'GoldenEye': From Script To Screen

 

Any film undergoes numerous changes between script and screen, and GoldenEye is no exception. Pierce Brosnan's James Bond debut began life in early 1994, with screenwriter Michael France introducing the rivalry between 007 and 006 (then named Augustus Trevelyan rather than Alec), a deadly femme fatale (Xenia Labyakova instead of Onatopp), a horseback-riding scene in Moscow instead of a tank chase in St. Petersburg, the return of The Living Daylights' General Pushkin, and some elements that would later be reworked into 1999's The World Is Not Enough.

Eventually, screenwriters Jeffrey Caine, Kevin Wade, and Bruce Feirstein made several modifications to France's script, leading to the blockbuster we know today. However, by analyzing three drafts dated November 21, 1994; January 7, 1995; and January 24, 1995, we can identify some interesting differences. These versions include most of the deleted scenes found on the two-disc Ultimate Edition DVD releases from 2006 and 2008, later ported to Blu-ray. Yet there are also a few differences worth noting. Let's take a look at them.

READ FULL ARTICLE AT THE GOLDENEYE DOSSIER

The Pierce Brosnan James Bond Meme Collection

 

Ladies and gentlemen. It’s my birthday today, and I wanted to thank you all for the support you’ve given this humble blog and its articles. Special thanks to those who have bought any edition of The Bond of the Millennium as well.

To celebrate, I just wanted to post a couple of memes here that have made their way into several Bond fan accounts I run. No particular order.

_________________________________________________________________________

No real man speaks badly of Pierce Brosnan or his films

The soap that could wash you from Stuttgart

Bond and Alura's underwater affair

Of course men have feelings!

Watching The Odyssey just like Nolan intended

PS1 Bond and his adolescent antics

Your crush's family

Absolute cinema!

Just for the birds

Whenever we remember Christopher Lee praising Brosnan

The real Bond ending

What every Bond fan should do

A better investment than First Light

Weak scripts, you say?

"You missed, Mr. Bond."

"Did I?"

The legacy of #TheLastBond

I don't want to

Of course Die Another Day is better!

White Knight: The Genius of Tomorrow Never Dies’ Pre-Credits Sequence

While GoldenEye will always be remembered as the bridge between the Cold War thriller and the challenges of the 1990s in the James Bond franchise, Tomorrow Never Dies will be remembered as the film that squarely introduced Ian Fleming’s character into the earliest version of the world we know today: a world shaped by mass media and satellite communication, with computers and cellphones increasingly dictating our lives, and with the distinction between what is real and what is fake becoming increasingly difficult to discern.

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, the film is remembered for its energy and non-stop pacing. Editors Dominique Fortin and Michael Arcand had little time to deliver the movie and ensure the December 1997 slot promised by the producers to MGM’s Kirk Kerkorian, who was well aware that Bond was Leo the Lion’s most valuable asset. On the film’s audio commentary, Spottiswoode reveals that he edited the movie in his mind to lend a hand to the editors, instructing the cameramen which unnecessary moments were not worth shooting.

This energy is first witnessed in the moment we’ll be focusing on today: the film’s pre-credits sequence, which is perhaps the most satisfying opening ever made for a Bond film.

Right after the gun barrel sequence, the story begins at “an arms bazaar on the Russian border,” crowded with people with unholy intentions. Next, we are given the first insight into an element that would make up much of the film: a small camera, capturing all the elements that turn this no-man’s-land into a threat that concerns MI6. The action moves to the Ministry of Defence, where M’s Chief of Staff, Charles Robinson, gives everyone an exposition of the elements we see: American rifles, Chilean mines, German explosives, Russian mortars… essentially a terrorist’s supermarket. The people in there, codenamed “pawns,” are high-profile terrorists: Satoshi Isagura, a chemical expert wanted for the subway attack in Tokyo and now serving Zairean insurgents, and Henry Gupta, a Berkeley radical who “practically invented technoterrorism” and sells his politics for cash.

Tomorrow Never Dies puts the focus on international terrorism. The enemies don’t belong to a nation like GoldenEye’s General Ourumov or Die Another Day’s Colonel Moon, nor are they linked to corporations like banker Lachaise, counting dirty money. They gather in Russia, but they are united in mayhem and don’t live under a flag. In parallel, the MOD’s situation room –crowded with wall monitors and computers, cutting-edge stuff of the analog era– also shows a clear post-glasnost alliance: next to MI6’s M and Robinson, we see Royal Navy Admiral Roebuck and Russia’s General Bukharin. This reinforces the same notion: the allies represent the civilized world (the United Kingdom and Russia), while the enemies are those who commit atrocities for cash or “pagan” causes (terrorists from the United States, Japan, and everywhere in the world).

The operation conducted inside the situation room of the MOD is planned like a chess match. The codenames are based on chess pieces: the terrorists are “pawns,” Roebuck is the “Black King,” and the man MI6 has infiltrated into the place –guess who?– is the “White Knight.” The players of the civilized world are planning the best strategy to neutralize the activities there, thinking of all possible moves and countermoves. But the metaphor will soon turn against them: the people moving the pieces cannot see what the White Knight sees from the board itself. The analytical mentality of M, the accountant-turned-Head of Intelligence, and her man Robinson clashes with Roebuck’s headstrong decision. He dismisses the role of British Intelligence and considers a military operation. Bukharin refuses to send troops to the borders of his country: elections are coming, and losses of his countrymen are unacceptable. The Black King then orders a cruise missile strike to eliminate half of the world’s terrorists. M’s protests are in vain: “My man hasn’t finished.” Roebuck tells her that his job is over, showing complete contempt for MI6’s talents – he was, earlier on, unsure of Bond’s ability to get through the terrorist camp.

