GoldenEye was massive, Tomorrow Never Dies continued the run. The Brosnan Era was underway and already he was being referred to as “The Billion Dollar Bond”. After the extended break between Licence To Kill and GoldenEye, when many commentators said Bond was dead and buried, he was back and going strong. Brosnan had been embraced by fans, and all eyes turned to 007 once more as the end of the Millennium approached, and The World Is Not Enough was readied for release…
The World Is Not Enough – Behind The Scenes
Bond was still something of a production line in the late 1990s. Regular production schedules on a two-year cycle meant that movies were being planned while the previous movie was still in production.
Before Tomorrow Never Dies was even released, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were on the lookout for subject matters to build their next 007 outing around. The global news and current affairs once again provided the answers.
An in-depth report on Nightline one evening gave Broccoli an idea. The world’s major oil companies were vying for control of the untapped oil reserves in the Caspian Sea in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and the key to victory would be the speed of pipeline construction.
She thought controlling the only pipeline from the Caspian to the West would be a good motivation for a Bond villain.
Following the success of Plunkett & Macleane, they asked screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to develop the idea. This was the start of the life-long Bond fans being involved in the franchise, involvement which continues to this day.
For further inspiration, they turned to A Reunion With Death. This was the outline treatment for what would have been Timothy Dalton’s fourth 007 movie, if he had stayed with the role. It would have followed on from GoldenEye.
It is from here they took the idea of the assassination of M’s friend, Sir Robert Grey in the treatment, as a catalyst. This took place in Tokyo in the Dalton version and involved the Yakuza. In this treatment, it does not end well for the Bond girl and it ends with a grieving 007.
The writers suggested changing this up, and what started to emerge was a particular idea, a female villain. As Broccoli put it:
“Bond thinks he has found Tracy, but he’s really found Blofeld”.
Joe Dante had some initial talks to direct. Peter Jackson, another lifelong Bond fan, was then in more detailed talks. Broccoli enjoyed Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, and so a screening of The Frighteners was arranged for her. Unfortunately, she disliked this film.
This ended Jackson’s involvement. Jackson has since lamented that, as Bond producers tend to go for less famous directors, his work on Lord Of The Rings means he will probably not get another chance, indicating that he would still be interested if they came calling today.
There were also talks with Alfonso Cuarón, but what was becoming clear was that a female role would be key. They started to focus on directors who had a history of delivering strong female performances.
Michael Apted earned female leads three Oscar nominations in three projects – Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist, and Jodie Foster in Nell. He was hired, and his wife would complete a script polish. Frequent Bond collaborator Bruce Feirstein would also provide a further polish.
Death Waits for No Man, Fire and Ice, Pressure Point, and Dangerously Yours were titles that were either rumored or considered. Eventually, they turned to Fleming and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
The World Is Not Enough is an English translation of the Latin phrase “Orbis non sufficit”, the motto of Bond’s ancestor Sir Thomas Bond from the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Initially, the pre-title sequence features only Bond’s mission in Bilbao, with the speedboat chase to come after the titles. It was felt that this opening wasn’t spectacular enough so the chase was moved before the title sequence. This made the opening scenes run long, so there were some big cuts made to the Bilbao scenes.
Even with these cuts, it still created a 14-minute long pre-title sequence. This was officially the longest in the series until No Time To Die.
Filming took place in several locations along the Thames including at the Millennium Dome (now the 02 Arena), still under construction at the time. Chatham Dockyard, a frequent movie filming location, also stood in for the East End of London for the scenes featuring the jet boat out of the water.
The World Is Not Enough continued the long Bond tradition of ingeniously used stand-in locations. The King family estate, the location of Sir Robert King’s funeral and located overlooking Lock Lomond in Scotland in the script, was actually filmed at the Stowe School, Buckinghamshire.
The ski sequence, set in the Caucasus mountains, was filmed in Chamonix, France.
The interior and exterior shot of L’Or Noir casino in Baku, Azerbaijan, was shot at Halton House, which is in reality the officers’ mess of RAF Halton.
The Kazakhstan nuclear facility was, in reality, the Bardenas Reales, in Navarre, Spain. The oil refinery control center was actually the Motorola European Headquarters at Groundwell, Swindon. The exterior of the oil pipeline stretching across the mountains was constructed in Cwm Dyli, Snowdonia, Wales, with the exploding version built at Hankley Common in Surrey.
RAF Northolt stands in as a runway in Azerbaijan, meanwhile, the water tank at Pinewood would be home to Zukovsky’s entire caviar factory.
