Welcome back to my continuing series on the James Bond films, broken down by decade. Last time, we talked about the transition from the 70s to the 80s, from Roger Moore to Sean Connery to Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton. I did a great job with that, didn’t I? (Yes, you’re not hallucinating, I haven’t written it yet. Blame the streaming companies for not making those titles available after April!)

Today, we’ll talk about how the films completely rebooted in the 90s as we had yet another transition in the actor playing Bond. In a move that seemed the opposite of the last move, Timothy Dalton’s rougher and colder interpretation was replaced by Pierce Brosnan’s suave, funny, and charming Bond.

The move worked as the films grossed more money than ever. The 90s were the years when the Bond franchise became a FRANCHISE. The budgets were bigger, the stories became more outlandish, and the thin line between fiction and plausible reality eventually disappeared. In a sense, James Bond became the first comic book hero franchise and would set the stage for the superhero movies of the 2000s.

Here are the James Bond films of the 1990s:

1. Goldeneye (1995) – Pierce Brosnan
2. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) – Pierce Brosnan
3. The World Is Not Enough (1999) – Pierce Brosnan

Yup, there were only 3 films in the entire decade! After Timothy Dalton’s last film in 1989, there was a six year gap in which it wasn’t really clear what was going to happen to the franchise. The producers had wanted Pierce Brosnan for awhile but, in a story very similar to Roger Moore’s, Pierce was busy filming Remington Steele for TV and was thus unavailable when Timothy Dalton took over for Roger Moore. It took a while, but eventually Brosnan was able to get out of his Remington Steele contract and the franchise was able to get going again.

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Goldeneye

Story: 007 and 006 start the film off with a mission inside a chemical weapons plant in the Soviet Union. 006 gets captured yet 007 gets away and manages to blow the place up. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the events of that day come back to haunt Bond as he searches for a missing military helicopter, a beautiful Russian technician, and a secret Cuban satellite base.

Highlights: You’re kidding, right? Famke Janssen stole this movie like she was Pierre Despereaux.

Also this

Robbie Coltrane was awesome as Russian gangster Valentin Zukovsky

Lowlights:

Look, I’m a BMW driver, but that Z3 that Bond drove was an embarrassment. The Z4, a car I had for a few years, is a much better representation of what BMW can do and is the car that Bond should have driven in the film.

Random Observations: Question for the Canadien readers: How do you feel about the fact that the guy that gets killed for the helicopter keys was depicted as Canadian?

Minnie Driver plays the mistress of Robbie Coltrane’s Valentin Zukovsky. She’s only onscreen for probably less than a minute but her appearance is memorable due to her “cat-strangling” singing and her two tremendous talents.

Influences: I tend to like my women insane and homicidal.

Overview: Martin Campbell is a really good director if you want to re-set the Bond franchise. He directed this film and he also directed Casino Royale, the first Daniel Craig film and the one that re-re-set the franchise after Brosnan’s departure. I think Goldeneye is Brosnan’s best Bond film and Casino Royale is Craig’s best Bond film.

Goldeneye was unlike any previous Bond film and fully moved him into a contemporary post-Soviet time. The Cold War was over, so the old stories didn’t work anymore. This film did a good job of bringing Bond into the present more than any film had done so before.

In discarding the past, the film also heralded the beginning of a new type of James Bond film. Some of the familiar elements were still there, but M is now a woman, expertly played by Dame Judy Dench. Moneypenny is also played by a new actor. Instead of James’ friend, Felix Leiter, we get Joe Don Baker’s Jack Wade and his Muffy rose tattoo. It’s the same world but it’s also completely different. Only Desmond Llewellyn’s Q remains the same but his days were numbered.

As the transition film into this new world, Goldeneye was highly successful. It grossed more than any previous Bond film to date and more than doubled the gross of the last Bond film. It also set the stage for the rest of Brosnan films with bigger budgets, blatant product placement, and increasingly unreal CGI sequences.

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Tomorrow Never Dies

Story: A mad media mogul manipulates multiple governments in order to sell newspapers, magazines, and ads on his 24 hour news network. Bond must extract vital information out of the mogul’s wife’s vagina that will allow him to stop the madman. He is successful and teams up with a beautiful Chinese secret agent to take down the evil plot to start World War 3.

Highlights: She cool:

I really should brush up on a little Danish:

Lowlights: I didn’t get this feature in my BMW:

Random Observations: I will never forgive Sheryl Crow for getting with One Nut Cheating Biking Bastard. She does a good job with the theme song, though.

There was rampant product placement everywhere in this film. From the clearly shown “Ericsson” phone (which is hilarious, btw, because I’m pretty sure that company has disappeared. I might be wrong, though. I mean, there are still Hippos using Blackberrys…) to the BMW used for the second straight film by Bond, you can see brand names clearly displayed everywhere.

Ricky Jay was hilarious in his part as the media mogul’s henchman. In every scene he is in, he exudes a sense of “I can’t believe I have to work for this asshole…”

Influences: Not a single one. I don’t know if it’s because I was older when I watched this film, but nothing about it inspired me. It didn’t make me want to go to Vietnam or Hamburg. It also didn’t make me want to buy a BMW or an Ericsson phone. It did, however, pique my interest in Danish blondes.

Overview: I’ve got to be honest. This was the first James Bond film where I said out loud to myself as I was watching it, “Fucking really?”. Don’t get me wrong, the action sequences are fun to watch but having Bond manipulate his BMW (I wonder how much money BMW gave to the producers for the Bond films of the 90s…) with his phone like it was a Nintendo Gameboy was a little much.

