Die Another Day
Die Another Day | |
---|---|
Directed by | Lee Tamahori |
Written by | |
Based on | James Bond by Ian Fleming |
Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | 20th Century Fox (International) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 134 minutes |
Countries | United Kingdom[1] United States[1] |
Language | English |
Budget | $142 million[2] |
Box office | $431.9 million[2] |
Die Another Day is a 2002
Die Another Day marked the James Bond franchise's 40th anniversary. The film includes references to each of the preceding films.[4] It received mixed reviews; some critics praised Tamahori's direction, but others criticized its reliance on CGI, product placement and its unoriginal plot, as well as the villain. Nevertheless, it was the highest-grossing James Bond film up to that time.
Plot
In
At his ice palace in Iceland, Graves unveils a new orbital mirror satellite, "Icarus", which is able to focus solar energy on a small area and provide year-round sunshine for agriculture. Frost seduces Bond and Jinx infiltrates Graves' command centre, but is captured by Graves and Zao. Bond rescues her and discovers that Graves is Colonel Moon, who has used the gene therapy technology to change his appearance and amassed his fortune from conflict diamonds as a cover. Bond confronts Graves, but Frost arrives to reveal herself as the traitor who betrayed him in North Korea, forcing Bond to escape from Graves' facility. He returns in his Vanquish to rescue Jinx, who has been recaptured in the palace. As Graves uses Icarus to melt the ice palace, Zao pursues Bond into the palace using his Jaguar XKR. Bond kills Zao by causing a ice chandelier to fall onto him, and revives Jinx after she has almost drowned.
Bond and Jinx pursue Graves and Frost to the
Cast
- MI6agent.
- Halle Berry as Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson, an NSA agent.[5][6] Before Berry's casting Salma Hayek, Saffron Burrows, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor were also considered for the role.[3]
- Toby Stephens as Gustav Graves, a British entrepreneur and the alter ego of Colonel Tan-Sun Moon. Graves was modelled after Hugo Drax in Ian Fleming's original Moonraker, a Nazi war criminal who switched places with a British soldier at the end of World War II, became a well-respected and wealthy philanthropist, and used this cover to plan a nuclear missile strike on London. He was also modelled after Uday Hussein and Richard Branson.[3]
- Will Yun Lee as Colonel Tan-Sun Moon, a rogue North Korean army colonel and the original persona of Graves.
- Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost, undercover MI6 agent and double agent.
- Rick Yune as Tang Ling Zao, a North Korean terrorist working for Moon and living as an exile.
- Judi Dench as M, the head of MI6.
- Q, MI6's quartermasterand armourer.
- Madonna as Verity, Graves and Frost's fencing instructor.
- Michael Madsen as Damian Falco, Jinx's superior in the NSA.
- Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary.
- Charles Robinson, M's Deputy Chief of Staff.
- Kenneth Tsang as General Moon, Colonel Moon's father. He assists in Bond's release back to the West. The North Korean general wishes for a peaceful reunification of Korea, whereas his son is bent on war.
- Michael Gorevoyas Vladimir Popov, Gustav Graves' personal scientist.
- Lawrence Makoare as Mr. Kil, one of Gustav Graves' henchmen.
- Ho Yi as The Hotel Manager and Chinese special agent Mr. Chang. In early drafts of the script, it was Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) who aided Bond in Hong Kong, but the idea fell through and Chang was created to replace her.[7][8]
- masseuse.
- Emilio Echevarría as Raoul, the manager of a Havana cigar factory, and a British sleeper agent.
- Vincent Wongas General Li
- Joaquin Martinezas Elderly Cigar Factory Worker
- Simón Andreu as Dr. Álvarez
- Deborah Moore (the daughter of former Bond actor Roger Moore) as Airline Hostess
- Mark Dymond as Mr. Van Bierk
- Oliver Skeete as Concierge At The Fencing Club
Production
After the success of The World Is Not Enough, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson asked the director Michael Apted to return to direct. Although Apted accepted, they rescinded the offer in order to ask Tony Scott and John Woo, who both declined. Scott claims to have suggested Quentin Tarantino as director, although Wilson denies that any formal negotiations were held with him. Pierce Brosnan suggested John McTiernan, Ang Lee and Martin Scorsese as potential choices, and informally discussed the idea of directing a Bond film with Scorsese on a flight. Brett Ratner, Stephen Hopkins and Stuart Baird were later in negotiations to direct, before Lee Tamahori was hired.[3]
Filming
The scenes featuring Berry in a bikini (designed to resemble Ursula Andress' swimming costume in Dr. No) were shot in Cádiz. The location was reportedly cold and windy, and footage has been released of Berry wrapped in thick towels between takes to avoid catching a chill.[12] Berry was injured during filming when debris from a smoke grenade flew into her eye. The debris was removed in a 30-minute operation.[13] Brosnan also sustained a knee injury during the shooting of an action scene in Cornwall.[14]
Gadgets and other props from every previous Bond film and stored in Eon Productions' archives appear in Q's warehouse in the London Underground. Examples include the jetpack in Thunderball and Rosa Klebb's poison-tipped shoe in From Russia with Love.[15] Q mentions that the watch he issues Bond is "your 20th, I believe", a reference to Die Another Day being the 20th Eon-produced Bond film.[16] In London, the Reform Club was used to shoot several places in the film, including the lobby and gallery at the Blades Club, MI6 Headquarters, Buckingham Palace, Green Park and Westminster. Jökulsárlón, Iceland was used for the car chase on the ice. Four Aston Martins and four Jaguars, all converted to four-wheel drive, were used (and wrecked) filming the sequence. A temporary dam was constructed at the mouth of the narrow inlet to keep the salty ocean water out and thus allow the lagoon to freeze.[17] Additional chase footage was filmed at Svalbard, Norway, Jostedalsbreen National Park, Norway, and RAF Little Rissington, Gloucestershire.[11] Manston Airport in Kent was used for the scenes involving the Antonov cargo plane scenes.[18] The scene in which Bond surfs the wave created by Icarus when Graves was attempting to kill Bond was shot on the blue screen. The waves, along with all the glaciers in the scene, are computer-generated.[19]
The hangar interior of the US Air Base in South Korea, shown crowded with
