Cary Fukunaga Wanted ‘No Time to Die’ To Take Place Inside James Bond’s Head
There’s nothing quite like a movie where everything turns out to be a dream or fantasy inside one of the character’s heads. It’s truly one of the most dependably unsatisfying plot twists. So random, so silly — and yet so reliable it pops up in a film (or television show!) every year or two.
Well, listen to this: One (presumably discarded) idea for the next James Bond film, No Time to Die, would have hinged on just such a twist. The film’s director, Cary Fukunaga, conducted an interview with filmmaker Miranda July for Interview Magazine, where he revealed that he had an idea to make No Time to Die almost entirely a figment of James Bond’s imagination.
The concept would have actually borrowed from a moment in the previous 007 film, Spectre. In that movie, evil super-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) drills a hole into the skull of poor James Bond (Daniel Craig). Fukunaga thought it could be cool if everything that happened after that — and everything that happened through much of No Time to Die, was all inside Bond’s head after it got drilled full of holes.
Here’s how he described it to July:
I had an idea that this movie could all be taking place inside the villain’s lair from the last film. There’s this scene where a needle goes into James Bond’s head, which is supposed to make him forget everything, and then he miraculously escapes by a watch bomb. And then he and Léa blow up the place, and go on to save the day. I was like, ‘What if everything up until the end of act two is all inside his head?’
Here’s the key scene he’s referring to from Spectre:
Granted, a “It was all in his head!” twist is probably not what most people want from a James Bond movie. I will say, though, that I had a real problem with the fact that Blofeld blathers on and on about how if he drills into Bond’s head it’s going to destroy him, only to have Bond escape from his little torture chair with no long-term damage his cranium. This twist would have at least explained this major plot hole — and certainly shown more attention to continuity than most James Bond movies.
No Time to Die opens in theaters on November 25, 2020. Let’s hope that release date is legitimate and not a dream in some film executive’s head, given everything going on in the world.
Gallery — Every James Bond Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best: