The participants for this segment are (in alphabetical order)….
Robert A. Caplen is an attorney in Washington, DC, and the author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond (Xlibris, 2010; revised 2012).
John Cork is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He contributed new introductions for the original Bond novels Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, and Goldfinger for new editions published in the UK by Vintage Classics in 2017.
Lisa Funnell is the author (with Klaus Dodds) of The Geographies, Genders, and Geopolitics of James Bond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She is the editor of For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond (Wallflower, 2015) as well as the special issue on “James Bond in the Daniel Craig Era” (with Klaus Dodds) for Journal of Popular Film and Television (2018). She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of James Bond Studies and has published over two dozen articles on James Bond in academic journals and collections as well as in popular media. Her work on gender and feminism in James Bond was recently featured in Mark Edlitz’s The Many Lives of James Bond: How the Creators of 007 Have Decoded the Superspy (Lyons Press, 2019) in addition to other media pieces. She is currently working as Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma where she teaches a course on Gender and James Bond.
The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.
And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to The World is Not Enough, and then enjoy the conversation with this group of James Bond authorities.
Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): In what way is The World Is Not Enough worthy of celebration on its 20th anniversary?
Robert A. Caplen: Twenty years after The World is Not Enough gave us veiled references to a presidential impeachment (“close, but no cigar”) and a plot involving some elements of Russian collusion, it seems like you would be describing a film drawing from current headlines!
Overall, TWINE was a good final installment of James Bond in the twentieth century. Audiences were introduced to a complex female character in Elektra King, who, in many respects, was a villainous nod to the resourceful Octopussy. It offered a throwback to some other Roger Moore-era elements, notably humor (Bond fixing his tie underwater, critiques of Swiss bankers, silly one-liner innuendoes), villains (Jaws, meet Bull, Zukovsky’s gold toothed associate), and a modern update to Moonraker’s “take me around the world one more time, James” moment. Pierce Brosnan looked much more established in the role of James Bond. Bond appears vulnerable, both physically (his wounded shoulder) and emotionally (painfully making the dual observation, after killing Elektra, that he doesn’t miss). But these elements are subdued against the high-intensity action that drives the plot forward.
John Cork: The World Is Not Enough is a complex addition to the Bond canon. There is so much I love about the film, and so much that seems like different films fighting each other. I think the movie perfectly encapsulates the duality of Bond: the breezy, comic absurdity and the very serious stakes at play in a Bond storyline. How do you balance out the humor, the spectacle, and the drama that seemed to flow so gracefully in From Russia with Love and Goldfinger? That has always been the challenge as the series has continued. I have my issues with the film, but there is so much to celebrate: the great title song, the crisp, witty dialogue, the attention to details in so many scenes, and, most of all, the incredible performance by Sophie Marceau.
Lisa Funnell: The World Is Not Enough is the first Bond film to feature a direct attack on MI6 and its figurehead M. The film is decidedly inward facing rather than simply focusing on geopolitical conflict elsewhere and a strong comparison can be drawn with the attack on the heartland featured in Skyfall (2012). One important distinction is that The World Is Not Enough is a more female-focused film that centers on the betrayal of Elektra King by her father and her quest for vengeance. The film centers on a surrogate/symbolic mother-daughter relationship between Dench’s M and King (which pre-dates the mother-son connection of Dench’s M and Bond in the Craig era films), and is populated by other women who intend to harm (e.g. the assassin in the opening scenes), help (e.g. Dr. Molly Warmflash), and challenge (e.g. Christmas Jones) him. It is also the first and only Bond film to feature a woman, Elektra King, as the arch-villain. For this reason, it is worthy of recognition.
Coate: What do you remember about the first time you saw The World Is Not Enough?
Caplen: I was in college and saw the film on its release date in a Boston theater. I think I was the only audience member who audibly gasped at Desmond Llewelyn’s departure, but I enjoyed what I thought was a prototypical James Bond film filled with action, sexual tension, and humor. I went to the theaters with a friend, who thought the movie was misogynist nonsense. I vaguely recall having a passionate discussion about the film and defending it.
