007 months and counting: savouring the wait for NO TIME TO DIE

No Time To Die being released seven months later than planned might test the patience of many ardent Bond aficionados. But personally, I am looking forward to the slow burn as the plentiful tie-ins play out over a more protracted period.

"I want films, I want TV, I want radio, I want us on the air 24 hours a day! This is our moment!" intoned a deliciously histrionic Jonathan Pryce in 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, accurately prognosticating our obsession with up-to-the-second media. It's a brilliant moment that in a film that was underappreciated at the time but has become wonderfully prescient with the passing years.

It's also pretty self-reflexive. In mass media terms, the release of a new Bond film is like the circus arriving in town. And unlike in the nuclear-bomb-under-the-big-top finale to Octopussy, there's no stopping the explosion. March 2020 might be missing the main event but the media fallout is being felt everywhere: interviews, magazine covers, TV and radio specials and all the rest, including products from all of those 'brand partners'. We may have to wait for No Time To Die but, for those who can't resist a bit of merch, there's definitely time to buy.

Needless to say, I have already capitulated. I picked one of the new limited edition Swatch releases and I'm eyeing the others. At least I can watch the seven months tick by in style.

I'm also trying to justify to myself spending over £300 on the jumper Daniel Craig is seen wearing on the poster (if anyone at N. Peal is reading this I am a size M).

I've streamed Billie Eilish's theme song dozens of times already (adding to the more than 100 million listens on Spotify alone). I've tried to play it on the piano too but it's beyond the skills of this nascent pianist. Who knows though: with seven months of practice...?

I foresee some longeurs over the Summer where mass media find it unprofitable to remind the general public that there is another 007 adventure on the horizon. But with studios cancelling releases left right and centre, I would put a Le Chiffre-sized bet on Bond being the thing that keeps the showbiz correspondents in column inches. And it's not as if social media is going to stay silent is it?

I'm more than happy to continue playing the waiting game. It's not like it’s a new experience for me.

My parents weren't the sort to rush out to the cinema, or even rent many videos. I saw every Bond film out of order, as and when it appeared on ITV. My first one was Goldfinger, watched in the lap of my maternal grandparents when I was far too young to appeciate the arch punistry of Pussy Galore. I remember my grandad attempting an explanation of radioactive 'half-life' that I still recall whenever I come across the term. The Bond film I remember watching more than any other was The Spy Who Loved Me. Surely my faulty memory is to blame, but it seemed to my seven year old brain that it was on ITV every other week. That and Moonraker. I remember asking my dad if Jaws was in most Bond films. That he was only in two installments came as something of a shock when I reached an age where I could appreciate the series as a whole.

At the risk of sounding like someone who listens to The Beatles through ear muffs, today's kids will never appreciate what this was like. Mark O'Connell amusingly labels this experience of waiting for Bond films to appear on TV as 'Catching Bullets'.

I remember a time when there were no new brand bullets to catch. This was during the legalistically murky hiatus between 1989’s Licence To Kill and 1995’s GoldenEye. Fortunately, Dalton's films were yet to be shown on TV. When they were, years apart, they were A Big Deal. The first ITV showing of The Living Daylights in the early 90s was accompanied by a feature-length documentary on the making of the whole series. How brilliant!

Licence To Kill was the only one I saw on VHS first, before TV. In fact I saw it before it even became available to the public on video. My best friend had a relative who worked in a video shop and sneaked out a 'rental only' copy ahead of its official release date. Perhaps it was because of the vaguely illict nature of this screening or the more adult content of the film itself, but Licence To Kill felt like an unconventional entry in the series and secured it my affections to this day.

The first Bond adventure I saw in the cinema was GoldenEye. A spoilt brat in my class tried lording it over me because they had seen GoldenEye at the cinema on opening weekend. We were booked into the nearest multiplex in a fortnight's time. My eminently sensible parents deemed it 'better to wait until all the fuss has died down'. I slaked my Bond thirst with the 'souvenir magazine' from the newsagent, poring over the images and commentary. The internet was only vaguely a thing at this point and no one I knew had it at home. But I remember going into work with my dad and using his office computer to stream the GoldenEye teaser trailer several dozen times.

That low-res, glitchy minute and a half contained so much promise. I pored over every frame, piecing together my version of what the story might be, something I actively try to avoid nowadays because trailers typically give far too much away. It was soundtracked with a contemporary sounding version of the Norman/Barry theme which still gives me goosebumps when I hear it.

When I eventually saw the film itself it largely lived up to the version in my head, and in some ways exceeded it, something that I cannot - hand on heart - say has been my experience with every subsequent Bond adventure (see: Die Another Day, Quantum of Solace).

And that's why I don't mind waiting seven months. It means seven more months of anticipation. Seven months to catch-up on Bond-related reading material that proliferates in the run up to a new film’s release (top pick for the hard core fan: the surreal comic delight of Quantum of Silliness).

There's the danger, of course, that we might get overhyped. With the exception of the monolithically impressive Casino Royale, the build up to the film is better than the payoff, more or less.

But however No Time To Die turns out, we have seven months of Bond discourse to enjoy. The usual debates will be allowed to simmer rather than boil: to what extent is Bond sexist? Are the films racist? Will we finally have a positive portrayal of a significant queer character?

I've been finding reasons to squeeze Bond into my teaching for years (is there a better longitudinal indicator of social change in cinema?) and 007 now attracts serious academic attention. Here's hoping prolonged exposure to Bond fever will provide more material for experts like Dr Lisa Funnell to study.

As they always do, less high-brow discussions about the cars, the gadgets, the clothes and the myriad of accoutrements will fill lifestyle supplements. But not just for a few weeks this time - seven months!

I am not for a second trivialising the impact the Coronavirus it will have on our society and our lives. The hoopla over a Bond film is not going to stop anyone fearing for the health of very vulnerable family members. My husband and me are in this exact position: both of our mothers have serious long-term respiratory conditions. We hope the worst that happens to us is we have to cancel a holiday or two. But there’s no point sitting around worrying about worst case scenarios.

I, for one, value the distraction of a leisurely countdown to 007’s latest adventure. And if, by the time we get to October, we still can’t travel anywhere exotic, we’ll have to do it vicariously, through our cinema screens.

2020 may be the year of Coronavirus but it will also be a year of Bond.

007 months and counting.