The World Is Not Enough
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- For other uses, see (disambiguation)}}}.
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
- James Bond - Pierce Brosnan
- Elektra King - Sophie Marceau
- Dr. Christmas Jones - Denise Richards
- Renard - Robert Carlyle
- M - Judi Dench
- Valentin Zukovsky - Robbie Coltrane
- Miss Moneypenny - Samantha Bond
- Q - Desmond Llewelyn
- R - John Cleese
- Gabor - John Seru
- Mr. Bullion - Goldie
- Sasha Davidov - Ulrich Thomsen
- Bill Tanner - Michael Kitchen
- Charles Robinson - Colin Salmon
- Cigar Girl (aka Giulietta da Vinci) - Maria Grazia Cucinotta
- Dr. Molly Warmflash - Serena Scott Thomas
- Sir Robert King - David Calder
Crew
- Directed by: Michael Apted
- Produced by: Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli
- Written by: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
- Screenplay by: Bruce Feirstein, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
- Cinematography by: Adrian Biddle
- Composed by: David Arnold
- Production design by: Peter Lamont
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
- The World Is Not Enough - Garbage
- Show Me The Money
- Come In 007, Your Time Is Up
- Access Denied
- M's Confession
- Welcome To Baku
- Casino
- Ice Bandits
- Elektra's Theme
- Body Double
- Going Down - The Bunker
- Pipeline
- Remember Pleasure
- Caviar Factory
- Torture Queen
- I Never Miss
- Submarine
- Christmas In Turkey
- Only Myself To Blame - Scott Walker / David Arnold / Don Black
Vehicles & gadgets
- Main articles: List of James Bond vehicles and List of James Bond 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
- Bilbao, Spain — Guggenheim Museum
- London, UK — MI6 Headquarters and Millennium Dome
- Scotland, UK — Eilean Donan castle
- Baku, Azerbaijan
- Istanbul, Turkey
Shooting locations
- Pinewood Studios including Albert R. Broccoli's 007 Stage
- Bilbao, Spain — exterior of Swiss bank and flyover-bridge adjacent to Guggenheim Museum
- London, United Kingdom
- *MI6 Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross
- *River Thames — boat chase eastwards down the river
- *Millennium Dome, Greenwich
- Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, UK — King family estate on banks of Loch Lomond
- Eilean Donan Castle, Scotland — exterior of MI6 operations centre at "Castle Thane"
- Chamonix, France — skiing chase sequence in Carpathian mountains
- Baku, Azerbaijan
- Halton House, RAF Halton — interior (and single exterior shot) of L'Or Noir casino in Baku
- RAF Northolt — airfield runway in Azerbaijan
- Bardenas Reales, Navarre, Spain — exterior of Kazakhstan nuclear facility
- Motorola Plant, Swindon, United Kingdom — exterior of oil refinery control centre
- Cwm Dyli, Snowdonia, Wales — exterior of oil pipeline
- Hankley Common, Elstead, Surrey — explosion at oil pipeline
- Istanbul, Turkey — Elektra's Baku villa actually here, and famous Maiden's Tower used as Renard's hideout in Turkey
- The Bahamas — underwater filming of submarine scenes
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.)
- Although the producers have not acknowledged it, M's kidnapping is perhaps borrowed from the Kingsley Amis James Bond novel, Colonel Sun. One of the film's settings, Baku, Azerbaijan, is also one of the settings of the 1991 John Gardner Bond novel, The Man from Barbarossa.
- 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.
| Author: | Publisher: | Hardback: | Paperback: | Alternate titles: |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raymond Benson | Ian Fleming Publications | UK) 1999 | UK) 1999 | |
| Preceded by: High Time to Kill | ||||
| Followed by: Doubleshot (novel) and "Live at Five" (short story) | ||||
See also
External links
- [MGM's official The World is Not Enough website]
- ["MI6" fan site with many film details]
- [The Digital Bits DVD review]
- [Movie Tour Guide.com - Maps and directions to The World is Not Enough Filming Locations]
- [The World is Not Enough info]
| 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 | Bond 22 |
| Unofficial films Casino Royale (1954 TV) | Casino Royale (1967 spoof) | Never Say Never Again |
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