This moment takes us back to GoldenEye’s dilemma. In the 1995 film, it was M who trusted analysis and data over the man in the field (“You don’t like me, Bond. You don’t like my methods. […] You think I’m a bean counter.”). By Tomorrow Never Dies, M has adopted Bond –the White Knight– as “her man,” fully trusts his capabilities, and knows that whatever they’ll have to do, he has the strategic ability to get the job done while preventing major catastrophes. The Admiral, on the other hand, prefers to trust today’s ballistic technologies (a cruise missile) over the man in the field.

Then, Bond appears.

He first appears in silence, talking to Robinson via satellite. We don’t hear him, but we know he insists on something and disobeys a direct order – fleeing the place as a missile is about to strike. “You will not wait! That’s an order!” yells Robinson to the White Knight. It is clear to us that Bond, from the shadows, has seen something the MOD didn’t.

Unlike the gritty atmosphere of the GoldenEye pre-credits sequence, a clinical operation held in 1986 at a nerve gas plant in the Soviet Union where 007 and 006 had broken contact with MI6, Tomorrow Never Dies introduces the late 1990s by having Bond in live and direct contact with his superiors. Bond is literally the chess piece the players are moving, but he’ll be a rebellious White Knight because he has assessed the play from the chessboard and not from a distance. He has the pawns directly in front of him and can feel them breathing, acting, and reacting.

His eyes detect Soviet nuclear torpedoes mounted on a MiG jet (actually, an Albatros). This says it all – if the cruise missile hits the place, it will trigger a nuclear catastrophe. In the words of Bukharin, there is enough plutonium there “to make Chernobyl look like a picnic.” For Roebuck, it is too late to abort the missile.

Bond has two options – leave the place or avoid the catastrophe while risking his life.

The White Knight makes his triumphant appearance, showing total independence and brilliant strategic judgment in avoiding the catastrophe. No real or virtual hand guides him. Like a sentient version of the chess piece that moves in an L-shaped pattern, he knocks out one of the terrorists, drops a grenade, and opens fire against the terrorists. The firepower that could have been fatal for the Russian army is no match for Bond: he avoids the bullets of the Gatling gun and the bursts of the Kalashnikovs and, with clear precision, heads for the MiG, knocks down the pilot and the back-seat driver, and sits in the cockpit. He flies away just as the missile makes impact, going through the blazing wall of fire. MI6 loses contact with him, communication is broken, and they assume the worst.

The agile mind of director Spottiswoode and editors Fortin and Arcand is seen as 007 springs into action. The pace of urgency not only responds to the needs of the filmmakers to deliver the film in time, but also to a fictional element: the effect of immediacy through the idea of Bond being monitored live and direct, and the imminence of the missile about to strike the place. More than in any of the other Brosnan-era pre-credits sequences, Bond has to think and move fast.

Although the film is an answer to the best blockbusters of the season (even Pierce Brosnan noted the overabundance of pyrotechnics), Bond never goes on a killing spree. He’s not Rambo. He knows exactly where to go and which threats to neutralize and eliminate. The explosives are placed in the right places, the bullets go toward the most strategic adversaries. The man has complete dominion of the arena. The scene reminds us that we are looking at a secret agent, not a random action hero. A skeptical Roebuck is surprised at how Bond broke his cover and went from the most discreet silence to the most strategic action: “What the hell is he doing?” he asks. “His job!” affirms M, cementing that “come back alive” moment from GoldenEye that would be reinforced in The World Is Not Enough after the death of Sir Robert King.

Amidst the agile editing, Spottiswoode takes a moment to show the sorrowful faces of M and Robinson, thinking that Bond has perished in the flames and that the disaster wasn’t avoided. But the audience is well aware that our White Knight –the chess piece, but also the hero who always defeats evil– is alive and well, as the MiG has successfully avoided the cloud of fire. David Arnold’s sublime musical piece enhances the majestic nature of our hero, with the right touches of the James Bond Theme to underline Bond’s heroic cheating of death.

But the danger is not over yet. Bond is being followed by another terrorist in another MiG, determined to hunt down the secret agent. At the same time, Bond’s back-seat driver wakes up from unconsciousness and proceeds to strangle him with a wire. Bond has to pilot the plane, avoid the enemy missiles, and find a way to get rid of his unwanted co-pilot.

Unlike the clinical precision of GoldenEye’s nerve gas plant and its miraculous plane getaway, or The World Is Not Enough’s sudden escape from a civilian setting like the bank in Bilbao, Tomorrow Never Dies builds its tension through successive layers of urgency: first the incoming missile, then the unexpected resurgence of two unwanted enemies. It’s intense, non-stop action, but oriented toward explosive suspense. Just as he’s about to be choked, the spy activates the co-pilot’s ejector seat and causes it to crash into the enemy jet right above him, making it explode and, effectively, eliminating both threats with a single move.

The laconic faces at the Ministry of Defence turn into cheers and laughter as soon as they hear the familiar voice of their White Knight through the radio: “I’ve evacuated the area,” he says, following with a pun at the frowning Roebuck, whose lack of strategy almost screws it up: “Ask the Admiral where he’d like his bombs delivered.”

The final notes of the James Bond Theme, married with this phrase brilliantly delivered by Pierce Brosnan, have a supremely satisfying effect on anyone who carries the flag of 007 through the roads of life. The effect is that of seeing your own team score a goal that wins the World Cup final. The cheers and laughter from Robinson, M, and the MOD analysts are an onscreen reflection of the same applause that echoed in the cinema rooms in Christmas 1997. Vibes of pride and joy – the same joy No, Time to Die would steal from us 24 years later in the most cruel, insulting, and destructive of ways. We were feeling the complete certitude that nobody does it better than Bond. And even though many could consider The Spy Who Loved Me’s opening superior, they would have to admit that Tomorrow Never Dies handles suspense and threat far beyond a very admirable ski stunt.

