I’ll just say it outright: the explosion at Vesper’s grave in No Time to Die was simply excessive, and any person in real life wouldn’t have survived. It could have been toned down a notch, but in the end, with all of the other oddities of the opening sequence, I guess it didn’t matter.

The moment becomes even more implausible when Bond conveniently finds a business card bearing the Spectre logo just as the bomb detonates. The scene carries the same contrived feeling as Blofeld’s bizarre MI6 “funhouse” from Spectre, complete with stations and photos of past villains in jail cells. It simply makes me laugh to think of some anonymous henchman doing menial preparation beforehand, like printing the past villain pictures (I assume Blofeld doesn’t print stuff out on a computer?) and taping them to the jail cell walls for some far-fetched psychological effect, especially assuming Bond follows the exact path in the huge MI6 building.

And really, it’s unfortunate because Vesper’s graveyard could’ve been an excellent setting for a tense shootout to perfectly kick off a movie titled No Time to Die. The remaining action sequences, including the chase featuring the Aston Martin DB5, were far more effective.