Michael May's Blog, page 130

Die Another Day (2002) | Music

Garbage's theme to The World Is Not Enough was great, but it wasn't a huge hit in the US, so MGM wanted a high-profile artist to sing the title song for Die Another Day. And it doesn't get much more high-profile than Madonna. She was given autonomy to create the song herself, so she wrote it with Mirwais Ahmadzaï, her collaborator of a couple of years at that point. Ahmadzaï had co-written "Music" (among other songs) with her and "Die Another Day" has the same techno sound she was using at the time.

Most fans I've talked to call it the worst of the Bond songs, but I disagree. I'd argue that it's not even the worst Brosnan song (Sheryl Crow's "Tomorrow Never Dies"), but I really don't understand why anyone would rank "All Time High" or even "Licence to Kill" and "Moonraker" above it. It's weird and different - and yeah, that "analyze this" line is super annoying - but it's at least trying something new as opposed to many of the later Moore themes.

It's also not one of my favorites though. It seems to be about Bond's mindset during his fourteen months of torture as he's trying to survive and resist the tearing down of his will. But the lyrics are extremely poetic and - unlike "View to a Kill," which is also abstruse - I'm not fond enough of the music for it to distract me from the words.

Still, it's a catchy enough tune and the strings are awesome, so while I don't love it, I like it better than many. Could've done without the remix over the closing credits though. It would have been nice to hear something by David Arnold for that.

Daniel Kleinman makes great use of the song for the credits sequence. There's a little tapping part at the beginning and Kleinman has animated scorpion tails rising into place in time with the music. The scorpions of course are part of Bond's torture, because Kleinman is using the credits as an actual part of the story. The teaser ends with Bond's capture and torture, so the credits are basically a musical montage to illustrate what Bond's going through. The ice water that Bond's face was plunged into during the teaser becomes ice women, and as the credits progress we also see women made of fire and electricity to represent hot pokers and shock treatment. Kleinman also inserts images of Bond's being beaten. And there's some diamond imagery, too, since that's what the villains are into.

The only thing I don't like is the use of female bodies to represent the methods of torture. Thematically, that doesn't work. It's been established - especially in the Brosnan films - that Bond uses women to overcome suffering. They don't really work as a metaphor for pain. It just seems like Kleinman's throwing dancing women into the credits because that's what's expected. Except for that, the credits are bold and really strong.

David Arnold is still getting plenty of use out of the Bond Theme. It plays during the hovercraft chase, when Bond's reinstated as a Double-O, when he's parasurfing a tidal wave, and as he and Jinx escape Grave's ruined cargo plane in a helicopter. There's even a cool, Latin version of the Bond Theme playing when he arrives at his hotel in Cuba.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. A View to a Kill
2. "Surrender" (end credits of Tomorrow Never Dies)
3. The Living Daylights
4. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. Diamonds Are Forever
7. You Only Live Twice
8. From Russia With Love (instrumental version)
9. The World Is Not Enough
10. Live and Let Die

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. GoldenEye
6. From Russia with Love
7. The Spy Who Loved Me
8. Die Another Day
9. Tomorrow Never Dies
10. Diamonds Are Forever

Die Another Day (2002) | Villains

Die Another Day is too excessive in general, but a little excess is good and it works with Zao. I like that we get an origin story for him and his final look is eerie and beautiful. The greatest compliment I can pay a henchman is that I wish he wouldn't have died so that we could get more of him. I can't even say that about every henchman currently in my Top Ten, but I can definitely say it about Zao.



I can't say it about Mr. Kil though. Lawrence Makoare is a great presence in the Lord of the Rings movies, but his Bond character is just a joke name and an extra person for Bond to get through.



Miranda Frost is so frustrating. Rosamund Pike is using every ounce of her mojo to make Frost interesting, but there's just nothing to work with. We're supposed to believe that she's betrayed her country just so Moon would help her cheat and win a gold medal? What kind of person does that? The movie obviously doesn't know.



Moon/Graves is a great concept. I love the DNA sci-fi laid over Fleming's version of Hugo Drax. And it's cool that Graves has some of the same weaknesses that Drax does. But his big screw up is paying for Zao's surgery with his own engraved diamonds. Graves' diamonds have been altered to hide their origin as conflict diamonds, so why not pay for Zao's procedure with the original versions? Dumb.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Never Say Never Again)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
4. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
5. Maximilian Largo (Never Say Never Again)
6. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
7. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
8. Doctor No (Dr. No)
9. General Gogol (For Your Eyes Only)
10. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Zao (Die Another Day)
6. Gobinda (Octopussy)
7. May Day (A View to a Kill)
8. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker)
9. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
10. Oddjob (Goldfinger)

Die Another Day (2002) | Women

Miranda Frost's name is awfully on-the-nose, isn't it? Not a lot of subtlety there. She's unemotional, we get it. She even hangs out in an ice palace. But beyond her coldness, the movie hasn't given any thought to her as a person. Even her role as juxtaposition to Bond's methods is weakened when we learn that her methods aren't really her methods at all, but a cover for a meaningless plot twist. I want to like her, but I don't.