It was just unrealistic to me.

Similarly, the opening sequence at the arms bazaar had multiple explosions that were clearly CGI’ed. Granted, I know they’re not going to blow up multi-million dollar fighter jets, but a little more realism would have been appreciated.

The plot itself was timely as it dealt with the now-familiar dilemma of “news” outlets going away from performing journalistic duties and turning into “entertainment” media. It foreshadowed Fox News, CNN, and all the other networks that now have a clear bias and agenda to shape the news, not just report it.

Despite its flaws, it was still an enjoyable movie for me. Teri Hatcher, though underused and sporting a regretable haircut, did a great job as Paris, Bond’s ex and the mogul’s wife. The most notable and important bit of casting, however, was Michelle Yeoh as the Chinese agent helping Bond.

Much like Barbara Bach’s character in The Spy Who Loved Me, Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin was beautiful, talented, and a worthy adversary to Bond. She was also initially a rival until they decide to work together to stop the evil plot. The most noteworthy part, though, is the fact that she is Asian. An Asian female co-lead in a James Bond film was a big deal from the standpoint of equality and providing opportunities to minority actors.

The role of China, again, changes from previous depictions. The cooperation between Bond and Wai Lin infers a friendliness between the two nations even as the media mogul tries to pit them against each other. It’s also interesting that Russia is depicted as an ally trying to help, not an enemy. Finally, the US, via Jack Watt’s second appearance in the series, also assists.

The old world of countries going against other countries is disappearing. It will, like in the real world, be replaced by countries cooperating in dealing with dangerous third parties intent on wreaking havoc for profit.

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The World Is Not Enough

Story: Now that we got the most important part of this movie out of the way, we can discuss the plot which (/watches film), fucking REALLY?!? Trainspotting Dude gets a bullet lodged in his head and is now impervious to pain and wants to inflict it on the world and Sophie Marceau has gone all Stockholm Syndrome and Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife is a fucking nuclear scientist?!?

Fuck you.

Highlights: The last line of the film.

The return of Robbie Coltrane as Valentin Zukovsky:

Bilbao makes an appearance in the opening sequence!

This delightful young lady:

Lowlights: Where do I begin? The plot? The decision to suspend ALL disbelief for the sake of “entertainment”? The boat flying out of a window and then driving through city streets? The decision to kill Valentin Zukovsky, one of the best Bond movie characters ever? The decision to kill Maria Grazia Cucinotta’s character at the very beginning?

Random Observations: Garbage was a great band of the 90s. It was a good choice to have them sing the theme song.

This was Desmond Llewellyn’s last film as Q. They decided to introduce John Cleese as his replacement which… yeah. At least he got a proper sendoff.

Bond gets a lot better roadster to drive in this film, the short-lived Z8. The car had a very short and small production run. Only 5,703 were built between 2000 and 2003, 2,543 for the North American market. Perhaps the $128K price tag had something to do with it.

Influences: I definitely wanted to visit Bilbao after watching this movie. Thankfully, I was able to do that a few years ago. I found out I got a speeding ticket from a speed camera in Bilbao. I may be a wanted man in Bilbao.

Overview: What the movie lacks in plot and coherence, it more than makes up with action sequences. The Bilbao sequence was good, the Thames river sequence was better, and the Azerbaijan skiing sequence even better. And that’s just the first third of the film.

It was nice to see former Soviet socialist republics turned independent countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan being locations for the film. It was also nice to see Istanbul back in a Bond film as the centre of the action.

Intellectually, my mind revolted watching this the first time and, watching it again, it again is repulsed. This was the film that started turning me off the Bond franchise.

When logic is suspended to this extent, there is no longer a mystery to be solved or a puzzle to figure out. There was only now a thin plot that served as an excuse/vehicle for showing action sequences, the next one more extreme than the one before with CGI explosions all over the place.

It’s a formula that’s worked well for audiences. The World Is Not Enough was the highest grossing film in franchise history at the time. It established a formula for multiple comic book franchises in the 2000s.

It just wasn’t what I knew and loved as a James Bond film.

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Conclusions

The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union forever changed the James Bond films. Instead of spycraft and using brains to beat opponents, the emphasis shifted to explosions, hand-to-hand combat, and non-stop action.

I remember fondly a 5 minute sequence in From Russia With Love in which no words are spoken as Sean Connery’s Bond is inspecting his hotel room to see if it is bugged. I cannot imagine a James Bond film in the 90s having that sequence in it.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing for me was the suspension of disbelief that was now required to watch a James Bond film. Sure, James Bond had always been larger than life, but at least his adventures were grounded in reality, his adversaries were mad but logical, and the action was incredible but obeyed the laws of physics (Moonraker Star Wars bullshit notwithstanding).

Goldeneye was the most realistic to me and thus holds a special place in my heart. Yes, Famke Janssen gets a lot of credit for that, but still, it was a well-made film. Tomorrow Never Dies started going off the rails with the Nintendo BMW and The World Is Not Enough just completely jumped off the track with Renard and his pain-eliminating bullet.

There would be one more Pierce Brosnan film to come, Die Another Day, which would follow in the path of The World Is Not Enough with invisible cars, the ability to turn an Asian into a white person, and a Futurama-like space mirror that burns a path through ice like a knife through butter.

But that’s a story for another time. See you next time in the 2000s.