Most movies claim to have explosive finales; however, Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movie, No Time To Die, literally has such a moment. That scene is an even bigger deal now, as the climactic final set piece to the 25th 007 movie has just shattered a Guinness World Record, and other films are going to have a hard time beating it.
Over on the official YouTube feed for the James Bond franchise, there are a lot of details given about the huge moment that saw yet another honor added to director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s end of an era. This is thanks to a video where special effects/stunt action coordinator Chris Corbould tells the story about how this new record came to be. In Mr. Corbould’s words, here’s how it all happened:
While we were rigging the explosions, one of the guys from Event Horizon, the explosive company, came up to me and said, ‘Oh, Chris, you know that there is a different Guinness Book of Records award out there?’ Now I thought we had got that with Spectre, but apparently there was another one for ‘the most high explosives in one shot.’ The record was for 65 kilograms of high explosives in one shot. We had 140 [kilograms] in our one.
As Chris Corbould stated above, this brand-new Guinness World Record came out of his achievement of another while filming 2015’s Spectre. One would have thought that the record for high explosives in one shot would go hand-i- hand with landing the largest filmed explosion, but apparently those causes aren’t as intertwined as one would think. Almost as if to make up for lost time, the James Bond effects team went with over double the amount needed to break the record, and the result was breathtaking. Get ready to watch some explosives through the official video commemorating this new record:
If you’re still sensitive to spoilers for No Time To Die, skip to the paragraph after the next quote. That’s because this big record came from a big moment in the film’s “explosive finale,” with the explosions in question taking place during the destruction of Lyustifer Safin’s poison garden base. As explained in the video above, Chris Corbould mentioned that the explosions shown above were used as part of the finished scene that it belongs to; this also happened to be the exact moment we saw James Bond die without any reservation in the film.
This quest in further record breaking has been in the making for some time, with the first mention coming from the press notes for the film’s theatrical release. So when CinemaBlend had a chance to speak with Mr. Corbould himself during the home video junket in England, we asked him if he thought the record would stand. Confirming his suspicions that he believed they stuck the landing, the James Bond franchise legend who’s worked in the effects department since The Spy Who Loved Me mentioned that even that first record for Spectre came after the powers-that-be started asking the right questions:
Yes, I think we’ve got it. That’s more of a production endeavor, really. On Spectre, they came up to me and said, ‘Is this a big explosion?’ Of course I said, ‘Yeah,’ and they said, ‘Is it the biggest one you’ve ever done?’ I said, ‘Eh, I think it probably is,’ then that cranked up the cogs for them to then go to the Guinness Book of World Records and looking into it. It was production driven, really.
Two James Bond films in a row now have record-breaking explosions attached to their list of accomplishments. Most of the pressure for Bond 26’s big moment may be resting on whomever franchise producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson decide to eventually cast as the next 007. Though it’s almost assured that somewhere in the planning phase, there’s going to be a talk about which new world record could potentially be beaten in that next film. Which means that Chris Corbould is going to do what he does best, and make history yet again.
You can catch that historic explosion for yourself in No Time To Die, which is currently available to rent or buy on various formats.