Location shooting did occur in Bilbao and Istanbul, Turkey around the Maiden’s Tower. Istanbul also provided the real location for Elektra’s waterside Baku home. For the underwater model sequences involving a submarine, they returned to their usual underwater filming locations in the Bahamas.
Desmond Llewelyn, long-time Bond companion Q, realized his advancing years were becoming increasingly visible on screen. He insisted that his scenes now include opportunities for Q to make reference to his retirement in case he should be unable to continue in the role. For this reason, the character of R was also introduced (John Cleese) as a potential replacement.
Sadly, this appeared to be somewhat prophetic for Llewelyn. Shortly after the premiere of The World Is Not Enough, he was driving home alone from a book signing event when his car collided with another head-on in East Sussex. He died from his injuries at the age of 85. A visibly emotional Roger Moore spoke at his funeral.
Do You Expect Us To Talk?
Stark: I remember that I did not like this movie as much as GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, but writing it all up for this feature, I cannot think of why? All the ingredients are there. All of them. Revisiting this has been curious and conflicting.
Wrenage: I saw The World Is Not Enough and Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow back-to-back in the theater. The World Is Not Enough is an interesting Bond film for me. I disliked it quite a bit upon initial viewing. In fact, I had to watch the greatest Bond movie ever, A View To A Kill, a couple nights later to wash the stink of The World Is Not Enough out of my brain. Thanks to Roger and Tanya, I learned to love Bond again.
Yet, The World Is Not Enough grew on me more than any other Bond film (with one possible exception). I am curious to see if that remains to be true…
Stark: It is good to see I am not alone in this. We will deconstruct the elements as we go through the process, but already I am feeling maybe this is one where the sum of the parts somehow do not add up in the finished product.
Ranking And Rating
Let’s get to the ratings and rankings. Wrenage and Stark will give their opinions on the Bondian elements found in The World Is Not Enough and come up with a score and ranking to place them appropriately in their league table of all things Bond.
Bond
Stark: Here we go, straight off the back, with Brosnan. Absolutely nothing wrong at all here. This was his big dramatic opportunity. His On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He does not drop the ball at all. You buy him as both a human being and a ruthless assassin.
Wrenage: I never had an issue with Brosnan’s performance in The World Is Not Enough. He delivers all you want from Bond: the sophistication, the action, the ruthlessness, and the quips. It’s a pity that Brosnan exits the film at a low point. The final quip of The World Is Not Enough probably gets my vote for the worst Bond quip ever. If you listen hard enough, you might still hear my groaning echoing, echoing in the night.
Stark: That is one of the fatal errors in this movie. An Achilles heel, maybe, that are part of the reasons that the whole thing doesn’t quite add up to be as good as it should be. Bond quips should be sardonic. A tension reliever after a close shave. Sure, in bad taste, but also quite pointed (e.g. “He had a lot of guts.”). This one is just childish and out of place. It is more Carry On than Bond.
Wrenage: On the other hand, The World is Not Enough has a couple of my favorite Bond moments: Bond shooting Elektra in cold blood is aces. He has her cornered, and when she won’t give him what he wants, plus taunts him to boot, BAM! No fuss, no muss, just, get off the planet, Hellbeast!
Next, Brosnan delivers some great lines with the right amount of venom. One that stands out is, “She’s waiting for you,” right before he kills Renard.
Stark: Cruel. Almost a taunt. Like he is revisiting some of Renard’s cruelty on him, while making it clear he now considers both of them as deserving of their fate together. I liked it.
Wrenage: Robert Carlyle also deserves mention for how he receives that line. He’s thwarted, yet the possibility of seeing Elektra again, even if it is in hell, makes him a bit winsome. The other line that stands out is also from that scene, when Bond reveals to Renard that Elektra is dead. His knife-twisting delivery of “Haven’t you heard? So is she…” is great.
It’s stuff like this that gives Brosnan something to chew on in the role. Despite my initial dislike, these days I group The World Is Not Enough with the more prestige Bond films, like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It’s not on that level, but it attempts to offer a bit more than the standard Bond flick. It can’t quite close the deal, though.
Stark: I have a feeling this is going to be something of a theme as we go down this road.
Bond Girls
Wrenage: The World Is Not Enough is extremely weak in the Bond Girl department, as Elektra is more than a Bond girl. She is the villain.
That leaves us with only Denise Richards to talk about here. Poor Denise Richards. Man, has she gotten static over this role. I remember a lot of snickering in 1999 at the thought of Richards playing a nuclear scientist. And that snickering is not unfounded.
I don’t blame Richards, though. I blame whoever cast Richards. Like Teri Hatcher, Richards is not a Bond girl-type. She lacks the sophistication. Richards is made for things like Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The only reason Richards works in Starship Troopers is because it is satire.