The satellite attack at the end of the film was at first written to take place in Manhattan, but after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it was moved to the Korean Demilitarized Zone.[3]
Music
The soundtrack was composed by
The
Marketing
Reportedly, twenty companies paying $70 million had their products featured in the film, a record at the time,[25] although USA Today reported that number to be as high as $100 million.[26]
The eleventh-generation Ford Thunderbird was featured in the film as Jinx's car, with a coral colour paying homage to a paint option for the original model, and matching her bikini. Ford produced a limited-edition 007-branded 2003 Thunderbird as a tie-in for the film, featuring a similar paint job.[27]
Release
Die Another Day had its world premiere on 18 November 2002 at the 56th
Die Another Day was controversial in the
Home media
Die Another Day was released on DVD and VHS on 3 June 2003.[33]
Reception
Box office
On the first day of release, ticket sales reached £1.2 million at the UK box office.[34] Die Another Day grossed $47 million on its opening weekend in the US and Canada and was ranked number one at the box office.[35] The film would compete against Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and The Santa Clause 2 during the Thanksgiving weekend. Moreover, all three films were able to defeat the underperforming animated film Treasure Planet. Later on, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Die Another Day would simultaneously reclaim the number one spot at the box office.[36] For six months, they were both the latest films to return to the top spot at the box office, until Finding Nemo joined the group in June 2003.[37] The film earned $160.9 million in the US and Canada, and $431.9 million worldwide, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of 2002. Not adjusting for inflation, Die Another Day was the highest-grossing James Bond film until the release of Casino Royale in 2006.[38]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 56% based on 220 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Its action may be a bit too over-the-top for some, but Die Another Day is lavishly crafted and succeeds in evoking classic Bond themes from the franchise's earlier installments."[39] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 43 critics, indicating "mixed and average reviews".[40] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.[41]
Michael Dequina of Film Threat praised the film as the best of the series to star Pierce Brosnan and "the most satisfying installment of the franchise in recent memory."[40] Larry Carroll of CountingDown.com praised Lee Tamahori for having "magnificently balanced the film so that it keeps true to the Bond legend, makes reference to the classic films that preceded it, but also injects a new zest to it all."[42] Entertainment Weekly magazine also gave a positive reaction, saying that Tamahori, "a true filmmaker", has re-established the series' pop sensuality.[43] A.O. Scott of The New York Times called the film the best of the James Bond series since The Spy Who Loved Me.[40] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film three stars out of four, stated: "This movie has the usual impossible stunts ... But it has just as many scenes that are lean and tough enough to fit in any modern action movie".[44] Kyle Bell of Movie Freaks 365 stated in his review that the "first half of Die Another Day is classic Bond", but that "things start to go downhill when the ice palace gets introduced."[45]
Several reviewers felt the film relied too heavily on gadgets and special effects, with the plot being neglected. James Berardinelli of ReelViews said: "This is a train wreck of an action film – a stupefying attempt by the filmmakers to force-feed James Bond into the mindless XXX mold and throw 40 years of cinematic history down the toilet in favor of bright flashes and loud bangs." Of the action sequences, he said: "Die Another Day is an exercise in loud explosions and excruciatingly bad special effects. The CGI work in this movie is an order of magnitude worse than anything I have seen in a major motion picture. Coupled with lousy production design, Die Another Day looks like it was done on the cheap."[46] Gary Brown of the Houston Community Newspapers also described the weak point of the film as "the seemingly non-stop action sequences and loud explosions that appear to take centre stage while the Bond character is almost relegated to second string."[47] Roger Moore, who played Bond in earlier films, said: "I thought it just went too far – and that's from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!"[48]
The amount of product placement in Die Another Day had been a contemporaneous point of criticism, with the BBC, Time and Reuters referring mockingly to the film using the title "Buy Another Day".[25][26] The producers subsequently chose to limit the number of companies involved in product placement to eight for the next Bond film, Casino Royale, in 2006.[26]
Retrospective
Despite favour from fans who prefer Bond's more "camp" films, a comment piece in 2020 stated that it is "considered by many to be the worst entry in James Bond's canon" and compares unfavourably to The Bourne Identity (released months earlier), which "ushered in a new era of violent, gritty action-espionage movies" and gave rise to the "stripped-down, no-nonsense" Bond of Daniel Craig.[49] It often occupies a low rank on Bond-related lists. In a 2021 Yahoo! survey consisting of 2200 experts and superfans, Die Another Day was ranked as the third-worst installment after Quantum of Solace and Spectre. The authors of the study did, however, specify that "every Bond film...is always someone's favourite".[50]
Media
Die Another Day was novelised by the then-official James Bond writer,
007 Legends, released in 2012, features Daniel Craig's James Bond in a Die Another Day level.[53]
Cancelled spin-off
Speculation arose in 2003 of a spin-off film concentrating on Jinx, which was scheduled for a November/December 2004 release. It was originally reported that MGM was keen to set up a film series that would be a "
See also
References
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Of her character, Berry said: She's the next step in the evolution of women in the Bond movies. She's more modern and not the classic villain. She also said that Jinx is fashionable. She's fashion-forward, very sexy and takes fashion risks, and I love her for that.
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{{cite web}}
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