1999 was a big year for movies. It was the year that The Matrix’s slow-motion bullet influenced action movies for years to come. It was the year American Beauty won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and Oscar fans have been arguing about it ever since. It was the year Pokémon jumped from Gameboys and TV to the big screen. And worst of all, it was the year that disappointed a generation of Star Wars fans with the release of The Phantom Menace.
To celebrate that landmark year in film’s 20th Anniversary, The Pop Break continues its year-long retrospective of 1999’s most influential (at least to us) films with Editor-in-Chief Bill Bodkin, looking back at Pierce Brosnan’s third outing as 007, The World is Not Enough.
Pierce Brosnan’s run as James Bond was a tale of two 007’s.
In Goldeneye, and Tomorrow Never Dies, the Bond franchise exorcised the demons of Timothy Dalton’s less than successful run as Britain’s top secret agent, as well as the whole Sean Connery-returning Never Say Never Again debacle. Brosnan, known in the States for his work the TV series Remington Steele and Mrs. Doubtfire, was able to infuse the witty wink-and-nods from the Roger Moore era Bond films, with the action-oriented mantra of the Connery days.
But then things took a turn. With The World is Not Enough, and its follow-up Die Another Day, it became apparent that a change was needed in the Bond world. The witty wink-and-nods were replaced with rapid fire, eye-rolling dad jokes, and double entendres. Action sequences began to rely too heavily on overly gimmick concepts — like the invisible car in Die Another Day, or the silly boat chase scene in the beginning of Tomorrow Never Dies.
The film, sadly, marked the final appearance of Desmond Llewelyn as Q, as he was replaced by John Cleese, and sadly Llewelyn died in a car accident around the film’s release. His finale scene is just crushing to watch.
Luckily, that change came years later with the introduction of Daniel Craig’s grittier version of Bond. While not always a home run, Craig’s incarnation of Bond has a lot more dramatic meat on the bones, much better action, and the humor is more measured, and usually better-timed than in the latter days of Brosnan.
With all that said, The World is Not Enough is not a bad movie, and definitely not a bad Bond movie. Unfortunately, it’s a movie that does not capitalize on the unexpected groundwork laid in the first half of the film.
That groundwork comes from the Sophie Marceau’s character, Elektra King. The daughter of a murdered oil mogul, you initially perceive King to be one of two classic Bond female characters. She’s either “the first woman” (my term, not an official one) — a female character who Bond meets early in the film, and then usually ends up dead after the two have a romantic interlude. A recent example of this character would be Gemma Arterton’s character in Quantum of Solace. The second would be a woman Bond ends up being an accomplice of the main villain … and she’s discovered after a romantic tryst with Bond.
Having grown up with Bond my entire life (my dad had been a 007 diehard since Ian Fleming’s paperbacks), I thought I had the King character figured out. I knew Denise Richards, who was a hot commodity in Hollywood, would ultimately be the “final woman” for Bond — the one who Bond would kiss at the end as the score swelled after being thrust into the action about midway through the film.
However, to the surprise of my then turning 18 year old self (yes, I’m not young), Elektra King was more than either of these Bond caricatures. She was complex and she challenged everything we knew about Bond and Bond knew about himself. We hadn’t really see a female character emotionally challenge Bond (or us) this deeply, and this intensely before. At the time I admit I wasn’t on board for the initial couple scene where King challenged Bond. I was convinced she’d end up dead or a villainous sidekick and all of this was for naught. However, as the film progressed Marceau and Brosnan’s chemistry, and more importantly Marceau’s performance, hooked me.
So that’s what made Marceau’s reveal as not just a villain, but the villain of the film so jaw-dropping. You’re expecting Robert Carlyle (hot off Trainspotting) to be the big bad of this film, but when you find out he’s being controlled by King — a woman he both kidnapped, held captive, and sexually assaulted — it’s even more of an impactful moment.
[Editor’s Note: I highly recommend reading Marisa Carpico’s review of The World is Not Enough from our “Countdown to Spectre Series” where she does a brilliant deep dive into the film, and the King character.]
But instead of diving deep into the broken heart and wounded soul of Bond, as well as continuing this terrific storyline with King — we’re introduced to “the final woman” — Christmas Jones (Denise Richards). And this where things go awry. The emotional drama of the film is replaced with crash bang action sequences. Richards and Brosnan’s chemistry nowhere near matched Brosnan’s and Marceau’s. It was also a bit difficult to buy that her character was a nuclear physicist. Then came usual “Bond fights the villains” playbook in the final act of the film. King is shot dead by Bond, allowing James to save the damsel in distress, and deliver an over-the-top death to the bad guy.
The hard left the film takes in the second half just killed the movie for me on that cold November night at the Cineplex Odeon in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It felt like the studio saw a really serious character-driven Bond film, panicked and tried to throw as much as sex and explosions into the film to placate a younger, MTV audience. And yes, MTV did promote the hell out of this film, with Richards at the forefront.
Unfortunately, this strategy, and word of mouth, didn’t help the film domestically as it did not cover its budget (by about $1 million, but still). Internationally, it cleaned up to the surprise of no one. The conclusion to this film took me off new Bond films as I opted for 27 Days of 007 on TBS rather than go see Die Another Day. Ultimately, while Bond still made money the audiences were heard, and Bond was replaced with character Daniel Craig, which brings us to today, on the precipice of Bond 25 aka No Time Die which is scheduled for an April 2020 release.
In the end, The World is Not Enough is a movie that’s fine but forgettable. However, it did give us one of the all-time great/terrible lines in movie history “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.”
The World is Not Enough is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-wzRxPPFs
