"What's this, Spectre bunga-bunga?"
— James Bond
Phoebe Waller-Bridge was a screenwriter for this movie, so you can bet that No Time to Die has plenty of self-aware humor aimed towards the usual tropes of the franchise.
All spoilers on this page are left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Film
- Madeleine is introduced as a young girl tending to her mother, who is lying on her couch asking for her "medicine". Cut to Madeleine bringing her mother a glass of boxed wine.
- Dr. Obruchev's introductory scene: when teased by his colleagues, he reacts by stating that he would like to put Ebola into their food and watch as they sweat blood (made a Brick Joke by the fact that he's a genuinely murderous scientist willing to do worse things than that) The fact that he looks like Tobias Funke helps make him especially ridiculous. Then he's contacted by Safin, and tries to make his call seem less suspicious by ending it with this very convincing line:Obruchev: "...Yes, I like animals! Bye bye!"
- Nomi taking the 007 codename is a great Running Gag offering plenty of awkward moments when she's called that while in Bond's presence. When Bond is reinstated as a 00 agent, she asks (twice) what his number will be, clearly unwilling to give up being 007, even in the face of his clear indifference.Nomi: "Double-0 what?"
- Nomi at first appears to be nothing more than another Bond hook-up, literally picking him up outside a bar and taking him to his home and the bedroom... Where she promptly drops the act, as signified by pulling off her wig.
- Bond nicknames Logan Ash, a smiling young CIA agent introduced in a pristine white shirt, "The Book of Mormon".
- Leiter asks Bond if they can go somewhere quiet to talk. Gilligan Cut to a nightclub. Fridge Brilliance as the noise would make it harder to be overheard.
- Paloma downing an entire vodka martini in a few gulps. Also, her pulling Bond into a wine cellar and taking his shirt off (so that he can change into a tuxedo), to which he jokes that they should get to know each other a little more first, capped off by her decidedly amused reaction to realising that he thought she was making advances on him.
- The evil plan Spectre are putting on turns out to be Blofeld's birthday party. Made much more malevolent by the fact that the main "gift" is James Bond's death, but it's still an incredible throwback to some of the high camp from the older Bond films.
- Also, Bond and Paloma taking down a couple of dozen Spectre agents, just pause by the bar to each down a drink fast before running out.
- Bond grabs a tray with a glass and uses it like a discus to knock down Obruchev. Then, realising he still has the glass in hand, Bond shrugs and downs the drink.
- Paloma gets into a car and we promptly see the driver thrown out the opposite door.
- The reason for the typical "Bond, James Bond" in this film is because he tries to introduce himself at the MI6 front desk with just his last name and then irritably gives his full name when it gets no recognition.
- "M, darling."
- In Jamaica, Nomi threatening to shoot Bond in his good knee shall he get in her way. Some might feel tempted to picture a famous meme from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.note
- Following a Beat, she adds "the one that works". It sounds a bit like Self-Deprecation given that Daniel Craig had leg injuries (knee in particular) that caused the filmings of both Spectre and No Time to Die to be stopped for a few weeks.
- Craig's Bond himself is no stranger to knee-capping people. Mr. White must be smirking from whatever afterlife he ended up in at this little bit of karma.
- And then as Bond enters to have a meeting with M:Nomi: I can see why you shot him.
Moneypenny: Everyone tries at least once.
- Q is surprised when Moneypenny brings Bond to his home, questioning how he is not dead yet. Bond's response is "Hello Q, I've missed you.", Sarcasm Mode clearly on.
- Q was expecting to welcome a gentleman for a nice romantic dinner and instead sees Bond's face on his door's surveillance camera, like in a sitcom. Q's face then screams "I have to deal with this troublesome man again..."
- Upon seeing Q's hairless cat, Bond snarks "You know they now make them with fur, right?" Especially if you take this as a nod to Mr. Bigglesworth.
- Bond is freely helping himself to the wine Q set up for his date without asking beforehand. He offers Moneypenny a glass, who gratefully accepts it.
- Shortly after, Q is spinning through the contents of the bionic eye looking for leads, lounging back in his big office chair while casually chewing on a bowl full of gummy worms.
- When Q sees Bond in M's office, he pretends this is his first time seeing Bond post-retirement. M already knows they've been working together and even if he didn't, Q's hilariously unconvincing act would've given it away. Q may be a brilliant engineer, but intrigue is not his forte.
- Bond is back in M's office after disrupting Nomi's mission and the first thing he asks is if the desk has gotten bigger or M just got smaller. After the fractious meeting, Bond parts with a comment that the desk is the same size. M looks down at his figure.
