Did No Time To Die Actually Ruin James Bond Canon? Let’s Get Real
“It was a massive mistake.” Or maybe nobody cares?
Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond was a definitive one: he officially bit the dust in No Time to Die, eliminating any possibilities for a return. Still, it’s not the end of the world, as Bond will soon be reincarnated in a younger form... that is, if the franchise can clear a hurdle of its own making.
The Bond saga is gearing up to reboot itself for the sixth time in its 60-year history as a film franchise, which began back in 1962 with Dr. No. The upcoming film will be the first without participation from the Broccoli estate and EON Productions, which held the rights for 25 films, until Amazon seized creative control in early 2025. But, for some pundits, that’s not the only wrinkle complicating this reboot. Radar Online has pointed out that unnamed “insiders” and one Bond novelist — not one of the new film writers to be clear — is of the opinion that Bond’s on-screen demise has left screenwriter and Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight with a “huge creative headache.”
At the end of No Time to Die, Craig’s Bond is infected by nanobots in his blood, which are programmed to poison his lover Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) or their daughter, Mathilde, if he gets too close to them ever again. Without a chance of reuniting, Bond understandably loses his will to live. His ultimate demise comes at the hands of a missile strike — an unbelievably bleak ending, anyway you slice it. And, it’s the opinion of some that this puts the new script in a tough spot. But does it really?
Bond’s demise in No Time to Die has reportedly created a “headache” for the new regime.
“Writers are tearing their hair out,” claimed the dubious insider report from Radar Online. “Bond didn’t just vanish off a cliff or fake his death — he was blown to pieces on screen,” the report points out. The rest of the report then cites the opinion of the aforementioned novelist, Anthony Horowitz, who wrote three Bond novels set in the original Ian Fleming canon, not the films.“If I was asked tomorrow to write the script, I wouldn’t be able to do it,” Horowitz said in a separate interview, which Radar Online is citing as new, but is actually from September of this year. “Where would you start? You can’t have him waking up in the shower and saying it was all a dream.”
Horowitz makes a decent point, but this can’t be a real problem. In fact, why does the next Bond film have to acknowledge No Time to Die at all? Though the Sean Connery, George Lazenby, and Roger Moore eras tended to reference the events of previous films, the truth is, since the beginning, each entry in the Bond saga has always felt like a part of its own world. Apart from actors like Judi Dench and Desmond Llewelyn — who’ve starred in multiple films, weathering multiple soft reboots — each Bond seems to have his own continuity. And, even in the case of Dench, she was clearly playing a different version of M, in a different continuity in Casino Royale, which was, in theory, her second Bond reboot. (1995’s GoldenEye being her first.)
And it’s more than that: Craig’s run was as close to an all-out reboot as one can get, going all the way back to the beginning to adapt Fleming’s first novel for modern times. If Daniel Craig (and arguably Pierce Brosnan) made a clean break from the baggage of the past, why can’t Knight do the same with Bond 26? Is anyone really tearing their hair out over this?
Insiders are worried about Bond canon — but does it even matter?
Until Craig’s run, the Bond films have scarcely ever told a continuous story — that’s part of this saga’s appeal; a series of standalone adventures. The franchise has rebooted before and can do so again.
A changing of the guard is basically a blank slate, allowing this story to reset and providing a new entry point for fans. If Radar’s report is true — and it likely isn’t — then insiders are putting way too much thought into the making of a new Bond.
If multiple Batmen can coexist within the DC Universe, there’s no reason why the Bond franchise can’t just start fresh without fretting over the stories that came before. The cocktail might be famous, but the person to drink it could be brand new.