Bond’s prowess at the arms bazaar is testimony to the fact that, while GoldenEye told us “Bond is back!”, Tomorrow Never Dies is telling us “Bond is great!” And this is not an attempt to compare which film is better, or even which pre-credits sequence is better. This is simply cause and consequence. If Bond hadn’t been back, we couldn’t have been reminded of how great he is.

Read more in-depth analysis on Tomorrow Never Dies in the Updated Edition of The Bond of The Millennium, available at Amazon and DRM-Free at ZOOM Platform.

Bond as an Earthly Warrior of God

"It always helps to have a bit of prayer in your back pocket. At the end of the day, you have to have something and for me that is God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith ... God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear."  

-Pierce Brosnan, interviewed by IrishCentral in 2014 

James Bond is one of God's greatest earthly warriors.

There is nothing in the Ian Fleming novels that acknowledges him as a religious man, but his creator did compare Bond to a modern-day St George who kills wicked dragons. While Fleming noted that Bond isn't particularly likeable and has some "perceptible vices," we can be sure he stands on the side of good. The films took this even further, evidenced by a clear differentiation between the hero and the villain – while the hero avoids innocents paying the price of his actions, the villains never care about hurting innocents or their plan involves killing innocents. Bond strips out of this world the "wicked dragons" who endanger the lives of us mere mortals. Even more than that, he risks the most precious thing a man could have —his own life— to save people who would even ignore his existence. While families were having lunch in Istanbul, Bond was down there almost drowning in a sinking nuclear submarine to prevent a meltdown that would have killed them.

This is why God wants Bond to live and always gives him an escape plan—either through his wits, his gadgets, or that one ally who saves his life from an impossible situation. A clear example happens in The World Is Not Enough, where 007 is trapped in a nuclear silo by Renard with an explosive rigged for detonation, and Christmas Jones opens the blast door, paving a way out. As Psalm 20:6 reminds us, "The Lord gives victory to his anointed. He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary with the victorious power of his right hand." Dr Jones' appearance at the right place and time wasn't coincidence. This was God helping one of his best warriors.

Notably, the code number that identifies Bond is the seven. This is a number that frequently appears in the Bible, generally symbolizing completion or perfection, healing, and exoneration. A number associated with God's doings, while the six (which represents 'GoldenEye's traitorous MI6 operative Alec Trevelyan) has the opposite qualities and is frequently associated with the number of the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation. This makes sense when we consider the former agent 006 as a darker version of 007. Unsurprisingly, the demise of this villain even has some Luciferian vibes as the hero makes him fall from a blinding height (“They will bring you down to the pit, and you will die a violent death in the heart of the seas, pierced with many wounds” – Ezekiel 28:8).

Happy Resurrection Day, dear readers!

Feel free to connect at @millenniumbond on Instagram and @WolframBooks in Facebook and X.

Three Vixens, Three Deaths, One Bond

 

The World Is Not Enough features a singular moment that graces Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal of James Bond. When Elektra King ignores his warning (“You couldn’t kill me. You’d miss me”) and tells Renard to dive the nuclear submarine to proceed with their plan, he shoots her at point-blank range, killing her instantly. “I never miss,” he says quickly before caressing her forehead and jumping off after the submarine. None of the other actors could have balanced this blend of vulnerability and determination as effectively as he did. He has a moment of pity, but then he carries on.

This scene is generally celebrated among Bond fans. Director Michael Apted even said he was glad test audiences understood Bond did what he had to do, because he didn’t have another way to end their romance. Nevertheless, there are some who still argue that this scene weakens Ian Fleming’s secret agent, basically because Bond “wouldn’t have cried for a villainess.”

This isn’t quite right. Casino Royale ends with the protagonist shocked and saddened to find Vesper’s lifeless body on her bed, along with a written confession that she worked for the Russians. Bond experiences a mix of feelings: his eyes are wet (he had romantic plans with her), but he quickly shoves those thoughts aside and focuses on her betrayal of England, reporting that “3030 was a double” and “the bitch is dead now.” Villainesses don’t abound in Fleming’s books, and the femme fatale type is largely a tradition initiated by Fiona Volpe in the 1965 film adaptation of Thunderball, although the first film of the series, Dr No, included a minor female villain in the seductress Miss Taro – a character highly expanded from the source material to become a love interest setting a trap for 007.

Fast-forward to GoldenEye in 1995: we are introduced to the last of the franchise’s classic femme fatales, Xenia Onatopp. Played by Dutch model and actress Famke Janssen, Onatopp is a former Soviet fighter pilot who also worked for the KGB, or so John Gardner tells us in the film’s novelization. Like Bond, she uses seduction as a weapon, but unlike him, she kills her victims during the sexual act, strangling them with her thighs, and she possesses a sadistic personality that makes her relish killing in every form. This can be observed in the way she yells orgasmically as she guns down the Severnaya technicians and officers before stealing the title satellite weapon, which is her way of sexualizing a macabre act. GoldenEye establishes Janssen’s character as morally broken, destructive and devilish; a living manifestation of lust, in many ways. Unlike someone like Elektra King, for example, she has zero redeemable qualities in what it comes to seeing the side of right and virtue – a striking contrast with the heroine of this adventure, Natalya Simonova, who is clever and resilient but also innocent and angelical. This is why Bond dedicates her one of his trademark one-liners when he finally defeats her: “She did always enjoy a good squeeze,” he says after her body is catapulted toward the fork of a tree and crushed there. The first vixen of the Brosnan era elevates to PG-13 limits a dark attitude and psychological profile we had previously seen in Thunderball with Fiona Volpe or with Fatima Blush in Never Say Never Again.

