The following are only my thoughts after seeing No Time To Die. This is not a review of the film. WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!

No Time To Die starts off with a bang and gets less good as it goes along. The little girl was super-cute and adorable, but the ending was bending over backwards to tug at the heartstrings and be sentimental, and I wasn’t feeling it, especially the ending. From all appearances, they killed off Bond, which is a huge no-no, but then they promptly say that James Bond will return at the end of the credits. So I have no idea what they were trying to do, or are planning to do, which leaves me worried as a fan.

Bond dying could be some sort of symbolism of the end of 007 as we know him. Not of Daniel Craig’s Bond, who we already knew was stepping aside after this film, but of the traditional character that Ian Fleming created in his novels. What is sad is that I don’t think a lot of younger Bond fans even know that there are Bond novels.

Now the search for a new actor to play 007 will begin, and with the film industry’s recent track record, I don’t have a lot of confidence they’re going to get it right, or that they won’t bastardize future movies by making Bond politically-correct, or turning him into something he was never meant to be.

I’d still rank No Time To Die above Quantum of Solace , but I’d rank it below the rest of the Daniel Craig films. Apparently, it was supposed to be a callback to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in a lot of ways. It’s been years since I’ve seen that film, so if it was, it was lost on me.

I’ll miss Daniel Craig as 007. Overall, I thought he did a fantastic job over the course of his five films, especially Casino Royale, Skyfall, and Spectre. I hope whoever is picked to take the series into the future can carry on his legacy.