Before Die Another Day was even out, there was talk about spinning Jinx into her own series. As if this was such a strong character that of course audiences would demand more of her. So already she's got something to prove and then she's introduced by deliberately evoking the very first and most iconic Bond Girl. There were other reasons for both of these things, but together they give the impression that the movie is trying way too hard with Jinx.

And she's just not that great a character. She's snotty, immoral, vicious, and generally unpleasant. And she winds up the damsel in distress not just once, but twice, having to be rescued by Bond. I suppose Halle Berry was supposed to be enough to make us want the spin-off, because it certainly wasn't anything else about her. Give me a Wai Lin series any day, though.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
3. Kara Milovy (The Living Daylights)
4. Wai Lin (Tomorrow Never Dies)
5. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
6. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
7. Natalya Simonova (GoldenEye)
8. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
9. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
10. Christmas Jones (The World Is Not Enough)

Die Another Day (2002) | Bond

Actors and Allies



As silly as Die Another Day gets, Brosnan is still taking Bond seriously. He never wavers from this in his four movies. Things can be going completely nuts around him, but he continues to play this fascinating version of Fleming's troubled character who masks his pain with jokes and hedonism. It's not one of my favorite versions of Bond, but it's a great experiment and I'm glad they tried it. One of my favorite examples from Die Another Day is when he walks into a Hong Kong hotel sopping wet in his pajamas. It's ridiculous, but he's just as confident and in control as he always is.

Bond's relationship with M continues to be complicated. She discusses his value with Miranda Frost later on, but claims not to have any use for him early in the movie. I don't think she's being completely honest there though. Bond's embarrassed her by getting captured and raising questions about whether he's the one who's been leaking information to the North Koreans. She isn't happy about having to give up Zao, so she takes it out on him.

But I don't believe she really wishes that Bond would have used his cyanide capsule. I'll explain why in a minute, but first, I'm not sure how I feel about Bond's admission that he threw the cyanide away "years ago." Paula Caplan bravely gave up her life in Thunderball when she was captured, but Bond won't make the same sacrifice? Is that hubris, cowardice, or something else? He seems proud of it.

At any rate, M tells him that he's useless and rescinds his Double-O status, but I don't think she means it. It's been established in the previous Brosnan films that she considers Bond to be her best agent. If we're going to take that continuity seriously, her dismissing him in Die Another Day sounds more like the fake "personal leave" that M used to grant Bond in the Lazenby and Moore films. I believe she cuts him loose because she knows that's the best way for him to get answers without the oversight of Damian Falco and the NSA.

Speaking of Falco, we're not supposed to like him, but Michael Madsen is working overtime to make sure that happens. He's smarmy and a bully and I don't understand why the NSA has to be here at all. Jinx works for them, but she could have as easily been a CIA agent. And if she had, maybe she wouldn't have been as immature and immoral as she turned out. Bond hasn't always liked his CIA contacts, but at least they seem to be good guys. It's hard to say that about Jinx and Falco.

Finally, a word about Moneypenny. Apparently, all her teasing and judging of Bond has been an act. Q has a Danger Room/Holodeck now and Moneypenny has no problem using it to fantasize about making out with Bond. I get it and it's fine that she's attracted to him without being able to reveal it; I just wish that my last impression of her wasn't that she's a jealous hypocrite for giving Bond a rough time when she clearly wants to do with him what he's been doing with all those other women.

Best Quip



"Saved by the bell," after using a bell to swing off a doomed hovercraft. It's not a great quip, but it says something about Die Another Day that this is the best of the bunch.

Worst Quip



"I've been known to keep my tip up," concerning fencing, but not really. Brosnan's Bond is way more fond of erection jokes than I am.

Gadgets



I like that he uses the laser watch and rebreather from previous movies. That's fun.

He also has a couple of other nifty, personal items: a ring that shatters even bulletproof glass and a C4 detonator disguised as the winding pin on his watch.

