In the time between Spectre and No Time To Die coming out, a lot has happened. For Sam Rogers, this included his own coming out. Here he reflects on what the film means to him as a gay man and a Bond fan in general.

No Time To Die? Done. Like I’m sure many of you do, it feels absurd to say that I have watched No Time To Die (three times). What felt like a marathon ended up being one (and then some) and we are now across the finish line, reflecting on the journey we’ve been on.

When the last Bond film, Spectre, came out in 2015, I was starting my final year of university, wasn’t legally able to drink in the USA, hadn’t come out to my parents and wider family and working my part-time job at a bingo hall! Between then and now, I’ve graduated university, fully come out, been to the USA (drinks included), and moved on from my first job to my current full-time job that I’ve been at for four and a half years.

Oh, and there was a global pandemic going on, but I’ll try not to mention that too much!

The delay was difficult for fans but luckily everyone rallied together to get through the time by messaging each other, tweeting, writing articles, recording podcasts and creating video content. There was all the time in the world to wait around but no time to waste at the same time! Now we’re here, on the other side and can finally process and dive into the film. Rather than doing a full review or anything (I’ll save that for David), I really wanted to touch upon the key elements of the film that stood out for me, whether it’s good or bad, including some queer observations, the women, ties to video games, the emotion, and the music. To say No Time To Die is a controversial entry to the series would indeed be an understatement!

“It’s here, it’s potentially queer, get used to it?”

I sit here writing this whilst listening to 1996 pop hit Who Do You Think You Are by the Spice Girls (Elliot Carver definitely jammed to it whilst on his stealth boat) and think about the elements of No Time To Die that spoke to me, not just as a fan but as a gay man. It’s funny but I said two things in my first article on Licence To Queer, the first being “I especially don’t want a gay character in No Time To Die if they end up like so many who have come before: dead. I don’t have time for that.” I will bring up the second point later on but I didn’t expect anything to come from this at all and yet we did get a queer character and he didn’t die!

I wanted to start with this as it’s probably one of the more obvious things to write about on a website titled Licence To Queer. But yes, Ben Whishaw’s Q is not heterosexual. I won’t pretend to know exactly what his sexuality is but as he was preparing for a date with a gentleman (presume they weren’t going to go to the theatre after dinner like Moneypenny did in Goldeneye) then it’s safe to say he lands in the homosexual/bisexual/pansexual area.

How do I feel about it? Fine, I guess? Don’t get me wrong: to have a character be explicitly LGBTQ+ is great and maybe if I was younger, I would appreciate it a lot more. But it’s just a nice addition really, nothing incredibly ground-breaking or overpowering but just made to be a normal, average thing which was the right way to handle it in my opinion. What I do hope, on the flipside of my non-reaction to this, is that some younger and/or closeted Bond fans can take solace (*insert pun here) in the fact that one of the mainstays of the Bond franchise isn’t heterosexual and that it is so naturally added that no one bats an eyelid.

For years there have been 00Q ‘shippers with stories, artwork and all sorts of things being created in the hopes that Bond and Q would get together. I was firmly not a part of this, although I definitely understand the pull towards a ‘ship like that. So despite Q not being with Bond, I hope that Q preparing for a date with a man made many people happy. It seems inevitable upon reflection that Q would be gay (or any other sexuality that includes an attraction to men) as his awkward yet loveable persona screams this. Inclusion is important and although I think how it was presented could’ve been better (such as nothing being said and then the date arriving with flowers or something which would then end that scene), it was good to see and a rare time where it’s not just slightly implied or dependable on reading/perspective.

I have to mention this here as I’m not sure where else would be best but I have to give a shoutout to Logan Ash and especially Primo for not only being competent henchmen but for also being incredibly attractive. Lots of puns have already been made about Primo between myself and Licence To Queer’s David Lowbridge-Ellis and Mark O’Connell, author of the book Catching Bullets that have stemmed from my appreciation of Dali Benssalah!

And both Logan and Primo get memorable ends, with the former being a particularly earned moment in the film after his earlier betrayal. Bond’s brutal, cold kill made me do a little fist pump in the cinema and was a great call back to the death of Locque in For Your Eyes Only.

I love a classic one liner too and so “It blew his mind” was, whilst being incredibly cheesy, just so satisfying and is something that I’m sure one of the previous Bond actors would have said!

“In Bond films, women come first…then second…then third…”

For those who have read some of my other articles on Licence To Queer, it’s pretty obvious that I have a strong affinity for the lead female characters in Bond films and I’m happy to say that all the lead women in No Time To Die do a great job and have wonderful individual moments as well as great relationships with Bond.

