No Time to Die: Into the Bondverse?

All right, so blogging-wise, 2022 has hardly started with a bang, with this being only the second post so far. In my defence, I have been ill. That's also my excuse for making this a relatively unambitious post.

So, anyway, No Time to Die, the latest James Bond film, proved to be a good choice for an "omicron film": it kept my tired brain entertained, and its length, which put me off watching it in the cinema (it's approximately 2 hours 45 minutes long) is no drawback when you're collapsed on the TV sofa. It's also a solid Bond flick. In my ranking of Daniel Craig's Bond films, I'd put it in second place after Skyfall. Which is not to say that it doesn't have plenty of flaws.

For a film that's been in production for as long as No Time to Die, it's remarkable how little time has seemingly been spent on tweaking the plot so it makes any kind of sense (well, at least in a 007 kind of way). This is especially true of the villain and his evil schemes which just don't add up. Rami Malek is just as creepy in the role of Safin as is required (one might even say he overdoes it, but a Bond villain is a Bond villain: it should be impossible to be too creepy). The problem is, I had no idea what his end goal was, and equally bewildered reviewers reassured me that it wasn't because of my feverish brain. First, he wants to take revenge on the organisation that killed his family. So far, so good: it's a straightforward, functional if not spectacularly original villain motive. But once the revenge plot is done, Safin wants to use the biotech weapon he's got his hands on to... what? Wipe out a large part of Earth's population, and in that case, which part? We never learn the criteria met by the people targeted by the weapon, or what Safin has against them. Make Earth's population compliant? He grows a drug which has this effect, and speechifies about how people don't really want free will, but how can this drug be combined with a virus-thingy that straight up kills people? Or does he want to flog his weapons to rogue nations? The trailers made me think that Bond would be up against a villain with a clear, if mad and reprehensible, vision. But Safin is just a mess. 

There are other examples of the kind of shoddy plotting that dragged down Spectre. The biotech weapon which poses such a worldwide threat consists of a deadly disease which can be programmed by nanotech to only work on those with a particular DNA, which means that not only the targeted victims but also their families can get it. It can be concentrated into a solution, and once someone has been tainted with it they will be the carriers of death to anyone whose DNA the disease is programmed with wiping out. I was prepared to swallow all of this, though it was a little hard (it seems there are no limits to what nanobots and similar can do in action films). But when Q insisted that once someone had become a carrier, there was no way to rid them of the nanotech, and the effect was "eternal", I could no longer suspend my disbelief. No scientist would ever say that. They'd say that there was no solution "as yet", but they'd keep working on it. Instead, Q just shrugs off the question: if you've managed to become a carrier, too bad, nothing to be done. This was such an obvious plot contrivance it had me groaning. Seeing as Bond is trying to be reconciled with Madeleine Swann, whom he dumped because he has trust issues, and she has a cute little daughter who she unconvincingly claims isn't Bond's, there are no prizes for guessing what happens by the end of the film. Also, the film's title makes no sense when you see how things actually pan out.

The question is: what happens now? In the credits, we're promised that "James Bond will return". But how? I suppose they'll have to reboot the franchise again. There's no way the version of Bond played by Craig can return, for various reasons. I'm strangely OK with this. I didn't like that they called the Craig films "a reboot", but now they've bookended the tale of his Bond, I can see them as their own separate thing, telling a continuing story of one specific version of the character, a story that started with Casino Royale and ended with No Time to Die. One reviewer called the Craig films a "pocket universe", and I thought that was a good way of describing it. Now that a future Bond isn't obliged to take over where Craig left off, I can more easily accept that he didn't take over where Brosnan left off.

Let's face it, though, the Craig era has permanently fractured what little continuity there was in the Bond saga. We aren't going to get a version of the character that connects to the life and experiences of Brosnan's Bond now. The best way to make sense of it all will probably be to see each version of Bond as their own thing, living in a sort of multiverse of Bonds where some things remain the same while others are changed around. This would allow Fiennes's M, Naoime Harris's Moneypenny and Ben Whishaw's Q to appear again with a future Bond: they could be "variants" of the same characters that co-starred with Craig, to use Loki speak. It's a geeky way to handle all the contradictions of the Bond films, but I can do geeky.

What to look forward to in 2022

A new year has dawned, and it's time for a traditional list of some kind. Looking back at my wish list for 2021, it did come true, partly. There was no new Dickens adaptation, and it was a meagre year for costume dramas overall, but Disney animation released two very solid films which I enjoyed much more than I expected, Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto. On the minus side, they both still followed the new Disney formula, which meant no memorable villains and no romance (to speak of). Chibnall bowed out as show runner for Doctor Who and will be replaced with Russell T Davies, no less (I plan to blog about what to expect from him, and what not to expect, at a later date). I haven't had an opportunity to check out series thirteen, though – more of that below. There was some new Star Wars content, if not as much as I'd hoped; when they announced a squillion new TV series, I didn't realise they meant to release them during years to come, not all at once. I had a good time with the animated series The Bad Batch (though, sorry, no way that Fennec Shand could take out Cad Bane, my favourite bounty hunter), the anime shorts Star Wars: Visions were cute, and The Book of Boba Fett has started out very promisingly.

