The World Is Not Enough

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The World is Not Enough
Caption: The World is Not Enough film poster
Bond: Pierce Brosnan
Writer: Neal Purvis
Robert Wade
Screenplay: Neal Purvis
Robert Wade
Bruce Feirstein
Director: Michael Apted
Producer: Michael G. Wilson
Barbara Broccoli
EON Productions
Music: David Arnold
Composer: David Arnold
Don Black
Performer: Garbage
Distributor: USA Theatrical and Worldwide DVD/Video
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Non-USA Theatrical
United International Pictures
Released: November 19, 1999
Runtime: 128 min.
Preceded by: Tomorrow Never Dies
Followed by: Die Another Day
Budget: $135,000,000
Worldgross: $390,000,000
Admissions: 77.1 million
Imdb id: 0143145


The World Is Not Enough is the nineteenth official James Bond film made by EON Productions and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. It was released in 1999, and produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. The film's story and screenplay was written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade who later teamed again for 2002's Die Another Day and 2006's Casino Royale.

The title comes from the English translation of the Bond family motto, Orbis non sufficit (in Latin), which was established and adopted by James Bond in the novel and film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Plot summary

A British oil tycoon, and friend of M, Sir Robert King, is assassinated by an agent of Renard, an anarchist terrorist. M assigns James Bond to protect King's daughter, Elektra King from Renard, who previously had kidnapped her. She assumes control of her father's oil business at a pivotal time, taking over responsibility for an oil pipeline through the Caucasus, from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

Prior to the events in the film, M sent 009 to assassinate Renard. 009 failed, only wounding Renard by leaving a bullet lodged in Renard's brain. The bullet is slowly working its way towards the cerebral cortex. As it moves, it eliminates his senses of pain and touch, enabling him to physically drive himself beyond normal human limits. This will in turn allow him to continually gain strength until the bullet inevitably kills him.

Renard steals a quantity of weapons-grade plutonium from a former Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan, there encountering Bond. After Bond escapes from a booby-trapped missile silo with American nuclear physicist Christmas Jones, the two return to the King pipeline, discovering that Renard has set a nuclear bomb in a section of the pipeline in a cleaning rig headed towards the pipeline's control center. They enter the pipeline, catching up with the bomb in a spare cleaning rig, to attempt to defuse the bomb, but find that Renard only used part of the plutonium. Bond allows the bomb to explode; he and Jones jump off the rig inside the pipeline seconds before the explosion and survive. When Bond radios in that he survived (Jones also survived), he discovers that M has been kidnapped.

At that point, he grasps that Elektra is operating with Renard; Renard has hijacked a Russian Victor III class nuclear submarine. Eventually, when Bond confronts Elektra, he finds she had made a professional and romantic alliance with Renard during captivity (see: Stockholm syndrome). Their plan is to introduce the remaining plutonium to the submarine's nuclear reactor, overloading it and causing a nuclear meltdown in the Bosporus at Istanbul which would not only kill countless numbers of people, but also contaminate the Bosporus for decades. The effect would prevent shipment of Caspian Sea petroleum through any existing route, because all Caspian region pipelines terminate at the Black Sea, requiring that tankers go through the Bosporus; the only alternative would be the King pipeline.

Bond teams up with Valentine Zukovsky to track Renard and Elektra. One of Zukovsky's trusted henchmen, Bull, plants a bomb in his boss' operations room; Bond, Zukovsky and Dr. Jones manage to escape severe injury but are captured by Elektra. Bond is taken to King's hideout and tortured for King's pleasure. Jones is given to Renard and taken aboard the submarine. Zukovsky arrives at Elektra's hideout, demanding to know where the hijacked submarine is; his nephew is the captain. Seeing his nephew's naval hat on a nearby table, he realizes that the man is dead. Elektra shoots Valentin and continues to torture Bond. Zukovsky regains consciousness and shoots one of the bands holding Bond to the torture device. Bond escapes and chases Elektra through her headquarters, pausing momentarily to free M. Bond catches up with Elektra and shoots her fatally, despite her taunts that he would never kill a woman.

Bond boards the submarine and, after a brief battle with Renard's men, sabotages the controls and scuttles it on the bottom of the channel. He manages to overpower Renard, impaling the villain on the same plutonium rod he planned to use to cause the meltdown, but is too late to stop an small explosion in the reactor room. Bond and Dr. Jones escape to the surface before the sub explodes.

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Cast & characters

This was Desmond Llewelyn's last appearance as "Q" before his death in December, 1999. The film also introduced "Q"'s successor, credited as "R", played by John Cleese. The name "R" is a joke in the film made by Bond upon their introduction. In future movies, he takes over the job of Quartermaster, thus taking on the title "Q". Some fans have been disturbed by the death imagery in Llewelyn's final scene, which ends with the actor being lowered into the ground alongside a car, his final words being "Always have an escape plan". He died in an automobile accident only a few weeks after the film's release.