For vehicles, the NSA's Switchblade flyers are really cool and actually work, but they're overshadowed by Q's invisible car. It's great they Q's gone back to an Aston Martin after using BMWs for Brosnan's other films - and I like the tracking machineguns - but that's all that's cool about the new ride. The invisibility cloak is ridiculous, the thermal imaging is dull, and most of the rest of the car's gadgets are homages to previous films, so they're not original or exciting. It has an ejector seat and rockets like Goldfinger, remote control like the last two movies, and spiked wheels like The Living Daylights.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Iceberg boat (A View to a Kill)
5. The Q Boat (The World Is Not Enough)
6. Aston Martin V8 Vantage (The Living Daylights)
7. Glastron CV23HT speed boat (Moonraker)
8. Acrostar Mini Jet (Octopussy)
9. Crocodile submarine (Octopussy)
10. X-Ray Specs (The World Is Not Enough)

Die Another Day (2002) | Story

Plot Summary

Bond investigates a leak that led to his capture and 14-month torture in North Korea.

Influences

Die Another Day is another new story, but it does draw inspiration from a couple of Bond novels and (because it was released on the 40th anniversary of Dr. No) the movie series in general.

One of the books it pulls from isn't even a Fleming one, but the first continuation novel, Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis. Published four years after Fleming's death, just after the You Only Live Twice movie had been released, Colonel Sun has Bond teaming up with a female Soviet agent to track down a Chinese villain who kidnapped M. So it's more of a story influence on The Spy Who Loved Me and The World Is Not Enough than on Die Another Day, which just borrows the villain's name and Bond's being tortured. Even the villain's nationality and name are changed from the Chinese Colonel Sun Liang-tan to the North Korean Colonel Tan-Sun Moon.

A bigger influence over the plot is Fleming's Moonraker. Colonel Moon undergoes DNA restructuring to disguise himself as a wealthy Englishman named Gustav Graves, but he's secretly still loyal to his original nation. He announces a technological breakthrough that he's philanthropically developed on his own dime and is offering to the world. But his real plan is to use the technology as a weapon against his nation's enemies. There's also a woman British agent embedded in the villain's organization as his assistant whom Bond teams up with. All of that is right out of Moonraker (in fact, the assistant Miranda Frost was originally going to be named Gala Brand) as is the villain's membership in an English club called Blades. Die Another Day puts its own twist on all of it, of course.

From the movies, Die Another Day has all kinds of Easter Eggs. Here are as many as I could find, but let me know in the comments if you've spotted any others.

Jinx's intro on the beach and her knife belt are deliberate homages to Ursula Andress in Dr. No. This used to bug me a lot until I realized that it's just one of many homages, but it's certainly one of the most obvious ones.The Chinese Secret Service tries to film Bond's having sex in a hotel, just like SPECTRE does in From Russia with Love. Bond also picks up (and smells?!) Rosa Klebb's shoe knife in Q's lab.Bond bets against Gustav with an irresistible diamond, similar to how he used Nazi gold to get Goldfinger's attention during golf. And Zao straps down Jinx and threatens her with a laser like in Goldfinger, too.The jetpack from Thunderball makes an appearance and Bond uses a re-breather very similar to the one he had in that movie. Bond also steals a grape from the clinic in Die Another Day, just like he did from Angelo's Shrublands room in Thunderball.In You Only Live Twice, Tiger Tanaka mentions that M has a private subway train. We get to see it in Die Another Day.Graves actually says the line, "Diamonds are forever." And his killer satellite is pretty much the same as the one Blofeld created, though not actually created out of diamonds.Sheriff JW Pepper from Live and Let Die makes an appearance. Not really; just seeing if you're paying attention. He wouldn't have been that out of place though.There are some spinning mirrors in the DNA replacement clinic that are similar to Scaramanga's in The Man with the Golden Gun.Graves uses a Union Jack parachute like the one Bond has in The Spy Who Loved Me.The Acrostar and crocodile sub from Octopussy are both in Q's workshop.The way Bond and Jinx escape Graves' cargo plane is similar to the way Bond and Kara escape theirs in The Living Daylights.Bond temporarily goes rogue as he does in License to Kill.He uses his laser watch from GoldenEye (and arguably from Never Say Never Again, if we want to go that far). 
It didn't make it into the movie, but originally the Chinese operative Chang was going to be Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies. Sadly, they couldn't work it out with Michelle Yeoh, but that would've been another one.

How Is the Book Different?

I said I was going to retire this section, but there's enough in common with Moonraker to point out some major tweaks that Die Another Day makes. Hugo Drax's original nationality is German and he remains loyal to the ideas of the Nazis. That's changed to North Korea for Graves. Also, the club Blades is now basically a super fancy fencing gym. And instead of the Moonraker rocket (a fictionalized, upgraded V2) for Britain, Graves has created the Icarus satellite that focuses solar energy year-round to agricultural areas that need it all over the world.

Plotwise, a major difference is that Miranda Frost is actually a triple-agent working for the villain she's supposed to be spying on.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



In addition to the Moonraker stuff, there's plenty of Blunt Instrument talk in Die Another Day. In fact, it was this movie that put that term on my radar and explicitly stated it as Bond's primary tactic and use in MI6.

