The gunbarrel sequence at the beginning foreshadows what happens to Bond; instead of the gunbarrel turning red with blood, Bond fades away into white. At the film's end, Bond is obliteratedby a missile strike and goes into the light.
What's more, the reason that we don't see blood dripping down the screen is that for once Bond doesn't get the better of his would-be killer.
It's also the first of several times the movie references OHMSS—Craig fades away just like Lazenby did.
Billie Eilish's theme song sounds like the usual Woman Scorned fare, but now that we're finally able to put it in context with the movie, it's sung from Bond's perspective and explains why he broke up with Madeleine: he couldn't trust her and it felt like Vesper all over again. "Fool me once, fool me twice, are you death or paradise?"
Speaking of meaningful song lyrics, despite being written 52 years before the film was released, "We Have All The Time In The World" now perfectly applies to Madeleine and Mathilde, especially since Bond has disposed of everyone who was a threat to them.
Blofeld's Belmarsh prison cage seems somewhat primitive, when compared to the big glass chamber used to hold Raoul Silva, even though it's the same spy organization containing them. But when you think about how Silva got out because of his confiscated computer hacking the MI6 system, it would make sense that an old-school method is chosen to prevent another escape.
Considering Mathilde's age and the fact that this film takes place roughly five years after the events of Spectre, Madeleine may have been trying to tell Bond that she was pregnant in the pre-titles sequence. She also clutches her stomach just after Bond puts her on the train.
Madeline's terror in the opening sequence when Bond sits there as the car is bombarded with bullets makes even more sense when you realize that she wasn't just afraid for her life, she was afraid for her unborn child's.
Safin is the first villain in Daniel Craig's tenure to be entirely separated from (even directly opposed to) SPECTRE and its goals, so it's little wonder that the villain with the least personal attachment to Bond ends up being the one to finish him off.
In addition, even the more restrained tone of the Craig films had the villains fall into the usual over-the-top Bond Villain tropes; death traps, complicated plans, and even a bit of camp. So of course Safin is the only villain in Bond's long history to successfully kill him; he plays to those tropes only to the extent necessary to keep the movie recognizably a Bond movie, and otherwise doesn't play by those rules at all.
Why is Bond such a Chaste Hero in this movie? He's in his 50's now, and many people lose their sex drive as they get older, regardless of how promiscuous they might have been before. He sleeps with Madeleine because they already have a connection, but he likely isn't chasing skirts like he used to. And from a narrative point of view, the plot doesn't allow much time for one-night-stands: he meets Paloma for the duration of one fight scene, and his interactions with Nomi are either very brief, or scenes where both are prepping for/engaged in combat.
It's also possible the movie wanted to lampshade the almost ridiculous casualness and speed with which Bond ends up in bed with a woman within minutes of meeting of her. In real life, most women would rebuff a man making advances that quickly, and that's exactly what happened here.
Fans noticed the Death Glare that Blofeld was giving Bond and Madeleine at the end of Spectre and speculated that he would seek revenge. And indeed he did, once we learn that he was behind the attack on them as well as making Bond think she'd betrayed him.
Blofeld's revenge, from a villain's point of view, is perfect. He resented James for stealing his father's affection, and his latest scheme results in Bond being separated from his daughter (even if he had no way of knowing that Madeleine was pregnant when she and Bond broke up).
But he must have learned at some point, because it also explains why he's so especially smug when he taunts Bond about having framed her. He knows he got the perfect revenge.
At the conclusion (or so we thought) of the final battle, Bond finds Mathilde's stuffed animal and stops to pick it up, smiling as he does so, clearly anticipating giving it back to her. It's at that moment that Safin reactivates the silo doors, forcing him to go back. The whole moment completely foreshadows/symbolizes that Safin is going to be the reason that Bond can't be with his family.
If you want to make the ending even MORE bittersweet, consider this—Bond can't be with his Second Love and their daughter. . .but is now Together in Death with his first.
He can also say "hello" to M, his parents, Hannes Oberhauser, Felix, and anyone else who had died in his life.
The writers pulled off a complete reversal of the standard trope for a Bond films: at least one of the "Bond Girls" is killed. In this film, the three who fill the traditional places of a Bond Girl—Madeline, Paloma, and Nomi—all live while Bond is the one who dies.
