Licensed To Thrill

Daniel Craig roars onto cinema screens in his electric Aston Martin Valhalla this month, nearly two years late for his final outing as James Bond. But someone has taken over the wheel in his absence and she’s feisty, female and black… premieres No time to Die, the most PC Bond blockbuster yet.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EON PRODUCTIONS/METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS/ NICOLA DOVE

Meet Nomi, the first black female Agent 007 – Bond’s replacement in the film, but not the franchise, despite a tabloid frenzy last summer over rumours that 33-year-old Br itish actress Lashana Lynch was to be Daniel Craig’s successor. The name’s still James Bond, not Jane. But he’s not the same man who strangled a ‘Bond girl’ with her bikini top in the sexist 80s (Sean Connery in Diamonds are Forever). “Bond is a wounded animal struggling with his role as a Double O. The world has changed,” to quote the director, Cary Joji Fukunaga. When the film opens, James is retired in Jamaica with a bad knee, prefers corduroy trousers to tuxes and drives a Landrover Discovery around the island in the slow lane with his new wife ‘Ms Swann’ – never ‘Mrs Bond’ (Lea Seydoux reprising her character in 2015’s Spectre). Clues that the 25th Bond movie would be the most PC yet were dropped when Lynch, a Londoner of Jamaican descent, was cast as one of three Bond Woman (no one calls them Girls any more) and Fleabag creator Phoebe WallerBridge was brought in to make sure the film empowered them. She’s only the second female in the franchise’s 58 year history to have been allowed near a Bond screenplay. But James hasn’t gone soft, says Waller-Bridge: “All this talk of the way he treats women is b****cks. The important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn’t have to. He needs to be true to this character.” The trailers – all four of them – set a high bar for the costliest Bond film yet (and the longest), promising to keep us riveted to our seats for two hours and 43 minutes as our hero flies through the Unesco World Heritage streets of Matera in Italy, dives off a stone bridge on a bungee and vaults battlement walls on a Triumph Scrambler in a nod to Steve McQueen’s Great Escape. There are just as many twists and turns in the plot as Bond renews acquaintance with old time adversary Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) and pursues ‘a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology’ (Rami Malek).

EMPOWERED Lashana Lynch is the first black female 007

Ralph Fiennes returns as M, Naomie Harris as Moneypenny and Ben Whishaw as Q, CubanSpanish actress Ana de Armas adds lethal glamour as a CIA agent and the plot is packed with popcorn-dropping stunts in stunning locations. In one dramatic scene, Bond is trapped under a frozen lake in Norway while his new arch nemesis, a convincingly malevolent Malek, stands over him with a Kalashnikov. Will Bond be killed off this time? It’s been a source of much speculation but unlikely. The franchise makes too much money, although it’s been a long wait for a return on the film’s US$300 million investment. Delayed once when original director Danny Boyle quit over ‘artistic differences’, again when Craig injured his ankle during filming and several times by Covid, the red carpet was finally being laid out for the lavish world premiere at London’s Royal Albert Hall as went to press. Its six years since the last Bond movie and we’re all gagging for some high-gloss escapism. Bring it on!

Rami Malek drew inspiration from the late Freddie Mercury for his role as supervillain Lyutsifer Safin, an anarchist ex-SPECTRE assassin. “I tried to imbue his character with something that made sense but might also be shocking and unnerving. I guess that may be a lesson I learned from Mr Mercury,” said the American actor who won an Oscar playing the Queen icon in Bohemian Rhapsody. “If it’s not original, then why bother?”

Behind the ass-kicking new Agent 007 is a ‘real’ woman with ‘weight issues and periods’. “I wanted Nomi to be someone with a past, rough around the edges, who has issues with her weight maybe, or her boyfriend,” said Lashana Lynch, last seen playing a fighter pilot in Captain Marvel (2019). “I looked for at least one moment in the script where the black members of the audience would nod their heads, tut-tutting at the reality but glad to see their real life represented. We even considered adding a scene where her character talks about having her period.”

GRAND FINALE Daniel Craig’s last Bond outing

BAD ASS Rami Malek makes a malevolent arch villain

Lynch went through her own painful period of social media abuse from internet trolls and Ian Fleming purists last summer after false rumours that she had been cast as Craig’s replacement in the next Bond movie. “I just reminded myself it’s not about me,” said Lynch. “People are reacting to an idea.”

After Spectre’s lacklustre reviews in 2015, Daniel Craig said he’d rather slash his wrists than play Bond again. But as his five-film run as Ian Fleming’s suave super-spy comes to an end, his view has mellowed. “While you’re doing it, the tendency is just to go, ‘Oh, you know, this is what it is’… But I’m incredibly proud and honoured to have been a part of it.” He should be. Craig is the only 007 actor to be immortalised in a documentary retrospective on his five-year stint, Being Bond, streamed on the Apple TV App prior to the world premiere. So who gets the keys to the stable of Aston Martins in the next Bond movie? Regé-Jean Page, Bridgerton’s dashing Duke of Hastings, is among the hunks hotly tipped but the jury’s still out.

Billie Eilish is the youngest artist ever to score a Bond movie. The theme tune won a Grammy in 2020 for the (then) 18-year-old electro pop queen and her brother Finneas O’Connell who co-wrote it. No Time to Die topped the UK charts over a year and a half before the film’s release. e

CHART TOPPER No Time To Die was a hit for Billy Eilish

ANA DE ARMAS Joining a cast of strong Bond Women