Today, Empire released a first-look video of Bond 25 which might as well be titled “Bond 25: Everything is fine!”. After multiple incidents on set, including an injury to Daniel Craig and a slight out-of-control controlled explosion that injured a crew member, Bond 25 is course-correcting by showing us a video of sexy people doing sexy things in sexy Jamaica, all set to sexy reggae music. Everything is fine! We’re not cursed! Look at us working hard in Jamaica! We’re great! So great! Ignore the hysterical laughter drifting from the distance, we’re fine! Totally fine! Everyone is Very Sexy! Totally normal Bond things!
 
Does this look like a “well-polished sh-t show”? Of course not. It looks like a movie being made. It looks like sixty seconds culled from hours upon hours of daily footage of a movie being made. Of these sixty seconds, each one looks cool. Helicopters! Sea planes! Shady CIA types! Bond in a beach-Jeep! Lashana Lynch! Cary Fukunaga in a panama hat! (I am VERY into that.) Of course, this curated sixty-second first look is solid. It’s only sixty seconds. And they’re hardly going to show us the take where Daniel Craig broke his ankle, or that explosion that injured a crew member. Although it is pretty ballsy to end the video with a fireball.

Is Bond 25 doomed? No. Every once in a while a nightmare production works out. Mad Max: Fury Road was the last one to do so, so maybe we’re due for another miracle movie. And to be fair, Bond 25 does not sound as off-the-rails as Fury Road ever did, so it’s not a lost cause. Bond 25 has just had a lot of bad luck. Like I think they might have been cursed by a sea witch, but it doesn’t sound like Fukunaga has totally lost control of his set yet. We’ll have to see if reports of wild overspending and stars who can’t stand each other materialize. For now, we can only hope that the sight of Cary Fukunaga in a panama hat is enough to soothe the sea witch’s ire, and that Bond 25 proceeds without any more drama.
 

 

Attached - Daniel Craig, Cary Fukunaga, and Ralph Fiennes visit with Prince Charles on the Bond set in England last week.