Stark: Originally, the character was French-Polynesian and an insurance investigator. Too similar to The Thomas Crown Affair – also starring Brosnan – and when Sophie Marceau was cast they changed her ethnicity and job. Tiffani Amber-Thiessen (Saved By The Bell) was also in the running.
They seemed determined to shoehorn in a certain kind of hot young thing from US television after it got them so much publicity for Hatcher in Tomorrow Never Dies.
Wrenage: I cut Richards some slack in The World Is Not Enough. She shows up. She delivers her lines. Granted, she is no Stacy Sutton, but she isn’t a big enough presence in the film to drag it down overall. She doesn’t even appear until halfway through. From there, the character is poorly written. She has little to do but tag along and try to convince us she is super smart.
Stark: She does look absolutely magnificent in a tank-top and short shorts. There was a load of publicity content on MTV around the release of this movie, all of it hosted and presented by Richards. I think it was definitely a strategic decision.
Wrenage: That sounds about right. The Richards casting definitely seems more like a stunt than sensible. Meanwhile, Judi Dench continues to be tolerable as M after a wobbly start in GoldenEye. She is now a supervisor rather than a scolder. The World Is Not Enough also starts the trend of M being out in the field. I don’t like this development, but we will get to that in later films.
Stark: Judi Dench? Wobbly? Damn Colonial, Judi Dench does not wobble! She glides!
Wrenage: Dench’s best moment in The World Is Not Enough is when she looks at Bond like he is a monster after he wastes Elektra.
Stark: There’s a bit of sorrow there, too. Afterall, she was her old University friend’s daughter.
Villains
Stark: Robert Carlyle is wasted. This is one of the movie’s weak points. It isn’t his fault. This is the Elektra show, so like Dr. Christmas Jones, he was on a hiding to nothing as a sort of second-tier character.
Wrenage: The villain category is one thing that made me greatly dislike The World Is Not Enough initially. I expected great things from Carlyle after his turn in Trainspotting as the pyscho Begbie. Plus, the movie built him up as a man without feeling, immune from pain and getting stronger every day.
Then all he really did was hold a hot rock. Disappointing…initially.
Stark: They were also talking to Javier Bardem and Jean Reno for the part. This feels like a core issue with The World Is Not Enough. Bond has always only been as good as its villains. A weaker Bond movie can be elevated by the villain (eg. Moonraker) and it may be that we see the opposite playing out here.
What is potentially a great Bond movie clearly suffers in a few places, as we are discovering. One of these is with both the Bond girl and the villain being diluted and then distilled elsewhere into Elektra, so it somehow robs the formula of some of those two foundational pillars.
Wrenage: Eventually, I figured it out and grew to appreciate the switch to a degree. Sophie nicely captures a crazy bitch in sheep’s clothing. One comes to realize Renard is actually her victim. She was kidnapped and gave Renard Stockholm Syndrome. That is a fun reversal upon reflection.
Stark: It is, and it really feels as if it should work, or should have maybe been a little deeper than it was.
Wrenage: Electra and Renard have a wonderfully tragic and twisted relationship, but it is a little too subdued. Renard genuinely loves Electra, and he is simply a tool to her. I enjoy it when Renard hands Electra the captain’s hat when they say goodbye. “The world is yours. Have fun with it.”
So much bitter resignation in that line.
Stark: Is it that they really, really tried for too much with this movie and it just misses? Has it got what I shall call “a touch of the Daltons” in that the world simply wasn’t ready for this kind of stuff until Craig took on the role as part of the reinvention?
The same stuff we are praising here will be exactly the same stuff a few commentators will be criticizing the franchise for from Casino Royale onwards, wanting Roger Moore and jet packs back.
Wrenage: I’d probably put the blame on Barbara and Apted. I never realized that Peter Jackson was in the running for director, and Barbara rejected him due to not liking The Frighteners. Come on, Barbara! The Frighteners is a great flick!
The choice to go with Apted because he was good at getting strong female performances was also a mistake. Who cares about such things for a Bond movie? Perhaps, Apted then got stuck between two worlds. He is not the guy you want to deliver an action film. Meanwhile, as he tries to sort out that puzzle, he can’t concentrate on the reason he was brought aboard in the first place.
Plot
Wrenage: The plot is sufficient, in that it includes a villain with a master plan. This gives Bond a mystery to unravel and a reason to engage in action scenes. The plot is not all that successful at hiding Electra’s villainy, however. The villain duo dynamic of The World Is Not Enough is comparable to something like The Dark Knight Rises, which did a much better job of hiding a similar reveal.