Madeleine Swann is redeemed from her ok-at-best role in Spectre, creating a more well-rounded character that we sympathise with and understand more as we delve further into her past and present life. Nomi (aka 007) is a force to be reckoned with (whether next to Bond or others) and has some sensational stand out moments including her spy work in Jamaica and the moment she kills Obruchev, using the film’s title in the process! Eve Moneypenny is an effective support for MI6 despite her more limited role in this film and maintains her cool appearance with sharp wit when called for.

But of course, the standout that everyone raves about is Paloma who is arguably the most entertaining Bond girl since Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd (haunting the series one last time in the pre-/main title sequence of ‘No Time To Die’) and is probably the best female character for me since Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King. Ana de Armas not only has a natural screen presence but also uses her few minutes of screentime to the full by kicking arse, looking beautifully dangerous yet being incredibly down to earth and, to quote Kerim Bey, charming.

BTS (behind the scenes not the Korean pop supergroup) footage makes me love the actress and character even more as we are able to see just some of the training and preparation it took for her to complete her action sequence where she single-handedly takes out several henchmen. Had none of the trailers come out I think I would have been more worried about the character as she appears as a glamourous, yet slightly dorky, rookie (there’s certainly elements of Mary Goodnight that I see in her). She has sacrificial lamb written all over her (everyone knew she wouldn’t be in it for long due to the one dress that she wears) so what she was going to do during her limited screentime needed to create an impact. Luckily for us, it didn’t involve her dying or failing but instead being an absolute boss by working with Bond to track the treacherous scientist, Valdo Obruchev, fending off guards with pistols, machine guns, and through hand-to-hand combat, having a couple of drinks and looking completely flawless even as she exits the story!

Paloma’s few minutes of screentime shows that a young female character in a Bond film doesn’t need to have a romantic interest in Bond, look incompetent or die. She can do the job that she needed to do and wave goodbye. I think it’s because of this that people want to see her again and, if we stayed in this continuity, I would be on that bandwagon too. But Ana de Armas, like all the other female actors in this film, are destined for further greatness!

Paloma joins the ranks of Tracy, Wai Lin, Pam Bouvier, Natalya, and many more as being an icon (for me at least) to many and I would definitely include her as being a gay icon. If I did drag and could look even 10% as good as her then I would dress up as her and do a number acting out some random made-up Bond scenario then sing (or lip sync) to a few Bond title songs!

It is refreshing that none of the four female lead characters are killed. You would expect in a Bond film that at least one of them would bite the bullet and three of the four are involved in dangerous action. Instead, it’s the men who take their last breaths in this film. A rarity, especially when it’s Felix and Bond.

“A tear Sarah Ja…I mean Sam?”

This past month has been a weird one for me and crying at visual media I must be honest. No Time To Die and Squid Game are just two of the things that I have cried over. Crying at a Bond film in the cinema was an experience I never thought would happen.

Before I dive into my sob story, I just have to mention Felix as he, without a doubt, had his best showing since Licence To Kill in this film. I’ve always liked Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter but he just hasn’t had much to work with in his two prior films, so it was lovely to see him shine a bit more, despite his still limited role. This time Felix didn’t walk away as he was shot by the b*stard that is Logan Ash, the true villain of the film in my view!

Now I didn’t cry at Felix’s death, however it did make me feel sad and, in large part, it’s because of the performances by Wright and Craig who make it seem as if these two characters have been friends for years and have survived multiple missions since their last appearance together in Quantum of Solace. It’s nice that they have such an intimate moment yet it’s simultaneously awful to see Felix die right in front of Bond’s (and our) eyes. On a side note, I do think as an ending for this version of Felix it was spot on to have him get shot and then drift away instead of being brutally attacked by a shark which I’ve heard a couple of people suggest. To randomly shove a shark in there just to link back to Fleming wouldn’t have worked at all for the sequence or for the film and I really question any logical reasoning of throwing a shark in there. Imagine this lovely heart to heart between Felix and Bond suddenly being interrupted by the shark from Deep Blue Sea or Shark Attack 3: Megalodon! Mini rant over but I’m happy that I could finally truly enjoy Felix from this era and he looked like he was enjoying himself too - at least until his sad end.

