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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 of 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. Meantime, Renard hijacks 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 thousands 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.

Renard is made out to be the film's villain until Elektra reveals her true colours as the true power behind him, making her the first main female villain in the film series; KGB Colonel Rosa Klebb of From Russia with Love works for Ernst Stavro Blofeld, so she is not considered that adventure's main villain. This view is debated by those who feel Elektra is more Renard's brainwashed victim than not (though the reverse is also strongly suggested in the film); consequently, Bond's killing her is questionable.

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.

Crew

Soundtrack

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 pathois-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

  • 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, 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 released by United Artists. Its parent company, MGM, had since Tomorrow Never Dies assumed co-production and distribution of the Bond films.

  • This film is notable as being one of the few Bond movies in which James himself kills a leading female character. In the scene, Bond points a gun at her and threatens to shoot her if she doesn't call off the sub on her two-way radio. She replies that he can't kill her, because "You would miss me," referring to their romantic involvement. He says nothing, and in the crucial moment, she defies him screaming, "Dive!" into the radio and he promptly shoots her. Standing over her body, he says, tersely: "I never miss." An early version of the script has Bond shoot her in cold blood before she actually 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 in Thunderball or if she is a victim of her men's poor shooting skills.)

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • There is some debate over if it is Elektra, and not Renard, who should be considered the central villain, as it is clear that much of the plot is orchestrated by her, and by the fact the she stood to gain enormously from the whole scheme, while Renard fully expected to die.

Novelisation

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.

See also

External links

1999 novels | 1999 films | British novels | James Bond books | James Bond films

Die Welt ist nicht genug | Le monde ne suffit pas | Agente 007 - Il mondo non basta | The world is not enough | 007 ワールド・イズ・ノット・イナフ | The World Is Not Enough (film) | The World Is Not Enough | И целого мира мало (фильм) | Världen räcker inte till | 新鐵金剛之黑日危機

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "The World Is Not Enough".

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