Mallory ordering the creation of the nanobots makes perfect sense when you realize that he used it to keep an eye on his own allies and agents within MI6, because he knew from Silva and Max Denbigh that the most dangerous enemies are those that come from within.
The prologue basically depicts what probably happens between Bond and the Bond Girl in the interim between films—a few days/weeks in an idyllic location before they go their separate ways. This breakup just happened to be devastating instead of amicable like the others presumably were.
You know how the credit sequences are usually full of the silhouettes of nubile women? This one only features that of one, telling us that Bond won't be engaging in his usual skirt-chasing and will be a one-woman man in this film. Indeed, the only woman he sleeps with is Madeleine. (albeit, he clearly expected to sleep with Nomi and Paloma and could have been sleeping around in the unseen five years)
While it's far from amusing, Bond's death lampshades two things the franchise has been mocked for over the years—that no one ever simply shoots him when they have the chance, and that he's equally immune to explosions. Safin invokes the first method (and even HE fails to do this in their first encounter), and Bond willingly invokes the second.
Which leads to even more Fridge Brilliance—Safin knows he made a mistake not shooting him the first chance he got (granted, he may have had enough of a sliver of decency to not kill the man in front of his daughter) and isn't going to make it again.
During the opening sequence in Matera, Bond and Madeleine are dressed similarly to the way Bond and Vesper were at the climax of Casino Royale (casual clothes for him, a red dress for her). Aside from being a reference to the other film, this is also major foreshadowing that all hell is about to break loose.
The fact that Q's date is only briefly referred to but never seen is not only a Continuity Nod to the previous films of the Craig era (where we only got vague glimpses of M's husband and Moneypenny's boyfriend), it's also to the entire franchise—in nearly 60 years and over 25 films, we've hardly learned anything about the personal lives of the MI6 staff.
Nomi's name is significant, in that it can be interpreted in different ways. It can be read as "No Me", meaning, she doesn't exist, which is perfect for a secret agent. It can be read as "No, Me" since she's the new 007. And it can be read as "Know me" since Bond doesn't sleep with her, but actually comes to respect her as a fellow field operative.
The movies always start with the gunbarrel widening into the opening sequence. At the end of the movie, we get a replica of the gunbarrel sequence as Madeleine drives into a tunnel, only this time, the gunbarrel gets smaller (or perhaps just appears to as the camera pulls back), thoroughly symbolizing not just the end of the movie, but of an era.
Further parallels between Bond and Madeline: Both had to watch their mothers die. (Madeline's biological mother in this film, M in Skyfall.
Someone on What An Idiot said MI6 should've told the Navy to fired on the cargo ships instead of the island, which would risk a war. Thing is, destroying or stopping multiple ships from who knows what countries would also risk an international incident. And possibly a bigger one than firing on a privately owned (?) island in disputed waters. For one thing, it would be a lot harder to keep under wraps. At least with the island story, it can be spun as a weapons test or mishap.
As tragic as it was, killing off Bond was probably the only course of action TPTB could take. If he reappeared after Riding into the Sunset with Madeline and Mathilde—especially if still being played by Daniel Craig, we'd all be thinking he was a jerk who'd abandoned his wife and daughter. While bringing him back after his death raises a whole new slew of issues, we can presumably be certain that this is a different Bond/continuity.
Shortly after the film was released, Barbara Broccoli explained the decision to kill Bond as "That's the point of the guy. He can't have a family." It suddenly makes sense why everytime Bond has told a woman he loves her and legitimately tried to leave behind the secret agent life and build a new life with her, it's ended tragically—Tracy and Vesper were killed, he and Madeline had to separate after being attacked, then he had to sacrifice himself to ensure hers and their daughter's safety.
When Bond shoots Safin, he does so three times. One each for himself, Madeline, and Mathilde, essentially avenging the little family that has now been destroyed by his actions.
Who were the people rushing to Safin's base to procure the Heracles nanomachines that had been manufactured? SPECTRE may be dead, but there are still other highly dangerous groups in this universe with an interest in a weapon that can annihilate entire ethnic groups with ease. Nomi will have her work cut out for her defeating them...
Also, the death of SPECTRE's leadership could merely mean a power vacuum, in which their henchmen and various associates will start infighting in the near future.