Earlier on in the article I mentioned that my first article on Licence To Queer had a couple of points in it regarding No Time To Die and the second seemed pretty much guaranteed. Back then, I stated “007 will always survive”. Yes, I jinxed it (where’s my Mojito?). James Bond died, and I cried. Boy did I cry. I have heard several opinions about his death ranging from it being good, confusing, to disrespectful. A moment of this magnitude certainly warrants such a response. I watch James Bond and know that he will make it out at the end... It can be happy, it can be sad but Bond always makes it out. And so a part of me doesn’t want to like the film for going against such a fundamental part of the formaula and trying to subvert our expectations by killing him.

But

(and it’s a big but) it’s much easier to stomach when you separate Craig’s films from the classic films.

Craig’s Bond never gets a true, final happy ending. Yes, his missions can be successful, and he can end up with a woman but that’s not a life: it’s a moment which disappears never to be referenced again. It’s true to the character that he doesn’t end up with a happy life and we’ve seen how this is done, by taking his loves (Tracy and Vesper) away from him. This time, not only did we have his love, but we also had his child. These elements, along with Craig knowing that this was his final film closing out this five-part continuity, makes it easier to understand why it’s Bond who dies rather than his significant others. It’s different, shocking and isn’t how we expect a Bond film to end. This version of Bond had already retired and so him pulling a Dark Knight Rises and being alive wouldn’t have been satisfying (to me at least).

I’ve had three cinema viewings of the film and the latter two were definitely not as difficult as the first! Mind racing, knowing that Bond always finds a way to survive, I see the crimson red drip from his clothes following numerous gunshots, the broken glass of the nanobot DNA substance that Safin has infected him with and know that the rockets incoming are incoming. It’s just an almost impossible and inescapable situation for Bond. My Bond would fight and continue to fight but Craig’s Bond isn’t that. And I’ve made my peace with that. He’s left and returned to MI6 numerous times, been physically and mentally hurt more brutally than others and is now stuck knowing that he can’t let his loved ones get hurt by this virus whilst at the same time bleeding to death and awaiting rockets to blow up the land he is standing on. Some say it’s stupid that Bond wouldn’t at least try to get out and find a solution later, but he isn’t prepared to risk it. I also get the sense that he is just done with fighting. He dies knowing that he has done what he can and foiled a plan which could have wiped out millions whilst saving his loved ones. And it got me.

“Are they trying to hurt me?!” That’s what I said to myself when Louis Armstrong’s We Have All The Time in the World began playing at the film’s climax after watching Bond say his goodbye to Madeleine and the world before being engulfed in fire. To then have that song play with Madeleine and Mathilde driving off into the tunnel, fading out into a gunbarrel shape to darkness just took what was left of my dignity.

It made so much more sense why they used this song in the Being James Bond documentary and it made me cry more! I don’t think Craig’s era will ever be my favourite, but it has been with us for 15 years, such a long period of time. And to see it end in such a way was upsetting. Seeing any Bond die in front of you would be distressing and it upset me so much that I couldn’t speak to my friend the first time I saw the film until the words “James Bond will return” appeared on-screen, to which I breathed the biggest sigh of relief.

“Why do you persist on playing me, Mr Zimmer?”

One thing that I truly appreciate about many of the Bond soundtracks is the ability to play a piece of music from the soundtrack and be instantly transported to Nassau 56 years ago or to Cuba 26 years ago. Unfortunately, as good as the Craig era soundtracks have been, I haven’t had much of that same vibe, especially from Quantum of Solace onwards. And so I was sceptical of what the No Time To Die soundtrack would sound like despite my confidence in Hans Zimmer.

I actually tried incredibly hard to not find out anything about the soundtrack, but I was spoilt by someone on Twitter immediately tweeting about the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service cues and pieces so that really was the straw that broke the camel’s back as I HAD to listen to these tracks, ultimately leading me to view the track list. Luckily, I controlled myself and went into the cinema with average expectations. And I’m glad I did as this soundtrack not only greatly complements the film but is also an easy one to listen to in general.

Zimmer manages to balance the score with a variety of different sounding pieces to create a very Bond-esque product. This includes the action-packed Square Escape, the cool Not What I Expected, the emotional Final Ascent and even the eerie and intense unreleased Safin track which plays during the pre-title sequence flashback (and can be streamed on co-composer Steve Mazzaro’s website). With regards to the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service elements used in this score, I can understand the opinions of some that the use of the main title theme from that film as well as We Have All The Time In The World could be seen as lazy or tarnishing their use in their source film. With the former, I think it’s great to use good pieces of music again, albeit I would’ve absolutely loved to have heard a new version of Barry’s 007 piece. The On Her Majesty’s Secret Service theme and We Have All The Time In The World have also been used outside of Bond, including in teaser trailer for The Incredibles and the famous Guinness television commercial which ran in 1994, meaning that many people potentially only know these pieces of music from their use promoting those products.

