If you go by Rotten Tomatoes score, Spectre is the “worst” James Bond movie in the Daniel Craig-era. But ironically, of the four films, it has the best opening scene: 007 carrying out a mission in Mexico City on the Day of the Dead was thrilling and, with its lengthy (and deceptive) tracking shot, technically impressive. Spectre deserves a top-10 placement on any Best Bond Pre-Title Openings list, and it sounds like whatever director Cary Joji Fukunaga has in store for No Time to Die will be up there, too.
The Wall Street Journal describes the opening as “slow-paced, visually arresting, subtitled with dialogue in French and entirely Bond-free. Focusing instead on Madeleine’s backstory, the opening is a terrifying episode from her childhood in which Safin, wearing a Japanese Noh mask, kills her mother, pursues Madeleine through the home and hunts her down on a frozen lake.” Fukunaga then made an interesting comparison between that scene, which appears in the trailer, and another film. And genre:
“Some clown chasing a child around the house,” Fukunaga says with a laugh. “Yeah, it’s like I brought back It in the first five minutes of Bond.”
Fukunaga was the original choice to direct It, but he wanted to make an “unconventional horror film,” while the studio “wanted me to make a much more inoffensive, conventional script.” He later added, “They thought they couldn’t control me. I would have been a total collaborator. That was the kind of ridiculous part. It was just more a perception. I have never seen a note and been like, F*ck you guys. No way. It’s always been a conversation.” Fukunaga received writing credit on the highest-grossing horror movie of all-time, but it sounds like he channeled his unseen It ideas into No Time to Die‘s opening. As if the wait to watch Ana de Armas kill bad guys wasn’t long enough as is…
No Time to Die is scheduled to come out on April 2, 2021.
(Via Wall Street Journal)
