‘All the stunts are for real. There’s nothing that’s CGI, so to make the cars be more dramatic on the screen we had to turn off a lot of the safety features,’ says Neil Layton, Action Vehicle Coordinator, in this gritty new teaser footage for the 25th James Bond film – due for release at the end of this month.
The footage (believed to have been shot in June and July 2019) centres around a breakneck chase in which two Russian-registered Range Rover Sport SVRs blast over Norway’s famous Storseisundet Bridge, before diving off onto forest tracks (actually on the shores of Loch Laggan in Scotland) for high-speed fisticuffs with a Toyota 100 Series Land Cruiser – possibly with Bond at the wheel.
Nerves of steel
The Toyota is no match for the SVRs’ V8 thrust, but lairy high-speed driving on this dirt track ensures that both Range Rovers come a cropper. The Toyota meets a sticky end too, but not before it's squeezed one of the SVRs off the track, and sent the other careering up a bank into a stomach-churning airborne pirouette.
Watch the on-board footage in slow motion and you’ll see the revs climb as the SVR powers up the ramp and into the roll. Even though the car is fitted with an internal roll cage (whose front bar visibly deflects on the moment of impact), you have to admire the stunt driver’s nerves of steel. The right-front wheel seems to be ripped off altogether, along with a segment of the bumper, as the car flips through the air.
More than meets the eye
There’s more carnage going on here than you might think. The big jump features more than once, ruining at least two Range Rover Sports. One angle shows the SVR land squarely on its boot on the edge of the track; in another, it falls onto its roof in the middle of the track – flattening a perfectly positioned camera.
And in the brief clip where the Land Cruiser comes a cropper, the other vehicle tumbling through the dirt isn’t an SVR – it’s a black Range Rover Velar. But no official release has been made about a Velar in No Time To Die, and this is the only footage we see of a one… intriguing.
Enough words – watch it below!