Electra simply coming out as the villain by giving M a tiepin is awkward and lame.
Stark: I think she thought that Bond was dead, so she didn’t need to hide any longer.
The plot was widely criticized at the time for being too complicated. I don’t really think it is complicated at all, is it?
Wrenage: I never saw The World Is Not Enough as having a complicated plot either. It maybe gives the illusion of being complicated because it attempts a more prestige theme than villain-trying-to-take-over-the-world. That might cause folks just looking for escapism to zone out a bit. I certainly zoned out the first few times I watched it.
Action Sequences
Wrenage: Action is another reason I dinged The World Is Not Enough upon first viewing. It didn’t seem like the action hit as well as it could. It seemed overthought, like they sat down and planned it in terms of “How can we make Bond outrun an explosion, but do it differently? Maybe we could…have him dangle from chains on a winch sliding down rails?”
Likewise, the para-hawk sequence is a good example of overthinking. They have the whole sky to fly in, yet Bond can still maneuver them into crashing into each other. Just shooting them until they blow up would be much more satisfying. Not everything has to be “clever.”
Stark: There is a LOT of action in this. A double pre-title sequence, saw blades on helicopters, exploding caviar factories, an escape from a nuclear silo, an escape from an exploding pipeline, a fight on a submarine… when you lay them all out like that it sounds like a lot, yet sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Here we are again, with somehow the sum of the parts just not adding up for The World Is Not Enough.
Wrenage: Again, I think Apted was the wrong choice to realize such things. The caviar factory maybe works the best of the action scenes. The perpendicular submarine is a great set, but the fight between Renard and Bond has a murky ending. I get the gist of how Bond killed Renard, but I would be hard-pressed to explain the mechanics of it. I guess Bond hooked an air compressor up to the reactor cores, built up pressure, and then released it through a specific port.
When viewers have to sit and think about how the hero killed the villain in the finale, the filmmakers fail.
Stark: It was reactor pressure, and he fired the same dodgy rod at Renard that Renard was going to use to create a nuclear incident on the chokepoint at Istanbul, therefore making Elektra’s pipeline the sole route out of the Black Sea.
Wrenage: Again, too much work to try to be clever, if you ask me. They should have had Bond beating the heck out of Renard, and Renard shaking everything off due to his dead nerves. Finally, they wrestle over the core rod, and Bond stabs him with it through the heart. There is eloquence in simplicity.
Pre-Title Sequence
Wrenage: That has to be one of the longest pre-title sequences ever. It has some good stuff to it. The money blowing up is a neat idea. The boat chase is fun. Mystery is established as to who is behind it all. It morphs nicely into the opening titles.
Stark: They filmed some of this next to my office in an earlier role. We had to move our cars because we used to park where they wanted to do some filming. I read the original script and there was more of the Bilbao sequence, while Renard turned up in it. All cut to make the sequence not too long. As we said in Behind The Scenes, still was the longest one to date until No Time To Die.
Wrenage: Now that I think about it, Carlyle was probably as big of a miscast as Richards. To bring in the guy who played Begbie and then have him play the role like he took two Valium tablets does not make a lot of sense. Likely any actor would have been lost in that role, though. They probably wanted to make Renard like the spider at the center of the web, but none of it translates properly.
Stark: I like Bond bargaining with Cigar Girl before she commits suicide. Her “Not from him!” line builds up the threat of villainy that Renard doesn’t really get to deliver on as we have already discussed.
Dodgy VFX on the torpedoes and a homage to Moonraker squeezed in there, along with a tie adjustment echoing the tank chase in GoldenEye.
Theme Song And Score
Wrenage: This is not a great song by Garbage. The sound is right, but the chorus doesn’t hit like it should, and no catchy elements exist. You can tell they are trying to follow in the footsteps of what Sherly Crow did on Tomorrow Never Dies, but all of the soul Crow brought to the party is leeched away.
Stark: This is Bond – it needed more brass!
Wrenage: The score for the film is fine.
Stark: More David Arnold is always a good thing. He gets it.
Wrenage: He really does. You can hear the foundation Barry built-in Arnold’s work on Bond. It is a skill he displays on other films, as well. For example, I always liked Arnold’s opening credits theme to Godzilla 1998. It was a nice update of the bombastic monster themes from the 1950s.
Stark: Not forgetting Wing Commander, a score so mind-blowingly epic it is like it got accidentally attached from another, far better movie!
X-Factor
Wrenage: Farewell Q. This was the final Desmond Llewelyn appearance. Supposedly, Llewelyn did not consider The World Is Not Enough his retirement despite the appearance of John Cleese as his heir apparent. Unfortunately, the car accident happened.
