Trailers for the new James Bond movie No Time to Die have been out for almost two full years. The first one was released in December 2019 and it featured several scenes of James Bond (Daniel Craig) riding a motorcycle, driving a silver Aston Martin, and jumping around a bridge in very old city. As part of CinemaCon 2021, MGM — which will be releasing the film September 30 — screened a juicy 10-minute clip that links all of those scenes together, and even had a few interesting revelations. Here’s how it plays out.
It’s unclear when in this movie this scene takes place, it could even be the opening, but it’s almost certainly early in the film. The footage begins as James wakes up. He’s in a tan suit, but he’s on the ground and a mess. Blood on his face, dirt everywhere, and he can’t quite hear, which the sound mix reflects as everything is muted. Confused, he tries to get his bearings and make a phone call to Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) but he can’t connect. So he starts running down the hill as the classic Bond music starts to pick up.
James starts to run across a bridge and he sees a young, skinny kid with black hair in front of him. The kid turns around and smirks as a car that James can’t quite hear yet starts speeding towards him from behind. They’re also shooting and a bullet hits James in the shoulder, which alerts him to its presence. Before it can run him over, he hides behind a small rock (some of this has been in the trailers).
He gets up to run the other way when a motorcycle shows up on the other side. Now he’s trapped. Car on one side, motorcycle on the other. So, as you’ve seen in the trailers, he grabs a wire from the side of the bridge and jumps off, swinging to the bottom and taking a big fall.
He stands up, still a little disheveled and confused, and starts running again, only to be cut off by the motorcycle guy — who is young, very fashion-forward, and not your typical Bond villain. He looks more like a tourist at a nightclub. James decides to take things into his own hands and charges the cycle driver, knocking him back onto the ground.
The camera follows behind James as he does this and stays with him as the battle ensues. It’s a gritty, dirty fight, captured with a handheld shot that continues until James finally bests the guy and puts him in a choke hold. “Safin sends his regards,” the guy says (at least, we think it was “Safin,” which is Rami Malek’s character, but it wasn’t 100% clear). “You know Madeline,” he continues, to James’ dismay. “She’s a daughter of…” and as the guy just starts to finish that sentence, the guy passes out. James also notices that, in the fight, the guy had a fake, electronic eye, which is now just laying on the ground.
So James jumps on his motorcycle and speeds away. He’s at the bottom of the city but he’s going up. So it’s up one staircase, up a hill, then a funeral procession approaches, so he dips away from them and flies up a staircase, jumping into the air (another recognisable shot from the trailers). He ditches the bike to go into a hotel, where the doorman says “Your package is done, Mr. Bond, as your wife requested.”
James shows up to the room, beaten, bloody, and dirty, to see Madeleine. “You’re right,” he says. “Letting go is hard.” She’s shocked to see him, not sure what he means, but he grabs and shakes her. “How did they know I was here?” he asks. She asks who and he says “Spectre.” She says she doesn’t know and didn’t do anything. So James takes her and rushes her downstairs where, we assume, the package is ready — that slick, silver Aston Martin from the trailers. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she says. “I bet there is,” James replies.
The Aston Martin zips away from the hotel and instantly is being chased. First a motorcycle, then one car, then another car. As James whips left and right across the city, Madeleine’s phone rings. James tells her to answer it and, when she takes it out, the Spectre symbol is on it. She answers and a voice begins speaking. “It’s Blofeld, my love,” the voice says. “Your father would be so proud of you. Your sacrifice will be our glory.” James doesn’t know what to say but Madeleine swears she didn’t betray him. “We all have our secrets, we just didn’t get to yours yet,” he says.
As this is happening a local sheep herder gets a phone call. He’s told to let his sheep out or he’ll be killed. And so he does let the sheep out, which just so happens to be right in James’ path. But this is James Bond. When he sees an approaching car, he unleashes a few little explosives onto the street, and when he sees the sheep, he rips a 180 degree turn as the bombs go off, blowing up the other car, and allowing him to speed away. Here, the James Bond theme music kicks in big time.
James and Madeleine keep driving and she’s about to tell him something when they get smashed into by a truck, which stops the car dead its tracks. Now several cars and motorcycles surround them, and the drivers take out their guns and just start shooting the Aston Martin. Hundreds of bullets from all angles. Of course, the car is bulletproof, but Madeleine starts screaming.
James, however, needs a second to think. He’s silent and still.
Then, the fashionable guy who now has one eye (from the earlier fight) approaches the car with a bigger gun. He fires at the passenger side window over and over and over. Madeleine begs James to do something but he just sits there. Thinking. The huge shells keep cracking the glass. Madeleine screams. Finally, James acts. He flicks a switch and, in another trailer shot, the car’s headlights become machine guns. He does a 360 degree spin, blasting all the bad guys, while also letting off some smoke so they can make a clean getaway. The car drives out of the mess, into a more populated area, and skids into a parking spot… which is where the clip ended.
After many delays, No Time to Die opens in Australia on September 30.