Bond 25, now titled No Time to Die, there were rumors that Lashana Lynch, as Nomi, would be introduced as 007. Remember that rumor? Oh yeah, the door opens after M says “Where’s 007?” and in comes Lashana Lynch. That was the rumor in the beginning when they announced Bond 25. And even with the first official trailer out Nomi is acknowledged as a Double-0 agent. But they never say the number that’s after the Double-O (sneaky ad writers).

And one of the rumors about why they changed directors was that James Bond was supposed to die. 

They might still do that in the movie, we just don’t know. But, like Coca-Cola, there’s a lot of hype and lots of attention being paid to Bond and No Time to Die right now and here we’re talking about it again.

So the formula concept here is the same. They’re looking at how to change the formula. We think Eon Productions wants to change the formula.

James Bond’s Previous Formula Changes

Even if you look back at Ian Fleming, when he wrote “The Spy Who Loved Me”, he was changing the formula. And in that particular novel, Bond doesn’t appear until about the middle of the manuscript. And it’s this woman Viviene Michel who’s telling the story. It was not well received by the public. Ian Fleming had tried to change the formula.

In his next novel, the next year, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, Bond is mentioned right on the first page and he’s back to the old formula. And in reality, when Eon Productions did The Spy Who Loved Me movie, there was nothing based on that novel that Fleming actually wrote other than the title. So what does Eon Productions want to do?

Ian Fleming tried to kill off Bond in “From Russia With Love”. When they end that book he’s actually poisoned, potentially dying. Because you know, Fleming wanted to get rid of James Bond and write something else. This was much like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to do with Sherlock Holmes. He wanted to get rid of Holmes and write something else.

The Impact of Formula Changes

Coke and EON want to change the formula. Okay. It didn’t work out exactly for Coke or for Ian Fleming when he wrote: “The Spy Who Loved Me”. Quite frankly, we don’t think it will work out for EON Productions. But, they seem to be toying with this idea right now.

Reacting To The Consumer

This movie is the Coke formula. This is what they’re thinking. And now what? Coca-Cola realized that Coca-Cola belongs to the consumers, not the company. Meaning that they felt the consumer reaction and flat sales when they came out with their New Coke and Coke change back quickly, like in 10 weeks.

EON Productions doesn’t have the ability to pivot that quickly if they release a movie with a changed formula that the consumer doesn’t like. They can’t change in 10 weeks as Coca-Cola did. It takes them 5 years to put a movie out.

However, they can change within the movie, which we think they did. At least this is our assumption.

Is This All a Publicity Stunt?

So what will EON Productions do? Is all this hype, a publicity stunt? It could be, which would be great for them because it’s been five years since coming out with their last movie. These rumors are getting all of us to talk about Bond, to hype up No Time to Die so that it’s a box office smash and help the franchise.   They haven’t put a movie out in five years, which is a long time. It’s a long time to be waiting: maybe. Or maybe they really wanted to change the formula.

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t After You
Let’s remember Joseph Heller’s line in Catch-22: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”  EON Productions are running up against MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, which in 2021 and then again in 2022 are releasing movies. This has to be putting the heat on EON. It’s been five years for Bond and they may be changing all this stuff. And if it takes them another five years to react to whatever happens from this one. What happens to the franchise?

Having To Respond To The Backlash

So there you have it. Coke got a lot of backlash from its consumers when they changed the formula. And based on all the rumors at the beginning of Bond 25 when it was being announced, EON Productions got a lot of backlash based on the rumors from fans saying that Bond is Bond, 007 is Bond. Tons of podcasts, YouTube videos, articles almost daily about this stuff.

Look at Bond’s history. Fleming was going to kill off Bond at the end of, “From Russia With Love”. He doesn’t do it. And his next two books were “Dr. No” and “Goldfinger”. If he hadn’t written those books… Remember, the first movie was “Dr. No”.. What would have happened?

So what will EON do?
Maybe, and this is likely to be true if they follow the Coke analogy, maybe we see Bond dying at the end of this film, like in the “From Russia With Love” novel. Dying, not dead. Leaving us with a cliffhanger.

Let’s hope it resolves better than the “Who Shot JR cliffhanger” on the TV show, “Dallas” and his death is just a dream. Or worse yet, assuming this is Daniel Craig’s last turn at Bond, the new Bond actor leaps from the dying/dead body like Joe Pendelton in Here Comes Mr. Jordan or in the remake Heaven Can Wait? A new James Bond pops up from the dying Bond, just as he’s about to expire? Let’s hope not.

A cliffhanger would give Eon Productions another two years, three years, five years, whatever it takes for them to come up with another movie to decide what they’re going to really do.

Is It Time For a Retirement Party?
We talk a little bit about this in our, in our No Time to Die trailer podcast, but maybe Nomi is introduced as 007. Maybe she’s going to be introduced as that. James has kind of retired. The implication is he’s old. In the trailer, they go out of the way to make James Bond seem like he’s been gone a while.

