Fox No Time to Die - The Unofficial Retrospective

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-2112-2
Verlag: BookRix
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 201 Seiten

My previous book No Time to Die - The Unofficial Companion offered a comprehensive look at the genesis, production, and seemingly endless release woes of the much anticipated 25th James Bond film. Here then is the sequel that everyone asked me to write. No Time to Die - The Unofficial Retrospective covers the final marketing campaign and actual release of No Time to Die and also offers a comprehensive analysis of the film itself, the box-office, fan reaction, the future of the Bond franchise, and much more besides.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fox, John

Leseproben

CHAPTER TWO - THE RELEASE
  The latest (and hopefully LAST) promotional campaign for No Time to Die was at full throttle by now. Footage from the film was shown at CinemaCon and the 007 themed social media feeds were more furiously active than ever. Lashana Lynch was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times and we were reminded (lest we should have forgotten) for the millionth time that she plays a 00 agent named Nomi in the film. Lynch was certainly getting more than her fair share of ink in the media. The promotional campaign virtually gave one the impression that Nomi was very prominent in the film and would be on the screen all the time. Would this hype be justified though?   The final international trailers were released and a documentary about Daniel Craig's Bond titled Being James Bond was released on Apple near the start of September. After an early section on the infamous CraigNotBond affair and the initial media criticism of the casting, Being James Bond was a disappointingly brief (45 minutes) and bland victory lap through the Daniel Craig era which didn't really tell you anything you didn't already know if you followed the production of those films (and most Bond fans obviously WOULD have followed those productions). The documentary basically consists of clips and production footage from the last four Bond films while Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson endlessly talk about how brilliant, remarkable, talented, incredible, and amazing Daniel Craig is.   Of most interest in the documentary is the footage from Craig's 007 screen test for Casino Royale. EON tend not to release much screen test footage (you can find those of James Brolin, Sam Neil, and Roger Green online but the rest are locked in a vault) so this was certainly novel and fascinating. The Bond screentests are elaborate affairs on the evidence we see here with a sizeable crew. Martin Campbell could be seen giving Craig direction on the set. Daniel Craig had quite long hair during his test because he was shooting a movie called The Invasion at the time and so wasn't allowed to get his hair cut.   The documentary didn't really mention the Bond franchise as a whole much or put Craig's era in a wider context but then this was supposed to be a special celebration of Craig's tenure so you couldn't really begrudge them that single focus. In the documentary, Barbara Broccoli said that Daniel Craig was the only actor she wanted for Casino Royale and that they actually had to be persuaded and badgered by the studio to test some of the other actors. It seems then that none of the other Casino Royale contenders (like Henry Cavill and Sam Worthington) actually stood a cat in hell's chance of playing Bond in the film.   Daniel Craig said that he studied all the early online criticism of his casting and that it only served to make him work harder and try and prove everyone wrong. Being James Bond is hagiographic to say the least (Barbara even tries to pretend that Quantum of Solace was really good) but it was just designed as a nice little tribute to the departing Daniel Craig and a bonus for Bond fans as they counted down the last days to No Time to Die's release. As such, it would be churlish to be too critical of its shortcomings.   The promotional campaign continued to ramp up at this time with numerous featurettes and commercials. Aston Martin and Omega also both released product commercials to promote the film. There are few marketing campaigns in the world of film which can match Bond when it comes to a media blitz and so it was with No Time to Die. By this time you'd have had to be a hermit living in a cave with no electricity not to know that a new James Bond film was about to be released. No Time to Die was everywhere. This campaign was above and beyond anything we'd seen before for No Time to Die. It was the final mighty (and expensive) push before the film was sent out to cinemas around the globe.   It had been six long years since Spectre came out. One of the byproducts of No Time To Die taking taking so long to come out was that it threatened to alter the casting landscape entirely when it came to the next Bond actor. If, as was planned or assumed at one point, Daniel Craig had called it quits after Spectre then potential 007 candidates like Aidan Turner, Henry Cavill, and Dan Stevens would have been the perfect age circa 2015/2016 to replace him. Now though, with production on the next Bond (the one after No Time to Die) not likely to commence until at least 2024, those actors (should they be interested - we know from his comments that Henry Cavill, for one, would be up for Bond) now faced the very real prospect of being aged out of contention. We now didn't have the faintest idea who Craig's replacement might potentially be. The chances of a youngish relative unknown seemed to be increasing all the time.   