‘No Time to Die’: Why the Pre-Credit Teaser Was Essential to Daniel Craig’s Swan Song as James Bond

Daniel Craig’s James Bond quintology was a brilliant juggling act of maintaining and subverting franchise conventions, especially in exploring a first-time journey for 007.

Thus, the challenge for “No Time to Die” director Cary Joji Fukunaga was completing Bond’s arc.

And his catalyst was revisiting the ghosts of the past from “Casino Royale” and “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” [Spoiler Alert!] But, of course, with the ironic twist of killing Bond.Yet that meant setting up “No Time to Die” with both of these tragic love story threads in the longest and most daring pre-credit teaser in franchise history.

It’s a 20-minute tour de force that begins with a frozen horror encounter in Norway between young Madeleine (Coline Defaud) and baddie Safin (Rami Malek); jumping to present-day Italy with the “We Have All the Time in the World” romance of Bond and Madeleine (Léa Seydoux); followed by betrayal at the

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