Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) | Music

Éric Serra's attempt to combine the Bond sound with synth music in GoldenEye had been a failure, but film composer David Arnold was more successful. After scoring Stargate and Independence Day, Arnold more or less auditioned for the Bond gig by putting together an album of techno and rock covers of Bond songs. He called it Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project.

It's an interesting album with covers by Aimee Mann ("Nobody Does It Better"), Chrissie Hynde ("Live and Let Die"), and Iggy Pop ("We Have All the Time in the World"), as well as a bunch of techno bands I'm less familiar with. It's experimental though, so if you're turned off by albums with the word "project" in the title, it may not be for you. It's not something that I'll listen to over and over again except for Iggy Pop's song and Propellerheads' nine-and-a-half minute version of the theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Rumor has it that John Barry heard and liked the album so much that he recommended Arnold to Broccoli and Wilson as the composer for Tomorrow Never Dies. I'm not sure about that timeline since Shaken and Stirred was released only a little over a month before Tomorrow, but maybe Barry heard the album while it was in production? Who knows. However he got the job, Arnold was hired to score Tomorrow and he was a great choice.

He uses the Bond Theme a ton in the movie. Pretty much any time that Bond's doing something cool the Theme - or a portion of it - is playing: during the teaser when Bond steals the plane, as Bond pulls into MI6 HQ in his Aston Martin, when he's test-driving the BMW, escaping from Carver's printing press, finishing up the remote-control chase in the parking garage, getting out of a helicopter, fleeing on a motorcycle while handcuffed to Michelle Yeoh, or stopping a missile. I don't think the Bond Theme had been used that much in any other movie so far.

Arnold also took a stab at writing the theme song, teaming up with lyricist Don Black (who'd co-written with Barry the songs for Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, and The Man with the Golden Gun) and singer-songwriter David McAlmont (who covered "Diamonds Are Forever" on Shaken and Stirred). Sadly, MGM wanted a more popular artist for the theme and invited several to submit their own versions. Sheryl Crow won.

Crow's isn't a bad song. It combines a) the tradition of writing a love song using the movie's title with b) the school of writing about a character in the movie. In it, a Bond Girl laments how Bond's treated her while holding hope for the future ("tomorrow never dies," you see). In fact, "not bad" is an understatement. It's a very good song. My problem with it is the wispy airiness of Crow's voice. That's always been a barrier to my enjoying her work. She's just not a strong enough singer to pound out a Bond song the way it needs to be delivered.

Contrast her with kd lang, who sings Arnold's stab at the theme song (re-titled "Surrender") over the closing credits. Lang belts it out as strongly as Arnold's bold, blaring arrangement. It's catchy, it's beautiful, and it's totally Bond. That should have been the main theme. One more bad decision by the filmmakers. It would have made my Top Five Theme Songs list.

[UPDATE: After three days of having "Surrender" pleasantly stuck in my head, I'm putting it on the list. Doesn't matter which credits it goes with, it deserves it.]



Daniel Kleinman is back to design the titles again and he's still doing great work. Borrowing from the movie's themes of television and technology, the opening credits feature lots of TV screens (often being smashed) and computer circuitry (often in the shape of women's bodies). There's also a lot of x-ray imagery that I'm not sure where it comes from, but is very cool nonetheless. Maybe it's something about the power of the media to reveal hidden things? Dang. That would've made a great premise for this movie if it had been about that.

There's one puzzling sequence at the end where a woman dives from a floating circle of enormous diamonds and splashes into a TV screen. It might be weirdness for its own sake, but I can't help connecting it with Paris, whose fall from her position of wealth as Carver's wife contributes to the downfall of his television empire. I feel like I'm stretching there, but maybe it's another example of the credits sequence understanding the thematic potential of the movie better than the movie does itself.

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. Live and Let Die
10. Dr No

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. Tomorrow Never Dies
9. Diamonds Are Forever
10. Live and Let Die

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) | Villains

Elliot Carver may just be my least favorite Bond villain. I like Jonathan Pryce in most things (especially as Keira Knightley's dad in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), so I don't know why he's so unbelievably exaggerated in Tomorrow Never Dies. Ultimately, the blame has to fall on director Roger Spottiswoode. He's made some movies that I enjoyed (Shoot to Kill being my favorite of his), but I'd need to go back and revisit them to see if overblown villains are a recurring theme for him or if he just thought that's what was needed for a Bond film. Either way, it's a horrible choice and if it wasn't his idea, he should have reined Pryce in.

