Of course you reboot James Bond. He was officially rebooted in 2005, and unofficially rebooted half a dozen times before that. Or is Bond a 100-year-old WW2 veteran? Did Felix Leiter change race and then grow back his leg? Come on.
Yeah, that’s a very odd take. Until the current Craig-Bond iteration, the franchise didn’t even bother with continuity between movies - his murdered wife is just never mentioned again. And then the Craig-Bond movies officially rebooted the character, and even went through some of the same storylines from the earlier movies again - unless you think there were two completely different and completely unrelated men named Ernst Stavro Blofeld who ran two completely different and completely unrelated SPECTRE organizations? And nobody mentioned it?
She was mentioned, at least a few times. His vengeful hunt for Bloefeld in Diamonds are Forever, she was mentioned briefly in The Spy Who Loved Me, and he visited her grave in the opening scene of For Your Eyes Only.
Well I don’t get what circumstances in 2005 you are referring to, but I don’t recall anything special. Certainly not a return to square one situation. Just more Bond movies at varied intervals. Sure, the faces change. It’s fiction, and it’s the movies. But in my mind at least the word “reboot” means you start from the beginning and all those stories you followed over the years never happened. But nothing in “No Time to Die” suggests that Bond, this same Bond, never encountered Goldfinger and all those oddly named ladies. Just another day on the job for James.
What, it bothers you that he must be a century old by now? Well who’s to say all those little affairs didn’t happen over the space of six months! Let’s be real here, this is a world where threats to the world order lurk around every corner, but the average Joe never hears about it, and better he didn’t for the sake of civilization! Lucky for us we have James.
How about the fact that in the Casino Royal - M states “I knew it was too early to promote you” and that we have a fairly uninterupted timeline from his first kill thru the end of this current movie?
So - while I am sure he had other missions off film - we have zero evidence that Moonraker or Goldfinger, etc, ever happened. The closest we get to a tie in to the earlier movies is the car.
eta - plus what robot_arm said
At the beginning of Craig’s first Bond film, Casino Royale, he’s talking with a traitor in Prague that he’s been sent to kill. The traitor says that he’d have heard if any new double-0 agents had been appointed, and that it takes two kills to be awarded that status. This is intercut with Bond fighting and killing the traitor’s contact. Bond then shoots the traitor for his second kill, and qualifying for double-0 status. It’s certainly portrayed as the beginning of this agent’s career.
What, I’m supposed to remember stuff like that? Well what if Bond had 00 status but got it revoked, or maybe it expired and he had to re-apply. Do you know all the regulations? I thought not!
Honestly you guys read too many comic books. Next you’ll be tossing out some piddly litte detail and shrieking “That’s not canon!” Yes, contradictions exist, so what? If it makes you sleep more soundly at night, then sure, it’s a reboot, are we happy now?
I would 100% agree that Casino Royale was the most “reboot” we’ve seen in the series. He earned his double-oh status, for one.
It is true that Judi Dench carried over from the other movies, but I think they just liked her too much to re-cast. Otherwise, we saw the introduction of Moneypenny in this series of movies, the reintroduction of Q, and quite a few other things.
Question about “No Time To Die”:
Was “It blew his mind” Craig’s first “funny quip” like from the Roger Moore days? I told my wife, “Hey, Craig got to say a cheesy funny joke after killing a guy. Good for him!”
Or did he have others?
He made a joke about chocolates to the Swiss money man in CR.
But he didn’t kill him afterwards.
I did not remember that. Ok. Thanks for the correction.
Maybe I’m misremembering this too, but it didn’t seem to me to be a defining character trait, the way Craig-Bond’s grief over Vesper Lynd’s death was, and generally the continuity in the pre-Craig Bond movies seemed much looser.