Die Another Day gets a lot of crap and a lot of it is deserved, but the script is smarter than we give it credit for. I love the conversation between M and Frost about tactics. Frost has been undercover with Graves for months and hasn't turned up anything incriminating. Of course, we later learn that this is because she's in league with him, but it gives M the chance to explain Bond's methods and why they're valuable in these kinds of situations. Fans poke fun at Bond all the time for being a lousy spy, but that's because he's not that kind of spy. He's not like Frost. But he's extremely useful in certain kinds of missions and Die Another Day makes that clearer than it's ever been before.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



As smart as the script sometimes is, there's also a huge amount of whackadoo, from ice hotels to invisible cars. And director Lee Tamahori isn't helping with his use of CGI for some of the bigger stunts. Fleming could get pulpy and crazy, but his novels always feel grounded in reality. Die Another Day doesn't; even more so than the nuttiest Roger Moore ones.

Cold Open



We get a sense for how outlandish Die Another Day is going to be right from the gun barrel sequence. The Bond Theme during it is way too busy with excessive percussion and then when Bond fires, we actually see the bullet from his gun shoot at us and into the gun barrel. Like the rest of the movie, there's not a lot of thought about whether something should be done bigger.

The teaser itself is good though. It opens in North Korea with Bond and some other agents surfing into the country. And the surfing is really cool, from the photography to the music to the way the surfers are gradually revealed coming out of enormous waves.

From there, they intercept a helicopter and Bond replaces a diamond courier, planting C4 in the briefcase that holds the jewels. They then go to Colonel Moon's headquarters where we meet the officer and his henchman Zao (who's introduced beating up his anger therapist, speaking of unsubtlety, but it doesn't ruin anything). Moon and Zao receive a message that Bond is a spy, so they kill his associates and try to kill him. He blows up the diamonds though in Zao's face (literally) and steals a hovercraft to escape across the minefield of the DMZ between North and South Korea.

The hovercraft chase is pretty great with the hard-to-control vehicles slipping all over the place and crashing into each other like bumper cars. Bond winds up jumping onto Moon's hovercraft and fighting him, then jumps to safety just as Moon and the hovercraft go over a cliff.

There are no awesome stunts, but it's so far so good until Moon's father shows up. Bond has plenty of warning that General Moon is coming, but doesn't even try to escape. He just stands around waiting to be captured and taken back to the base for some torture. As his head is plunged into icy water, the credits start.

Except for that convenient lack of escape instinct on Bond's part at the end, it's an intriguing teaser with some strong visuals and action. Nothing that's going to push it into the Top Ten, but a good, solid, mid-level teaser.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. GoldenEye
2. The Spy Who Loved Me
3. Moonraker
4. Thunderball
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. A View to a Kill
7. Goldfinger
8. The Man with the Golden Gun
9. The Living Daylights
10. Licence to Kill

Movie Series Continuity



A lot of the Easter Eggs build on movie continuity, especially in Q's workshop, but that's pretty much it for direct ties to previous films. Chief of Staff Charles Robinson is still around, so that's great, but he has less to do this time than the last couple of films.

The World Is Not Enough (1999) | Music

After having his theme song to Tomorrow Never Dies bumped in favor of Sheryl Crowe's, new Bond composer David Arnold got to write the song for The World Is Not Enough. He worked with Don Black, who'd written the themes for Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun, and who'd co-written with Arnold the unused Tomorrow Never Dies song. (Well, it was was used over the closing credits, but you know what I mean.) Getting to use his own music, it makes sense that he incorporates this theme song into the score more than he did the one for Tomorrow.

To sing the song, they hired the band Garbage, a great choice that hearkened back to the days of getting culturally relevant artists instead of throwbacks. It's a beautiful, haunting song, enhanced by Shirley Manson's powerful voice. And it follows the tradition of turning the movie's title into a love song, although a very greedy one. It doesn't describe the kind of relationship I'd want, but nicely sums up Erika King's twisted world view in the film.

For the credits sequence, Daniel Kleinman pulled inspiration from the Kings' oil company. It opens with oil drops and then becomes all manner of combinations of oil and women: women submerged in oil, women covered in oil, women made of oil. And finally it closes with a field of oil pumps. It's a gorgeous sequence, as all Kleinman's are, but it does get repetitive.