The second villain in the universe of Brosnan’s Bond is Elektra King, played by Sophie Marceau in 1999’s The World Is Not Enough. She is a different kind of vixen compared to Xenia and those who preceded her. While Onatopp or Volpe were proud of being evil and enjoyed committing atrocities while working for a man or organization behind them, Elektra has a wicked sense of justice where she doesn’t see herself as a villain. She sees herself as someone who is delivering justice for a cause, much like Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye.

Elektra was the daughter of British oil tycoon Sir Robert King and a Muslim woman whose family discovered oil near Baku. After marrying her, Sir Robert took over the family company and ran the business (a potential case of the “glass ceiling”). Prior to the events of The World Is Not Enough, the terrorist Renard kidnapped Elektra and demanded a ransom of over three million pounds. M, a close friend of Sir Robert, advised him not to pay the ransom so that Renard would be stalled and 009 could kill him. Before 009 completed the mission, Elektra escaped captivity. M’s agent eventually found Renard and shot him. The terrorist survived the bullet but was now slowly dying and losing his senses.

Shortly after the film begins, Sir Robert is killed by a homemade explosive device inside MI6 headquarters. Bond concludes that Renard is behind this and, not content with humiliating British Intelligence and eliminating the oil tycoon, believes he will go after Elektra next. What Bond and the public ignore at this point is that it was Elektra who, in complicity with her captor, eliminated her father. She resented him for not paying her ransom, and she also believed he had stolen her mother’s empire. Now she wants to deliver justice in her name. Her plan involves using the reactor of a nuclear submarine under the Bosphorus to destroy Istanbul, making her pipeline the only oil resource for the region in the coming decades.

Marceau’s character doesn’t flinch before shooting down Valentin Zukovsky or before ordering the death of her technicians to abduct M. Elektra runs the show. She acts like a mastermind, disposing of assets and using her innocence to ensnare Bond, Renard, and M. She reaches M through her connection to Sir Robert, worrying her into thinking “she’s next” when 007 leaves in the middle of the night to follow a clue and causes her to leave her safe location at MI6. She manipulates Renard, who has desired her since the moment he kidnapped her (in the novelization, Raymond Benson details how much the terrorist suffered from being unloved by the opposite sex), but she sees him merely as a means to an end. She also makes Bond doubt himself–when he confronts her about her potential complicity with Renard and suggests she is suffering from “Stockholm syndrome,” she explodes and slaps him. More than that, moments after the accusation, she informs him that Renard has struck against a control center for her pipeline and killed several employees before placing a bomb inside one of the ducts. “Now do you believe me?” she asks him in front of everyone.

At her core, Elektra King remains both a victim and someone who has chosen the devil’s path to conduct her life. This is why Bond partially feels sad about her death and about having to kill her. That gesture of caressing her dead body is more like a wish that her soul might be healed. She resembles someone who took the wrong path because her surroundings failed her, rather than someone who became deliberately perverse. Deep down, this is the story of a girl who vindicated her mother and rejected her father, who treated her life and integrity like another business transaction–he used the ransom money to buy a classified report identifying terrorists who targeted his pipeline.

We can see a subtler specimen of this archetype in Miranda Frost, played by Rosamund Pike in Die Another Day. An MI6 agent, Frost was assigned to investigate the industrialist Gustav Graves while posing as his publicist. She is also an Olympic fencer who won the gold medal in Sydney two years before the main events of the film. In reality, Miranda’s loyalty remains with Graves’ alter ego, Colonel Moon, a North Korean officer involved in the trade of conflict diamonds and weapons of mass destruction. During the pre-credits sequence of Die Another Day, Bond is assigned to eliminate Moon while posing as a diamond dealer, but Miranda –working as his mole inside MI6– blows his cover by tipping the colonel off about Bond taking the place of the buyer who was visiting him. After a long battle on top of a hovercraft, 007 believes he has succeeded in eliminating Moon; but fourteen months (and a couple of beatings in a North Korean prison) later, he realizes Moon is alive and well and has undergone DNA replacement therapy to look like a British citizen: Gustav Graves.

Miranda Frost used her work at MI6 to facilitate Moon’s resurrection as Graves and to divert suspicion from him. Both knew each other from the time they were members of the fencing team at Harvard. Frost has an obsession with winning at all costs, and Moon arranged a drug overdose for the woman meant to be her rival. When her competitor died, Miranda won by default. Since then, in the words of Benson, she gave him her “undying loyalty.”

While Elektra King was blinded by her own revisionist sense of justice, Miranda was bitten by the bug of ambition and greed. Her story shares a parallel with a much-discussed subject in the post-9/11 era, where young Westerners were co-opted by “Axis of Evil” extremist cells to conspire against their countries, becoming the end point of a pipeline that frequently resulted in a terrorist attack. In Die Another Day, we see a strange connection between a young British woman and a North Korean leader, both conspiring against the West.

Unlike his relationship with Elektra, Bond’s encounters with Miranda are distant and cold, somewhat emotionally detached. Their lovemaking scene even pays ironic tribute to the woman’s surname. Not entirely ironically, upon learning of her betrayal, Bond tells Moon/Graves that her sex is “the coldest weapon of all.”

Nevertheless, something interesting happens during the climax of the film aboard the Antonov. Miranda fights with Jinx, Halle Berry’s NSA agent, and kills her. As the jet is engulfed in flames, Bond goes to find Jinx after having successfully shredded Graves on the aircraft’s turbine. He comes across Miranda’s dead body with a dagger crossing her heart. In one of Brosnan’s most overlooked moments as Bond, he kneels down next to the woman’s body and adopts a reflective expression, with a faint hint of hidden sadness in his eyes. The moment is broken by Jinx’s one-liner: “I think I broke her heart.” This is interesting because one-liners after an enemy’s death are usually a trademark of Bond action (as happened after the death of Xenia), but instead, it’s the good girl who delivers it, and Bond adopts a mournful expression instead.

