WARNING: The following contains spoilers for No Time to Die, in theaters now.
Daniel Craig's final Bond film pulls out all the stops to deliver a fitting farewell to the current 007. And in addition to bringing all the gadgets, action wisecracks and vodka martinis fans would expect, this also means bringing a formidable new foe to the table. This time around, it's Rami Malek's Lyutsifer Safin, a megalomaniac with a vendetta against SPECTRE and a terrifying biological weapon at his disposal. Once promotional material for the film started to emerge, some fans thought they had sussed out Safin's true identity. But how close were they to the truth?
A popular theory had suggested that Malek's Safin was in fact a modern reinvention of the Bond franchise's very first villain, Dr. Julius No, first seen in 1962's Dr. No. 2015's Spectre set something of a precedent for this, with Christoph Waltz's villainous Franz Oberhauser revealing himself to be Bond's old arch-nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Ultimately, though, Safin turned out to be just Safin But the theory wasn't entirely wrong, as the influence of both the character of Dr. No and the film to which he lends his name was keenly felt throughout No Time to Die.
The first film in the Bond franchise, Dr. No centers on the machinations of its eponymous villain as he schemes to interfere with US missile launches from his secret island base. No's plans involve the use of atomic radiation and he attracts the attention of MI6 when he murders John Strangways, their Station Chief in Jamaica. His interference with US missile launches also puts the CIA's Felix Leiter on the case. While Safin's plan in No Time to Die, which involves the mass dispersal of genetically targeted nanobots, is deadlier than Dr. No's, there are definite similarities between the villains.
Both Safin and No operate from similar island bases, where their cutting-edge scientific facilities are located. When Dr. No was released in 1962, atomic power like that harnessed by the villain was at the forefront of people's minds as a terrifying new technology that was shaping the ongoing Cold War. No Time to Die utilizes nanotechnology and biological warfare as similarly threatening areas of modern science in which to root Safin's murderous plan. The films even include similar imagery of their villains' lairs, with equipment stationed over deadly pools -- the reactor pool in which Dr. No meets his demise and the pool in which Safin is refining his bioweapon -- and the protective suits worn by Safin's henchmen echoing those worn by Dr. No's technicians. And just as the murder of Strangways brought Bond and Leiter together, Safin's abduction of scientist Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik) reunites the two spies.
Bond appears to draw a direct connection between the two villains' megalomania as well. Craig's Bond tells Safin "history isn't kind to men who play God," echoing Sean Connery's Bond when he told Dr. No "Our asylums are full of people who think they're Napoleon. Or God." There are differences between the characters, of course -- most prominently that Dr. No was an agent of SPECTRE, while Safin was committed to destroying the organization -- but in many ways, Safin appears to be a spiritual successor to Bond's very first enemy. And it's a creative direction that makes sense. The film's shocking ending sees the death of James Bond, so the decision to bring Bond back, on some level, to where it all began, brings the character's cinematic journey full circle.
No Time to Die's connections to Dr. No extend beyond the links between its villains. The film's opening titles, set to Billie Eilish's haunting theme, begin with a sequence of animated multicolored dots, harking back to Dr. No's own geometric title sequence. MI6's new 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), introduces herself to Bond in the guise of a diver, possibly as a nod to Ursula Andress's iconic Honey Ryder, the original Bond girl. These come alongside various other nods to moments from throughout Bond's cinematic and literary history, all of which helps imbue No Time to Die with an air of finale.
To see how Dr. No plays into the events of the 25th Bond film, No Time to Die arrives is in theaters now.
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