MGM and EON must have breathed a heavy sigh of relief when China lifted its temporary embargo on Western films and cleared No Time to Die for release. Chinese cinemas had been giving the priority to Chinese films to support their own film industry in these troubled economic times. The policy was sort of like import controls - only with movies instead of goods. The Chinese revenue that No Time to Die was liable to generate would, as we have noted, be desperately needed. By now, cinemas in the United States had begun selling tickets for screenings of No Time to Die. It was unthinkable that the plug would be pulled again at this late stage. MGM and EON had gambled all of their poker chips on the September/October release.   Cary Fukunaga was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter as No Time to Die finally geared up for its imminent and long delayed release. By now, Fukunaga had moved onto other things. He was working on Masters of the Air - a Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg produced miniseries sequel to Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Fukunaga was directing the first three episodes of Masters of the Air. The Hollywood Reporter article suggested that Danny Boyle's proposed Bond film had been more 'whimsical' than the one we were about to get and this was a salient factor in Boyle's departure. Fukunaga's sensibility was to make a dark and brooding sort of Bond film and this tied in much more with what Barbara Broccoli and Daniel Craig wanted.   During one of his many published interviews at this time, Fukunaga seemed to have an unnecessary dig at the late Sir Roger Moore when he said didn't like the 'eyebrow up' version of Bond. Fukunaga denied that Rami Malek was playing Dr No in No Time to Die but some wondered if this was misdirection. We'd know for sure soon enough. During the interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 'Weinstein era' was mentioned (the powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein abused his power with sexual assaults on dozens of famous women in the film industry - the shocking thing about the Weinstein case is that he got away with it for so long) and in response Cary Fukunaga said that some changes to the Bond franchise were necessary in an age of #MeToo.   Fukunaga then said that Sean Connery's Bond was a rapist - although, unhelpfully, he didn't seem to remember which film he was actually talking about when it came to the evidence for this. As we shall see, Fukunaga's interview with The Hollywood Reporter - where he depicted himself as a great towering beacon of light in the ongoing struggle against sexism and misogyny - would become darkly ironic after the dust settled on No Time to Die because several women later came forward with accusations and allegations of sexual misconduct and bullying against him. Nick Cuse, who did some writing on No Time to Die, later called Cary Fukunaga the "worst human being I have ever met in my life."   Barbara Broccoli happily joined Cary Fukunaga in the pile-on against the old Bond films and basically suggested they were all sexist. It would seem to be stating the bleeding obvious to point out that films made nearly sixty years might seem a bit dated in places today in the realm of sex and gender politics. As such, Broccoli's offhand digs at the old Bond films felt completely unnecessary and rather disrespectful. It always struck one as slightly odd that Barbara never quite seemed to realise that whenever she had a snooty dig at at an old Bond film she was, by association, also being somewhat critical of her father. Cubby was obviously the producer on all of those eye-rolling sexist silly old movies which so offended and amused her now.   There was a curious phenomenon in the Daniel Craig era where the modern EON sometimes appeared almost embarrassed by the fact that Bond films existed long before Daniel Craig. It was as if Barbara Broccoli dearly wished that Daniel Craig had been the ONLY person who'd ever played Bond. One other curious facet of the Craig era was that neither EON nor critics ever seemed to give Timothy Dalton much credit for portraying a more grounded and 'gritty' version of Bond decades before Daniel Craig came along. * To hear Barbara talk about the Bond series you'd sometimes think they were all mostly like Carry On films before 2006.   By now a positive blizzard of international TV spots and trailers was in full flow. This definitely felt like the point of no return now. Lashana Lynch was featured in a Daily Mail profile and Barbara Broccoli suggested in the article that Nomi could feature in the next film too. This felt like Barbara being diplomatic rather than anything that might actually happen in reality. Given that the next film was likely to be a clean slate with a new Bond it seemed highly unlikely that they were going to saddle the next reboot (and a reboot was surely on cards again post-Craig) with...