The Women of The World Is Not Enough

Picture Name Actress
100px Elektra King Sophie Marceau Elektra King is the daughter of Sir Robert King. When Renard kidnapped her and her father, on the advice of M, refused to pay the ransom, Elektra seduced Renard and vowed to avenge herself on her father and M. Elektra prides herself on her ability to seduce men (and basically gets anything she wants by relying on her beauty and charm), to the point even when her plans are unraveling in front of her eyes, she thinks she is in no danger because no man can bear to harm her. Elektra is unique in which she is the first main female villain in the Bond series.
100px Christmas Jones Denise Richards Dr. Jones is the lead Bond girl of the movie (almost by default as Elektra turns out to be the villain). She is a nuclear physicist and when we first meet her, she has already spent six months in the former Soviet Union disarming nuclear warheads (and not particularly happy about it). Jones is very self-conscious about her unusual first name and assumes people will make comments or jokes about it. After Renard left the missile base in ruins and with a nuclear warhead in tow, Jones joined forces with Bond to stop Renard. Once their mission was completed, the pair spend Christmas in Turkey where Bond found out that Christmas comes more than once a year.
100px Molly Warmflash Serena Scott Thomas Molly Warmflash is a physician for MI6. When Bond dislocated his collar bone after his encounter with the Cigar Girl, M put him off the case until Medical clears him. So Bond promptly gave Warmflash what she wanted so she can in turn return the favor by clearing him for duty.
100px Cigar Girl Maria Grazia Cucinotta Called Giulietta da Vinci in the novelization of the film, the Cigar Girl was first seen in Spain where Bond was investigating the murder of 0012. Later, after Sir Robert King was blown up with explosive money, she took a shot at Bond for good measure and attempt to escape in her speedboat. The tenacious 007 went after her and the two eventualy ended up in a hotair balloon. By then MI6, via helicopters, cornered her. Rather than face Renard's wrath, the Cigar Girl chose suicide.

Soundtrack

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File:007TWINEsoundtrack.jpg
Original The World Is Not Enough soundtrack cover

The theme tune "The World Is Not Enough" was performed by Garbage. This is the second James Bond soundtrack composed by David Arnold. Arnold breaks with tradition by not ending the film with a new song or a reprise of the opening theme. Originally, Arnold was going to use the song "Only Myself to Blame" at the end of the film, however, it was replaced by a techno remix of the James Bond theme. "Only Myself to Blame", sung by Scott Walker, and written by David Arnold & Don Black, does appear on the soundtrack album. This is actually the fifth Bond song Black has contributed to. Other films with songs he's contributed to include Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Tomorrow Never Dies.

Arnold's score was widely criticised for its regular use of electronic elements and over-use of the Bond theme. Elektra King was provided with her own patois-laden theme, most prominently heard in "Casino," "Elektra's Theme" and "I Never Miss." Arnold added two new themes to the Bond repertoire with this score, both of which are reused in Die Another Day. The first is an action theme, performed on the upper-registers of the piano, heard during "Pipeline" and "Submarine." The second is a romance theme, first heard in the film during the skiing sequence, but not heard here until the "Christmas in Turkey" cue, in a simple arrangement for piano.

Track listing

  1. The World Is Not Enough - Garbage
  2. Show Me The Money
  3. Come In 007, Your Time Is Up
  4. Access Denied
  5. M's Confession
  6. Welcome To Baku
  7. Casino
  8. Ice Bandits
  9. Elektra's Theme
  10. Body Double
  11. Going Down - The Bunker
  12. Pipeline
  13. Remember Pleasure
  14. Caviar Factory
  15. Torture Queen
  16. I Never Miss
  17. Submarine
  18. Christmas In Turkey
  19. Only Myself To Blame - Scott Walker / David Arnold / Don Black

Vehicles & gadgets

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  • BMW Z8 — Loaded with several Q refinements including ground to air missiles, a key chain that can control the car remotely, and as R proudly points out, six cup holders. It was later sawed in half and destroyed during a battle at Zukovsky's caviar factory.
  • Q Boat — Was an unfinished "fishing boat" created by Q for his retirement. It includes torpedoes and a GPS tracking system. It could also submerge, although this feature wasn't exactly finished when Bond took it (The Boat had no windshield) and forced him to hold his breath while underwater.
  • Omega Watch — Bond's watch has the ability to shoot a grappling hook that can allow him to climb to new heights.
  • Protective Jacket — Q gives Bond a jacket, that when deployed encloses Bond and potentially another person inside a ball. Bond uses it to survive an avalanche when out skiing with Elektra. This gadget appears to be based on the Zorb.