Cork: Because I was working on the DVD specials features project in 1999, we did interviews on the set of The World Is Not Enough. The backlot at Pinewood was filled with Michael Lamont’s miniature sets, John Richardson’s and Chris Corbould’s crews, and all the movie magic you could imagine. We spent a day with Vic Armstrong as he filmed key stunts for the Thames boat chase. I had read various drafts of the script even before then. The first time I saw the film was at a screening at MGM a week or so before the U.S. premiere. I literally left the edit rooms in Burbank where we were crunching on the documentaries for Wave 2 of the DVDs to drive to Santa Monica. On the way, I was listening to a cassette of one of the audio commentaries to approve it. My life was so filled with Bond 24/7 that I could not process the film at all. There was the joy of seeing a new Bond film, and this odd sense of dread that here was another film with all its behind-the-scenes stories that I would need to commit to memory in my already crowded brain. I was too deep in the machine to appreciate the things that worked or work out for myself the things that didn’t. That took me a few years.
Funnell: One scene that stuck out to me was the boat chase through London. While I enjoy chase sequences that make use of multiple elements (water, air, fire, and land), I was more attentive to the destruction that was taking place. Usually, Bond completes his missions elsewhere and leaves a trail of destruction; he is most destructive in places that are ranked low(er) on the human development index. So to see him driving through a fish market and restaurant in London while launching torpedoes in the River Thames, with a strong potential for killing citizens and destroying infrastructure, was surprising. It signaled to me that something different was happening in this film.
Coate: In what way was Robert Carlyle’s Renard a memorable villain?
Caplen: Renard is an absurdity. He is depicted as a man who, after being shot in the head, somehow has a bullet slowly traveling through his brain that gradually kills off his senses and renders him impervious to pain or emotion. Robert Carlyle’s portrayal is, for the most part, effective in conveying these farcical elements of detachment. But it is clear that Renard does, in fact, feel pain, perhaps pain associated with the inability to feel. His bedroom scene with Elektra is a striking example of this tension and his own turmoil. His internal struggle perhaps could have been more realistic if he was plagued by something more psychological than physical.
What makes Renard most interesting and memorable is that audiences are tricked into believing throughout much of the film that he is the main villain. He is a kidnapper, killer, and saboteur, and arguably fits the bill. But in reality, he’s merely Elektra’s accomplice, a resourceful and skilled terrorist who is physically capable of executing parts of her plan but ultimately not the final decision maker. Perhaps he manipulated Elektra at the beginning of their relationship, but it is she who becomes the manipulator as the plot unfolds.
Cork: I love Carlyle. When I saw him in Trainspotting, I thought: wow, this man owns the screen. He was so dynamic, and so good in The Full Monty. I always love seeing him and was so blown away by his moment in Yesterday as John Lennon. I wish he had more to do in The World Is Not Enough. The premise with Renard, a man who cannot feel pain, a man who knows he is going to die soon, is fantastic. I wish I believed more in the relationship between Elektra and Renard, that there had been a moment in the film where I understood how she broke him, turned him, and convinced him to embrace a suicide mission out of devotion to her. I also feel like Carlyle’s incredible physicality is limited as Renard. He seems like he cannot move his neck properly. I know, weird, but it’s always bothered me. It’s like he’s pretending to be in the Batman cowl and body suit. The final fight on the submarine is a perfect example. When the sub goes out of control, I thought we would get a Bond vs. Oddjob type of fight, except the sub’s reactor room is rotating in all sorts of different directions. But the sub hits bottom, the fight is static in a confined space, and the spidery Carlyle I hoped to see never fully comes to life. He’s so skilled as a performer, so real as an actor, I had hoped he could match Sophie Marceau’s performance, but I never felt he had the chance, for whatever reasons, to reach those heights.
Funnell: I don’t consider Renard to be the arch-villain of the film. That title belongs to Elektra King who masquerades as a Bond Girl only to emerge as the primary antagonist by the end. She is the first woman to serve in this capacity and much like other core villains she has her own musical theme. What makes her a memorable villain is the way she plays on the emotions of Bond and M, albeit in different ways; her seduction of Bond (and later sexual torture) challenges the effectiveness of libidinal masculinity while her emotional manipulation of M plays on her maternal instincts. Elektra King is underestimated as a threat and this is reflected in the Elektra Theme, which is slow and melancholic, framing her as a tragic figure and damsel in distress while masking her true intent from MI6 as well as the viewers.
