*This article contains spoilers for the 25th James Bond film, No Time To Die*
For over 60 years, relevance has been James Bond’s most dangerous opponent. That threat hanging around the corner kept the movie saga flexible, and it’s one reason it’s retained its popularity for an incredible 25 movies. Some slick film production kept the emphasis on responding to cinema trends that, while they sometimes dragged Bond into action movies or even space adventures, kept the superspy’s adventures fresh.
The franchise has built personnel changes into its fabric, behind and in front of the camera. Bond has changed his face six times in the official EON continuity but took no time to explain why. When it first happened, George Lazenby’s balletic Bond referenced original screen Bond Sean Connery in his first line. The tragic events that befell Lazenby’s Bond in his single film have been referenced subsequently by Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan’s agents.
For Bond obsessives, it’s like walking into Q’s workshop. All sorts of theories and speculation have sprung up to explain the conflicting characters, personalities, and timelines that may play a part in the series but are unlikely to be acknowledged on screen.
Ending a legend
It was only to be expected that come the 21st century Bond of Daniel Craig, an era that embraced a continuity not seen since the early 1960s, things could get even more real for the previously invincible icon. Many elements that defined the franchise were there, although some took a while, but Craig’s Bond had a wholly different approach to one-liners, action, and relationships to his predecessors. As the most self-contained chapter in Bond’s life yet, producers, including the lead actor, saw the chance to shut the door on the incarnation’s life, and they went for it.
In a franchise so used to changing while staying the same, it’s surprising it hadn’t happened before, considering the power of the line ‘James Bond will return’ that closes each movie. But No Time To Die wasn’t the first time Bond had a scrape with death. Here are six times the assassin found the bullet coming his way.
You Only Live Twice (1967)
James Bond didn’t take long to blow his cover. The cautious and ruthless spy that debuted on screen in Dr. No disappeared by the fourth movie. In Thunderball, Connery’s Bond happily walked up to a high-profile member of SPECTRE and insulted him in a casino. Rather than take their agent off big cases, MI6 hatched an elaborate plan to fake 007’s death that fitted the evocative Ian Fleming title.
It’s a classic opening in what, for five years, was Connery’s swansong from the Bond movies. It’s even sweeter and more believable because 007’s caught in a sting in Hong Kong when a woman betrays him (‘at least he died on the job’). Pinned to a wall by a spring bed riddled with machine gun fire, the British secret service didn’t skimp on the details or the Royal Navy Commander’s obituary, which made the front page of newspapers.
They even go as far as to bury 007’s body at sea, as befits a Royal Navy Commander, before the Navy retrieves his body from the casket. No harm done, and Bond has some new elbow room to undertake his biggest mission yet (and destroy SPECTRE). As M put it, ‘now that you’re dead, perhaps some of your old friends will pay a little less attention to you for a while.’
From Russia With Love (1963)
Bond might not have been famous by his second movie, but he was very well known among the operatives of SPECTRE. Having foiled Dr. No’s plans, his was a scalp many SPECTRE agents wanted. From Russia with Love shows that reversals and meta-trickery were built into the franchise early on. It finds Bond in a maze playing cat and mouse with the unstable and terrifyingly accomplished Red Grant.
Robert Shaw’s villain is the winner, shockingly jumping and garrotting the movie’s hero, only for the spy to be revealed as a SPECTRE agent in a very lifelike mask. It was the first time Bond died on-screen. Having passed the audition, Grant set off to carefully take out the real version. That didn’t go so well.
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
It’d be nice to think there was a reference to Connery’s previous movie and a comment on finality when 007 ended up in a coffin during his last official appearance. One of Bond’s most uncomfortable scrapes sees him knocked unconscious and sent into a cremation oven. It’s an unnerving sequence and a trap Bond is saved from rather than escapes.
Diamonds are Forever is full of morbid references, including jokes about Bond dying and the agent’s implausible fame, which 007 finds wryly amusing. Earlier, Bond had gone undercover as smuggler Peter Franks only to confront Franks and kill him during a nerve-wracking and superbly brutal elevator fight in Amsterdam. Some quick sleight of hand and Q’s handiwork convince contact Tiffany Case that he’s killed himself (‘You don’t kill James Bond and wait around for the cops to arrive!’).
Die Another Day (2002)
In Pierce Brosnan’s final outing, Bond uses death to his advantage to escape the organization that once successfully convinced the world’s bad guys he was dead. After Bond is released from North Korea after 14 months of imprisonment and torture, MI6 is naturally wary that the former asset has been turned, especially when the North Koreans seem to have someone on the inside in the West.
The film doesn’t dodge the idea that Bond could have met his end in captivity. But it’s in the custody of the British he manages to escape by channeling his year of hell to consciously decrease his heart rate until it stops. He bounces back from his simulated cardiac arrest to escape when medics rush in. It’s not the most preposterous thing to happen in Die Another Day, but it fits right in.
Skyfall (2012)
Pivotal to the movie and his relationship with Moneypenny, Bond bites it aboard the top of a speeding train in the pulse-pounding opening of Skyfall. Fighting the deadly Patrice in Turkey, M gives Eve Moneypenny the order to shoot at the pair and take out the enemy. Unfortunately, she hits Bond instead, who plummets into a river in one of the series’ most psychologically trippy title sequences.
Death by friendly fire isn’t very Bond, and of course, 007 survived and was happy to take advantage of the bullet. Marked as missing and presumed dead, Bond recovers off-grid, retired from MI6. Bond suffers throughout from the damage as he returns to the fold to take on Silva’s vendetta against M.
No Time To Die (2021)
If SPECTRE had pulled together the fabric of the Daniel Craig movies, No Time To Die was its fatal coda. In a tense third act that sees Bond and the 007 who replaced him destroy the poisonous island that is Safin’s base of mass murder, events pile up for the spy. As always, there’s a chance Bond could escape the impossible odds of international incidents and incoming Navy missiles. This time though, a full-stop came in the nanobot bioweapon Bond became infected with during a fight with Safin. Even if the spy made it off the island, he’d never be able to contact lover Madeleine Swann or their four-year-old daughter, Mathilde, without them dying.
It certainly looks like Bond chose to die on the island, protecting his loved ones. The end of Craig’s run in the tuxedo opted for a full closure. Of course, this was too much of a step away from the legendary loner of the books for some fans. A slither of ambiguity keeps Bond’s invincibility alive in that fade to white.
In any case, the next time we see the superspy, he’ll have a different face, a renewed invincibility, and apparently will be in his thirties.