Pryce isn't even trying to look real. One of the most hilarious things he does is his fakey way of typing, with his fingers flying all over his pad without his looking at it. That mirrors the character who also isn't trying to fool anyone, not that that makes it any better. Carver is clearly insane and how he's risen to such influence is even more incomprehensible for him than it was for Max Zorin in View to a Kill.

A minor example of Carver's craziness is his paranoia about Paris. He goes nuts and orders her execution when he overhears her asking Bond whether he still sleeps with a gun under his pillow. That's hardly incriminating if Bond used to date Paris' roommate, which was their cover story. Why wouldn't that be something she knew?

A bigger example though is his cartoonish megalomania. He thinks himself so untouchable that he pays no attention to covering his tracks. On the contrary, he draws attention to himself by reporting news before it's possible to know it. And he sends a British ship to its doom with a fatally misleading GPS signal that's easily tracked to his own satellite!



I always enjoy seeing magician Ricky Jay on camera, but he's the only interesting thing about the character of Henry Gupta. We see these scientist/tech support bad guys a lot in Bond movies and I don't usually mention them, but Ricky Jay has such a distinctive look that he makes me happy when I recognize him. And even though the part is thankless, it's still way better than the next guy.



The assassin Dr. Kaufman is the best example of my biggest problem with Tomorrow Never Dies: Its tone. Vincent Schiavelli is always weirdly comedic, but his dialogue in Tomorrow is impossible to take seriously, too. He belongs in a Get Smart episode, not a Bond movie where he's just murdered the alleged love of Bond's life. I was already having problems investing in Paris; Kaufman also makes a joke out of her death.



Stamper is the latest in the blonde, buff henchman archetype. Götz Otto is a handsome dude, but the only other thing that makes Stamper stand out is that he claims to have been Dr. Kaufman's protégé. And that's not standing out in a good way, because it makes him look dumb by association. Why would anyone follow that goofball?

None of these people crack the Top Ten.

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. Gobinda (Octopussy)
6. May Day (A View to a Kill)
7. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker)
8. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
9. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
10. Necros (The Living Daylights)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) | Women

Language professor Inga Bergstrom isn't a character, she's a joke. Literally. She's just there to show Bond in bed with a woman ('cause that's how he do) and to set up really old puns about tongues and cunnilingus.



I've mostly said my piece on Paris Carver, but there's one more thing I want to point out. As much as I dislike retconning in "important" relationships to give a story weight, there's a way to do it well. Tomorrow Never Dies doesn't.

And it's Teri Hatcher's fault. I couldn't be a bigger fan of her from Lois and Clark, but there's no vulnerability in her performance as Paris. At all. She's so guarded when she asks Bond, "Did I get too close?" I get that she's pissed at him for most of the time she's on screen, but if we're ever going to feel any emotion for these two as a couple, that should be the moment that creates it. Instead, when Bond says, "Yes," I don't believe him. There's nothing ever between the two of them that sells them as ever having had a deep connection.



Wai Lin is fantastic. She's played by Michelle Yeoh, which helps a lot, but I love the way she's written, too. Unlike similar characters (looking at you, Amasova and Goodhead), she doesn't let Bond take over the whole mission. They're equal partners and their romance is an afterthought once the job is done. There's no pretense that it's anything but a hook up, but after the unconvincing "depth" of Paris, that's refreshing.

Wai Lin totally makes the Top Ten, pushing out Mary Goodnight. That makes me sad, because Goodnight's generally underrated, but the list is getting competitive and Wai Lin even makes my Top Five.

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. Holly Goodhead (Moonraker)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) | Bond

Actors and Allies



Brosnan's not doing anything too different than what he did in GoldenEye, but the script's not helping him out. He's playing it straight, but the rest of the movie can't decide what tone it wants to take and undercuts him. Still, he's doing a fine job and is a much better Bond than I anticipated when they hired him.

When he was first up for the role to replace Roger Moore, I was a big Remington Steele fan, but assumed that Brosnan's Bond would continue the light-hearted, foppish take that Moore developed. After Dalton, I didn't want to go back to the Moore version and was thrilled that Brosnan apparently didn't either.

