No Time to Die Runtime: The Longest James Bond Movie Ever

No Time to Die’s runtime is revealed, and it’s officially the longest movie in James Bond franchise history. The 25th Bond film will be the final one for Daniel Craig, who has held down the role of 007 since 2006’s Casino Royale.

By all accounts the retiring (from Bond movies) Craig is getting a big send-off with Cary Fukunaga’s No Time to Die. The action sees the character of Bond being called out of his own retirement to once again square off against a supervillain with highly destructive plans. Rami Malek plays the villain, who despite rumors is not classic Bond bad guy Dr. No (at least according to Fukunaga’s latest statement). Lashana Lynch is also on board as Nomi, the first female 007. Lea Seydoux returns from Spectre as the mysterious Madeleine Swann, as does Christoph Waltz as Bond’s nemesis and half-brother Blofeld. And Jeffrey Wright is back as Felix Leiter after being sidelined since Quantum of Solace.

As further evidence that No Time to Die will be a real Bond blow-out, the movie is now officially confirmed to have the longest runtime of any film in the franchise. As reported by IndieWire, the action movie is 163 minutes long.

That two-hour-and-forty-three-minute runtime for No Time to Die indeed puts it well beyond the length of any other Bond movie. Spectre was the previous record-holder at 148 minutes, followed by Casino Royale at 144, Skyfall at 143 and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service at 140. During Craig’s run of Bonds, the shortest has been Quantum of Solace which came in at a tight 106 minutes – in fact making it the shortest Bond movie of all. Bond movies in general have of course been gradually getting longer over the decades, in keeping with the general trend for action films. In the original run of Bond films in the ‘60s, the average length was under two hours, with only Thunderball going beyond 120 minutes. In the Roger Moore years, around two hours was the norm, then during the Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan eras the runtimes started getting stretched into the 130-plus minute range. Casino Royale charted new territory for modern-day Bonds by going past the 140 mark.

That No Time to Die features such an extended runtime is obviously partly a reflection of how much story the movie has to tie up. In Spectre it was of course revealed that everything from Casino Royale on was actually being orchestrated by Blofeld, and this retconned-into-existence arc must now be satisfactorily paid off, which no doubt will take some time. But it remains to be seen if all this tying up ultimately results in a good audience experience or merely makes folks impatient. The Bond franchise has never really been about on-going arcs, instead sticking to self-contained adventures bound together by certain formulaic elements and traditional nods. But clearly No Time to Die is meant to have more emotional punch than previous entries in the series, hence the multi-film arc and long, involved wrap-up story. Unfortunately, length doesn’t always equal satisfying payoff.

Source: IndieWire

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