Why would Bond be sad to see Miranda Frost dead if she was the one who gave him away in North Korea?

The most plausible answer lies in the age gap between the two. Pierce Brosnan was 48 when cameras first rolled on Die Another Day, and Rosamund Pike was 23–although Frost’s birth year, as per her onscreen dossier, is 1973, making her 29 years old. What we see here is an ageing (not necessarily “old”) and experienced Bond feeling sorry for the way a young woman got “carried away by the gale of the world,” to use a Flemingian expression. He may be a professional and understand that, in his line of duty, people get killed, but at the same time he can’t stop being human and dedicating a moment to lament the spiral of ambition that took a young woman to her death. Considering this was (unfortunately) Brosnan’s final movie as Bond, it gives his era a particular gravitas by making him slightly older and wiser than he was in GoldenEye, where he still joked about a vixen’s death.

And once again, swapping a sardonic one-liner for an expression of lament further underlines the different types of “bad women” these three characters represent. He allows himself to crack a joke at Xenia’s death because he knew she was evil, sadistic, and perverse. But he feels differently about Elektra and Miranda, who represent cases of pure souls becoming corrupted and taking a path of sin.

Did you enjoy this article? Look for more in-depth analysis of this subject in my books The Bond of The Millennium, The World of GoldenEye and Straight Up, With A Twist. You can get them on Amazon (affiliate links used) and DRM-Free at ZOOM Platform.

Pierce Brosnan's Bond Fictional Timeline

When did the events of Pierce Brosnan’s 007 adventures take place? It’s not the easiest question to answer, but below is a reconstruction of those dates. They have been compiled based on production props and the limited information provided on screen.

1986 – The mission at the Archangel Chemical Facility

This date is stated in GoldenEye novelization by John Gardner (“Cowslip, 1986” is the opening chapter) and supported by other official production material. Early script draft suggest this took place in 1984 (Ourumov's electronic dossier also points out the destruction of the Archangel plant took place that year), but that would make the main events of the film in 1993.

December 1994 / January 1995 – Bond races Xenia and visits the Casino de Monte-Carlo; the Tiger helicopter is stolen

While John Gardner places this in early summer 1995, that would contradict the next dated event –Bond’s trip to St. Petersburg. Additionally, Bond’s crewneck sweater suggests a colder season.

3 February 1995 – Bond travels to St. Petersburg

According to his plane ticket, X-rayed by Q, this is the date of his British Airways Flight 878.

25 February 1995 – Bond foils Trevelyan’s plan

During the climax of GoldenEye, the watches worn by Bond and Alec both display the date “25.” Since the St. Petersburg events occur in February, this likely indicates that the trip to Cuba and Bond’s final confrontation with Trevelyan take place on February 25.

11 April 1997 – Bond learns Danish and is summoned to the Ministry of Defence Situation Room

This is confirmed by the date on the newspaper from Tomorrow Never Dies that Bond shows his superiors.

13 April 1997 – Carver Media Group Network Party in Hamburg

The date is shown on a prop in the film.

14 April 1997 – Bond infiltrates the printing press; Paris dies; car park chase

Bond and Paris are still wearing their party clothes at the hotel when she visits his room, presumably sometime after midnight. They spend the night together; Bond later follows her tip about the hidden hatch, retrieves the encoder, and escapes. He then finds Paris dead, kills Kaufman, and evades Carver’s men in his BMW.

15 April 1997 – HALO jump; discovery of the Devonshire; capture by Stamper

Bond tells Dr. Greenwalt that he retrieved the encoder “yesterday morning.” Probably Bond really meant it when he told M that he "never sleeps on the firm's time" in Dr No.

October 1998 – Kidnapping of Elektra King

In the The World Is Not Enough novelization by Raymond Benson, Elektra is said to have been kidnapped “over a year” before the Bilbao mission.

15 November 1999 – Bond visits La Banque Suisse de L’Industrie

This is confirmed by the date on the receipt given to him by the Cigar Girl.

7 December 1999 – Parahawk attack; casino meeting; Renard encounter

Elektra’s check is dated December 7, 1999. She tells Bond she gave Davidov “the night off” while they were at the casino, allowing him to meet Renard that evening. When Bond meets Zukovsky, he notes that the parahawk attack occurred “this morning.”

8–9 December 1999 – Kazakhstan mission; Elektra’s betrayal; M’s kidnapping

Elektra tells M that Bond “disappeared in the middle of the night,” indicating that he left after their evening together. When he confronts her, he says he spoke with Renard “this morning.”

The day continues with the pipeline sequence and Bond’s capture. After learning of M’s disappearance, Bond visits Zukovsky’s caviar factory with Christmas. She states that the nuclear device was stolen “this morning.”

However, by the time of the factory attack, it is already 1:00 AM, and Elektra is wearing nightclothes—indicating that it is now December 9. Despite earlier references to “this morning,” the timeline has crossed midnight.

9 December 1999 – Final confrontation with Renard and Elektra, nuclear crisis averted

At 8:00 PM on December 8, Renard tells M she will be dead “by noon tomorrow,” confirming that the plan is set for December 9. On that day, Bond kills Elektra and Renard and prevents the nuclear meltdown.

24–25 December 1999 – Christmas in Turkey

Bond celebrates Christmas with Christmas Jones. Festive lighting and MI6 dialogue referencing the impending Millennium Bug place this scene before New Year’s Eve 2000.

28 July 2001 – North Korea mission and Bond’s capture

Bond’s watch displays the date “28” during the mission. Combined with later evidence, this strongly suggests July 28, 2001.

8 September 2002 – Bond admitted to MI6 floating hospital

A medical report prop from Die Another Day is dated September 8, 2002, indicating his release and evaluation after approximately 14 months in captivity.

