CAUTION- OPENING SEQUENCE SPOILERS AHEAD!
From the gun-barrel sequence to clever gadgets to Bond girls, the James Bond franchise is full of motifs that have appeared in nearly all of the twenty-four films, but Cary Fukunaga's upcoming NO TIME TO DIE will bucking tradition in one very big way. When audiences sit down to watch the film, they'll be treated to a pre-title sequence that won't feature James Bond (Daniel Craig) at all, a first for the franchise.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal: "Typically, the pre-title sequences have been throwaway scenes packed with gratuitous chases, violence, and sex. And in every Bond film, save the first (which had no pre-title sequence), they feature 007. However, with the opening scene, Fukunaga bucks tradition in every way: It’s slow-paced, visually arresting, subtitled with dialogue in French, and entirely Bond-free." NO TIME TO DIE director Cary Fukunaga explained that the opening sequence will be focused on Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) and reveal a tragic encounter from her childhood in which Safin (Rami Malek) killed Madeleine's mother and pursued her through her home before hunting her down on a frozen lake, all while wearing a Japanese Noh mask. "Some clown chasing a child around the house," Fukunaga said with a laugh. "Yeah, it’s like I brought back 'It' in the first five minutes of Bond." If you remember, Fukunaga was once attached to direct the adaptation of Stephen King's IT for Warner Bros. before he stepped away.
NO TIME TO DIE will continue on where SPECTRE left off, with James Bond having left active service to begin a new life with Dr. Swann (Léa Seydoux), but Bond is soon brought back into action when Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) comes calling to enlist his help in searching for a missing scientist. When it becomes apparent that the scientist was abducted, Bond must confront a danger the likes of which the world has never seen before in a villain armed with dangerous new technology. The film also stars Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas, Christoph Waltz, Ben Whishaw, Naomi Harris, Rory Kinnear, and Ralph Fiennes, with Cary Fukunaga directing from a script he co-wrote with Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
After several pandemic-related delays, NO TIME TO DIE is now slated to hit theaters on April 2, 2021.