Although I had expected to see the latest James Bond movie on Sunday night, as per my last post, it took until Wednesday due to the ever-popular "abundance of caution" related to COVID. My younger son is actually quarantining for two weeks because someone in his class got COVID, and one or two others have subsequently tested positive. Although I never rant about COVID protocols, because I am a strong supporter of the progressive-minded caution that gives birth to them, I do think it's weird that we quarantine kids for two weeks after we've basically given up trying to contain the virus. Isn't it likely that a kid in every class out there has COVID and we just have to deal with that?
But by Tuesday our whole family had already gotten two negative COVID tests back since Friday, so it was time for me to venture out for only my third movie in the theater since theaters opened again three weeks ago. For some people, one movie a week might be a lot -- for me, it means I'm falling terribly far behind at the wrong time of year to do so.
I had been dreading this one a bit. The two hour and 43-minute running time figured to be quite the challenge for me, as I have been falling asleep at home during movies less than half that length. Despite really liking the latest movie in my noir series, 1945's Detour (post to come), I actually fell asleep during its 67-minute running time. (I always have the presence of mind to pause in this scenario to avoid missing anything.)
So I came equipped with two cans of Pepsi Max and an extra-large bag of gummy snakes.
(I can't just throw out the Pepsi Max reference and leave it without comment. I am historically a Coke man. For some reason I decided I liked the taste of Pepsi Max better than the taste of No Sugar Coke. I'm still wrestling with it.)
In past 163-minute movies, that bag of gummy snakes would have been just the starting point. I'd throw some chocolate in there too as a different sort of sweet that might give me a little jolt when I needed it most. But I'm also trying to lose some weight right now. I could fall off the wagon a bag of gummy snakes' worth in order to not let No Time to Die beat me, but I wasn't willing to fritter away any recent dieting gains more than that.
But how to make an open bag of gummy snakes last?
I'm one of those people who will eat and eat a movie snack until it is gone. I can't set aside some for later. I can make a drink last, but not food. It's just not how I'm programmed.
Well I decided I needed to change my programming for this one. So I had to come up with a method.
The first part of that method was to hold off on starting them as long as possible. But after a very long pre-credits sequence that effectively involves two cold opens, I found myself tearing the bag. So time for strategy #2.
And I thought, let's make a drinking game out of this.
I would allow myself five gummy snakes at a time, each to be eaten in segments, but I would wait for another particular milestone in the movie to pass before I got my next five. Just as how someone might watch Austin Powers and drink every time he says "Yeah baby!", I decided to eat every time ... well, not every time the same thing happened, but every time the next new thing I'd chosen happened.
The opening sequence had involved only two actors I knew, Daniel Craig and Lea Seydoux -- and also Rami Malek behind a mask, though it was only my knowledge that it was Malek that helped me determine that. So my first milestone was to wait until an actor I could name appeared on screen.
Not too long after the credits Naomie Harris became that person. Five more snakes.
The next one took a little longer. I decided I would wait for a gun to appear on screen. Shouldn't take that long in a Bond movie, but in this case, it was about 15 minutes. Ana de Armas was the one to draw a gun in the scene in Cuba. And while on the one hand I was desperate for my next portion of snakes, on the other hand I was pleased that this was working.
The next one also took a little while. I decided I was going to wait until a character we had been introduced to dies. I won't tell you who came through for me on that to avoid spoilers, but the risk paid off as I again waited about 15 minutes.
I thought I'd chosen too hard of a choice for my next one. I decided to wait until Seydoux's character appeared again. But then I panicked and thought "What if she doesn't reappear until the third act as a twist?" So I switched to the next time "007" was uttered. But I had to cheat a little here, because right on queue Seydoux did appear. I allowed that to count and took five more snakes.
Other milestones included the next time I saw fire on screen (I ended up allowing the burst of flame from a gun barrel to count), the next time I saw a "Bond gadget" (Q gave Bond his special watch only a few minutes later), and the next time I saw a flying object (bird or plane would have sufficed, but I went with an airborne car, which came only moments before a helicopter). There may have been one other in there.
The last one -- the next time there were subtitles on screen, as two characters are French -- never arrived. But by then it was nearly the end of the movie and I had only one gummy snake left. At this point it made no sense to deny myself the last snake, so I ate it.
As for the Pepsi Max, I drank one and a quarter cans.
If you came to this post to figure out what I thought about the movie, well, I'm sorry to make you wait so long. I enjoyed it. Maybe because of my little game, or maybe just because of the successful pacing of the movie, this did not feel as long as I knew it was. That's a good thing of course. Means I was enjoying myself.
I kind of want to talk spoilers but I'm not going to do that today. Maybe in a couple days, with sufficient warnings, if I'm still thinking about it.
Oh, why did I choose Ben Whishaw's Q?
Well, you may not have noticed this when you were watching, but I certainly did. Q actually eats gummy snakes/worms in this movie! As he is trying to crack some code on his computer, he picks from a modest bowl of gummies that contains about seven of the sugary reptiles.
Presumably the task he was involved in carried no risk of putting him to sleep.
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