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Through all the highs and lows of the James Bond franchise, the historic MI6 agent would be nothing without the compelling villains he goes up against. So when it was time to bring the Daniel Craig era of Bond to an end, it was immensely important to craft a villain fit for a final showdown. But when Rami Maliks Safin first appears in No Time to Die, fans everywhere felt underwhelmed.
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James Bond, licensed kill
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Vendetta with Ernst Blofeld. I could be speaking to my own reflection
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This is Safin. In theory, he's the final boss of the Daniel Craig era Bond films
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On paper, he's menacing, complex, and has the makings of an absolutely perfect Bond villain
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But here's the problem. He just flat out isn't. Die, Blofeld, die
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No Time to Die had a supremely difficult creative remit, to bring everything to a close
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This film had to bring the five films in the Craig era to a satisfying conclusion
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but it additionally had to tell a standalone story. It also had to make this a celebration
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of everything else that's come before, and for reasons that still aren't clear
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Christoph Waltz was only willing to come back for two days' worth of filming
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I didn't need to kill you. I'd already broken you. That's a lot of creative masters to serve
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and thankfully, Eon has been making these films for their entire duration
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And if there's one truism that this central brain trust is keenly aware of
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it's that the key to a good Bond adventure is a good villain. Spectre, Bond's previous outing, Eon dusted off Ernst Stavro Blofeld
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Bond's longtime arch enemy. Can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to this
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Tragically, the franchise mismanaged him, and even though Christoph Waltz turned in a great performance
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the finished product left audiences less than enthused over what should have been a blockbuster return to form
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Enter Rami Malek, the brooding performer who skyrocketed to fame off of his hacker-centric TV show Mr. Robot
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took the world by storm and was then selected to challenge Bond after he won an Oscar for portraying queen frontman Freddie Mercury in their biopic Bohemian Rhapsody
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Coming off of Javier Bardem's Silva and the misfired resurrection of Blofeld, expectations for the final Bond villain were sky high
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It's obvious that the producers were trying to pull out all the stops for this would-be final installment
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you can see how during development, they attempted to build this project as a finale for both
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the Craig era and the Bond franchise as a whole But how do you do that By bringing back one of the best villains cinema has ever seen Dr No You won get away with it this time Dr No The Americans are prepared for any trouble
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I never fail, Mr. Bond. Originally dating all the way back to the pre-production of Quantum of Solace
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rumors of Craig's real-world wife, Rachel Weisz, stepping into the role of Dr. No was pervasive
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However, when Malick was formally announced as the antagonist of the at-the-time-untitled 25th
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Bond film, the idea of incorporating everyone's favorite metal-handed scientist Julius Noe had
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seemed to be abandoned. Unfortunately, things aren't that simple. There are countless Dr. Noe
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references in No Time to Die. The polka dot pattern in the intro credits, the fact that Safin wears a
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Japanese Noe mask in the film's prologue, and even the sequence that sees Bond retiring to Jamaica
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and then having a rendezvous with Felix in a Jamaican nightclub. These are all obvious homages
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but maybe there's more to it. Contrarians may point to the fact that Dr. No
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is not the only previous Bond outing that No Time to Die draws on
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On Her Majesty's Secret Service is equally mined. We have a good time in the world
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But those oblique references are nothing compared to the fact that Safin's island getaway
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and climactically brutalist villain lair are obviously supposed to be a take on Dr. No's compound
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even down to the vats of radioactive water that eats people alive. Safin himself is a mixed bag
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in terms of character motivations and iconography. He's an obsessive, a maniac, and a classically archetypal Bond antagonist in that he
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has a plan to destroy the world. He also happens to be obsessed with the exact things the movie
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needs him to be obsessed with to take narrative chess pieces off the board. Do you know a lot
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about flowers? My father had a garden. He taught me. He died when I was young, but my interest
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Wait, is Safin supposed to be the son of Dr. No? Well yes and no
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It's very apparent that in an early draft of the script for No Time to Die, Safin was
