Die Another Day (2002) | Music

Garbage's theme to The World Is Not Enough was great, but it wasn't a huge hit in the US, so MGM wanted a high-profile artist to sing the title song for Die Another Day. And it doesn't get much more high-profile than Madonna. She was given autonomy to create the song herself, so she wrote it with Mirwais Ahmadzaï, her collaborator of a couple of years at that point. Ahmadzaï had co-written "Music" (among other songs) with her and "Die Another Day" has the same techno sound she was using at the time.

Most fans I've talked to call it the worst of the Bond songs, but I disagree. I'd argue that it's not even the worst Brosnan song (Sheryl Crow's "Tomorrow Never Dies"), but I really don't understand why anyone would rank "All Time High" or even "Licence to Kill" and "Moonraker" above it. It's weird and different - and yeah, that "analyze this" line is super annoying - but it's at least trying something new as opposed to many of the later Moore themes.

It's also not one of my favorites though. It seems to be about Bond's mindset during his fourteen months of torture as he's trying to survive and resist the tearing down of his will. But the lyrics are extremely poetic and - unlike "View to a Kill," which is also abstruse - I'm not fond enough of the music for it to distract me from the words.

Still, it's a catchy enough tune and the strings are awesome, so while I don't love it, I like it better than many. Could've done without the remix over the closing credits though. It would have been nice to hear something by David Arnold for that.

Daniel Kleinman makes great use of the song for the credits sequence. There's a little tapping part at the beginning and Kleinman has animated scorpion tails rising into place in time with the music. The scorpions of course are part of Bond's torture, because Kleinman is using the credits as an actual part of the story. The teaser ends with Bond's capture and torture, so the credits are basically a musical montage to illustrate what Bond's going through. The ice water that Bond's face was plunged into during the teaser becomes ice women, and as the credits progress we also see women made of fire and electricity to represent hot pokers and shock treatment. Kleinman also inserts images of Bond's being beaten. And there's some diamond imagery, too, since that's what the villains are into.

The only thing I don't like is the use of female bodies to represent the methods of torture. Thematically, that doesn't work. It's been established - especially in the Brosnan films - that Bond uses women to overcome suffering. They don't really work as a metaphor for pain. It just seems like Kleinman's throwing dancing women into the credits because that's what's expected. Except for that, the credits are bold and really strong.

David Arnold is still getting plenty of use out of the Bond Theme. It plays during the hovercraft chase, when Bond's reinstated as a Double-O, when he's parasurfing a tidal wave, and as he and Jinx escape Grave's ruined cargo plane in a helicopter. There's even a cool, Latin version of the Bond Theme playing when he arrives at his hotel in Cuba.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. A View to a Kill
2. "Surrender" (end credits of Tomorrow Never Dies)
3. The Living Daylights
4. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. Diamonds Are Forever
7. You Only Live Twice
8. From Russia With Love (instrumental version)
9. The World Is Not Enough
10. Live and Let Die

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. GoldenEye
6. From Russia with Love
7. The Spy Who Loved Me
8. Die Another Day
9. Tomorrow Never Dies
10. Diamonds Are Forever

Die Another Day (2002) | Villains

Die Another Day is too excessive in general, but a little excess is good and it works with Zao. I like that we get an origin story for him and his final look is eerie and beautiful. The greatest compliment I can pay a henchman is that I wish he wouldn't have died so that we could get more of him. I can't even say that about every henchman currently in my Top Ten, but I can definitely say it about Zao.



I can't say it about Mr. Kil though. Lawrence Makoare is a great presence in the Lord of the Rings movies, but his Bond character is just a joke name and an extra person for Bond to get through.



Miranda Frost is so frustrating. Rosamund Pike is using every ounce of her mojo to make Frost interesting, but there's just nothing to work with. We're supposed to believe that she's betrayed her country just so Moon would help her cheat and win a gold medal? What kind of person does that? The movie obviously doesn't know.