10–11 November 2002 – Bond meets Raoul and Jinx in Havana; destruction of Álvarez clinic

The check Jinx gives Dr. Álvarez is dated November 11. Since she spends the night with Bond beforehand, these events span November 10–11.

12–13 November 2002 (approx.) – Return to London; Graves encounter

Shortly after his period in Havana, Bond travels to London, fences with Graves, and is reinstated. A magazine dated November 2002 provides the only reference point.

31 December 2002 – Bond rescues Dominique and saves the Eiffel Tower

As indicated in Nightfire, the "Paris Prelude" mission takes place on New Year’s Eve. Bond already has the Aston Martin Vanquish, placing this after Die Another Day.

21 March 2003 – Drake's Operation Nightfire is stopped by Bond

The final mission, titled “Equinox,” likely corresponds to the spring equinox, suggesting March 21, 2003, as the conclusion of the game’s events.

Some other dates...

The events of 007 Racing probably happened throughout 2000. The developers thought of it as some sort of "multiverse" within the Bond legacy rather than an original story per se, and in their vision Valentin Zukovsky was still alive after all (despite Raymond Benson confirming his death in the The World Is Not Enough novelization). Although not strictly a Brosnan Bond adventure, Agent Under Fire should have taken place after The World Is Not Enough and 007 Racing, but definitely before the mission to North Korea that begins Die Another Day. That should place it during the first semester of 2001. What about the Benson novels, which took elements from the Brosnan films (Judi Dench's M and the Walther P99)? While Bond asks in the Tomorrow Never Dies novelization if he's going to Hong Kong again, the events of Zero Minus Ten should have factually taken place after Tomorrow Never Dies, as the Hong Kong handover took place on July 1, 1997. Although Never Dream of Dying was published in 2001, the year is already busy with Agent Under Fire and the North Korea mission, so the events of this novel probably happened in December 2002, just before Bond's NYE with Dominique. That should place The Man With The Dragon Tattoo in 2003, despite it being published in 2002. There are no dates for Everything or Nothing, but there are chances it was set between late 2003 and early 2004.

Take into consideration that this timeline is a reconstruction, and some clues in the films are contradictory. For example, Bond’s watch at the nuclear test facility in The World Is Not Enough displays “11,” even though the sequence clearly occurs on December 8.

All of these dates remain open to interpretation, but they provide a coherent overview of how 007’s missions unfold around the turn of the millennium.

If you’re interested in production chronology, both editions of The Bond of the Millennium include an extensive timeline, spanning from Pierce Brosnan’s birth to the release of expanded soundtrack editions. You can get it here.

Undeniably… The Man With The Golden Gun

 

When Rare developed the hit video game adaptation of GoldenEye for Nintendo 64, they were allowed to incorporate elements from past films. As a result, the 1997 first-person shooter included two bonus missions primarily based on the Roger Moore era. Aztec, unlocked once the story mode was beaten on Secret Agent (medium) difficulty, had Bond infiltrating the ruins of Teotihuacán to reprogram a NASA shuttle hijacked by the Drax Corporation, battling Jaws in the process. Egyptian, unlocked after every other level was completed on 00 Agent (hard) difficulty, assigned the player to recover the Golden Gun from an ancient temple in el-Saghira and use it to kill Live And Let Die villain Baron Samedi.

With Christopher Lee’s praise of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond –whom he considered the closest to Ian Fleming’s vision– circulating once again in cyberspace, it feels like the right time to revisit how this unlockable level from a Nintendo 64 game quietly fits into the broader cinematic lore of Bond.

Most people associate Lee with his role as Francisco Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun, the hitman who challenged 007 to a deadly duel on his island in Red China waters. Yet Lee was also Fleming’s step-cousin, and the two held several conversations about the character. Fleming even confided that he had once considered James Mason for the role. While this may frustrate some self-proclaimed fans, Lee’s praise of Brosnan should not be dismissed lightly. It was published in The Scotsman in early 2005, at a time when Brosnan –who had helped re-establish Bond as a global phenomenon– had just been rather unceremoniously removed from the role. MGM executives pushed for his return for a fifth Bond film, and Barbara Broccoli initially agreed, before ultimately deciding to take the franchise in a regrettably different direction.

Anyway, back to GoldenEye 007’s Egyptian level.

Baron Samedi is guarding Scaramanga’s Golden Gun within an ancient temple in the Valley of the Kings, and Bond must recover it. The mission has two clear objectives: recover the weapon and use it to eliminate the voodoo witchdoctor. The shaman can be killed with three shots from the Golden Gun, but obtaining it is no simple task. Bond must pass through a shrine and unlock a bulletproof case by following a precise path across a grid of floor tiles. Step correctly, and the case opens. Step incorrectly, and two nearly indestructible hidden turrets activate and open fire. In the days before YouTube, discovering the correct path was no easy feat, with solutions limited to magazines and scattered websites.

What stands out, however, is the creative vision behind this level. It is much more than a simple “multiverse” curiosity within the Bond saga. In a way that almost predates Lee’s public support of Brosnan, the Egyptian storyline symbolically positions the fifth 007 as the legitimate heir to the Golden Gun.

Looking back at the 1974 film, it is clear that Scaramanga held Bond in high regard. He saw him less as an enemy and more as a rival, perhaps even an equal. Facing him was his ultimate challenge. This is evident in the life-size statue of Bond placed within his island’s funhouse, a twisted monument to the man he sought to defeat. When the black belt karate students employed by Hai Fat fail to kill 007, Scaramanga finds it amusing: “What do they teach in that school, ballet dancing?” Later, when Bond arrives on his island to rescue Mary Goodnight and recover the Solex agitator, Scaramanga welcomes him cordially, offering lunch and a toast: “To us, Mr. Bond. We are the best.” This speaks volumes about how great Bond’s reputation is within the criminal underworld. He’s not merely feared, but respected.