Arnold's score is pretty great, including a collaboration with Garbage for the parahawks sequence. He doesn't use the Bond Theme quite as much as he did in Tomorrow Never Dies, but it's still all over the place - way more than John Barry ever used it. It plays when Bond's escaping the banker's office in the teaser and again during the speedboat chase on the Thames. It's playing as he shows up at Elektra's oil field and during the battle between Bond's BMW and the sawblade helicopter. One of my favorite uses is when Bond tells Christmas his real name as he improvises an elevator to get them out of the bomb facility. "Bond," he says. Cue music as they shoot up the shaft and come to a halt at the top. "James Bond." Very cool.

And finally, instead of a separate song for the closing credits, there's a techno remix of the Bond Theme there as well.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. A View to a Kill
2. "Surrender" (end credits of Tomorrow Never Dies)
3. The Living Daylights
4. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. Diamonds Are Forever
7. You Only Live Twice
8. From Russia With Love (instrumental version)
9. The World Is Not Enough
10. Live and Let Die

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. GoldenEye
6. From Russia with Love
7. The Spy Who Loved Me
8. Tomorrow Never Dies
9. Diamonds Are Forever
10. Live and Let Die

The World Is Not Enough (1999) | Villains

The first henchman we meet is known in the credits only as Cigar Girl, but the novelization for The World Is Not Enough calls her Giulietta da Vinci. She's not a great henchman. For instance,  she unnecessarily calls attention to herself by shooting at MI6 HQ from her boat on the Thames. But it's nice to see a woman henchman in a role that doesn't explicitly demand one (ie, there's no romantic angle between her and Bond).



I don't know why I even bring up Elektra's security chief Davidov, except that he's an important plot point. He's a nothing character whose motivation is unclear until the movie's real villain is revealed. And by then Davidov is dead.



I love Robert Carlyle and I love the potential of a dying man who can feel no pain and has nothing to lose. But World doesn't do enough with Renard. Once Elektra emerges as the movie's real villain, Renard becomes nothing more than another henchman with a gimmick. I mean, he's still played by Robert Carlyle, which is awesome, but he's not as awesome through and through as he should have been.

Bravo for his use of the parahawks though. That attack sequence is probably my favorite part of the movie.



It's such a great idea to reveal that the Bond Girl is actually the villain. This is why I don't really care that much that Renard gets demoted in the third act. Elektra is a great idea and she's wonderfully played by Sophie Marceau.

But like I mentioned yesterday, there are too many unanswered questions about her. Most importantly, why did she go crazy? Was is just the kidnapping or did she already have that tendency? And why is she so obsessed with sex?

A clue to that last question is when she tells Bond about seducing her guards to get away from Renard when he'd kidnapped her. In hindsight, it sounds like she really only seduced Renard, but her feelings about the event are probably honest. She describes it to Bond as "taking control," which makes a lot of sense for a young woman with an extremely powerful father. It sounds like she got a thrill from rescuing herself. And if she already resented her dad for being overprotective (this is totally reading between the lines, but that's all we've got to go on), her experience overcoming Renard probably gave her the confidence to eliminate her pop.

But she's wired so strangely that she now seems to conflate control with sex. She's consumed by sex. Even when it's clear that she and Bond are on opposite sides, she wants to be lovers with him again. And she's overly concerned about whether Bond and Christmas have been intimate. She doesn't sound that jealous when she asks - her issue isn't the same as Fatima Blush's - she just realizes that her control over Bond is diminished if he's moved on.

I wish all that was clearer or better explored in the movie. She's a great start to a character, but the villains suffer a lot in World by having to split the film between them. Renard is the bad guy for the first half and Elektra takes over for the end, with neither getting as much attention as they deserve.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Never Say Never Again)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
4. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
5. Maximilian Largo (Never Say Never Again)
6. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
7. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
8. Doctor No (Dr. No)
9. General Gogol (For Your Eyes Only)
10. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Gobinda (Octopussy)
6. May Day (A View to a Kill)
7. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker)
8. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
9. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
10. Necros (The Living Daylights)

The World Is Not Enough (1999) | Women

Dr. Molly Warmflash might be my least favorite Bond woman of all time. First there's her horrible name, but more than that she's a kind of character who doesn't belong in modern Bond films. I accepted Caroline from GoldenEye because she was an intentional throwback for the rest of the movie to comment on, but Warmflash (I hate even typing that name) doesn't get that leeway. She knows she's doing something unethical by clearing Bond for duty with a screwed up collarbone, but she does it anyway for sex in the exam room. And just to make sure we don't mistake this for a mutually non-committal thing, she makes the condition of her compliance that "you have to promise to call me this time." She's the worst.

Well, Bond's the worst, but she's right there next to him.



Sophie Marceau is wonderful at Elektra King, though the character's motivations could have been developed a lot better. I love the tragedy and how it affects M; I'm just not convinced that there's enough there to explain Elektra's hatred toward her father and her sociopathy.

