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Tomorrow Never Dies movie storyline. MI6 sends James Bond, agent 007, into the field to spy on a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Despite M’s insistence on letting 007 finish his reconnaissance, British Admiral Roebuck orders the frigate HMS Chester to launch a missile attack on the arms bazaar. Bond then discovers two nuclear torpedoes mounted on an L-39 Albatros, and as the missile is too far along to be aborted, 007 hijacks the L-39 and flies away seconds before the bazaar is destroyed.
The media baron Elliot Carver soon begins his plans to use a stolen encoder obtained at the bazaar by his henchman, cyberterrorist Henry Gupta, to provoke war between China and the United Kingdom; he hopes to replace the Chinese government with one that will give him exclusive broadcasting rights.
Meaconing the GPS signal using the encoder, Gupta sends the British frigate HMS Devonshire off-course into Chinese-held waters in the South China Sea, where Carver’s stealth ship, commanded by Mr. Stamper, sinks it and steals one of its missiles, while shooting down a Chinese J-7 fighter jet and killing off the Devonshire’s survivors with Chinese weaponry. The British Minister of Defence orders Roebuck to deploy the British Fleet to recover the frigate, and possibly retaliate, while leaving M only 48 hours to investigate its sinking and avert a war.
M sends Bond to investigate Carver after he releases news articles about the crisis hours before MI6 had learned of it. Bond travels to Hamburg and seduces Carver’s wife, Paris, who is also Bond’s ex-girlfriend, to get information that would help him enter Carver’s newspaper headquarters. He also knocks out three of Stamper’s men and cuts Carver off the air while he is giving a speech during the inaugural broadcast of his satellite network.
After Bond steals back the GPS encoder, Carver orders Paris and Bond killed. Paris is murdered by Carver’s personal assassin Dr. Kaufman, but Bond kills Kaufman and escapes, protecting the encoder. Bond learns that the encoder had been tampered with, and goes to the South China Sea to investigate the wreck (which was actually in Vietnamese waters). He and Wai Lin, a Chinese agent on the same case, explore the sunken ship and discover one of its cruise missiles missing, but are captured by Stamper and taken to the CMGN tower in Saigon. They soon escape and decide to collaborate on the investigation.
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) is the eighteenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, with the screenplay written by Bruce Feirstein, the film follows Bond as he attempts to stop Elliot Carver, a power-mad media mogul, from engineering world events to initiate World War III.
The film was produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, and was the first James Bond film made after the death of producer Albert R. Broccoli, to whom the movie pays tribute in the end credits. Filming locations included France, Thailand, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Tomorrow Never Dies performed well at the box office and earned a Golden Globe nomination despite mixed reviews. While its performance at the domestic box office surpassed that of its predecessor, GoldenEye, it was the only Pierce Brosnan Bond film not to open at number one at the box office, as it opened the same day as Titanic, but instead at number two.
Second unit filming began on 18 January 1997 with Vic Armstrong directing; they filmed the pre-credits sequence at Peyresourde Airport in the French Pyrenees, and moved on to Portsmouth to film the scenes where the Royal Navy prepares to engage the Chinese. The main unit began filming on 1 April. They were unable to use the Leavesden Film Studios, which they had constructed from an abandoned Rolls-Royce factory for GoldenEye, as George Lucas was using it for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, so instead they constructed sound stages in another derelict industrial site nearby. They also used the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios.
The scene at the “U.S. Air Base in the South China Sea” where Bond hands over the GPS encoder was actually filmed in the area known as Blue Section at RAF Lakenheath. The sea landing used the vast tank built for Titanic in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico. The MH-53J in the film was from the US Air Force’s 352d Special Operations Group at RAF Mildenhall. Some scenes were planned to be filmed on location in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and the production had been granted a visa. This was later rescinded, two months after planning had begun, forcing filming to move to Bangkok, Thailand.
Bond spokesman Gordon Arnell claimed the Vietnamese were unhappy with crew and equipment needed for pyrotechnics, with a Vietnamese official saying it was due to “many complicated reasons”. Two locations from previous Bond films were used: Brosnan and Hatcher’s love scene was filmed at Stoke Park, which had been featured in Goldfinger, and the bay where they search for Carver’s stealth boat is Phang Nga Bay, Thailand, previously used for The Man with the Golden Gun.
Tomorrow Never Dies movie trailer.
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Directed by: Roger Spottiswoode
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Joe Don Baker, Judi Dench, Vincent Schiavelli, Samantha Bond, Colin Salmon, Nina Young
Screenplay by: Bruce Feirstein
Production Design by: Allan Cameron
Cinematography by: Robert Elswit
Film Editing by: Michel Arcand, Dominique Fortin
Costume Design by: Lindy Hemming
Set Decoration by: Peter Young
Art Direction by: Ken Court, Jonathan Lee, Giles Masters, Tony Reading, Stephen Scott
Music by: David Arnold
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, sexuality and innuendo.
Distributed by: Metro Goldwyn Mayer (United States), United International Pictures (International)
Release Date: December 19, 1997
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