Entertainment

The New James Bond Movie Has a Name So Dumb It's Actually Incredible

It's called 'No Time to Die,' as in, "Sorry, I can't die right now—I'm too busy."
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Daniel Craig
Still from Spectre via MGM / Columbia Pictures

The new James Bond movie is going to be Daniel Craig's last, which means there's a lot of pressure on the Powers That Bond to give it a really good name. (This is a hard thing to do, which might explain why it's gone by Bond 25 for more than a year.) Director Cary Joji Fukunaga—or whoever it is that comes up with titles for movies—had to land on something iconic, something big to commemorate the end of an era in Bond-dom. After ostensibly spending months batting around ideas for the name, wracking their brains for something memorable and explosive and epic to call it, the best they could do was this:

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Yes: The title for the new James Bond movie is

No Time to Die

, as in, "Sorry—I can't die, I'm too busy." As in, "Hey, Death—great to hear from you. Do you mind if we circle back on this next week? I'm swamped." As in, "Apologies, but things are pretty hectic with work right now, and I have

No Time to Die."

The name of this movie is somehow even dumber than its old working title, Shatterhand, whatever that was supposed to mean. No Time to Die is such a dumb name that it's actually… kind of incredible. It allows us to envision a fateful encounter in which Rami Malek, who's playing the villain this time around, holds a gun to Daniel Craig's head and—after delivering a requisite Evil Speech in which he outlines his plan for global ruination—asks him if he has any last words, to which Craig replies: "Hey, man, I know this is pretty pressing, but I'm really, really slammed—I just don't have time to die right now."

No Time to Die kind of, barely, almost explains how James Bond has managed to stay alive, unaging, for nearly 60 years now: The guy's just too busy to die. He's too busy to get older. He is impervious to the forces of time and mortality to which the rest of us are subjected because his schedule is just that freaking packed.

No Time to Die, which also stars Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, and Billy Magnussen—some of whom might have time to die—comes out on April 8. Here's to hoping we actually get to hear James Bond say the words "I'm too busy for death" when it hits theaters.

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