Multi-Bond Director Shares His Opinion On 007 Death: “The Next Guy Is Alive”

GoldenEye and Casino Royale director Martin Campbell shares his opinion on the decision to kill off Daniel Craig’s James Bond in No Time To Die. Campbell was the man behind the camera when Pierce Brosnan played Bond for the first time in 1995’s GoldenEye, and he was the director again when Craig first took up the 007 mantle in 2006’s Casino Royale. Now, with Craig’s Bond having been killed off in the climactic moments of 2021’s No Time to Die, the Bond series again seeks a new star to take on the coveted role of film history’s most famous secret agent.

The decision to kill off Craig’s Bond in No Time To Die indeed broke with franchise tradition in a shocking way, but for his part, Campbell doesn’t think it was that big a deal to literally kill James Bond. Speaking to The Daily Express, Campbell explained why he was OK with Bond meeting an explosive demise, pointing out that the character will be alive again in the next movie no matter what happened in the last one. Check out what the director had to say in the space below:

The Bond franchise has changed lead actors several times over its history, and each time a new Bond has been introduced, the series has simply carried on as if nothing was different. Not addressing such casting changes has indeed become franchise tradition, and that tradition will presumably continue when Bond 26 arrives, with a new actor in the role of Bond.

Killing Bond off in No Time To Die may have seemed like a radical move, because Bond never died in any of the previous movies. But in truth, if the next Bond film plays out without even mentioning the death of Craig’s Bond, then nothing will really have changed. The truly franchise-shifting move would be addressing the death of Craig’s Bond, establishing as canon the idea that the “James Bond” moniker is itself an alias, and that each prior change in Bond actor actually signified a totally new character being given the Bond codename.

The Bond franchise did indeed do some radically different things during Craig’s tenure, including introduce multi-movie arcs. But to make canon the notion that there have actually been multiple different agents named James Bond would undoubtedly be the most earth-shattering move of them all. It seems unlikely that such a franchise-shaking change is in the offing post-No Time to Die however, given the conservative nature of Bond’s producers. Most likely, Campbell is correct in his guess that the next movie will carry on as if nothing happened with a new Bond.