At long (long, long, long) last the new – and, surely, final – No Time To Die trailer is here. Since the 25th James Bond film was first delayed in March, in response to the coronavirus crisis, this second teaser has been much-anticipated. Will we get any new footage? (Yes!) Will Ana de Armas make more than a fleeting appearance? (Yes!) And will we finally get a sense of what Phoebe Waller-Bridge's script punch-ups have brought to the franchise? (Maybe? A little bit!?)
Intriguingly, it seems that the Bond bosses might have also slipped in a dig at 2020's other properly massive film. Tenet was originally supposed to land in the summer, a few months after Bond's March release date, but after the 007 film slid to the autumn, Christopher Nolan's mind-bending blockbuster snuck in as the first movie to open in cinemas post-pandemic. A ballsy move, undoubtedly, and one that appears to have been rewarded with a bumper global box office, before Tenet even starts showing in the US.
This gun-jumping launch has also inspired comparisons between Tenet – with its time-inverting spies and backwards car chases – and Bond, who some critics still see as a throwback to a different time, what with his tuxedos, women and normal, forwards car chases. It led to comparisons between John David Washington's frosty spy and Daniel Craig's rather more red-blooded 007, as well as suggestions that Nolan might be tapped to helm the next film in the franchise, and that his Tenet star, Robert Pattinson, could be the new James Bond, since Craig is hanging up his Walther PPK after No Time To Die.
Has Barbara Broccoli been taking note? Has the studio, afforded some extra time in the editing suite, decided to side-eye those suppositions? A line in the new Bond trailer suggests so. After leaping off an viaduct, Bond pops up behind Lea Seydoux and growls: "The past isn't dead." Cue the MGM lion, the xylophone bonks, the prickling skin.
Is this Bond's counter to Tenet's the-past-is-the-future-is-the-past plot? Is it a rebuke to those who say that the 007 way of doing things doesn't make sense in 2020? Or is it just that we've been waiting six months for the biggest movie of 2020 and we're overanalysing every element? Who knows. Frankly, who cares. The past isn't dead. We just can't wait to find out why.
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