Locations

Film locations

Shooting locations

Italics indicate the locations in the movie portrayed by each shooting location.

Trivia

  • During filming of the opening boat chase, web cams were set up overlooking the Thames River and Internet users could watch the filming from around the world.
  • This was the first official James Bond film not to be co-produced by United Artists. Its parent company, MGM, had since Tomorrow Never Dies assumed co-production of the Bond films.
  • The pre-title sequence lasts for about 14 minutes, the longest pre-title sequence in the Bond series to date.
  • This film is notable as being one of the few Bond movies in which James himself kills a leading female character. An early version of the script has Bond shoot King in cold blood before she attempts to contact Renard. A long-standing stereotype regarding James Bond is that 007 routinely kills women he beds; in truth, the death of Elektra is the only occasion in the Bond film series in which this undeniably occurs. (It is debatable whether Bond actually kills Fiona Volpe in Thunderball or if she is a victim of her men's poor shooting skills; in GoldenEye Bond causes Xenia Onatopp to be killed by a helicopter, but technically kills only the pilot of the craft himself - and it's debatable whether his earlier encounter with her in the film counts as "bedding". (See also Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me)
  • The Freudian psychology introduced to the Bond films in GoldenEye is more pronouced in this script, as Elektra – named for the character from Greek myth and the Electra Complex to which she gives her name – is revealed to have killed her own father and may or may not be mentally disturbed. It may be argued that the portrayal of Bond himself is more clearly as a damaged person (see above), and Stockholm Syndrome also gets a mention.
  • There is some debate over if it is Elektra, and not Renard, who should be considered the central antagonist – and therefore whether she is the first female Bond villain – as it is clear that much of the plot is orchestrated by her, and by the fact that she stood to gain enormously from the whole scheme, while Renard fully expected to die. Indeed, much is made of Bond's slowly coming to suspect that she has been 'turned' by Renard while kidnapped (see above), only to learn from her that it is the other way round. That Bond has fallen in love with her is strongly suggested, and there are subtle connections made between her character and that of the Bond character's late wife from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
  • The fictional news report which Bond views from the MI6 Archive was provided by BBC News. This was out of date by the time the film was released (November 1999), as the BBC had relaunched its news output in May and Martyn Lewis (the newsreader) had left the corporation at the same time. The footage is archive material within the story, however, and reportedly Lewis and the original set were used deliberately (current BBC newsreaders are contractually forbidden to participate in fiction).
  • The pipeline featured in the film is a thinly disguised fictional version of the real Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs from the Caspian to the Mediterranean via the Caucasus. Unlike the film's "King pipeline", however, the BTC pipeline is almost entirely underground. As in the film, it is the only land route by which oil can be transported from the Caucasus to the Mediterranean. Some of the pipeline shown in the film is in fact part of a hydro-electric scheme on Snowdon in Wales.
  • Elektra's father is named Robert King. This is also the name of the co-writer of Your Deal, Mr. Bond, a collection of bridge-related short stories that included an unauthorised James Bond story.
  • Bond's Aston Martin DB5, as seen in the previous two films, was due to make an appearance and was filmed driving 007 and M to MI6's castle HQ after the funeral, but this was cut. The only shot in which it appears is a thermal satellite image at the end — Bond apparently having had his car shipped to Istanbul to replace the Q-issued BMW he was driving, but which has been destroyed.
  • Months after release a copy-cat attacked MI6 in a very similar fashion to the cigar girl.
  • At the end of the film Bond quotes the original title for the 20th installment of the franchise "Christmas in Turkey" this title was later dropped for Die Another Day.

Novelisation

File:WorldIsNotEnoughNovel.jpg
1999 British Coronet Books paperback edition.

Template:Spoiler The World is Not Enough was adapted by then-current Bond novelist Raymond Benson from the screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein. It was Benson's fourth James Bond novel and followed the story pretty closely, except in some details. For example, Elektra does not die immediately after Bond shoots her ... she begins quietly to sing. The novel also gave the Cigar Girl a name: Giulietta da Vinci, and retained a scene between her and Renard that was cut from theatrical release.

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Video game

The World is Not Enough was adapted into a video game by Electronic Arts for the Nintendo 64 and Playstation.

See also


External links


The James Bond films
Official films
Dr. No | From Russia with Love | Goldfinger | Thunderball | You Only Live Twice | On Her Majesty's Secret Service | Diamonds Are Forever | Live and Let Die | The Man with the Golden Gun | The Spy Who Loved Me | Moonraker | For Your Eyes Only | Octopussy | A View to a Kill | The Living Daylights | Licence to Kill | GoldenEye | Tomorrow Never Dies | The World Is Not Enough | Die Another Day | Casino Royale | Quantum of Solace
Unofficial films
Casino Royale (1954 TV) | Casino Royale (1967 spoof) | Never Say Never Again
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