Tomorrow Never Dies
Tomorrow Never Dies is a 1997 spy film, the eighteenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode from a screenplay by Bruce Feirstein, it follows Bond as he attempts to intercept Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), a power-mad media mogul, from engineering world events to initiate World War III.
For other uses, see Tomorrow Never Dies (disambiguation).Tomorrow Never Dies
MGM Distribution Co. (U.S.)
United International Pictures (International)
- 9 December 1997 (London premiere)
- 12 December 1997 (United Kingdom)
- 19 December 1997 (United States)
119 minutes
English
$110 million
$333 million[2]
The film was produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. It was the first Bond film made after the death of producer Albert R. Broccoli (to whom it pays tribute in the end credits) and the last released under the United Artists label. Filming locations included France, Thailand, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Tomorrow Never Dies performed well at the box office, grossing over $333 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1997 and earning a Golden Globe nomination despite mixed reviews. While its performance at the U.S. box office surpassed that of its predecessor GoldenEye,[3] it was the only one of Brosnan's Bond films not to open at No. 1 at the box office, as it opened the same day as Titanic, and finished at No. 2 that week.[4]
Plot[edit]
MI6 sends James Bond into the field to reconnoiter a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Despite M's insistence on letting 007 finish his reconnaissance mission, Royal Navy Admiral Roebuck orders the frigate HMS Chester to fire a Harpoon missile at the bazaar. Bond discovers two nuclear torpedoes mounted on an L-39 Albatros trainer jet; with the missile out of range to be aborted, Bond is forced to pilot the L-39 away seconds before the bazaar is destroyed.
Media baron Elliot Carver starts his plans to use an encoder obtained at the bazaar by his associate, cyberterrorist Henry Gupta, to provoke war between China and the UK. Meaconing (faking) the GPS signal using the encoder, Gupta sends the frigate HMS Devonshire off course into Chinese-occupied waters in the South China Sea, where Carver's stealth ship, commanded by Mr. Stamper, ambushes and sinks it with a "sea drill" torpedo. Carver's henchmen steal one of Devonshire's missiles and shoot down a Chinese MiG fighter jet investigating the scene. The henchmen kill Devonshire's survivors with weaponry loaded with Chinese ammunition. The British Minister of Defence orders Roebuck to deploy the fleet to investigate the sinking of the frigate, and demands retaliation, leaving M only 48 hours to investigate its sinking and avert a war.
M sends Bond to investigate Carver and his company, CMGN, after Carver released news articles about the crisis hours before MI6 had become aware of it. Bond travels to Hamburg to seduce Carver's wife, Paris (an ex-girlfriend of Bond's), to get information that would help him enter CMGN headquarters. He defeats Stamper's men and cuts Carver off the air during the inaugural broadcast of his satellite network. Carver discovers the truth about Paris and Bond and orders both of them killed. Bond and Paris reconcile in Bond's hotel room, and she provides him with information to infiltrate Carver's newspaper facility. Bond steals the GPS encoder from Gupta's office at the facility; meanwhile, Carver's assassin and Stamper's mentor Dr. Kaufman kills Paris. After Bond returns to find Paris's body, Kaufman holds him at gunpoint. Bond is able to kill Kaufman and escape his henchmen through a multistory car park in his Q-branch vehicle, a BMW 750iL with remote control.
At a U.S. Air Force base in Okinawa, Bond teams with his CIA contact Jack Wade and meets GPS technician Dr. Dave Greenwalt. Bond understands that the encoder had been tampered with, and goes to the South China Sea to investigate the wreck. He and Wai Lin, a Chinese Ministry of State Security agent on the same case, explore the sunken ship and discover one of its cruise missiles missing, but after reaching the surface they are captured by Stamper and taken to the CMGN tower in Saigon. They soon escape and contact the Royal Navy and the People's Liberation Army Air Force to explain Carver's scheme. Carver plans to destroy most of the Chinese government with the stolen missile, allowing a corrupt Chinese general named Chang to assume power and negotiate a truce between Britain and China, both of which will have begun a naval war. Once the conflict is over, Carver will be given exclusive broadcasting rights in China for the next century, which would then allow his broadcasting network to be completely global.
Bond and Wai Lin board Carver's stealth ship to prevent him from firing the missile at Beijing; Wai Lin is captured, forcing Bond to devise a second plan. Bond captures Gupta to use as his own hostage, but Carver kills Gupta, claiming he has "outlived his contract". Bond detonates a grenade in the hull, damaging the ship, thus rendering it visible to radar and vulnerable to a subsequent Royal Navy attack. While Wai Lin disables the engines, she is recaptured by Stamper. Bond kills Carver with his own drilling machine and attempts to destroy the warhead with detonators, but Stamper attacks him, and sends a chained Wai Lin into the water. Bond traps Stamper in the missile firing mechanism and saves Wai Lin as the missile explodes, destroying the ship and killing Stamper. Bond and Wai Lin kiss amidst the wreckage as HMS Bedford searches for them.
Appearances in other media[edit]
Tomorrow Never Dies was the first of three Bond films to be adapted into books by then-current Bond novelist Raymond Benson. Benson's version is expanded from the screenplay including additional scenes with Wai Lin and other supporting characters not in the film. The novel traces Carver's background as the son of media mogul Lord Roverman, whom Carver blackmails into suicide, later taking over his business.[67] The novel also attempts to merge Benson's series with the films, particularly by continuing a middle-of-the-road approach to John Gardner's continuity. Notably it includes a reference to the film version of You Only Live Twice where he states that Bond was lying to Miss Moneypenny when he said he had taken a course in Asian languages. Tomorrow Never Dies also mentions Felix Leiter, although it states that Leiter had worked for Pinkertons Detective Agency, which is thus exclusive to the literary series. Subsequent Bond novels by Benson were affected by Tomorrow Never Dies, specifically Bond's weapon of choice being changed from the Walther PPK to the Walther P99. Benson said in an interview that he felt Tomorrow Never Dies was the best of the three novelisations he wrote.[68]
The film was also adapted into a third-person shooter PlayStation video game, Tomorrow Never Dies. The game was developed by Black Ops and published by Electronic Arts on 16 November 1999. Game Revolution described it as "really just an empty and shallow game",[69] and IGN said it was "mediocre".[70]