Safin claims that a plant in his Poison Garden can produce tea which makes people compliant, which also lines up with his rhetoric about The Evils of Free Will. If this is true, it could potentially mean that his henchmen were essentially innocent, brainwashed people who were all killed with the final bombing of the island.
Since the Heracles nanomachines are described as staying in the body permanently, could it be possible for some future villain to extract the nanomachines from the corpse of a Heracles victim (say, Blofeld, for instance) and reconstruct that technology?
Even more chilling, Madeleine still has it in her system too. Who's to say the above-mentioned people couldn't find a way to do to her what Safin did to Bond?
Even worse than that, Paloma and the attendees at Blofeld's party who weren't part of SPECTRE also have Heracles in their system. Meaning not only are there hundreds (if not thousands due to now easily transmissible Heracles is) of people who Heracles can be extracted from, but also if any one of them comes into contact with someone who is related to a member of SPECTRE, that person could die. Oh and to top it all off, there's no way of knowing who is a carrier for Heracles until they cause someone's death by accident, and even if there was there's nothing anyone can do.
The fact that M was engineering a potentially population-destroying weapon behind the government's back raises the question of just what other dangerous and morally dubious things the Bond universe's MI6 gets up to behind closed doors in the name of "national security".
It gets worse: they were designing Heracles in the middle of London, and MI6's background checks are apparently lax enough that they ended up employing Dr. Obruchev, a sadistic, racist Mad Scientist in league with international terrorists. Or perhaps their checks were circumvented by SPECTRE/Safin, or MI6 knew about Obruchev's true character but chose to prioritize the manufacture of Heracles over all else (comparable to real-life programs such as Operation Paperclip), with none of these options reflecting particularly well on MI6's competence and moral code.
Blofeld is dead and Spectre has been decimated by Safin, but at the end Bond has been completely broken and eventually decides to let himself be killed. Blofeld's goal was all along to mess with Bond and make his life miserable. In a sense, Blofeld has won.
The implications of the last dose of Heracles are even more horrifying than the obvious when you think about it. Heracles is instantaneously infectious, and never leaves the system. That means that Bond can't just never hold his lover or child again, he places them at risk by existing even if he never comes within a thousand miles of them again. He could inadvertently kill his own daughter because he touched the hand of a Starbucks barista while collecting his change, and then a later customer at that Starbucks passes Heracles to his family, and then the boyfriend of a relative goes to a crowded football game, and then several years later someone else who had been at that game ends up in the same subway car on the tube as Mathilde. At which point Mathilde dies horribly for no immediately obvious reason. Is it any wonder that Bond decided to ensure that he couldn't spread the disease?
Three times Bond has told a woman that he loves her, and it's ended tragically everysingletime.
Similarly, with only one exception (Spectre), every one of Daniel Craig's Bond films has had a sad/bittersweet ending.
It is really unnerving to think of what Madeleine would have been subjected to by Safin had he been able to force her to drink that tea that would have made her obey his every order and/or he been able to keep her prisoner.
If Safin could initially reprogram the nanobots to kill the members of Spectre instead of Bond, that likely means that someone could have figured out how to reprogram the nanobots in Bond's system so they didn't target Madeleine and Mathilde. Which means that Bond probably didn't have to sacrifice himself, which just makes his death that much more agonizing.
Not necessarily. The nanobots Safin reprogrammed hadn't yet been distributed. Conversely, the nanobots targeting Madeleine and Mathilde were already in Bind's bloodstream. Unless there's a way to extract every nanobot without killing Bond or reprogram them all without taking them out, the nanobots could not be reprogrammed.
Felix offhandedly tells Bond that he wants to tell his family that he saved the world one last time. It looks like Madeleine and Mathilde aren't the only ones mourning the loss of a husband and father.
Bond didn't just endanger himself and Madeleine when he let the car be bombarded with bullets, he endangered his child.
The car Madeleine and Mathilde are seen in at the end is the one Bond drove to her house in Norway. Can you imagine the anguish it must have been for Madeleine to return there after their terrible ordeal and see that reminder of him and the brief time that they had as a happy family?
In a strange way, it's a good thing Safin told Bond that he'd poisoned him, because otherwise, Bond would have escaped the facility, embraced Madeline and Mathilde upon reuniting with them. . . and watched in absolute horror as they died instantly.
), with none of these options reflecting particularly well on MI6's competence and moral code.