Though it’s bound to make boatloads of money by the end of its run, No Time To Die is failing to bring theater attendance back with a bang. Attendance is thinner than expected. I saw the film in an almost empty theater, and a young multiplex employee shrugged philosophically, “People who still care about James Bond are older . . . ” And it seems the older demographic is the most reluctant to return to theaters.

Judging by the media chatter and some of the narrative moves in this latest installment, the so-so opening numbers are probably one more factor in pushing the owners of the lucrative Bond franchise to do what it seems they were planning on anyway; that is, pivot sharply away from the traditional James Bond. Perhaps a female Agent 007? Perhaps a black female Agent 007? Lashana Lynch already plays just such a character in No Time To Die, setting up an amusing rivalry for the 007 number with Bond (Daniel Craig), who returns from an emotionally bruising five-year aborted retirement to find himself replaced. “I bet you thought they’d retire the number,” she snarks at him.

An even better contender for a new 007 would be the Cuban female agent named Paloma, played by the delightful Ana de Armas (Craig’s costar in Knives Out). She’s getting all the rave reviews for her brief dazzling turn in the Havana sequence of No Time To Die. She plays an effervescent spy with three weeks’ training who announces her nervousness about the mission with disarming frankness and deals with it by pounding one of Bond’s shaken-not-stirred martinis in one gulp. Dolled up in the usual Bond-girl wear, a revealing knockout of an evening gown, she treats Bond with an unprecedented all-spies-together friendliness. And she handles the inevitable fight scene with such high-heeled-roundhouse-kick aplomb that he says with a bemused smile as they part, “You were excellent.”