I'd also love more background on her motto: "There's no point in living, if you can't feel alive." Is that something she believed before her kidnapping or did it develop after? We get no sense for what Elektra was like before meeting Renard, which is unfortunate. She's a fascinating character and could have been even more so.

Another thing I really like about her is how she shames Bond for using her (for sex as well as bait). That's not quite fair since she pushed hard for the sex, but it's cool to see Bond confronted for once after doing this to so many women. I would have loved to see Solitaire push him like that, for instance.



So... Dr. Christmas Jones.

Here's the thing. I don't hate her. Not by a long shot. Most people don't like her and I get it. Denise Richards playing a nuclear scientist is its own punchline. And she's not especially necessary to the movie, so she does feel a little tacked on.

What I don't get is the sheer outrage by fans over her. I frequently hear her brought up as the worst Bond Girl of all time and that's just not true. Tilly Masterson, Stacey Sutton, and Paris Carver all immediately leap to mind as having more problems than Christmas Jones. She's not even the worst Bond Girl in this film (hello, Doctor).

Look, I'm willing to admit that I cut her some slack because she looks like Denise Richards and dresses like Lara Croft, but she's an active character who figures things out and contributes to the mission. She doesn't deserve the horrible reputation she has. No, Richards isn't great with her lines, but worst ever? Not even a little bit. In fact, she's going to bump Holly Goodhead out of the Top Ten.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
3. Kara Milovy (The Living Daylights)
4. Wai Lin (Tomorrow Never Dies)
5. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
6. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
7. Natalya Simonova (GoldenEye)
8. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
9. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
10. Christmas Jones (The World Is Not Enough)

The World Is Not Enough (1999) | Bond

Actors and Allies



I mentioned yesterday that - especially in comparison to Tomorrow Never Dies - I like how believable and Fleming-like the villains of The World Is Not Enough are. Something else that World improves on from Tomorrow is Bond himself. World doesn't have the same issues with finding its tone. There's humor, but it lightens the story without undermining it. In general, Bond and the other characters are serious and driven.

GoldenEye did a great job of reconciling Fleming's Bond with the movie version. It acknowledged the darkness of Fleming's take and explained that Bond's light-hearted approach to his job is a way of masking that. The Bond of World fits that same template, even if it's not stated as explicitly or elegantly. There's a line where Bond tells Elektra that he survives by taking "pleasure in great beauty." That's a trite way of saying it, but I think he's being honest there. His enjoyment of women, food, and drink is a survival tactic. So I'm glad to see that idea brought forward into World.

One place where the tone gets goofier than I like though is Bond's major new ally in the series. At least, Q's replacement (Bond jokingly refers to him as R, but that's not official) was planned to be a major ally. I love John Cleese and would have welcomed him as the new Q if he'd played the character straight. Cleese's slapstick is always enjoyable; it just feels out of place here.

The script's not doing him any favors either. He's especially snide towards Bond; even more so than Q. In fact, Q actually comes to Bond's defense and pulls rank to put R in his place. This would be Desmond Llewelyn's last Bond film, probably even if he hadn't died in a car accident shortly after the movie's release. He hadn't officially retired from the role, but his character is certainly thinking about leaving MI6. And his attitude about Bond is uncharacteristically kind, as if he knows this is good-bye. In addition to defending Bond to R, Q sweetly holds on to Bond's arm through a lot of their scene together. And he offers Bond some final advice.

The advice is kind of confusing because Q prefaces it with, "I've always tried to teach you two things." Neither of which has Q ever tried to teach Bond in any movie ever. But if we imagine an offscreen relationship between the two men, Q's wisdom does seem like something that Bond's taken to heart: "Never let them see you bleed" and "Always have an escape plan." The first does sound like a principle that stiff-upper-lip Q has lived by himself. And the second, said ominously as Q disappears in a descending lift, sounds like something he's getting ready to employ. Like maybe he hasn't actually mentioned his retirement to anyone else, but is just planning on not showing up one day. It kind of makes it sound like Q has enemies somewhere (and why wouldn't he?) that he wants to disappear from.

Moneypenny is also acting rather uncharacteristically, at least in comparison to Samantha Bond's portrayal in the last couple of movies. There was no flirtation between her and Brosnan's Bond before, but this time when he says he brought her something, she asks if it was chocolate or an engagement ring. And when she finds out what it really is - a cigar tube - she observes that it's not very romantic. That threw me at first until I realized that there's nothing really flirty in her delivery. She's not mutually playing with him, she's teasing him. He wants it to become flirting, but she's detached from it and completely in control.

