THE SPY’S THE LIMIT

STRIP AWAY THE GADGETRY AND glamour, the schemes and the sex, the cars and the quips. Beyond the globe-hopping and the guns, what truly powers a James Bond film?

For Cary Joji Fukunaga it’s the man with the Walther PPK in his hand. “Bond always powers it, right?” says the director of No Time To Die, the superspy’s 25th official big screen mission. “These stories live and die on Bond’s agency and also on his imperfection, but I think this one really plays on a man whose exterior shell has been so hardened through loss and through hardship throughout his life.

“I really wanted to dig into the stuff we’ve learned about him now, over the course of the films, from his being orphaned in and then the legacy of ending with Madeleine Swann – where can this relationship take him? It was pretty exciting to start from