No Time to Die (spoilers)

[Chris Lang]

That ending though..very intriguing. I guess this is cleaning the deck for an entirely new type of James Bond. But I don't know why modern film makers feel the need to end the heroes journey in death. In this instance it just seemed rather unnecessary especially now that James Bond had a family.

I'm reminded of this Neil Gaiman quote. "All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows when to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death."

In any case, I think part of the point is that James Bond is someone who was destined to never have a normal life and settle down with a family. This idea has been explored in the past as well.

When Bond and M meet on the streets of London, the score calls back to the theme of 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'- one of MANY callbacks to that movie.

The basic idea that any time James Bond comes even close to having a normal life with a family, something tragic will happen to stop it, is present in that film as well. So the callbacks to that film certainly work within the context of this one.

So are we assuming Craig's cast are going to carry over to the next Bond or will they do a complete overhaul since it seems like they really wanted to cap off and "end" the Craig era? Like they just got done seeing Bond die and toasting to him, but then in the next movie it's business as usual?

Killing Craig's Bond just opens up a lot of questions for where they're going to move forward with the franchise.

Well, Ben Whishaw has said in an interview that he's done the three he was contracted for and is done. But this is an intriguing question. In the past when the supporting players carried over, you never really questioned it because it was always Bond going on another mission. Even with the Craig reboot, having Judi Dench carry over felt natural. But with Bond having died, it would feel kind of weird to see Moneypenny bantering with a new Bond. I could go with Mallory carrying over, though. It would be a kind of symmetry.

Generally, it's bringing Daniel Craig's whole series full circle. It began with a reboot: Casino Royale had a Bond beginning his career in the post-9/11 era, with the Cold War long behind us. The series continued by giving us a new version of Blofeld, and ended the series in such a way that it seems unlikely that "James Bond will return" unless there's another reboot.

I was confused when Judi Dench's M carried over to the Craig reboot, but I didn't mind too much as she was one of my favorite parts of the Brosnan films. I just had to keep in mind that while she was M, that in the universe Casino Royale is set, she became M at an earlier point in Bond's career than in the Brosnan films.