Moneypenny's resistance to Bond also informs her relationships with women who give in to him. She isn't fooled about why Dr. Warmflash (ugh) clears him for duty and shames her for it with some judgmental looks. Which, look, I'm all for a good shaming when it's deserved. Shaming gets a bad rap these days, but Warmflash (gross) deserves it for reasons I'll go into in the next post.

Robbie Coltrane is back to reprise his role as Valentin Zukovsky from GoldenEye. I like that character a lot and one of the coolest things about the Brosnan movies was their willingness to build new, recurring characters into the series. It's too bad what happens to Zukovsky in World, but I enjoyed him all the way through it.

I saved M to talk about last because she plays a bigger role in World than usual. The Brosnan movies developed her as a character in a way that had never been done with any previous M. And of course that continued into the Craig era. I love how from the very first second you see her in World, you know she's smitten with Robert King. It's all in Judi Dench and David Calder's performances. And as the movie progresses, we learn that she's every bit the bulldog she claimed to be in GoldenEye; capable of making ruthless decisions and worrying later about living with the consequences.

As a result of one of those decisions, her relationship with King's daughter, Elektra, is tragic and complicated. Dench and Sophie Marceau's performances totally sell that, but the script is working it too. When M assigns Bond to protect Elektra from whomever killed her father, M says, "Remember, shadows stay in front or behind; never on top."  She knows how Bond is and she's absolutely not having it with Elektra.

And amazingly, Bond does his best to respect that. Not only does he not try to charm Elektra, he resists her advances until she makes it absolutely clear that she wants him and isn't going to give up. I love what that suggests about Bond's changing relationship with M. They've gone from mutually antagonistic in GoldenEye to professionals who deeply respect each other. For example, when Bond suspects Elektra of murdering her father, M despises the idea, but doesn't dismiss it. She can't make herself fully believe Bond, but she trusts his instincts enough to give him some leash to explore the idea. As she tells Elektra at one point, "He's the best we have. Though I'd never tell him."

Best Quip



"First things first," to Christmas when she says that she has to get some plutonium back "or someone's going to have my ass."

Worst Quip



"I was wrong about you. I thought Christmas only comes once a year."

Gadgets



Q really went all out for his final movie. In addition to his personal speedboat (tricked out with rocket boost, a temporary dive function, torpedoes, and it also drives on land just fine) and a new BMW Z8 (with Stinger missiles and an improved remote control device on the key fob instead of in a phone), he also gives Bond some very cool, personal gadgets.

There's an explosive gun with a detonator built in to a pair of glasses, an inflatable escape pod built into a ski jacket, a lockpick hidden in a credit card, a grappling line watch, and of course, every 12-year-old boy's dream...

X-Ray Specs



Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Iceberg boat (A View to a Kill)
5. The Q Boat (The World Is Not Enough)
6. Aston Martin V8 Vantage (The Living Daylights)
7. Glastron CV23HT speed boat (Moonraker)
8. Acrostar Mini Jet (Octopussy)
9. Crocodile submarine (Octopussy)
10. X-Ray Specs (The World Is Not Enough)

The World Is Not Enough (1999) | Story

Plot Summary

Bond investigates the death of a British agent and discovers that the case is deeply personal for M.

Influences

The title of course is from Bond's family motto as revealed in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but the rest of the story is entirely new. And frankly, the plot draws no inspiration from its title, either. Bond mentions the motto once in the movie, but it's only in reference to itself, not anything that's actually happening in the film. Something Elektra says reminds him of it, but it's not applicable to their conversation and even her set-up for it is super forced.

It's worth mentioning that this is the first Bond film written by the team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade who would go on to at least touch all the Bond films since. Barbara Broccoli had liked their work on Plunkett & Macleane (also featuring Robert Carlysle, incidentally) and hired them for the job. Bruce Feirstein, who'd worked on the GoldenEye script and written most of Tomorrow Never Dies, did a final pass at Purvis and Wade's script, but most of the story is there in their first draft. The most significant change is putting M in personal danger for the ending.

How Is the Book Different?

I'm going to retire this section until we get to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



The thing that immediately came to mind is that this is a personal case for M that leads to something bigger. Fleming used that device in Moonraker. "For Your Eyes Only" was another Fleming story built around a case that was personal to M, but there wasn't a deeper, more sinister plot lurking underneath it.

But the most Fleming-like moment comes when Bond has captured Renard at the ICBM base in Kazakhstan. He confesses, "I usually hate killing an unarmed man. Cold-blooded murder is a filthy business." He acts like he's about to make an exception, but that attitude is straight from Fleming's version of the character.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



Fleming wasn't above using coincidence to further a plot (ahem, Goldfinger), but for the most part Bond has to work for his leads. In The World Is Not Enough he does a lot of detective work, but picks up a key clue by just happening to be in the right place at the right time. He's checking out the security office at Elektra's pipeline when Davidov, her head of security, shows up with a dead scientist in his trunk. Bond had a decent reason for being at the office, because he suspects that the murder of Elektra's father was an inside job, but being there just in time to catch Davidov doing something incriminating is a stretch.