For 2022, enough interesting projects have been greenlighted for me to fill a list of things which will actually happen (unless postponed by a pi variant of covid or similar) and which I look forward to:

Doctor Who series thirteen (and maybe a couple of specials) As a subscriber to HBO Max, I thought I would have a chance to stream the new series as it aired, or maybe with a couple of days' delay. No such luck. If information gleaned from web searches is anything to go by, HBO Max streams its acquired series approximately six months after they have first been shown in their original channels. So the fastest way for a non-British citizen to get hold of new Who content legally is still through good, old-fashioned DVDs. The good news is, series 13 will be released on DVD as early as the end of January. I can wait that long. Surely.

Though I am worried about the new series, and the possibility that Chibnall could cement his ill-conceived idea of the Timeless Child to the extent that it can no longer be retconned by later show runners, I am still excited about it. Though series twelve was bogged down by the Timeless Child reveal and those awful environmental episodes, I still thought it was a step forward compared to series eleven, so I'm curious to see what Chibnall comes up with next – especially as there will be a clear, continuous story arc this time. Also, I'm looking forward to seeing more of Sacha Dhawan's Master.

The Gilded Age Yes, believe it or not, it's actually happening! This new series written by Downton Abbey's Julian Fellowes has been in the works for ages. I already had it on my list of things to look forward to in 2019, and it had been a long time coming then. But now it's finally ready to be aired (on HBO Max – I knew I had it for a reason) on 24 January, and trailers have been released. The drama takes place in late 19th-century New York, and it seems it will display a surprising amount of snobbishness among the rich families in the Land of the Free. I have mixed feelings about being introduced to yet another Dowager Countess Surrogate Character in the shape of the heroine's Aunt Agnes, but I like the shameless tycoon already.

Downton Abbey: A New Era I still remember, from when I was a teenager, a TV column where the cheeky columnist admitted to being sick and tired of dramas inspired by Ingmar Bergman's parents and childhood experiences. "What next, Ingmar's Parents Buy a Horse?" he wondered sarcastically (the "X buys a horse" template being a classic when it comes to naming sequels of Swedish children's books). It has to be said that the setup for the second Downton Abbey film has a hint of The Crawley Family Buy a Horse about it or, following another classic template, The Crawley Family Go on Vacation. The Dowager Countess, who's still alive (how on earth did they persuade Maggie Smith to return?), has inherited a villa in France, presumably from another of her old admirers, and now the family is set to visit it. At some part of the proceedings we will see Tom Branson and his new flame Lucy get married and be introduced to a glamorous female who looks like a movie star and is probably (I'm calling it now) the main antagonist of the film.

I may go more into detail about my expectations and predictions for the film in future (the release date is in March), but for now, I can say that it looks like another slice of simple Downton, much like the first film. It doesn't seem likely that old plot lines from the series will be explored further, and any threat to the peace of mind of the Downton crew, upstairs and downstairs, will be external. I would have liked more complex drama and exploration of the Downton characters we're already invested in, but Downton is Downton and I'll take what I can get gratefully. As long as Fellowes doesn't split up Thomas and his clandestine love interest Ellis, I'll be happy. Oh, and can Molesley and Miss Baxter kiss, at least? Please?

Around the World in 80 Days I haven't read the novel by Jules Verne and I know the plot primarily from an Illustrated Classic magazine (also, a friend of mine had an illustrated version of the actual novel, and I can remember us poring over the pictures when we were kids). In other words, I shouldn't be too fussed over the latest TV adaptation's accuracy compared to the novel, especially as I remember having a blast with the extremely free TV adaptation from 1989 starring Pierce Brosnan as Phileas Fogg. There are some things about the trailer and information gleaned from a British review that give me pause, though. I don't mind them ethnic-switching Passepartout – I don't think it will be too much of a stretch to imagine that Fogg's servant with the cosmopolitan-sounding name (literally meaning "a key which fits all doors") descends from, say, one of the French colonies – but I don't see why they need to add a female journalist into the mix. There's already a female protagonist in the story – Princess Aouda, Fogg's love interest – who joins the guys later. So why do we need this journalist chick? As a female viewer, I feel patronised: I can enjoy the zany adventures of two men fine, even without Aouda, and certainly without an Insert Strong Woman Here character. Though seeing as the journalist is nicknamed Fix, the name of the detective who chased Fogg in the original, maybe she will be revealed to be an antagonist at some point? That would make things more interesting.

I'm also afraid that the TV series will be tiresomely po-faced about 19th-century politics and not half as much fun as the Brosnan version. So why am I still looking forward to it being aired on Swedish TV, or one of my many streaming services? The answer: David Tennant plays Phileas Fogg. With his mixture of thinking-woman's-crumpet attractiveness and comic ability he feels ideal for the part. And I'm not going to look a gift costume drama in the mouth... too much.

Geeky TV shows on Disney + One great advantage of my long Marvel prep in order to be able to watch Loki is that I'm now fairly well-wersed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and I find, much to my surprise, that I tend to enjoy MCU products, whether they are movies or TV series. It's not Once Upon A Time or Doctor Who, but I think I can say that the MCU has made it to the "bronze tier" of pop culture I enjoy, where it sits along with (possibly a bit below) Star Wars content. This means Disney + will be sure to cater to my geeky needs all the year round. When the Star Wars franchise doesn't deliver, the MCU surely will. Only this December, Hawkeye (MCU) was followed seamlessly by The Book of Boba Fett (Star Wars), and so I hope it will continue. However, now I'm watching the geeky series in real time, instead of binging on them retroactively, I will probably experience drought periods where I don't especially fancy what's being offered. Not everything from the MCU is solid gold, and I may have to wait for the second season of Loki until next year.