M continues to be a figure of restraint in Tomorrow, but this time Bond is her ally. She's at odds with the Navy, who wants to bluster forward and start a war with China, while she's trying to investigate and gather information. The Navy's position is stupid (especially since there's tangible evidence linking Elliot Carver to the sinking of the British vessel in Chinese waters), but I like that it puts M and Bond on the same side and gives her a reason to stick up for him. He's very much an instrument of her will, which is a theme I love and am glad it's going to continue through Judi Dench's time as the character.

I especially like when she has to remind him that sex is a viable tool to get information from his former girlfriend. I don't buy the Paris-Bond relationship, but it's a refreshing change to see Bond reluctant to use sex that way, but be ordered into it by M. Bond has always made jokes about "having" to go to bed with beautiful women "for queen and country," so it's cool (and kind of a comeuppance) to finally see him do it against his will.

Getting a bit more of a handle on Bond's relationship with Moneypenny now. It was vague in GoldenEye, but Tomorrow shows that she's not flirting with him. She knows what he's like and it doesn't bother her - in fact, she's able to wink and joke about it - but she's way too smart to fall for his crap herself. I miss the mutual flirtation of Lois Maxwell's version, but Stephanie Bond's take is cool too.

Joe Don Baker is back as Jack Wade and I still like him. I'd still rather see a great version of Felix, but I like Wade better than most versions of Felix up to this point.

And finally, there's Michelle Yeoh's character, Wai Lin. Usually when I think of Tomorrow Never Dies, I remember Carver and Paris and will tell you that I hate the movie. But I'm forgetting about Wai Lin when I do that. She and Bond make an awesome team with neither of them really being "in charge." They're convincing as agents with competing priorities whose missions happen to align this one time. They also have fun chemistry and the last half of the movie is pretty great because of it.

Best Quip



"I've always been a fan of Chinese technology," after playing with many Chinese spy gadgets culminating in a dart-shooting fan. It's a funny scene anyway with great reactions by Brosnan, but the pun puts it over the top.

Worst Quip



"Backseat driver," after ejecting the enemy gunner from the backseat of the plane Bond's stealing. Too easy.

Gadgets



Tomorrow has a couple of pretty cool gadgets that I'll get to in a second, but there are also a couple of small items that need mentioning. Both are explosives: one concealed in a lighter and the other (stolen from Wai Lin's stash) is hidden in a watch. That second one is so tiny that I'm not sure what it's intended purpose is. Bond uses it to break some glass, but it doesn't produce any flame, so it doesn't look very effective against anything stronger.

The bigger personal item is a cell phone that includes a skeleton key, a taser, a fingerprint scanner/copier, and a car remote that not only unlocks Bond's new BMW, it also drives it.

The BMW is the big showcase item for Tomorrow. In addition to being able to be driven by the phone, it's also fully loaded with an electrified security system, smoke cloud, cable cutters, a caltrops dispenser (and matching re-inflatable tires), and rockets. It's also bulletproof and sledgehammer proof, but apparently not grenade launcher proof, though the bad guys don't try that until Bond's already in the car and getting away. When Q gives Bond the car, he also claims there are machineguns, but Bond never uses them.

Speaking of giving Bond the car, it's totally lame to squeeze in one more product placement by having Q wear an Avis jacket and hand the car over at the rental company. It's a funny scene as Q reads through the insurance options, but it doesn't make sense in the context of how MI6 usually does things.

Having the car be a BMW is another unfortunate effect of product placement. The vehicle's gadgets are mostly great, but the car itself is bland and not in the same class as the Aston Martins or Lotus. Also, the remote control is a cool fantasy, but doesn't seem like it would work in real life. Including it comes from the same impulse that's going to give us an invisible car in Die Another Day. Don't like it.

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. Aston Martin V8 Vantage (The Living Daylights)
6. Glastron CV23HT speed boat (Moonraker)
7. Acrostar Mini Jet (Octopussy)
8. Crocodile submarine (Octopussy)
9. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
10. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) | Story

Plot Summary

A stupidly short-sided news mogul tries to beat his competition to stories by creating events and reporting on them before they happen. Bond and Michelle Yeoh put a stop to it.

Influences

Fresh out of Fleming influences to pull from, Barbara Broccoli and her step-brother Michael G Wilson (Cubby Broccoli had passed away shortly after the release of GoldenEye) turned to screenwriter Bruce Feirstein. He'd been one of the writers on GoldenEye and came up with a story based on his own experiences as a journalist, creating a villain along the lines of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch. Drawing inspiration from the Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows," Feirstein named his bad guy's newspaper Tomorrow and the name of the movie was going to be Tomorrow Never Lies. Which makes tons more sense than Tomorrow Never Dies, but (so the story goes) thanks to a bad fax, that was what MGM thought the title was going to be and they fell in love with it.