To reclaim those pieces of music and incorporate them into modern Bond is an excellent choice, especially with No Time To Die harkening back to less grounded films. The latter is more complicated. These songs resonate with me and make think about Tracy and Bond, Piz Gloria, ski chases and a gunshot that shatters Bond’s future. And so to place that music over a different Bond and a different love is for me at least a little weird. Why am I not as opposed to this music being used in No Time To Die? Because it’s being utilised in a different way and isn’t just a complete copy and paste of the love story from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Again, it goes back to lifting Craig’s era out of the franchise as a whole and looking at it as its own universe which equates to: no On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; no Tracy; no beautiful John Barry original creations (the horror!). This enabled the filmmakers to tell a different story and use the music to support the story that they were trying to tell. This is especially noticeable with We Have All The Time In The World, which is not only spoken by Bond but appears as an instrumental twice in the film and as the full vocal version by Louis Armstrong in the closing credits.

John Kell from the Really, 007! podcast made an interesting argument surrounding not using We Have All The Time In The World, stating:

“…the music Matera is so beautiful without that [We Have All The Time In The World] anyway, they could have used that bit of Matera as the Madeleine and Bond theme and played that throughout it and then in 30 years’ time, the next thing they’d [the audience] be going “that’s the Matera theme, that’s when Bond and Madeleine are going”…” Full podcast and more here.

This is actually a really great point as although We Have All The Time In The World is beautiful and very emotional, the new music was also beautiful and more personal to Bond and Madeleine’s story rather than Bond and Tracy’s. Classic music’s inclusion is always tricky and, although I personally really enjoyed it, there’s definitely room for others to express their different opinions or alternate ideas about what could or should have been done, much like Kell’s excellent point.

Before I move on, I did want to state how pleased I was with the score overall. Some comments that I have seen on some of the tracks on YouTube have stated that Zimmer didn’t do well with one commenter talking about one piece (and I quote) “…a mess. A lot of noise and rhythm with no melody…”. I wholeheartedly disagree and feel that Zimmer, despite the limited time to create the soundtrack following Dan Romer’s departure in 2020, created the most entertaining and true to Bond soundtrack of the 21st century Bond films.

The ties that Bond – This happened to the other fella

Certain Bond films or other media have a way of interconnecting, whether it’s an obvious way such as Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace (and the rest of the Craig era) or in an “only Bond fans will get this” manner, such as the beloved “monorail trilogy” of films. As mentioned throughout, ‘No Time To Die’ makes some links to other Bond films and media, with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service being at the top of the list.

An more obvious callback is the driving sequences at the beginning and very end of the film. An Aston Martin (or two) driving on the cliffside whilst Bond’s loved one is in the passenger seat is sure to bring back memories of the fateful final moments for Tracy who was in that same position in a similar location when she was killed. I’m sure this was intentional to bring an uneasy feeling (which would’ve been more widespread had Madeleine’s role in the film been kept under wraps I’m sure). Blofeld also appears in the film, another obvious link. But something more interesting is the fact that, like Safin, Blofeld’s plan in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was to do with biological warfare, although his plan would’ve been a less direct way of killing millions by sterilising the world’s food supply rather than the almost-instant death of those who come into contact with a particular virus. We first see Madeleine (grown up) in the water, thinking about a traumatic moment in her life which, for me on my second watch, gave me Tracy flashbacks again as she attempted to drown herself due to the trauma she experienced. Unlike Tracy, Madeleine isn’t trying to end her life but instead deal with the trauma and continue on.

The title sequence is another example of No Time To Die emulating On Her Majesty’s Secret Service along with other films. The main visuals chosen are the hourglass, clocks and the Union Jack alongside the trident. The latter could be used in any Bond film that has a portion of its time spent in the UK, but the hourglass and clocks are here to show that time passes and is running out, representing the five year gap between the pre-and post-titles as well as the ticking clock at the end of the film (another staple of the Bond franchise).

Time is mentioned a lot in the film (of course: it’s called No Time To Die) so it’s a brilliant choice that Daniel Kleinman, who has created almost all of the Bond title sequences since GoldenEye, chose to use this iconography. I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up the Dr No dots, the Thunderball diver, the sand dunes of Quantum of Solace, Vesper and the clock tips being hearts referencing Casino Royale, the DB5 sinking into the abyss like Bond in Skyfall and more. There’s a lot packed in here and it was amazing to see so many vibrant colours being used in the title sequence.

