Cary Joji Fukunaga’s First Idea For ‘No Time To Die’ Was All In James Bond’s Head–But Was This Sam Mendes’ Plan Too?
Cary Joji Fukunaga brainstormed some unique ideas for the 25th installment of the Bond franchise. Like, it was all in Bond’s head.
The James Bond franchise has been pretty consistent since the first Bond film, Dr. No, introduced movie-goers to the secret agent in 1962. A big part of the series longevity is sticking to its tried-and-true formula. But after 24 official films, and nearly 60 years on our screens, can the series afford to stay the same?
Isolated attempts to stretch the formula in new directions is often met with mixed reviews. Timothy Dalton’s Licence to Kill, which saw the secret agent quit and seek revenge against a drug lord for the mauling of his best friend, Felix Leiter, was lambasted for being too violent, and too similar in tone to ’80s action films like Lethal Weapon. And while Daniel Craig’s SkyFall made considerably more money than Dalton’s last film, it is often criticized for making M the center of the film. Die-hard fans, it seems, just want gadgets, double entendres, and stunts. But as Cary Joji Fukunaga shared with Miranda July in Interview Magazine, his first idea for No Time To Die would have pushed James Bond into unfamiliar territory–inside his own mind:
“Miranda, I swear to god, I had an idea that this movie could all be taking place inside the villain’s lair from the last film. There’s this scene where a needle goes into James Bond’s head, which is supposed to make him forget everything, and then he miraculously escapes by a watch bomb. And then he and Léa blow up the place and go on to save the day. I was like, ‘What if everything up until the end of act two is all inside his head?’”
While this sounds original, I can’t help wonder if Sam Mendes had a similar plan?
I’m not suggesting Fukunaga stole Mendes’s idea. The two men probably never met, and as we know, great minds think alike. And the key phrase in Fukunaga’s interview is “up until the end of act two.” I’m not sure why Fukunaga believes everything from Act 1 and 2 is in Bond’s head. To me, it seems Bond’s torture scene messed with his mind, and the rest of the film (Act 3) occurs inside Bond’s head, which, as we’ll see could have been Mendes idea all along.
We’ll have to wait for Mendes autobiography to be sure. But until then, it doesn’t mean we can’t speculate. The direct aftermath of Bond’s torture by Blofeld is either badly handled by Mendes and the writers, or it gives credence to it all occurring in Bond’s head. Bond easily recovered from having a needle drilled into his head, which according to his arch-nemesis would cause permanent memory loss. So you’d expect some ill-effect at least. But there was none. Bond barely experienced any pain. Of course, with Bond being Bond, his limits are greater than any normal person. But credulity is stretched even further when, in the few minutes after Bond and Madeleine Swann escape, he blows Blofeld’s gigantic base sky high with a just few machine-gun blasts.
And this is one reason why so many believed it was all in Bond’s head long before Fukunaga suggested it. The idea that “it was all a dream” has been discussed on the internet since Spectre hit cinemas in 2015.
I remember a movie poster for SPECTRE in the UK featured the tagline, “It’s a matter of perspective”, under the image of shattered glass. A metaphor for a shattered mind, perhaps? The line suggested that Sam Mendes was going to mess with someone’s mind; maybe Bond’s mind. And this idea is certainly not unique to the films. There’s a storyline in Ian Fleming’s novel, The Man With The Golden Gun, where Bond (presumed dead) returns brainwashed to assassinate his boss, M.
All this sounds intriguing and isn’t too far removed from the mind-bending themes Christopher Nolan explores. Though not as extreme. Mendes certainly admits SkyFall draws on Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Revisiting Bond’s childhood home and blowing it to smithereens recalled the destruction of Wayne Manor in Batman Begins. And London became Bond’s Gotham; it was the first Bond film to be set primarily in the city. And does anyone else see a similarity between Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva and The Joker? Not just in his performance, but also his facial deformity, which is quite possibly a nod to The Joker’s deformed smile in The Dark Knight.
It’s purely speculative. Still, spending an entire film inside Bond’s head, like Fukunaga suggested, is a bit of a stretch. But there certainly is room to explore the ill-effects of torture or brainwashing on Bond just as Fleming did in The Man With The Golden Gun.
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