The World is Not Enough is 15
As far as pop cultural artifacts are concerned, there is no denying the tenure and sustainability of the James Bond franchise. Since 1962, a Bond film has been released almost every other year. The biggest gap of time between films is six years, 1995’s Goldeneye following up ‘89’s License to Kill. As Bond sought to stake his claim on the 1990s, a fresh-faced 007 was introduced to the screen in Pierce Brosnan, along with a very different style of spy film heavily influenced by the action blockbusters of Michael Bay and John Woo. This new incarnation of Bond was an attempt to push the spy back into the popular sphere. To do so, the spy formula was restrained as a higher-octane, pyrotechnic, thrill ride emerged to take its place. It seemed the best way back to ascend to a new relevance was found in learning to walk away from an explosion (metaphor alert!).
Despite Brosnan’s first two action-packed vehicles (Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies), young moviegoers still saw James Bond as “an old-fashioned Secret Service agent created by their parents’ generation.”[1] Therefore, MGM and MTV negotiated a multi-million dollar promotional deal in anticipation of 1999’s The World is Not Enough. The deal involved MTV pandering to its “young audience” by showing over 100 hours of Bond-related footage. This included everything from a documentary of Garbage making the music video for the theme song to contests where viewers could win the BMW Z8 to Denise Richards showing up randomly during programming to titillate teenage male viewership.
Because Bond functions best as nostalgia, The World is Not Enough now has the weight of the franchise’s cultural timbre hanging over it. Much of the delight in watching earlier Bond lies in the films’ period-specific details and farfetched plots. So does revisiting it amuse as much as watching Goldfinger in which Sean Connery thwarts an over-the-top villain’s ridiculous attempt to rob Ft. Knox? Does it retain the same pleasure of flipping on Moonraker and seeing the dastardly Jaws and his metal-toothed grin? Fifteen Novembers, four new Bond films, and Daniel Craig’s ascension have passed since the release of The World is Not Enough. Even with its crystallized success in 1999, does this Bond film help the spy-god figure further bury his well-coifed follicles into cinema history?
On its own merit The World is Not Enough stands as simply a poor film. In keeping with the times, it boasts daunting action set-pieces but which unfortunately play out as bland, Woo-esque counterfeits, bloated scenes rendered inert and derivative. The action seems wholly disinterested in creating any tension or stakes as it hurtles through each set-piece forever onto the next, all impotent momentum and unnecessary combustion.
Michael Apted (director of the Up documentary series and Coal Miner’s Daughter) has a knack for what I’m calling “compositional insipidness.” The best examples of this are establishing shots at the beginning of the film with the then two-year old Guggenheim museum placed lackadaisically in the middle of the frame. This hulking museum is shot with no sense of its structure or use of space. As the museum juts in the middle of the screen, a mere place holder of setting, every frame that follows in the film seems to exist within the same purgatory of visual indifference: no exploration of space or how images shape story.
Speaking of the story, it is nothing special. Bond is called to protect the oil heiress Elektra King from the terrorist who killer her father. This
Some have attempted to classify this as “darker” Bond, but its guise of psychological density is all placed within one act of his killing a woman. This is undoubtedly a shocking act, but it is one completely in line with this franchise’s rampant misogyny. Bond plays it straight because he hates women and already has another one - Dr. Christmas Jones, a nuclear physicist played by Denise Richards (seriously) - whom will replace the dead one.
Finally, in treating The World is Not Enough as a case study in Bond-as-artifact, I’ve found that its makings are too freshly stale to be a piece of nostalgia. As of 2014, the 61 year old Pierce Brosnan still stars in middling spy thrillers and standard Hollywood rom-com fare; Garbage remains on the fringes of popular music, gone the way of MTV and alternative rock; and Denise Richards has been replaced many times over by the fresh-faced fantasy pinups of the 21st century prepubescent. This is not to deride these artists nor their current work but to say that culture has begun shuffling them to the margins as newer, more popular personalities have arisen.
With its grade D filmmaking and stale cultural elements, fifteen years has proven unable to coat the inherent bad of The World is Not Enough in the amber of Bond film tradition. Until this future old man pines for the brand of nostalgia where Brosnan is Bond, everything is reducible to a flash of pyrotechnics, and Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist – none of which I will ever pine for, mind you - I think it’s best this one stays on the shelf for another fifteen.
by Colin Stacy
[1] “Selling a super spy”. BBC News. 19 Nov 1999. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1999/11/99/shaken_not_stirred/525210.stm. 30 Oct 2014.
This programmed Bond-bludgeoning of the young masses seemed a success, as The World is Not Enough was the highest-grossing film in its opening weekend, raking in $35,519,007. It eventually made $126,943,684 domestically and was the 14th highest-grossing film of 1999. Not only was the film monetarily successful, but many critics hailed it as a solid Bond outing, including Ebert himself.
terrorist Renard has recently taken a bullet to the head. As it can’t be removed, it slowly travels further into his brain, thus making him lose his bodily sensation. There’s an evil plot to gain control of an oil supply, a love triangle, and nuclear weaponry. But ultimately, every bit of plotting is simply reduced to a shell within which to release senseless action.