How Is the Book Different?

Tomorrow Never Dies is the first Bond movie to take none of its name or plot from anything Fleming-related. Other than the standard cast of characters, I can't think of a single thing that it owes directly to the books.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



There are a couple of Fleming-like elements though. A tiny one is that Bond keeps his gun in a special container in his glove compartment, but a major one is the way he approaches his case. He's in total Blunt Instrument mode.

As soon as he knows that Elliot Carver is his man (which is really early, thanks to Carver's stupidity), Bond's whole tactic is to go meet Carver and just stir crap up. Bond lets Carver know right away that he's under suspicion; then moves in on Carver's wife. I don't even know why Bond's "investigation" is necessary, because MI6 has enough evidence already to seize Carver's assets and launch a full inquiry, but whatever. Bond doesn't pussyfoot around with Carver and that's very much like Fleming's character.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



There's a bunch about Tomorrow that feels off, but I'll mention two big ones. The first is Carver's wife (and a former girlfriend of Bond) named Paris. It's cool and all that Carver is married to someone that Bond used to date - that's kind of novel - but the movie claims that she was a major, important person in his life. It makes the claim super unconvincingly, but it makes it. That not only doesn't feel like Fleming's Bond, it doesn't even feel like the movie version. There's only ever been one significant woman for Bond and it ain't this one.

Paris is an example of an even deeper problem though, and that's the inconsistency of Tomorrow's tone. One of GoldenEye's strengths was that it reconciled Bond's humor with the darkness of his world. Tomorrow doesn't have that balance. It just gives us dark moments right next to goofy ones with no attempt to bring the two together. The silliness robs the tragic moments of their weight, and the grim stuff makes the humor inappropriate. Fleming was a way better writer than that.

Cold Open



The teaser starts with a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border (because we still don't trust those Russians). It's cool that the movie shows us this from the perspective of the MI6 command center with no Bond in sight for a while. Instead, M and her new Chief of Staff are at odds with an admiral about how best to handle the market. M wants to gather intelligence, while the Navy just wants to bomb the place and get it over with.

The admiral pulls rank and orders a missile strike over the objections of "White Knight," M's agent at the bazaar who's supplying them all with the video they're watching. Of course, White Knight is actually Bond and he's right that they should've held off the attack, because one of the planes for sale is carrying nuclear weapons and an explosion will kill far more than just the terrorists.

Since it's too late to abort the missile strike, Bond's only choice is to steal the plane and get it out of the area, which he does. There's a nice moment when the admiral wonders what the hell Bond is doing and M replies, "His job!" It's an unnecessarily combative question for the admiral to be asking - creating some extra tension that doesn't need to be there and doesn't really make sense - but I like that M defends her man despite their disagreements in GoldenEye.

We can't have a teaser without some kind of action set piece, so Bond steals his plane with the gunner still in the backseat. The gunner chokes Bond, who has to fly the plane with his knees, get it under a pursuing plane, then eject the gunner into the other plane, making it explode.

It's one of the more implausible teasers, made even clunkier by its not having much to do with the rest of the movie. Carver's tech guy makes a cameo appearance at the bazaar where he's seen buying some equipment that will help in Carver's plan, but he's totally unconnected to what Bond's doing there and as far as the rest of the movie's concerned he could have gotten that tech anywhere.

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



M's traditional Chief of Staff, Bill Tanner (from the novels and a few movies including GoldenEye) has been replaced by the extremely handsome Charles Robinson (Colin Salmon from Alien vs Predator, the Resident Evil movies, and Arrow). I wonder if it has anything to do with Tanner's calling M the "evil queen of numbers" last movie? At any rate, Robinson's going to stick around for the rest of the Brosnan films and I'm glad. Like him a lot.

The only other bit of movie continuity I noticed (besides Paris, I mean) is that Bond is still a secret agent. He hasn't been a world-famous spy since the middle of the Moore era. Carver does figure out who he works for, but has to do some digging to come up with it. And he also comes up with Michelle Yeoh's employer, so it's meant as an example of Carver's resourcefulness, not Bond's notoriety.