Now pay attention, 007. The 18th EON James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, which starred Pierce Brosnan in his second smash-hit 007 adventure, received its World Premiere at the famous Odeon Leicester Square, in central London, on 9th December, 1997. Yet it is a film as fresh and topical today as it was back in 1997.
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode and with a screenplay by Bruce Feirstein, Brosnan’s second stab at the role of MI6 agent James Bond saw him up against the manipulative media mogul Elliot Carver, played by the award-winning theatre and movie actor Jonathan Pryce.
It was arguably a movie that anticipated the future in many ways. Elliot Carver is a villain fully in tune with the news-saturated 24-hour world of global communications, and seeks any opportunity to increase his media empire (the Carver Media Group Network) and thus his exercise of personal power and influence. He wants, for example, exclusive broadcasting rights in China. He is also keen to trash the reputations of leading public figures – at one stage he orders his Bureau Chief (played by none other than Michael G. Wilson) to ‘slime’ the president.
In fact, destroying the reputations and credibility of rivals, enemies and simply anybody he dislikes, comes naturally to the malicious Elliot Carver. In this sense, Tomorrow Never Dies (TND) offered an astute screenplay that remains highly relevant to our 21st century hi-tech and digital age, and the dangerous antics of over-ambitious media owners with large and petulant egos.
The Search for a Villain
In the months prior to the start of filming on TND, the British press regularly speculated that none other than top Welsh thespian Anthony Hopkins, acclaimed star of stage and screen, was the front-runner choice for main villain in TND. However, after having made such an impact as Hannibal the Cannibal, it was said by industry insiders that Hopkins was growing tired of being regularly offered villainous roles: Although he responded positively to an early draft of the screenplay for TND, Hopkins made it clear he was now more interested in playing a good guy in the new Zorro movie, as Don Diego de la Vega, mentor to the black-masked swashbuckler (Sean Connery had originally agreed to play the role of Zoro’s mentor, but had dropped out, enabling Hopkins to step in). Ironically, what became The Mask of Zorro (1998) was directed by Martin Campbell, who had made such a success of Brosnan’s first Bond movie Goldeneye.
Disappointed about Hopkins, EON turned again to an actor who they had sounded out before but who had previously been unavailable: Jonathan Pryce. They were in luck. EON producer Barbara Broccoli had long admired the respected theatre and film actor, and this time was able to secure his services. Moreover, when he saw the screenplay, Pryce was especially keen on playing a villain who was, in his view, very much a product of the ‘real’ world of contemporary media power-play and the ruthless manipulation of mass news.
Bad News is Good News
Indeed, news, information and hi-tech communications, together with one man’s murderous desire to dominate and manipulate global media markets, were at the very heart of the plot to TND. Greedy newspaper mogul Elliot Carver (Pryce) was given some now classic lines: ‘Words are the new weapons, satellites the new artillery’, and: ‘There’s no news like bad news’.
In a sense, the TND screenplay skilfully combined traditional ‘Bondian’ elements with a highly topical and contemporary social message: the underlying theme of the plot was a subtle critical commentary on the way that news and facts were being distorted and falsified through new forms of media in the run-up to the new Millenium. The movie anticipated what is today called ‘fake news’.
Moreover, the character of Elliot Carver was also partly modelled on egotistical media barons past and present, such as Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch. In hindsight, he also anticipated the rise of 21st century social media barons such as Elon Musk. Looking back on the film from a 21st century perspective, it is clear that Pryce successfully conveyed a baddie who combined an over-the-top ego with a preparedness to inflict extreme pain or even death on anybody who displeased him. It was a return to a very traditional Fleming-esque kind of villain, but very much updated for a modern media-saturated era.
In a great piece of marketing for the film, tie-in coverage of TND was published by the UK’s Mirror newspaper in December, 1997, in the form of a supplement mocked up as an edition of Elliot Carver’s newspaper Tomorrow, with the same masthead to the paper as in the movie. The front-page story to this special supplement also had a typical piece of Carver ‘news’, revealing details about the formerly top-secret existence of top MI6 spy James Bond! It quoted a Ministry of Defence official admitting: ‘He exists all right and he costs Her Majesty’s Government an absolute fortune’. It was a great souvenir for Bond fans. Interestingly, this ‘story’ was penned by Diplomatic Editor ‘Roger Connery’!
There is no doubt Pryce had a lot of fun playing Carver, but he also approached the villain in a suitably serious fashion, determined to convey an individual who was convinced that he was completely in tune with the rise of new media forms and could dominate such a world. Interestingly, speaking in 2024, Pryce gave some insights into how he interpreted the character of Carver: ‘I don’t see him as a villain. I mean, villains very often don’t see themselves as villains. Even in Bond’, he explained. ‘There’s no use in setting out to think you’re the villain. It’s not good because you just want to believe in what the character believes in. And my characters believe that they are doing the right thing’.
It is evident that Pryce helped make TND a big success. The cinema-going public ensured that TND quickly stormed the global box-office charts. The movie opened in the UK, for example, with the highest three-day grosses ever for a James Bond film up to that point, even eclipsing Goldeneye‘s 1995 November release. Similarly, in the USA, TND rapidly became the top-grossing James Bond film. This was the kind of news both EON and James Bond fans alike certainly loved. And it was music to the ears of Pierce Brosnan, now firmly established as a confident, suave and a hugely popular 007.
Did You Know?
The TND screenwriter Bruce Feirstein apparently scripted a farewell scene between Bond and ‘Q’ for the movie, as Desmond Llewelyn, who was still playing the quintessential gadget master, had recently found his wife Pamela was developing Alzheimers. However, the scene was not required, and appeared instead in The World Is Not Enough (1999).