Moon/Graves is a great concept. I love the DNA sci-fi laid over Fleming's version of Hugo Drax. And it's cool that Graves has some of the same weaknesses that Drax does. But his big screw up is paying for Zao's surgery with his own engraved diamonds. Graves' diamonds have been altered to hide their origin as conflict diamonds, so why not pay for Zao's procedure with the original versions? Dumb.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Never Say Never Again)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
4. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
5. Maximilian Largo (Never Say Never Again)
6. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
7. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
8. Doctor No (Dr. No)
9. General Gogol (For Your Eyes Only)
10. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Zao (Die Another Day)
6. Gobinda (Octopussy)
7. May Day (A View to a Kill)
8. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker)
9. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
10. Oddjob (Goldfinger)

Die Another Day (2002) | Women

Miranda Frost's name is awfully on-the-nose, isn't it? Not a lot of subtlety there. She's unemotional, we get it. She even hangs out in an ice palace. But beyond her coldness, the movie hasn't given any thought to her as a person. Even her role as juxtaposition to Bond's methods is weakened when we learn that her methods aren't really her methods at all, but a cover for a meaningless plot twist. I want to like her, but I don't.



Before Die Another Day was even out, there was talk about spinning Jinx into her own series. As if this was such a strong character that of course audiences would demand more of her. So already she's got something to prove and then she's introduced by deliberately evoking the very first and most iconic Bond Girl. There were other reasons for both of these things, but together they give the impression that the movie is trying way too hard with Jinx.

And she's just not that great a character. She's snotty, immoral, vicious, and generally unpleasant. And she winds up the damsel in distress not just once, but twice, having to be rescued by Bond. I suppose Halle Berry was supposed to be enough to make us want the spin-off, because it certainly wasn't anything else about her. Give me a Wai Lin series any day, though.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
3. Kara Milovy (The Living Daylights)
4. Wai Lin (Tomorrow Never Dies)
5. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
6. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
7. Natalya Simonova (GoldenEye)
8. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
9. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
10. Christmas Jones (The World Is Not Enough)

Die Another Day (2002) | Bond

Actors and Allies



As silly as Die Another Day gets, Brosnan is still taking Bond seriously. He never wavers from this in his four movies. Things can be going completely nuts around him, but he continues to play this fascinating version of Fleming's troubled character who masks his pain with jokes and hedonism. It's not one of my favorite versions of Bond, but it's a great experiment and I'm glad they tried it. One of my favorite examples from Die Another Day is when he walks into a Hong Kong hotel sopping wet in his pajamas. It's ridiculous, but he's just as confident and in control as he always is.

Bond's relationship with M continues to be complicated. She discusses his value with Miranda Frost later on, but claims not to have any use for him early in the movie. I don't think she's being completely honest there though. Bond's embarrassed her by getting captured and raising questions about whether he's the one who's been leaking information to the North Koreans. She isn't happy about having to give up Zao, so she takes it out on him.

But I don't believe she really wishes that Bond would have used his cyanide capsule. I'll explain why in a minute, but first, I'm not sure how I feel about Bond's admission that he threw the cyanide away "years ago." Paula Caplan bravely gave up her life in Thunderball when she was captured, but Bond won't make the same sacrifice? Is that hubris, cowardice, or something else? He seems proud of it.

At any rate, M tells him that he's useless and rescinds his Double-O status, but I don't think she means it. It's been established in the previous Brosnan films that she considers Bond to be her best agent. If we're going to take that continuity seriously, her dismissing him in Die Another Day sounds more like the fake "personal leave" that M used to grant Bond in the Lazenby and Moore films. I believe she cuts him loose because she knows that's the best way for him to get answers without the oversight of Damian Falco and the NSA.

Speaking of Falco, we're not supposed to like him, but Michael Madsen is working overtime to make sure that happens. He's smarmy and a bully and I don't understand why the NSA has to be here at all. Jinx works for them, but she could have as easily been a CIA agent. And if she had, maybe she wouldn't have been as immature and immoral as she turned out. Bond hasn't always liked his CIA contacts, but at least they seem to be good guys. It's hard to say that about Jinx and Falco.

Finally, a word about Moneypenny. Apparently, all her teasing and judging of Bond has been an act. Q has a Danger Room/Holodeck now and Moneypenny has no problem using it to fantasize about making out with Bond. I get it and it's fine that she's attracted to him without being able to reveal it; I just wish that my last impression of her wasn't that she's a jealous hypocrite for giving Bond a rough time when she clearly wants to do with him what he's been doing with all those other women.

Best Quip



"Saved by the bell," after using a bell to swing off a doomed hovercraft. It's not a great quip, but it says something about Die Another Day that this is the best of the bunch.

Worst Quip



"I've been known to keep my tip up," concerning fencing, but not really. Brosnan's Bond is way more fond of erection jokes than I am.

Gadgets



I like that he uses the laser watch and rebreather from previous movies. That's fun.