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going to be the son of Dr. No. This would have been a fun reason why the title of the movie is No Time to Die especially because this is what gets said in the actual movie Time to die No Obviously they got cold feet and decided to backpedal this idea
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Did it happen during pre-production? Did it happen during the full year the film was delayed due to the pandemic
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What is certain is that Safin is now another soft continuity villain
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yet another in the long line of blink-and-you-miss-it winks to camera that Eon chose to do with the post-Casino Royale Bond franchise
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What does that mean, exactly? It means the Broccoli's chose to make a franchise in absentia
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just cameos and references for those in the know, like Q referencing the exploding pin from Goldeneye
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And to make things even worse, Saffin just kinda doesn't work. We see him going to Mr. White's safe house to kill Madeline
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and her mother when she's a child. And yet, in the rest of the movie, he hasn't aged
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How old is this guy supposed to be? His motivations are all over the place
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He hates Blofeld and Spectre and wants them dead, but he also hates Bond and wants him dead
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But he wants to raise Madeline's daughter as his own. He refers to himself as Bond's mirror image
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and yet he's also a prototypical Bond villain. He's like an all-you-can-eat buffet of eyebrow-arching bad guys
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This is largely because they couldn't build a movie to satisfy and create a great villain
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They needed to make a villain to wrap up the plot elements of the previous four movies
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No Time to Die is 2 hours and 43 minutes. That's too long for a Bond film
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There are so many moving parts in this film, it's impossible to succinctly name them all
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How is your retirement? Shut up, Q. I know he's staying with you. Even just the idea that Blofeld is in the film for less than 10 minutes and dies
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That shows you how much ground this movie is trying to cover. A massive reason why this film is so clumsy is that Danny Boyle
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the director of 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire, was fired from the production just 60 days before principal photography began
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Ultimately, the Broccolis hired Carrie Joji Fukunaga to step into the director's chair
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and they quickly started the mad dash towards their release date. Is it understandable why Safin is muddled and poorly defined Yes It just sucks that this franchise had to go out on such a minor keynote Safin if they had stuck with the original idea of having him be a rebranded Dr No
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probably could have been a great villain. The characters obviously intended to be pulled right
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from the books. He's equal parts Blofeld from Fleming's novel You Only Live Twice
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and Julius No from Dr. No. He has a Garden of Death, Orientalist obsession
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and a virus that turns people into walking weapons. But they obviously decided that after
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the poor reception of Blofeld and Spectre, it was too risky to revisit one of the classic Bond
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villains. Also, the idea of bookending a major franchise with a father-son duo 50 years apart
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is a great idea. Too bad the way that it's executed just falls flat at every turn. Aside
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from the prologue and a scene where Safin visits Madeline's psychotherapy office, he doesn't really
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show up until roughly two hours into No Time to Die's runtime. And when he does, he only gets a
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scant few scenes to really communicate who he is to the audience. Just look at the scene where
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he's showing Madeline and Bond's daughter around his death garden. It's got tension and a great
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performance from Malick. This one makes you do as you're told, so you never misbehave
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and you always could. You mustn't misbehave. If they had been able to give him even one or two
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more scenes that had this level of dramatic potential, his role would have been remembered
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drastically differently. Dr. No works so well as a movie because Bond and Dr. No spend a good amount
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of time face-to-face sparring. Safin and Bond don't get that same privilege. Sure, they scuffle
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in a pool of water, but that doesn't exactly carry the same narrative load-bearing weight
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No Time to Die inarguably takes the biggest swing in Bond franchise history by, spoiler alert
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killing James Bond. It's a tragedy that they couldn't come up with a villain who was deserving
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of this honor. The shortcomings of Safin aren't Rami Malek's fault. He performed the material
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he was given wonderfully. The problem is that the broccolis and Fukunaga
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just didn't have the time to massage and build saffron into something great because they were hurtling
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towards the release date. The finished product is just forgettable. It would seem that the true death of James Bond
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wasn't no time to die. It was no time to get it right