No Time To Die Director Explains Meaning Behind Final Madeleine Scene

Caution: This article contains spoilers for No Time To Die

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga explains the meaning behind the final No Time To Die scene with Madeleine Swann. No Time To Die is the final entry in the James Bond franchise starring Daniel Craig as British Agent 007, capping off his fifteen-year run totaling five films. Co-starring Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ana de Armas, Jeffrey Wright, and Christoph Waltz, No Time To Die is the 25th film in the long-running spy series based on the character created by author Ian Fleming.

No Time To Die is a benchmark film for the franchise, as it’s the first one to kill off the titular hero, which was an understandably surprising move. Bond was afflicted with a DNA virus that would’ve killed his new family if he were to come in contact with them again, and, opting to make sure that the virus couldn’t affect anyone else, he made the ultimate sacrifice. The family in question was Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann and their daughter, Mathilde, who Bond chooses to protect at all costs.

No Time To Die ends with Madeleine and Mathilde driving away together, traveling through a tunnel, which recreates the iconography of the 007 gun-barrel visual. The song “We Have All The Time In The World” plays as they do, which references another Bond film, George Lazenby’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Fukunaga, talking to Empire, says that ending the film that way “felt like closure” for Craig’s story. It’s his final chapter and Fukunaga wanted it to feel “satisfying,” despite his fate.

It felt like closure, like closing off the past, and closing off the story. It’s that last sentence in a paragraph in the last chapter of a book, just to try to make it feel satisfying.

Craig may be done with Bond, but the actor has plenty of projects lined up to keep his name in lights, including two more films in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series, which will debut on Netflix. He’s also starring in director Todd Field’s action-thriller The Creed of Violence and will return to the stage for Macbeth with actress Ruth Negga. As for Bond, the character will most assuredly return, although it will be a new actor filling the role. Producers of the series have said that the search for a new Bond won’t begin until 2022.

It was a bold and risky move to kill off the main character of the franchise in No Time To Die, but it’s not the first or last time it will happen. So long as the death is earned, the hero dying can give more dramatic weight to the overall story. It’s up for debate if Craig’s Bond demise was worthy, but it has generated plenty of discourse among fans. While it adds a grim layer to Craig’s tenure as the character, it also takes a leap in narrative for the series, which has traditionally been more cartoonishly fun. If anything, it lets Bond fans know that the character isn’t immortal, although it’s worth asking if the franchise has taken itself too seriously by going that direction.

Source: Empire

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