Aston Martin's Valhalla Isn't Really in "No Time to Die"

There are plenty of reasons to see No Time to Die on opening weekend. Go for Daniel Craig’s swan song as 007. Go for “one of fiction’s most eligible bachelors going Dad Mode.” Go for three Aston Martins, including the James Bond classic DB5, the Dalton-era V8 Vantage and the would be new if this came out on time DBS Superleggera. Just don’t go expecting to see the most exciting Aston Martin, the Valhalla hypercar.

Oh all right, I guess you will see the car in the literal sense. Aston Martin certainly didn’t lie when they said the Valhalla would be one of four of their cars featured in No Time to Die. But when someone says a car is featured in a movie, you expect it to perform the most basic of car functions: driving. The Valhalla can’t even follow through with a drive by.

Past, present and future.

To mark the 25th Bond film, #NoTimeToDie, four of our cars will be featured in the film.

From the classic DB5 and V8 Vantage, to the new DBS Superleggera and Aston Martin Valhalla, there is something for every Bond fan.#JamesBondDay @007 pic.twitter.com/cmKvswriHo
— Aston Martin (@astonmartin) October 5, 2019

Look, I hate Bond spoilers as much as the next person, but this hardly even counts: the limited-edition, $1.3 million Valhalla hypercar — which is now an ~$800K production supercar — only appears in one scene in No Time to Die and it’s not even mentioned by name, much less driven. It simply acts as dramatic scenery for a phone call with M (played by Ralph Fiennes), with him in the foreground and the car plopped behind in a wind tunnel.

In this sense, it is regrettably relegated to the status of product placement. While the other Aston Martins, and Land Rover Defenders and Triumph motorcycles, do their duty as high-performance vehicles in the film, the Valhalla is like the Nokia phone Bond uses in one scene: a subliminal ad completely unnecessary for the storytelling. That’s par for the course for Bond, a franchise that spares no expense thanks to said product placements, but a bit of a letdown nonetheless.

Should we have seen this coming? Possibly. As we noted in July, the Valhalla has undergone a significant remake since No Time to Die was filmed; those who did get a chance to see the original model up close, like YouTuber Supercar Blondie, were met with an engine-less car. But if anyone could have inspired Aston Martin to get their Valhalla into gear and make a drivable version, it was James Bond.

Unfortunately, that was one mission 007 couldn’t finish.