Taking this into account, the Egyptian shrine challenge feels entirely in character for Scaramanga. He was a man who appreciated trials of skill and elegance, even subjecting himself to such tests through the elaborate games orchestrated with his manservant, Nick Nack. In this light, the shrine puzzle resembles a ritual of worthiness. It is almost as if Scaramanga, consciously or not, designed a challenge that only Bond could overcome, only he being worthy to inherit the Golden Gun. Not because they shared the same moral ground, but because he recognized Bond’s value as both a gentleman and a modern warrior. This sentiment is echoed when he proposes their “duel of titans,” acknowledging it as old-fashioned, yet still “the onIy true test for gentlemen.”

Seen from this perspective, the mission at el-Saghira takes on a deeper symbolic dimension. It becomes an ultimate confrontation between opposing forces. Bond emerges as a kind of warrior of God: a “modern-day St. George,” as Fleming once described him. In opposition, Baron Samedi represents a darker, pagan force, rooted in black magic and superstition. Both contend for possession of a powerful and coveted artifact, yet it is the force of good that ultimately claims it and uses it to vanquish evil.

The level that concludes the GoldenEye 007 gameplay exceeds its function of offering a nostalgic callback. It ends up reinforcing Bond’s mythological stature, framing his victory not just as a matter of skill, but as the outcome of a trial he alone was destined to overcome. And reaffirms that Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond is now, undeniably, The Man With The Golden Gun.

Read more about the video games of the Brosnan era in a chapter of the Updated Edition of The Bond of The Millennium. You can get the book in Paperback, Kindle and DRM-Free Digital Special Edition at ZOOM Platform.

A Precise Balance of Heat And Cold: The Cinematography of 'Die Another Day'

 

Die Another Day faced the task of ushering James Bond into the new millennium while reaffirming the relevance of Ian Fleming’s creation in a post-9/11 world. The early 2000s marked a fascinating transitional moment for action blockbusters and spy films, blending grittier visuals and a touch of realism with heightened, CGI-assisted spectacle and speed-ramped editing tailored to the “MTV Generation.”

Released in 2002 to mark Bond’s 40th anniversary on screen, the film is often criticized for fusing these contrasting styles. Yet that very fusion is, in my view, what makes it such an authentic reflection of its era. And, rather than a flaw, one of its greatest strengths.

Another of the film’s greatest strengths is its cinematography. Every time I revisit it, I’m struck by how rich and striking the color palette is. The transitions between cool blues and violets and warmer golds, oranges, and browns feel fluid and organic. That’s not to say there wasn’t some level of digital enhancement – we know color grading was used when needed, whether to turn cloudy Cádiz into sunlit Havana or to make sunny Aldershot pass for a bleak North Korea. Even so, the overall look feels vibrant and alive, rarely appearing overly processed or artificial.

David Tattersall served as the film’s director of photography. By the time he joined the Bond franchise, he already had an impressive résumé, with credits that included the Star Wars prequel trilogy, The Green Mile, and Martin Campbell’s Vertical Limit. After Die Another Day, the late Lee Tamahori reunited with him for xXx: State of the Union, and Tattersall went on to become a frequent collaborator of Campbell on projects such as The Foreigner, The Protégé, Memory, and Dirty Angels. He also worked on several of Pierce Brosnan’s post-Bond films, including The Matador, Some Kind of Beautiful, and once again The Foreigner, which co-starred the fifth 007.

In a 2002 interview with American Cinematographer, Tattersall noted that many Y2K-era films leaned toward desaturated colors and added grain, but he felt that approach didn’t suit Bond: “We’re not talking cinéma vérité here – it’s full-on gloss, high-key and colorful.”

The cinematography of Die Another Day has a personality of its own. The film speaks through its colors, which are several times influenced by three major locations in the story: North Korea, Cuba and Iceland. Of course, you would expect North Korea to feel grey, Cuba to feel warm and Iceland to feel cold. But there's something more I keep noticing in every rewatch. It may have been intentional or not, but there's a second meaning to the color grading of the movie.

I'll post a couple of screenshots...

Now, here are some totally different screenshots...

What did you notice? At first glance, you might say that the cold and warm images are simply arranged in separate groups. But there’s something more at play. In the colder sequences, Bond is facing some form of trouble – even if it’s as subtle as being dismissed by M at the floating clinic. These cooler tones evoke suspense, danger, uncertainty, and the sense that events are not unfolding in his favor.

Now compare that to the scenes dominated by warmer hues. In those moments, Bond is at ease in one way or another – surrounded by allies, enjoying companionship, or drawn toward women and indulgence. Even though Peaceful Fountains of Desire is technically an operative sent to gather information, her role is framed around offering Bond a form of “pleasure,” reinforcing the comforting, inviting quality of those warmer visuals.

As I noted in Straight Up, With A Twist, the character portrayed by Rachel Grant carries striking symbolic weight. Her very name evokes peace– precisely what Bond has been deprived of for the past fourteen months– while her fuchsia-purple dress suggests enthusiasm, passion, and renewed energy. She feels like the final flourish in Bond’s gradual return to form, complementing his reappearance in Brioni suits, the uncorking of Bollinger champagne, and the indulgence in refined cuisine that signal he is becoming himself again.

The contrast between a relaxed Bond and a Bond under threat expressed through warm and cold tones can even be seen within a single sequence, such as the virtual reality training session. It opens with Bond cleaning his Walther P99 and savoring a glass of scotch, his tie loosened and sleeves rolled up, projecting a sense of ease. The image is dominated by rich, golden hues that reinforce this calm atmosphere.

But once gunshots ring out and Bond moves through the corridors of MI6, dispatching the black-clad intruders, the palette shifts noticeably. Cooler shades take over –blue tones, stark white lighting– visually signaling the transition from comfort to confrontation.

