I tend to be an EON apologist. During the many times No Time To Die was delayed, I tried to understand them thinking they know what's best for the James Bond series. I was just moving to my new home in July 2017 when I read that Bond 25 will be released in November 2019 and I was okay with it, even though four years seemed like a long gap. Then I was happy with EON convincing Daniel Craig to return, mainly because I didn't quite like the other "candidates" and I think the happy romantic ending of SPECTRE suited as a perfect closure to his era.
Then, Danny Boyle came on board as the director with the film still announced for November 2019. That changed when Boyle left the project (along with screenwriter John Hodge) and Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were hired back with Cary Fukunaga to direct. Now the film was delayed to February 2020. Maybe expected, and I still defended EON. Even still when script tweaks and the arrival of Phoebe Waller-Bridge delayed the movie to April 2020.
Now, when the movie was delayed from April to November 2020, I became more upset. Particularly when fake Bond fans -speaking in the name of real Bond fans, too- wrote a letter requesting its delay. Sigh. Okay, the film will come now in November and it's understandable because, well, coronavirus.
Marketing went silent and I seemed to forget No Time To Die existed, focusing on the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films, which I still think are the best Bond movies that have ever graced the silver screen, particularly GoldenEye. Seriously, I can live without every other Bond movie. But GoldenEye is even an Oscar snub in many categories, mainly cinematography and editing.
Last month, we were teased again: a new poster came on September 1st, followed by a second trailer in September 3rd. Every post seemed to assure the movie was coming out in November, even if it was armageddon. EON, MGM and Universal poured the November liquid into our eyes and ears with a Billie Eilish music video, a taste of Hans Zimmer's soundtrack (Gunbarrel sequence!), and lots of promos up until this morning. Hours later, in the afternoon, the movie is delayed till... April 2021!
This is the point where I regretfuly say that EON Productions has lost all my credibility to me. Saying they are bad filmmakers is light compared to what I think. They keep making the fool of themselves by delaying a film right after they insisted it was NOVEMBER or bust. They could have announced a delay to April in June, before relaunching the campaign. Or risk a VOD release, at least, on an NSA-encrypted platform if they are too afraid of possible leaks.
I don't think money is everything in this business. Credibility also is. Would you imagine A View To A Kill being promoted as "Roger Moore's big farewell" and subsequently released until 1988 after Octopussy in 1983? Well, this is even worse, because No Time To Die is supposed to follow up the events of SPECTRE. How can it be clever to follow up the events of a movie from 2015 in 2021? You can say whatever about GoldenEye, but at least it didn't follow Licence To Kill in terms of story, it had a different Bond actor and once production began the film was announced for November 1995 and it was delivered in November 1995. Had something different happened, you could imagine the tabloids being right in announcing the end of James Bond.
If I worked on the industry, I wouldn't put money on EON for any project. And it doesn't even have to do with the delay itself, but with the way the movie was handled. This one should have been out no later than February 2020 and that was late already. Hodge should have joined Purvis & Wade and not going solo, and if he or Boyle refused, kicked out of the project before any announcement and get on with another director search. They have wasted precious time, they will be delaying in 2021 a movie shot in 2019. They have reactivated the campaign only to announce the delay one month later, which is a ludicrous waste of money.
If you ask me, do you think No Time To Die is finally coming in April 2021? My answer is "no".
If the virus still stays in April, they'll announce in March that the film is delayed till November 2021. Then, if some steroid is expected to fall on Earth in November, the film will be delayed to October 2022 under the excuse of celebrating the 60th anniversary - with the movie they promised us three years earlier! How many shots of the Aston Martin DB5 in Matera we'll see by then? How many trailers showing different footage of the same scenes? "Oh, this shot of Bond looking surprised is new", "Oh, Bond says 'I'm sorry' to Madeleine in Safin's lair", "Here's a new poster of Bond sleeping on the 007 logo", and so on.
I honestly don't see EON Productions doing Bond 26 after this. They'll probably sell the franchise, and let's hope they do to someone who truly loves James Bond like Cubby did, who wanted to make money but also hoped to keep his promises to the fans. I miss the old times where we never wondered if a black guy was going to play Bond or if the gunbarrel was at the beginning or if Bond will be alive at the end. We need to go back to that, and to more formula-subdued 007 films with less Oscar pretentions.
Between here and April (or November '21, or October '22), I will focus on GoldenEye and the other three movies starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, which to me are those movies that really mean James Bond. I will continue with my Martin Campbell book. The ill-fated reactivation of the No Time To Die campaign has distracted me from, but I'll hopefully be delivering it for late October as it's almost finished.
Oh, and I'll be more than happy to read every possible spoiler from No Time To Die, maybe even watch the movie once it leaks somewhere. I'm thru waiting and I hoped the film would have lifted me up after such a tragic year. "But it's only a movie!" Yeah, it's only a movie, I guess, but a movie I needed so much to avoid branding 2020 the fifth worst consecutive bad year of my life. In desperate times, a single thing like "just a movie" can change your mood considerably.
Wake me up when 2020 ends.
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