Renard serves as more of a traditional henchperson with a biologically altered/enhanced body. His pairing with King reminds me of Zorin and May Day in A View to a Kill (1985), with the henchperson being more emotionally/romantically invested in the relationship than the villain. While Renard lacks the ability to feel physical pain, King is depicted as a sociopath who lacks the ability to connect emotionally. This makes their pairing interesting (i.e. they have what the other lacks) but also unsustainable. Much like May Day, Renard comes across as more of a tragic figure given his unrequited love for the villain that cannot be returned.
Coate: In what way was Denise Richards’ Christmas Jones (or Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King) a memorable Bond Girl?
Caplen: Elektra King is a fascinating Bond Girl with a very complex character arc. Initially portrayed as the victim and a pawn, Elektra ultimately presents herself as a conniving manipulator disguised as a businesswoman set on recapturing her family’s legacy (supposedly taken from her by her father) and controlling the world’s oil supply. She has many demons, familial and otherwise, that are touched upon only superficially, an unfortunate limitation in the script. Elektra admits to using sex as a weapon — against Renard and Bond — to advance her own personal agenda, but she ultimately underestimates her sexual powers (at least over Bond). One might say Elektra is the most tortured soul since Tracy di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but audiences at least get a better glimpse into Elektra’s past. Ultimately, Elektra opens an important portal for the franchise to explore greater complexity and emotion within the Bondian formula.
Dr. Christmas Jones, by contrast, seems entirely out of place in the film. Writers certainly did not help Denise Richards, offering lines such as “Do you want to put that in English for those of us who don’t speak spy?” And the chemistry between Richards and Pierce Brosnan is a few small steps ahead of the Roger Moore/Lynn-Holly Johnson dynamic in For Your Eyes Only.
The concept of Dr. Christmas Jones, of course, is a good one: a capable nuclear physicist who is tasked with dismantling nuclear weapons in Russia. (It’s interesting to note that two of the [supposedly] most educated Bond Girls in the franchise — astronaut/CIA agent Dr. Holly Goodhead and Dr. Christmas Jones — are Americans with names that cut squarely against their qualifications.) But Dr. Jones (no, not that Dr. Jones) falls short of expectations. She does offer some mission critical assistance given her knowledge of dismantling bombs, but she ultimately advances the film’s aesthetic. It is no coincidence that, as water submerges everyone during the climactic submarine battle, Dr. Jones is adorned in a white shirt.
Cork: This is not a knock on Denise Richards as an actress or a human being, but my fantasy edit of The World Is Not Enough basically would eliminate her role entirely. She was an MGM casting decision and becomes more of a distraction than even eye-candy in the film. The problem is that Bond is emotionally invested in Elektra King, and the audience knows this long before Miss Hot Pants joins the festivities in her Tomb Raider / Nuclear Scientist outfit.
In contrast, I absolutely love Sophie Marceau’s performance, and this is from someone who doesn’t much like the way Bond interacts with Elektra King. I’m a sentimental guy. I cry at movies, funerals, weddings, birthday parties. But I am not so mushy that I would reach up to a computer monitor and try to touch a tear on the face of a woman crying in a news clip. I always felt that Bond should not fall for Elektra, and that this was a mistake dramatically. It means we can’t invest in the potential sexual chemistry with Christmas Jones, and that it is all going to end badly. But every shot of Marceau is perfection to me. She brings so much more out of that character, and I could watch her play Elektra King all day long. Her Elektra King ranks up there with the best femme fatal performances from the film noir era and beyond.
Funnell: Christmas Jones is arguably one of the worst Bond Girls featured across the series. She is on par with Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill (1985), drawing a further comparison between the films (see my comment to the previous question). It is clear that more attention was placed on developing the character of Elektra King; this renders Jones both a cliché and afterthought. Her only purpose is to serve as an object of affection at the end of the film so that Bond can insert (pun intended) his groan-worthy “I thought Christmas only comes once a year” line.
Coate: Where do you think The World is Not Enough ranks among the James Bond movie series?
Caplen: Filled with millennial gadgetry, beautiful locations, high-tech graphics, and excitement, TWINE was deeply satisfying for my twenty year-old eyes when I saw it in theaters. I still think it is a fun, entertaining film, but much of the humor is dated. Few contemporary audiences have heard of Y2K, and most probably would not understand that the Bond-Moneypenny cigar dialogue is a dig about the Clinton impeachment scandal. The gravity of Q’s retirement, for me, outweighs any emotion Bond may exhibit after he kills Elektra. And Denise Richards, unlike Lois Chiles, could not overcome a silly Bond Girl naming convention to make Dr. Christmas Jones a more plausible character. I would rank TWINE as Pierce Brosnan’s third strongest film behind GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.
