Last year’s James Bond blockbuster, No Time to Die, is permeated by a sense of closure. For one thing, the ironically titled movie brings closure to Daniel Craig’s portrayal of the famous fictional spy. By having Bond finally forgive his double-agent former lover Vesper Lynd for her betrayal in the 2006 Bond film, Casino Royale, No Time to Die brings closure to the character’s story arc that began 15 years ago. But it also reverses the misogynistic conclusion of Ian Fleming’s very first Bond book – with its infamous final line (“The bitch is dead now”), and 007’s commitment to never letting any woman take advantage of him again.
There is another type of closure reverberating throughout the movie. Although No Time to Die is the first Bond picture of the Brexit era, its visual, musical and thematic winks to the past serve as a reminder of this franchise’s historical ties to a cosmopolitan – and therefore also European – idea of Britain.