Other than that though, the whole plot has a very Fleming feel. The World In Not Enough has a horrible reputation among Bond fans, but all things considered it's probably my favorite of Brosnan's four. I love GoldenEye, but I feel like it's commenting on everything, where World is just a straightforward adventure. I get why people have a hard time with Christmas Jones (though I think the issues with her are way overstated), but I don't get people's complaint about the plot. It makes you do some work to figure it out, but it makes sense and the bad guys' motivations are far more believable than many Bond villains.

Cold Open



World does have some problems though and one of them is the cold open that doesn't fit the traditional criteria for what the cold open is supposed to be doing.

It opens right in the middle of the plot with Bond's visiting a bank in Spain, but this isn't the issue for me. I love getting plopped into the middle of an existing story and playing catch up. That's why I opened Kill All Monsters the way I did. I love that World doesn't fill this opening conversation with tons of exposition. There's some money that Bond's trying to get back for someone named Robert King who used it to buy a report that was stolen from a dead British agent. Bond wants the name of the person who sold the report, figuring that'll lead him to the agent's killer. There are major details missing from that story, but it's enough to understand why Bond's there and what his goal is.

Unfortunately, the banker is murdered by his assistant before Bond can force him to reveal the name of the seller. In the shootout that follows, Bond is saved by a mysterious sniper, giving him time to escape out the window of the skyscraper on an improvised repelling line.

That was originally supposed to be the end of the teaser, but the filmmakers wisely noted that the shootout and repelling stunt weren't quite up to the level of excitement expected from a Bond opening. That's good, but instead of changing the set piece, their solution was just to keep the teaser going until after a more exciting part of the movie. That makes the teaser overlong and with chunks of interesting, but not very thrilling dialogue scattered throughout it.

Back at MI6, we get the rest of the story about Robert King and the money. He had used it to buy what he thought was info about terrorists who are disrupting his efforts to build a pipeline from Russia to the West. He didn't know where the information came from and once it was apparent that it had come from a murdered British agent, he'd contacted M to help get back the money and learn the identity of the thief/murderer.

Further complicating things, the money has been tampered with and as soon as King gets near it, the money explodes and kills King with several MI6 personnel. In the Thames outside of MI6 HQ, the banker's assistant is watching from a boat, presumably to confirm when the money explodes and report back to her boss. When Bond arrives at the scene and sees her through the giant hole in the building, she foolishly fires at him, letting him know that she's not just there to enjoy the river, which is totally what anyone would assume.

Bond borrows a speedboat from Q and gives chase and the teaser finally feels like it should. He pursues her to the O2 Dome (known as the Millennium Dome at the time) where she trades her boat in for a hot air balloon. Bond's able to catch the balloon and question her as MI6 helicopters surround her. But rather than reveal the name of her boss, she blows up the balloon and kills herself.

I like the way the opening plops me into the story and the boat chase is pretty awesome, but it's all way too long and doesn't feel like a teaser, so this doesn't crack the Top Ten.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. GoldenEye
2. The Spy Who Loved Me
3. Moonraker
4. Thunderball
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. A View to a Kill
7. Goldfinger
8. The Man with the Golden Gun
9. The Living Daylights
10. Licence to Kill

Movie Series Continuity



Other than the title, which was mentioned in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, there are a few things to note about movie continuity.

Chief of Staff Charles Robinson (Colin Salmon) returns after being introduced in Tomorrow Never Dies, but Bill Tanner is also there, still played by Michael Kitchen as he was in GoldenEye. In Tomorrow, I speculated that Robinson's replacing Tanner may have been connected to Tanner's attitude towards M in GoldenEye, but Tanner is obviously still around and part of MI6's top staff. World never reveals his job title, but it's looking like he may have been promoted - or at least laterally moved - out of the Chief of Staff position rather than just totally losing it to Robinson.

We finally get a mention of a successful mission by another Double-O agent. It was 009 who put the bullet in Renard's head and survived the encounter. Sadly, the World novelization reveals that the British agent whose death Bond is investigating is 0012. Sure, it's just the novelization, but a) I'm going to use something else from it later and have to take the good with the bad, and b) it's totally what most of the movies do. Still: yay, 009! Nicely done!

Finally, speaking of Double-Os, no one explicitly mentions it, but it only makes sense that the rest of the people receiving assignments in M's briefing after King's death are other Double-Os. Which means that the person sitting to Bond's right in the image above is in fact a female Double-O agent. And that's pretty cool.