The shot in the trailer when he really looked old was when he’s talking to that security guard. He was asked what his name was. He said Bond …. James Bond. The guard had no idea who this old guy was. We think that was a brilliant way of getting that line into the movie in a different way than normal. (again, changing the formula). Skyfall kind of gave you that feeling as well.

The Trap Eon Productions Finds Itself In

We think EON Productions has a problem though. In the No Time to Die trailer, Nomi tells Bond “the world has changed, Commander Bond. Stay in your lane.” The problem is this: if he survives, (assuming he does and we think he’s going to survive. Based on the Coca-Cola formula, we can assume that.) then how do they bring back an old Bond? This is the problem. They have painted themselves in a little corner here with him being old.

They can’t reboot again. That would be crazy, wouldn’t it? With Daniel, they did a complete reboot and went back to Ian Fleming’s first James Bond book, “Casino Royale”.

But now you’ve got five stories kind of connected here. They’re all connected his five movies, right? So now there’s like, yeah, you’re old, you’re retired, you’re whatever. Now what? He must survive this movie.

With Daniel’s supposed retirement from the role, they are going to have to start with somebody new and in a totally different direction.

So, this is the conundrum there. We think they were thinking at the beginning of their work on this movie, maybe he dies in this movie and we bring up Lashana Lynch as the new 007. We have a woman spy.  But now they’re there in this corner. Now they’re going to have Bond survive because the feedback is not good or whatever. And now he’s old. Now, what do you do? It’s a problem. If they would’ve just said he’s retired cause he was sick of it. Tired of it. Tired of that lifestyle. Okay, that’s good.

Plus, you have a whole industry with James Bond, this James Bond that: all talking about your product and you change it?

So, number one, he’s got to survive. Number two, they have to wrestle with this problem.

However, the trailer appears to go out of its to make him look like he’s been gone awhile nobody even knows who he is anymore. He’s Mr. Irrelevant.

This is a problem. This is a company with about $7 billion in gross revenues for their movies so far. About $4 billion of that was Daniel Craig’s movies. But the world is changing. EON Productions would be wrong if they don’t do what Coke did or at least play around with the formula, but in the end, keep the old one.

Coke released the new formula. and got rid of the old formula. But they were able to react quickly where EON can’t. If they change the formula in this movie and they go with the Lashana-Lynch-as-007 plot, they may find out that only 13% of James Bond fans liked the new formula. Like the Coke experience with their change.

The Old Guard
It’s going to be really interesting, in general, for spy movies because the two biggest series are at a point where their chief spy guy is getting old. We think Tom Cruise’s age is why they’re doing back-to-back releases for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. They need to do a handoff. It will be interesting to see what they do: whether they had come up with a new Ethan Hunt or whether it’s Ethan Hunt now running the whole thing as Phelps did. But MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE has the benefit of what happened in the TV show where the teams changed over. They can continue that model easier.

Bond’s a little tougher problem because of where they’ve taken the story arc and Bond’s aging.

Spy Movie Navigator’s Guess

So, we think James Bond will not only survive into a beyond-Craig-as-Bond film with another male lead, but he’ll survive for many decades to come. We don’t think any of us should worry that the formula is going to be changed in such a big way as Coke did it with New Coke.

Bond. Will Survive.

Classic Coke, Classic Bond.


Related Content

NO TIME TO DIE:  Why You Cannot Kill Off James Bond.  Or could you?

With the upcoming release of NO TIME TO DIE, there are lots of rumors about what will happen in this movie and the direction EON Productions will take James Bond going forward. Check out our thoughts these issues.

No Time To Die Trailer Discussion – A Quick-Fire Look

Join Tom and Dan in Cracking the Code of Spy Movies! Here we take a Quick-Fire look at the December 2019 trailer for No Time To Die and speculate as to what it all means.

James Bond is Like Coca-Cola Which is Why for Bond, This is NO TIME TO DIE!

Podcast Episode

James Bond is Like Coca-Cola Which is Why for Bond, This is NO TIME TO DIE!

Join Dan and Tom as we explore No Time To Die and see why James Bond will survive his next mission, looking back at how changing the Coca-Cola formula in 1985 is similar to the formula change that is being attempted with the Bond franchise!

Join Dan and Tom as we explore No Time To Die and see why James Bond will survive his next mission, looking back at how changing the Coca-Cola formula in 1985 is similar to the formula change that is being attempted with the Bond franchise!  This is a unique look at Bond and No Time To Die!

Be part of Cracking the Code of Spy Movies and send us a voice message by clicking the red button to the right of the screen.

Related Content

In this podcast show we talk about:

  • How the changes that Coca-Cola made to their formula in the 1980’s parallels the potential changes we will see in the Bond formula going forward!
  • We draw some conclusions based on what happened to Coca-Cola when they changed the formula and what we think will happen wit the James Bond franchise.
  • Fun stuff!

On this show, we reference the following links:

Commercials (these links will take you to YouTube):

  •  I’d like to buy the world a Coke – (link)
  • Archaeology – (link)

Article:  Creative Father of the ‘Pepsi Generation’ Turned Lifestyle Into a Selling Point, By  Betsy McKay. Updated Aug. 4, 2007 12:01 am ET in The Wall Street Journal (link)


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