A missed opportunity was to bring back the original Aston Martin DBS for the second half of the movie with the Aston Martin V8 from The Living Daylights being used instead. The V8 looks beautiful in this film and I’m glad for its inclusion however given that No Time To Die appears to be a “modern equivalent” of ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, it’s an interesting choice that they didn’t go for the car from that film instead!

YouTube channel ‘Pentex Productions’ has made a great video on the references between ‘No Time To Die’ and all previous Bond films so I’d recommend that if you are interested in finding out more!

“Video games…is he having me on?”

Being of a certain era, and unlike Glenn Close’s Cruella de Vil, I immediately clocked some links between No Time To Die and certain James Bond video games that I know others will have picked up on. The most glaringly obvious, exciting, weird, unexpected link is Blofeld’s/Primo’s/that guy from Pirates of the Caribbean’s eyeball which just screams GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.

For those who never played that video game, the main protagonist is an anti-hero who is “fired” from MI6 and works for Auric Goldfinger to battle against the forces of Dr No (very convoluted indeed). Prior to the story beginning, the agent who we play as loses his eye to a gunshot from Dr No which made him more vengeful and brutal in his spy methods and this is later replaced by a cybernetic eye (created no less by Francisco Scaramanga!). This eye has a multitude of uses and is upgraded throughout the game so that there are four powers which includes MRI vision (view through walls), EM Hack (hack certain weapons, machinery, and other systems), Polarity Shield (protects from enemy fire and explosions, also deflecting bullets), and Magnetic Field (control enemies by throwing them similar to telekinesis). Naturally, this sounds completely preposterous and luckily these powers don’t appear in No Time To Die! Instead, the eye, mostly used by Primo, seems more like what a spy version of a communications device could be as it was a source of information for Blofeld who was still imprisoned after the events of Spectre. The inclusion of this unique gadget is interesting and does create some funny moments, with the monotone delivert of “scanning Blofeld’s eyeball” line almost making me crack up. It’s so silly and that’s why I like the inclusion, which was a great surprise, especially as Blofeld and Primo weren’t so heavily featured in promotion for the film. I don’t believe this was an intentional call-back to GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, however it was a nice surprise nonetheless.

The second big reference is all the nanotechnology information that is sprinkled throughout No Time To Die which echoes Everything or Nothing. In both stories, nanotech is intended to be used by an evil power to destroy things on a large scale. However each story uses this tech in different way. 2004’s Everything or Nothing wants to use this tech to destroy objects made of metal (excluding platinum), with Nikolai Diavolo and Dr Katya Nadanova weaponizing them for their scheme. Safin in No Time To Die goes in a completely different direction by using nanobots biologically, incorporating them into a virus that can target specific DNA strands. Nanotech has been mentioned before but this film is the first time where it comes to the forefront as part of a villain’s masterplan. For me at least it seemed quite believable for a villain to go down the biological warfare route (reflective of today’s world).

These are two of the main links that I could point out but of course there are some minor connection too, such as Safin’s Island being reminiscent not only of Crab Key from Dr No but also Raphael Drake’s island in Nightfire which houses nuclear weapons much like Safin’s island previously housed nuclear weapons.

The music, specifically Cuba Chase, definitely gives me nostalgia for games like Everything or Nothing and From Russia With Love due to the use of bongo drums and of sounds and instruments that aren’t typically used in every Bond soundtrack. This really captures the South American vibe and the exciting beat again immediately took me back to 2004/05 playing those video games.

Indeed, fellow Bond video game lover Calvin Dyson has released a video specifically on Bond games inspiring No Time To Die.

‘Final Ascent’

I feel like I’ve been doing my own final ascent whilst writing this. ‘No Time To Die’ has proven to be a film that holds a lot of content and I know that I have barely scratched the surface of my thoughts on this film (the locations, the villains, the overall plot, deeper dives into characters) but we’ve certainly got time to learn more as the film starts to release digitally on-demand. I am more positive than I thought I could be and hold this film as Craig’s second-best Bond film, with Casino Royale taking the top spot.

So here we are. We live in a world where we have a fifth and final Craig Bond movie! Not since Roger Moore have we been as certain of a Bond actor’s departure from the role so for many (myself included) this is a brand-new world we are stepping in to. From the ashes of Craig’s Bond (and era), a new one will rise with ‘No Time To Die’ again proclaiming that “James Bond Will Return” and i’m ready for it. Until then, I can raise my alcohol infused glass, and say salud not only to the past 15 years, but also to that 11 year old boy who had no idea when sitting in the cinema watching a car pull up in black and white that his world (and the world of Bond would change forever (I’m all yours).

Salud! The end of an era!