'No Time To Die' Featurette: Cary Joji Fukunaga Sends Daniel Craig's James Bond Out With A Bang, Teases Villain

We're less than two months from the release of No Time to Die, the 25th movie in the long-running James Bond film franchise, and it looks like Daniel Craig's 007 is going out in style.

Today, a new featurette has arrived that's narrated by co-writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga, in which he showcases lots of behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the film and talks about his approach to this milestone moment in the Bond saga.

"For me as a writer and director, it was essential to rediscover Bond," Fukunaga says, indicating that we're going to see a different shade to the character as a "wounded animal, struggling with his role as a 00." There's always been tension between Bond's rogue personality and the acceptable methods of getting the job done, but it seems like that tension is being amped up in this film. Five years into retirement, "the people close to Bond, the ones he considers to be family, are at great risk."

That risk comes at the hands of "someone new out there, more dangerous than anyone he's ever encountered." He's talking about Rami Malek's mysterious villain character, whose name is "Safin" but whom many fans speculate is actually playing a new version of Dr. No, the iconic Bond villain who set the template for an entire trope in the first EON-produced James Bond film, 1961's Dr. No. Malek has been cagey about his character's identity in interviews, and this featurette does nothing to quell fan suspicions: Fukunaga even says "whoever they are is smarter and stronger than Spectre."

The most interesting element to me is Fukunaga talking about the emotional punch that's waiting for audiences in this movie, because despite his assertion that every Bond film has that, the previous film was devoid of anything like that. Making it personal by putting Bond's friends in jeopardy could be an exciting way to pay off some of those established relationships and bring Craig's run to a satisfying conclusion.

Here's the film's official synopsis:

In No Time To Die, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.

No Time to Die is written by longtime Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, as well as Cary Joji Fukunaga and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It stars Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Ana de Armas, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Rory Kinnear, Dali Benssalah, David Dencik, Billy Magnussen, and Ralph Fiennes. It hits theaters on April 10, 2020.