It’s worth emphasizing that the link between warmth and safety, or cold and danger, isn’t an absolute rule. Naturally, color is also shaped by location and setting. Blue dominates the love scene between Bond and Jinx –the first explicit sex scene in the franchise– while warmer tones appear during Bond’s infiltration of the Beauty Parlor at the Álvarez Clinic, despite the high tension of the moment.

Even so, it’s hard to ignore how frequently the film associates cooler hues with peril and warmer ones with comfort or ease.

Leaving that behind us, there are a couple of good shots in the film with some powerful meaning...

North Korea does look bleak and oppressive. When you look at behind-the-scenes photos of those sequences filmed in England, the first thing that stands out is how lush and vibrant the vegetation actually was. Digital grading played a crucial role in transforming that landscape into what Lee Tamahori envisioned as “a giant prison camp.”

I love how these wide and distant shots immediately place you in the emotional landscape of each scene. They don’t just showcase the setting — they deepen our understanding of how the environment supports the story.

The low-angle shot after Bond defeats Moon conveys a fleeting sense of triumph, one that quickly dissolves as North Korean troops close in on him. When Bond enters the room with Krug unconscious and the prostitute still lying in bed as if nothing unusual has happened, the framing suggests a kind of harsh normalcy — a world where violence like this barely disrupts daily life.

The high-angle view of Raoul’s office provides a momentary sense of calm following the frenetic action at the clinic. And the wide shot of the abandoned Underground station powerfully emphasizes isolation — a space meant to be crowded now eerily empty, heightening the secrecy of Bond’s meeting with M and echoing his remark about “an abandoned station for abandoned agents.” It subtly reinforces the idea that the head of MI6 is placing her trust in Bond outside official channels, rather than formally assigning him a mission.

The close-ups are equally impressive. You can almost sense lust floating in the air between Bond and Jinx simply through the way they look at one another. During the VR sequence, the camera captures Bond in split-second contemplation, calculating how to free M from the terrorist’s grip. And in the confrontation with Graves, the tight framing makes his resolve unmistakable — you can see that he really wants to stop him.

I’ll admit this may be reading into it a bit, but it’s something that has stood out to me since 2002. In this shot, every reporter’s camera is aimed at Gustav Graves just after he pulls off a classic Bond-style stunt – parachuting in with a Union Jack, echoing the iconic entrance in The Spy Who Loved Me. Meanwhile, Bond stands behind the crowd, almost visually sidelined, as if momentarily forgotten.

There’s a layer of symbolism there that’s hard to ignore. Graves –Colonel Moon’s constructed alter ego– functions as a distorted, exaggerated version of Bond, the kind imagined by his critics: all swagger and smirking bravado, masking supposed inadequacy. He co-opts Bond’s iconography and flair, performing the spectacle while the real agent is pushed into the background, stripped of his official standing. The cameras flash for the impostor, while the true hero stands unnoticed, already calculating his next move.

Very cool –no pun intended– gammas of blue in Iceland. I especially appreciate how varying shades of blue help distinguish the exuberant atmosphere inside the Ice Palace from the harsh, unforgiving darkness outside, where Zao reunites with Moon/Graves. The contrast in color subtly mirrors the shift in mood between celebration and menace.

When Graves illuminates the night sky with the Icarus beam, everyone eagerly slips on their sunglasses – everyone except Bond and Jinx. They instinctively sense that this supposed philanthropist’s grand gesture hides ulterior motives. While the crowd embraces the spectacle, the heroes remain unconvinced, seeing through the illusion.

A classy moment from the late Michael Madsen – and it’s worth noting the shattered monitors behind Falco and M. The wreckage visually underscores that this was a genuine “we’ve just dodged a bullet” situation, made possible by Bond’s intervention. His abilities, previously dismissed by the NSA handler, have just proven decisive. 

Two contrasting faces of Cuba emerge. In the first image, Bond drives an old-fashioned Ford Fairlane supplied by Raoul, and the modest hotel in the background reinforces the sense of a place that feels frozen in time. It’s a portrait of a country that hasn’t quite modernized.

The second image, however, shows Bond infiltrating the Beauty Parlor inside a clinic that appears fairly unremarkable from the outside –aside from the conspicuous armed guards. Behind that ordinary façade lies advanced, state-of-the-art technology, concealed and reserved for a privileged few– those who, as Raoul puts it, can “prolong the life of our beloved leaders.”

Going slightly off-topic here with this shot. Few are willing to acknowledge how strong the acting is in this scene. More often than not, it’s dismissed or criticized. To me, however, it showcases the depth of Brosnan’s performance. He isn’t simply playing James Bond — he’s embodying the platonic, idealized, romantic Bond that Moneypenny has always imagined. At the same time, he never tips his hand that this is a fabrication within the story. He's never out of character. He plays it with complete sincerity, as though the desire were entirely genuine. It’s a delicate balance of layers, and I struggle to picture another actor pulling it off with the same level of conviction.

I have many reasons to think Die Another Day is an ignored masterpiece, or at least a very good film with very minimal flaws. You can check out my book Beyond The Ice: The Case For and Against Die Another Day (which I hope to update for the 25th anniversary next year) and, of course, the "Defiant To The Last" chapter in the Updated Edition of The Bond of The Millennium. One of the reasons the film has grown considerably on me is precisely the cinematorgaphy.

In different ways, the cinematography mirrors Bond himself. The cold blues of captivity, suspicion and danger gradually give way to warmth, pleasure and regained composure. By the end, the man who was betrayed, captured and abandoned stands once again in full control, visually and emotionally. The camera charts that transformation with precision. And whether one loves or dislikes the film, its imagery remains undeniably vivid, purposeful, and alive.