NO TIME TO DIE IS A GOOD MOVIE WITH MAJOR PLOTHOLES
I’m not really a huge fan of James Bond movies. Meaning, I don’t own any of the movies, but I will watch them when it’s streamed for free, or when it comes out in the theaters. As a straight male, there’s really not much to hate. Exotic sports cars, beautiful women, guns, great action scenes, there’s testosterone in every scene.
But as a dude who makes his living capturing and telling stories, the entire plot of No Time To Die, had me cringing. The script has holes so large, I can plow a semi through it. Now, if you’re not a professional critic, or a storyteller, chances are, you won’t notice. So, this movie throws itself into that strange category of “weak script, great movie.” This movie is very easy to criticize, but in the end, it does its job, which is to entertain. And that in itself, is an accomplishment.
No Time to Die is a great movie, with great action scenes, with a good enough ending to retire Daniel Craig’s James Bond. It’s not a gory movie, despite the high body count, making it pretty safe for kids. There’s isn’t a lot of curse words too, if I can recall correctly.
Overall, this movie gets an A from me, despite its technical shortcomings.
GRADE: A
FROM HERE ON OUT, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS
NO TIME FOR… A 2ND DRAFT?
Let’s talk about the script and its one major flaw that made my eyes roll, roll, and roll. The antagonist, whose name is Safin, wants to end the world by releasing a killer virus. Hmm, sounds like China and the Wuhan laboratory, doesn’t it? Anyway, this “killer virus” has an interesting spin on it as it utilizes nanobot technology. What exactly are nanobots? Small robots, that only exist in fiction, that are a size of a nanoparticle. If you’re wondering, a nanoparticle is larger than an atom by about 100 times. Which means, nanoparticles are can’t really be absorbed through the skin effectively.
The nanobot virus in No Time to Die is rather cool because they target one’s DNA. So, in theory, a large gathering of people could be sprayed by the virus, but the virus would only kill those whose DNA it is programmed to kill. That’s cool. I give that spin on technology, a thumbs up.
But here’s where the script goes wrong. There is science in science-fiction. And, if you don’t explain the science well to your audience, and believably, you run the chance of losing your entire storyline in an instant. In this case, there were “things” that just didn’t make any sense:
- Dr. Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a viralogist who is captured to work on a nanobot virus. The problem is that he’s a viralogist, and well, viralogoists specialize in live infectious diseases, not minature robots. The screenwriters literally chose the wrong profession, for the villian’s top henchman. Blofeld should have been an engineer who specialized in nanobot technology. And it would have been a bit more interesting to give him an interesting backstory, to motivate him to destroy the world. Maybe Blofeld was on the verge of winning the nobel peace prize, for eradicating cancer with the use of nanobots. Maybe he worked on robots all his life, but was bullied as a child, or throughout his entire life, and he was seeking revenge.
- These nanobots, well, the movie didn’t spend much time explaining how they were made. But for some reason, these nanobots, which again, were robots, were made organically. They literally had to be grown on an remote island. Now, if you’re a brilliant writer, you can spin this somehow to make it believable, but these writer’s didn’t do any of that. They just threw it out there, like fake news, and expected the audience to gobble it up. Can we explain this technology? Please……….?
This is not careful writing. LIke I said before, there is science in science-fiction, and that’s what makes science-fiction so great, it explains itself. But in No Time to Die, not one single writer in the story department raised their hand and said, “Well, wait a minute…” That’s lazy writing. - And it gets a bit worse. In the final fight scene, Safin, the main villian, manages to infect James Bond with killer nanobots. Now, first of all, why would James Bond worry because these nanobots were programed to kill Bond’s love interest and his daughter, not him. Maybe you could make the argument that Bond’s daughter had half of her father’s DNA, so Bond would be slighly affected. But, here’s the kicker. Q had given James Bond a special watch that doubled as a highly powerful electromagnet. It was so powerful, it literally killed another henchman by short circuting his robotic eyeball. This watch could have easily short circuted the nanobots, because well, they are electronic…and it just worked with the robotic eye.
So…let me get this staight, James Bond is not thinking creatively and using tech that he got from Q effectively? That’s not the James Bond, I come to know.
- And…it gets even worse. In the last act of the movie, potential buyers of Safin’s virus are enroute to their location, via destroyers. I believe they were Russians? I’m not sure. Anyway, they just dissapear.
These are “things” a storyteller has to think about when crafting a story. These are “things” that usually come up during a rewrite or a 2nd draft. But apparently, it looks as though there was no time for any of that…
The script gets the same grade my English teacher gave me in high school.
GRADE: F
AND NOW IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE CHARACTERS:
There really is no such thing as a good story-driven script. All stories are driven by characters. If characters are true to real personality types, then the script will literally write itself, and you, as the author, just have to document it – beautifully. If stories are absent of real personality types, then everything in the script is just an extension of the screenwriter, or that screenwriter’s agenda. And 10 times out of 10, that script, is a failure.
Wait a minute, is that the “Blue Steel” look?