He also has a couple of other nifty, personal items: a ring that shatters even bulletproof glass and a C4 detonator disguised as the winding pin on his watch.

For vehicles, the NSA's Switchblade flyers are really cool and actually work, but they're overshadowed by Q's invisible car. It's great they Q's gone back to an Aston Martin after using BMWs for Brosnan's other films - and I like the tracking machineguns - but that's all that's cool about the new ride. The invisibility cloak is ridiculous, the thermal imaging is dull, and most of the rest of the car's gadgets are homages to previous films, so they're not original or exciting. It has an ejector seat and rockets like Goldfinger, remote control like the last two movies, and spiked wheels like The Living Daylights.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Iceberg boat (A View to a Kill)
5. The Q Boat (The World Is Not Enough)
6. Aston Martin V8 Vantage (The Living Daylights)
7. Glastron CV23HT speed boat (Moonraker)
8. Acrostar Mini Jet (Octopussy)
9. Crocodile submarine (Octopussy)
10. X-Ray Specs (The World Is Not Enough)

Die Another Day (2002) | Story

Plot Summary

Bond investigates a leak that led to his capture and 14-month torture in North Korea.

Influences

Die Another Day is another new story, but it does draw inspiration from a couple of Bond novels and (because it was released on the 40th anniversary of Dr. No) the movie series in general.

One of the books it pulls from isn't even a Fleming one, but the first continuation novel, Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis. Published four years after Fleming's death, just after the You Only Live Twice movie had been released, Colonel Sun has Bond teaming up with a female Soviet agent to track down a Chinese villain who kidnapped M. So it's more of a story influence on The Spy Who Loved Me and The World Is Not Enough than on Die Another Day, which just borrows the villain's name and Bond's being tortured. Even the villain's nationality and name are changed from the Chinese Colonel Sun Liang-tan to the North Korean Colonel Tan-Sun Moon.

There's also a minor influence from another important non-Fleming book when Bond adopts the cover of an ornithologist and has a copy of Birds of the West Indies. The author's name on the book has been scratched out in the movie, probably because it would have confused viewers who didn't know that Fleming stole James Bond's name from the author of the actual version of that field guide. Great homage.

A bigger influence over the plot is Fleming's Moonraker. Colonel Moon undergoes DNA restructuring to disguise himself as a wealthy Englishman named Gustav Graves, but he's secretly still loyal to his original nation. He announces a technological breakthrough that he's philanthropically developed on his own dime and is offering to the world. But his real plan is to use the technology as a weapon against his nation's enemies. There's also a woman British agent embedded in the villain's organization as his assistant whom Bond teams up with. All of that is right out of Moonraker (in fact, the assistant Miranda Frost was originally going to be named Gala Brand) as is the villain's membership in an English club called Blades. Die Another Day puts its own twist on all of it, of course.

From the movies, Die Another Day has all kinds of Easter Eggs. Here are as many as I could find, but let me know in the comments if you've spotted any others.

• Jinx's intro on the beach and her knife belt are deliberate homages to Ursula Andress in Dr. No. This used to bug me a lot until I realized that it's just one of many homages, but it's certainly one of the most obvious ones.
• The Chinese Secret Service tries to film Bond's having sex in a hotel, just like SPECTRE does in From Russia with Love. Bond also picks up (and smells?!) Rosa Klebb's shoe knife in Q's lab.
• Bond bets against Gustav with an irresistible diamond, similar to how he used Nazi gold to get Goldfinger's attention during golf. And Zao straps down Jinx and threatens her with a laser like in Goldfinger, too.
• The jetpack from Thunderball makes an appearance and Bond uses a re-breather very similar to the one he had in that movie. Bond also steals a grape from the clinic in Die Another Day, just like he did from Angelo's Shrublands room in Thunderball.
• In You Only Live Twice, Tiger Tanaka mentions that M has a private subway train. We get to see it in Die Another Day.
• Graves actually says the line, "Diamonds are forever." And his killer satellite is pretty much the same as the one Blofeld created, though not actually created out of diamonds.
• Sheriff JW Pepper from Live and Let Die makes an appearance. Not really; just seeing if you're paying attention. He wouldn't have been that out of place though.
• There are some spinning mirrors in the DNA replacement clinic that are similar to Scaramanga's in The Man with the Golden Gun.
• Graves uses a Union Jack parachute like the one Bond has in The Spy Who Loved Me.
• The Acrostar and crocodile sub from Octopussy are both in Q's workshop.
• The way Bond and Jinx escape Graves' cargo plane is similar to the way Bond and Kara escape theirs in The Living Daylights.
• Bond temporarily goes rogue as he does in License to Kill.
• He uses his laser watch from GoldenEye (and arguably from Never Say Never Again, if we want to go that far). 

