The opening teaser is tightly shot and tense. Bond is usually seen as a bit of lone wolf and the rest of MI6 are merely weapons in his arsenal, so Skyfall gave viewers a different perspective on Bond’s role and place within the organization. Backing up M is Tanner ( Rory Kinnear) and a huge team of agents ready to send medical evacs and pull security footage when needed. Bond is in the field with newbie Eve Moneypenny ( Naomie Harris) chasing a valuable MacGuffin, and both of them have M ( Judi Dench) at MI6 headquarters barking orders at them. The film kicks off with a stunning, adrenaline-pumping action set piece. And he came out all guns blazing with Skyfall.

And we’ve never seen Bond look happier-except once before in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which No Time to Die directly references with refrains from Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World”.Īfter the disappointment of Quantum of Solace, director Sam Mendes had his work cut out for him for the third Craig entry. The sound editing was spectacular, as were the motorcycle stunts in the action set piece. There were a few things that saved No Time to Die from the last spot on this list. It’s a lot to take in and one can’t help but wonder if the film suffered by trying to include too much in its cold open.

The scenes also set up the central mysteries that tied into the emotional core of Bond’s characterization in the film. The scenes with Bond and older Madeleine had a little bit of everything: explosions, hand to hand combat, car chases and shootouts. Young Madeleine’s ( Coline Defaud) trials were overly long and quite distressing since it centered on a small child. A prolonged romantic moment is followed by a stunning chase along the narrow ancient streets before the final twist-Bond abandons Madeleine, thinking she betrayed him. The scene then changes to the present where Bond and Madeleine are holidaying in Matera, Italy. Unlike the majority of the franchise, this film begins with a flashback to Madeleine’s ( Léa Seydoux) past and her connection with the man who becomes the primary villain of the film, Lyutsifer Safin ( Rami Malek). No Time to Die has the longest pre-credits sequence in James Bond history and it packed in a lot. There’s nothing wrong with a simple car chase, but it still has to be a good one. At one point one of the black cars crashes and you don’t know if it’s Bond who’s crashed until he reappears. The quick cuts also made it impossible to contextualize what was going on. We all love a good shot of a gorgeous Aston Martin, but that’s not what a Bond film in 2008 should have been focusing on.

And a chaotic, haphazardly edited one at that.Ī lot of this sequence looks like a car ad. But these are also the reasons the film’s opener is last on the list-a chase is all it was. Bond is in a cool car, he’s got villains on his tail, and there’s seemingly no end to the frenzy and stunt work on display. Quantum of Solace is universally considered the poorest entry in the new era, and the opening sequence is indicative of that.Ĭlocking in at only four minutes, this short teaser was a quintessential, heart-thumping chase scene. RELATED: Every Daniel Craig Bond Villain, Rankedĭaniel Craig’s sophomore turn as James Bond was unfortunately the least successful. This ranking is based on how memorable each sequence was, what worked, what didn’t, and most importantly, how exhilarating the action was. So how successful were the Craig pre-credits sequences? We take a look back at all five films and rank the openings. Craig’s swan song as Bond was the longest film in the franchise’s history, and the pre-title sequences set the stage by clocking in at a whopping 20+ minutes. But the Daniel Craig films, and especially No Time to Die, have tried something a little different. While the Sean Connery era established these cold opens as a franchise trademark, the Roger Moore films turned them into the action set pieces we’ve grown to expect. No, which was the very first adaptation of the Ian Fleming novels, all the other films in the franchise have had a pre-credits sequence. One of the norms of James Bond films has been the opening teasers.

No time to die opening title sequence