'No Time to Die': Bond Ends His Career in Italian Style

James Bond movies are full of action, Bond girls, and most of all, exotic locations.

Daniel Craig's last 007 film finally gets its world premiere in London.

Inspirations for Bond film titles include the works of a 17th-century Japanese poet, a French advertising campaign in the 1940s, and even a phrase originating from the epitaph of Alexander the Great.

In No Time To Die, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.

Agent 007 may be the most quintessentially British spy, but he doesn’t spend too much of his time confined to his homeland.

Bond, James Bond, has been evading enemies, shooting up allies, and pursuing villains in high-speed car chases around the world.

Italy features prominently in No Time To Die, including in the opening scene.

The final trailer has been released for the movie which was partly filmed in Matera, the 2019 European Capital of Culture. A town in Basilicata looks like it is carved directly into the hillside – because it is. Hundreds of tiny grottoes make up the famous town, which as recently as the 1980s was all but abandoned.

"The monochrome nature of Matera already makes it feel like a large necropolis. There's a lot of metaphors there in terms of what Bond was leaving behind for the next chapter. So that's kind of how we got there. We also combined two different cities in the sequence. The bridge that we say connects Matera to the necropolis is actually in a neighboring town around 30, 40 minutes away called Gravina in Puglia. We made it seem like it's all part of the same journey, but it's actually not part of the same town."
'No Time to Die's' production designer Mark Tildesley

A car chase scene with the Aston Martin DB5 starts at Piazza San Pietro Caveoso. The motorcycle stunt jumping near Matera Cathedral in Piazza Duomo was performed for real, as many fans captured the images on set.

After Matera and some scenes by the grand cathedral and the ancient cave houses, which have been listed as World Heritage by Unesco, the filming goes to the neighboring and equally picturesque region of Puglia.

Gravina di Puglia in the province of Bari, a town famous for its dramatic two-level Roman bridge spanning a ravine, is the film's second southern Italian location.

Sapri, a town in Salerno, also features in the film. James Bond and Dr. Madeleine Swann can be spotted at a railway station, and viewers can identify Midnight Canale and Big Arch Beach in No Time to Die.