It didn't make it into the movie, but originally the Chinese operative Chang was going to be Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies. Sadly, they couldn't work it out with Michelle Yeoh, but that would've been another one.

How Is the Book Different?

I said I was going to retire this section, but there's enough in common with Moonraker to point out some major tweaks that Die Another Day makes. Hugo Drax's original nationality is German and he remains loyal to the ideas of the Nazis. That's changed to North Korea for Graves. Also, the club Blades is now basically a super fancy fencing gym. And instead of the Moonraker rocket (a fictionalized, upgraded V2) for Britain, Graves has created the Icarus satellite that focuses solar energy year-round to agricultural areas that need it all over the world.

Plotwise, a major difference is that Miranda Frost is actually a triple-agent working for the villain she's supposed to be spying on.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



In addition to the Moonraker stuff, there's plenty of Blunt Instrument talk in Die Another Day. In fact, it was this movie that put that term on my radar and explicitly stated it as Bond's primary tactic and use in MI6.

Die Another Day gets a lot of crap and a lot of it is deserved, but the script is smarter than we give it credit for. I love the conversation between M and Frost about tactics. Frost has been undercover with Graves for months and hasn't turned up anything incriminating. Of course, we later learn that this is because she's in league with him, but it gives M the chance to explain Bond's methods and why they're valuable in these kinds of situations. Fans poke fun at Bond all the time for being a lousy spy, but that's because he's not that kind of spy. He's not like Frost. But he's extremely useful in certain kinds of missions and Die Another Day makes that clearer than it's ever been before.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



As smart as the script sometimes is, there's also a huge amount of whackadoo, from ice hotels to invisible cars. And director Lee Tamahori isn't helping with his use of CGI for some of the bigger stunts. Fleming could get pulpy and crazy, but his novels always feel grounded in reality. Die Another Day doesn't; even more so than the nuttiest Roger Moore ones.

Cold Open



We get a sense for how outlandish Die Another Day is going to be right from the gun barrel sequence. The Bond Theme during it is way too busy with excessive percussion and then when Bond fires, we actually see the bullet from his gun shoot at us and into the gun barrel. Like the rest of the movie, there's not a lot of thought about whether something should be done bigger.

The teaser itself is good though. It opens in North Korea with Bond and some other agents surfing into the country. And the surfing is really cool, from the photography to the music to the way the surfers are gradually revealed coming out of enormous waves.

From there, they intercept a helicopter and Bond replaces a diamond courier, planting C4 in the briefcase that holds the jewels. They then go to Colonel Moon's headquarters where we meet the officer and his henchman Zao (who's introduced beating up his anger therapist, speaking of unsubtlety, but it doesn't ruin anything). Moon and Zao receive a message that Bond is a spy, so they kill his associates and try to kill him. He blows up the diamonds though in Zao's face (literally) and steals a hovercraft to escape across the minefield of the DMZ between North and South Korea.

The hovercraft chase is pretty great with the hard-to-control vehicles slipping all over the place and crashing into each other like bumper cars. Bond winds up jumping onto Moon's hovercraft and fighting him, then jumps to safety just as Moon and the hovercraft go over a cliff.

There are no awesome stunts, but it's so far so good until Moon's father shows up. Bond has plenty of warning that General Moon is coming, but doesn't even try to escape. He just stands around waiting to be captured and taken back to the base for some torture. As his head is plunged into icy water, the credits start.

Except for that convenient lack of escape instinct on Bond's part at the end, it's an intriguing teaser with some strong visuals and action. Nothing that's going to push it into the Top Ten, but a good, solid, mid-level teaser.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. GoldenEye
2. The Spy Who Loved Me
3. Moonraker
4. Thunderball
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. A View to a Kill
7. Goldfinger
8. The Man with the Golden Gun
9. The Living Daylights
10. Licence to Kill

Movie Series Continuity



A lot of the Easter Eggs build on movie continuity, especially in Q's workshop, but that's pretty much it for direct ties to previous films. Chief of Staff Charles Robinson is still around, so that's great, but he has less to do this time than the last couple of films.