Tomorrow Never Dies
Tomorrow Never Dies is a 1997 action 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 prevent Elliot Carver, a power-mad media mogul, from engineering world events to initiate World War III.
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 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 $339 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, 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. It was followed by The World Is Not Enough in 1999.
Plot
sends James Bond into the field to scout a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Despite M's insistence on letting 007 finish his mission, Royal Navy Rear 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, dogfighting with another L-39 before being able to return to base.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 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 Carver's chief enforcer Stamper, ambushes and sinks it with a "sea drill" torpedo. Carver's henchmen steal one of Devonshire
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, 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, Paris is killed by Carver's assassin and Stamper's mentor, Dr. Kaufman. After Bond returns to find Paris' 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 via his Ericsson cell phone.
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, sending 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.
Cast
Other actors in the film include Julian Fellowes as the British Minister of Defence; Cecilie Thomsen as Inga Bergstrom, an Oxford professor Bond has an affair with; Nina Young as Tamara Steel, a news presenter for Carver Media Group; Colin Stinton as Dr. Dave Greenwalt, an American Air Force expert on GPS; Michael Byrne as Admiral Kelly, commander of the Royal Navy task force sent to the South China Sea; Philip Kwok as General Chang, a corrupt Chinese military official who is helping Carver start a war between China and Britain; Terence Rigby as Russian Army General Bukharin; Christopher Bowen as HMS Devonshire Commander Richard Day; Gerard Butler and Julian Rhind-Tutt as Devonshire crewmen; Pip Torrens as captain of the naval task force's lead ship HMS Bedford, Hugh Bonneville, Brendan Coyle, and Jason Watkins as Bedford crewmen; and Daphne Deckers as a Carver Media Group PR representative.Production
Bond 18 was greenlit after the positive public reception to the teaser trailer for GoldenEye in May 1995. Following GoldenEyeIt was the first Bond film made after the death of Albert R. Broccoli, who had been involved with the series' production since its inception. Not only was the film dedicated to his memory, but the opening credits were revised to begin with "Albert R Broccoli’s Eon Productions Limited presents", thus keeping Broccoli’s name in the title sequence.
The rush to complete the film drove the budget to $110 million. The producers were unable to persuade GoldenEye director Martin Campbell to return, as he had chosen to direct The Mask of Zorro instead; his agent said, "Martin just didn't want to do two Bond films in a row." Roger Spottiswoode was chosen to direct in September 1996; he had offered to direct GoldenEye when Timothy Dalton was still cast as Bond.
Writing
Initial writers included John Cork, Richard Smith, and novelist Donald E. Westlake. In 1995, Westlake wrote two story treatments in collaboration with Wilson, both of which featured a villain who planned to destroy Hong Kong with explosives on the eve of the city's July 1997 transfer of sovereignty to China. Westlake used some of his ideas for a novel he completed the next year, though it was not published until 2017 under the title Forever and a Death. Director Spottiswoode said that, in January 1997, MGM had a script also focused on the Hong Kong handover, but it could not be used for a film opening at the end of the year, so they had to start "almost from scratch at T-minus zero!"Bruce Feirstein, who worked on GoldenEye, wrote the initial script. He claimed that his inspiration was his own experience working with journalism and viewing both Sky News and CNN's 24-hour news coverage of the Gulf War, stating that he aimed to "write something that was grounded in a nightmare of reality." The script was handed to Spottiswoode, who then gathered seven Hollywood screenwriters in London to brainstorm, eventually choosing Nicholas Meyer to do rewrites. The script was also worked on by Dan Petrie Jr. and David Campbell Wilson before Feirstein was brought back for a final polish. Although Feirstein retained sole writing credit in the film and publicity materials, Meyer, Petrie and Wilson were given credit with Feirstein on the title page of the film's novelization by Raymond Benson. While many reviewers compared Elliot Carver to Rupert Murdoch, Feirstein based the character on Robert Maxwell, with Carver's reported death bearing similarities to that of Maxwell's; that is, "Missing, presumed drowned, while on a cruise aboard his luxury yacht," as stated by M at the end of the film. However, Spottiswoode himself said in a 2004 interview that "Carver is Rupert Murdoch".
In the original script when Bond is set to parachute into Vietnam he is told by a CIA agent that "You know what will happen. It will be war. And maybe this time, maybe we’ll win". The Pentagon was embarrassed by this line and it was subsequently removed.
Wilson said, "We didn't have a script that was ready to shoot on the first day of filming", while Pierce Brosnan said, "We had a script that was not functioning in certain areas."
The title was inspired by the Beatles' song "Tomorrow Never Knows". The eventual title came about by accident. One of the potential titles was Tomorrow Never Lies, and this was faxed to MGM. However, due to a misunderstanding by the fax recipient, it became Tomorrow Never Dies, a title MGM found so attractive that they insisted on using it. The title was the first not to have any relation to Fleming's life or work.