JAMES BOND: UNHEALTHY TYPE COUNTERPHOBIC TYPE SIX “Loyalists”
James Bond has major trust issues. He is a man who has no fear, other than a fear of a healthy relationship. There isn’t a relationship that he won’t test, and a relationship that he isn’t paranoid of. In the real world, these “Loyalists” personalities exist in volume, and most of these trust issues are fueled by the fear of abandonment, which usually manifests themselves in early childhood. Loyalists can’t trust others because they primarily can’t trust themselves. And their fear of themselves often leads them to find a rescuer who will point them in the right direction. Don’t be mistaken, James Bond is not a leader, but a follower. His loyalty was not to the British Government, but to the original M, Olivia Mansfield, the head of the MI6. When she passed, he retired.
Unhealthy Type Six Personalities have a tendency to destroy what they fear. It’s very easy for them to walk away from something good, purely because of their trust issues. That’s not fictional, unfortunately. I’m sure you’ve had friends, who are no longer friends, and you really don’t know why.
The movie didn’t Safin’s face looked like Rosie O’Donnell’s backfat.
SAFINE: ??????
Who is Safin? What motivates him to wake up in the morning? What are his base fears? Unfortunately, I couldn’t place a personality type on his character. One moment, he sounds like an intellectual that is lost in his own world of fiction; then in the next scene, he seems like a counterphobic who just wants to destroy what he fears most – people. In the 3rd act, he wants to sell his virus to the highest bidder. Then, literally a second later he’s kidnapping a child; and in the next scene, he’s letting her go.
I feel for the actor, Rami Malek, who is a very talented actor, who was literally a confusing character that he had to make sense of. Actors need to know the motivation of their characters, whether they grow or disintegrate. Safine was very confusing. Real personalities are driven by fear and agendas, which gives birth to anger. How they handle that anger, is what defines them. But other than Safine seeking out revenge for his family’s death, what motivated him in the present? Did he long for a family? Did he want to be rich? Why did he want to kill James Bond? It didn’t make any sense.
By the way, in case you’re wondering, a movie can’t progress with an antagonist who is confused.
And this is why the script needed a new part-time antagonist, M, to step in, to drive the story. Remember, it’s the antagonist, and their agenda, that drives the story. Everyone else is pretty much, reactive.
M: UNHEALTHY TYPE EIGHT “CHALLENGER.”
James Bond is not a fan of the new M, who believes the ends define the means. The new M will do anything to defend his motherland, even if that means breaking the law. It’s a bit strange to have a Type Eight in the leadership role of a three-letter agency, because when they are not in their best light, they will not respect for the law. But we’ve seen this happen in real life. Just look at the military and political leaders who broke the law in America, falsely impeached our former President, to get him out of office.
NOMI: ???????
And here’s another travesty of this script. It looks as though Nomi was inserted into this script to fulfill a progressive agenda of having a powerful black woman as Double-O-Seven. The writers, producers, or whoever you want to point the finger to, did not give this character a proper introduction, assign a proper personality type, any skills other than being the equivalent to James Bond.
What makes Nomi tick?
What triggers her?
What is her base fear?
She’s just there to fill in for Bond, who retired. Can we give this actress a character with substance to toy with, rather than a just token role? I find it rather insulting to the actress.
PALOMA:???????
Paloma is just a character who shows up and can automatically kick ass. She’s a spy like Bond, and claims that she’s relatively new to the scene. It sure looks as though she’s a veteran. But again, what motivates her to do what she does. Her character is just lame.
MADELEINE SWANN: ??????
This is how bad this script is. Madeleine Swann is the love interest of James Bond from the movie Spectre movie, and we still don’t know much about what makes her tick. All we know is that she is a psychologist and that she is a “strong, rebellious, and a resourceful woman (according to a fandom site). That sounds like a resume of a progressive female graduating from a university, BUT THAT ISN’T A PERSONALITY TYPE!
Her mother was killed by Safine, and she was then saved by him. So, you would think that would screw up a child, right? But her character is so flat, I still can’t assign a personality type to her. It’s just blah….
If I were to write Madeleine, I would pen her as a type Eight “Challenger.” Someone who is not loyal to anyone, is strongly independent, and is purely out to look out for themselves because they don’t trust anyone. I could also write her an unhealthy Type Three, or a con artist. A character who no one can trust, including Safine and Bond. But her character right now, is nothing. She’s literally a damsel with no motivation to do anything.
CHARACTER SUMMARY
It doesn’t get any worse than this people. What we have here is an agenda drive script, not a script that is driven by its characters. And whose agenda is it? The studio? The director? The writers?
GRADE: F
DIRECTING
No Time To Die is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. His resume as a director is not decorated like others. From 2003 to 2012, he directed shorts that he starred in himself. Then in 2014, he directed eight episodes of True Detective, a good HBO series. He directed a Netflix movie called Beast of No Nation in 2015, then a TV Mini-series in 2018 called Maniac. And then he earned the opportunity to direct No Time to Die.
It’s really hard to say how much of this script Cary’s, but he is credited on here as the 3rd writer. And usually, that’s not much of anything. Neal Purvis, the screenwriter for all other Bond films, is credited as the 1st writer, so that usually means the script is his puppy, which means, we can’t blame Cary for the lame characters and plotholes.
With that being said – I have to say that this movie is much better directed than it is written. The script is an F, the directing is an A. Cary managed to make a great movie with a crappy script. For that, I’ll tip my hat and reward him with my highest grade. Could you imagine how good this Bond movie would be if he would have been given a great script?
Cary deserves the opportunity to show what he can do with a good script and a VERY BIG BUDGET. He obviously is very talented.
We’ll see where his career goes.
GRADE: A
Steve Young