Cleese is fun to see, but he is probably too big of a personality for the role. He kind of stops the movie dead when he appears.
Stark: Feels more like a cameo here. He was better in Die Another Day, but that’s a different conversation.
Wrenage: It was good to see a miniature submarine again. It brought me back to The Spy Who Loved Me. Bond really likes its miniatures, and they mostly look good in this film. They even use a Ken doll for the scene where Bond dives into the submarine bay.
Stark: The thing that stands out to me about this scene is just how brilliant it should have been. A vertical fight through an upended, diving submarine. This, under X-Factor, highlights that problem I keep referring to about it all being somehow less than the sum of its parts. This should be excellent, in this environment, Bond vs. a villain who can’t feel pain.
But due to that distilling of villainy across Renard and Elektra, and with Elektra already dead with all that emotional discharge we had minutes earlier in the movie, this just feels a little superfluous.
Wrenage: Yeah, it is a frustrating entry in the series. When I say The World is Not Enough grew on me more than any other Bond, that doesn’t mean it has risen to the top. It simply started from a place so low that getting to a point where I could watch it and enjoy it was a huge leap. It was sitting near the bottom of my list in 1999. At the end of the day, Brosnan and Sophie’s performances rescued it for me, and Sophie really only hit her stride in the third act.
Stark: We have to remember the universal Bond rule (sex/pizza, remember?) – even “bad” Bond is pretty good!
Scoring Breakdown
| Stark | Wrenage | |
| Bond | 8 | 8 |
| Bond Girl | 4 | 3 |
| Villain | 6 | 7 |
| Plot | 6 | 6 |
| Action Sequences | 5 | 4 |
| Pre-Title Sequence | 6 | 7 |
| Theme Song | 4 | 3 |
| X-Factor | 4 | 5 |
| TOTAL | 43 | 43 |
Stark: To clarify, I am classing Elektra as the villain and Jones as the Bond girl for these scores. Brosnan is immense in the role now. Can’t fault him. This is just where you start to get the feeling that a wonderful Bond is being slightly undermined by some of his material.
This is also where you have to be tough on yourself. Elektra is a good villain, but she’s no Hugo Drax, while the love angle still doesn’t touch On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The plot is good, but it’s no From Russia With Love. It’s when this dissection starts, that it falls apart a bit.
Wrenage: That is fair. I like The World Is Not Enough, but it is a flawed entry. I thought I’d end up with a higher score than you, since I mentioned how much the film grew on me over the years, but we actually tied in the end. I guess my objectivity circuits are still working…on this entry, at least. I can like it, even as I recognize it has issues.
Overall Rankings
The second tier remains running hot, as The World Is Not Enough ends up in the bottom tier despite some re-evaluation.
First Tier:
From Russia With Love (61.5)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (61)
The Spy Who Loved Me (59.5)
Dr. No (56.5)
Licence To Kill (56)
Second Tier:
Goldfinger (54.5)
Thunderball (53.1)
Live and Let Die (53)
Tomorrow Never Dies (52)
You Only Live Twice (51.5)
For Your Eyes Only (51.5)
Third Tier:
Octopussy (51)
The Living Daylights (50.5)
Moonraker (48.5)
A View To A Kill (48)
Fourth Tier:
GoldenEye (47)
The World Is Not Enough (43)
The Man With The Golden Gun (38.5)
Diamonds Are Forever (34.5)
Stark: I am still not having it! I am not having GoldenEye being that low! Judges! Stewards! Anybody!!
Wrenage: I will make a deal with you. You can move GoldenEye up to the third tier if I can move A View To A Kill up to the first tier. Seems fair to me!
Stark: Why, you dirty…
That’s A Wrap
Wrenage: Did you know Sophie Marceau identifies as a sapiosexual? That means she is attracted to a person’s intelligence. It is on Wikipedia, so it has to be true. I hope she never reads these articles then. It will ruin her love life because everyone else will be unattractive by comparison. Maybe we should put a warning on these articles for such folk?
Stark: Don’t get too carried away. She is French. I have to say, one thing that is freaking me out more than just a little is that we are now deep into what I consider as “Modern Bond” and then I realise that this movie was now a quarter of a century ago. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
NEXT TIME… Brosnan’s run is brought to a premature end in Die Another Day.
Meanwhile, check out the rest of our Bond On series as we take a walk through all the Bond movies in order: 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, a two-way Battle Of The Bonds for Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, A View To A Kill, The Living Daylights, Licence To Kill, GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.