- As Bond and M slowly reveal the truth about Herakles, M goes to his sideboard. After a few visits Bond snarks how thirsty M must be, which M does not take kindly to (though that can also be interpreted as Played for Drama, meaning the more M loses grip on the consequences of his own orders the more he drinks).
- Despite the Anguished Declaration of Love, Bond and Madeleine's conversation when they reunite gets this:Madeleine: "Do you know the worst thing about you?"
Bond: (steps towards her) "My timing?"
Madeleine: (quietly) "Don't".
Bond: (continues walking towards her) "My. . . sense of humor?"
Madeleine: (as he takes her in his arms) "Please, don't."
Bond: "What?"
Madeleine: "You look good."
Bond: "You look incredible".
(cue what would have been a Big Damn Kiss, only for them to be interrupted by Mathilde) - Bond seeing Mathilde is punctuated by the mother of all awkward silences as she drops a slinky and it slowly tumbles down a flight of stairs to him.
- "I have something else to reveal to you." "What, another child?"
- And what does she show him? A hidden door to which Bond quips, "What is it with your father and secret rooms?" (The line nods to Spectre, in which White had a hidden stash at L'Américain hotel in Tangier, as well as a secret basement behind a mirror in the cabin where he died.)
- Mathilde waking Bond up by bluntly declaring "I'm hungry" and him fixing breakfast for her. Bond asks how it is and she just as bluntly replies that it's alright.
- Mathilde blathering on about whether or not mosquitoes have friends in the midst of a deadly car chase. It gets paired with "Heartwarming" as even Bond himself can't help but crack a tiny smile at her obliviousness.
- Add to this the conversation itself. Madeleine's answer to her question was "I don't know". Mathilde mutters in French "I didn't think so"
- M dropping the film's sole F-Bomb after learning that Bond again went behind his back and asked Moneypenny and Q for their help.M: "Who's we? (beat, realises) Oh, for fuck's sake".
- Even better when you realise that M is probably thinking about what C said to him in the previous movie and that it turned out to be completely true: M really has no control over his own agents, with it clearly pissing him off just a bit.
- Bond pausing mid-interrogation to sarcastically wish Blofeld "Happy Birthday, by the way" to which Blofeld earnestly replies "thank you."
- During Bond and Nomi's briefing, Q reveals that he packs supplies for teatime abroad (a kettle, containers for cream and sweeteners, two cups and two saucers, to be precise) by opening a drawer in a cabinet that also contains rounds of ammunition and the Smart Blood equipment. Q's small "whoops!" when he opens the wrong drawer is just the icing on the cake.
- Q describing Bond's callsign on Q-Dar (The Greek letter "Psi") as "the trident-thingy".
- When Bond enters a narrow stairway in Safin's headquarters after shooting down several enemy agents, a grenade drops down to land at his feet. Bond picks it up and throws it back where it explodes, and cue several grenades dropping down to land around him. Bond immediately dives for cover from all the explosions.
- Mathilde of all people earns one late in the film. She frees herself from Safin by biting his hand and forcing him to put her down. He angrily says to her that if she doesn't want his protection, she's free to go. Utterly calling his bluff, the little girl wordlessly turns away and runs off down the hallway, leaving Safin looking foolish in front of all his bodyguards.
- It's made all the more better by Safin's expression when she leaves: baffled and almost a tiny bit hurt.
- Bond and Madeleine begin frantically searching for Mathilde, only for her to immediately appear, complaining about losing her stuffed animal. A potentially terrifying situation defused in seconds.
- Upon reuniting with Nomi, Bond introduces Madeline and Matilde to her.Bond: "Nomi, you remember Madeline and Matilde. They are my..." turns to mutter to himself "family?"
- Bond uses his EMP watch to fry Cyclops' cybernetic eye, which explodes in his head and kills him, then follows it up by dropping an absolutely hilarious Bond One-Liner. Made better by the facial expression he had about a minute ago that showed he had no idea that would work.Bond: I just showed someone your watch, Q. Really blew their mind.
- Something wouldn't have felt right without the "mind-blowing" part.
- Before Bond even makes the one-liner, Q remarks that Bond sounded like he got into a rugby scrum.
- Bond is in the silo control room to open the big blast doors. As Q begins to describe the long and technical procedure to do so, Bond starts flicking every switch and button he can see on the nearest console before pulling the large lever and opening the silo doors within seconds.
- The now-obligatory series tradition of the post-credit coda "James Bond Will Return" is hilariously macabre considering that Commander Bond was conclusively vaporised onscreen by a barrage of Tomahawk Missiles 5 minutes ago, made doubly cruel considering his Dying Moment of Awesome was played as an arrow-straight Tearjerker.
Meta
- These two Heineken commercials
that lampshade the idea of Craig trying to return to a normal life after finishing his tenure as Bond.