Cork: I ranked it 19th back in 2012, which seems very low to me now considering the things I love about the film. But The World Is Not Enough feels like two movies fighting each other uneasily, and as much as I love the late editor, Jim Clark (Charade, Marathon Man), he couldn’t marry those two films. There is the light, absurdist adventure film filled with seductions and giant buzz saws chasing after fat men who dive into ponds of caviar, which is one that is not really in director Michael Apted’s wheelhouse, but very much is in second unit director Vic Armstrong’s range. And then there is the hard-edged, darker film where M nearly destroys MI6 because of her affection for an old university friend and her desire to protect his daughter, where Bond has to cold-bloodedly kill a woman he thought he could love. Either one of those films could be great. Together, they are at war.
Funnell: It is not in my top or bottom five.
Coate: What is the legacy of The World Is Not Enough?
Caplen: The World is Not Enough was only the third James Bond film released in the 1990s, a sharp decline in the number of installments per decade than what moviegoers experienced in the 1960s (six films), 1970s (five films), and 1980s (five films). Nevertheless, TWINE brought about a strong close to the twentieth century James Bond, ending much like Moonraker did twenty years earlier. If Pierce Brosnan had not firmly established himself as Agent 007 by Tomorrow Never Dies, he certainly owned the role in TWINE, and audiences craving high octane action were satisfied and longing for more in the new millennium.
TWINE did not delve deeper into an emotional character study, though it certainly painted an interesting storyline with Elektra King and revealed some of James Bond’s vulnerabilities. TWINE ultimately confirmed that drama could coexist alongside typical 007 cinematic elements, as later demonstrated more masterfully in Skyfall. In that regard, TWINE offers a more multifaceted storyline than previous installments, preserving the film’s long-term entertainment value despite the late 1990s ethos.
Cork: The World Is Not Enough began the legacy of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Screenwriters come and go through the process of creating new Bond films. Few writers really get Bond and get the intricate flow of dialogue that can make a Bond film such a joy to watch. I think Richard Maibaum did. Tom Mankiewicz did. Bruce Feirstein does. Even harder is to get Bond right in the multi-cook kitchen that is a 007 film as it roars toward production. Everyone has new ideas all the time. Michael G. Wilson, who is responsible for some of the greatest scenes in the series, asks a lot of writers. Barbara Broccoli had the initial idea for the story after seeing a report on Baku on a plane flight, and she valiantly fights for the characters to rise above the chaos of a big-budget action film. Everyone sees their own Bond, and everyone thinks their Bondian humor is funny. Purvis and Wade wrote the initial drafts of TWINE with Bruce Feirstein coming in and making wonderful contributions even during production (most of the wittier dialogue in the film is his). Purvis and Wade have come back for six films as of this writing. Only Tom Mankiewicz had been the sole writer on a Bond film (for Live and Let Die) prior to 2002, but Purvis and Wade made it through every draft of Die Another Day. They have been part of the series now for twenty years. That is an incredible run, and one that speaks to a great deal of skill in negotiating the creative process with the producers.
Funnell: The Brosnan era films present the impression that while the world around James Bond has changed, especially in terms of gender politics and geopolitics, the iconic hero endures and remains steadfast in his commitment to safeguard “Queen and country.” However, with the rise of a Bond Girl-Villain hybrid, or a female villain who masquerades as a Bond Girl (depending on how you look at it), the film (un)intentionally draws into question the effectiveness of Bond libidinal masculinity and its shelf-life in the series. It is presented as more of a liability in the latter Brosnan era films (with Miranda Frost disarming Bond in the next film Die Another Day [2002]) and this provides producers with a strong justification for altering the heroic model governing the franchise in the prequel Casino Royale (2006).
Coate: Thank you — Robert, John, and Lisa — for participating and sharing your thoughts about The World is Not Enough on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.
The James Bond roundtable discussion will return in Remembering “The Man with the Golden Gun” on its 45th Anniversary.
IMAGES
Selected images copyright/courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, CBS-Fox Home Video, Danjaq LLC, Eon Productions Limited, MGM Home Entertainment, San Francisco Examiner, United Artists Corporation.
- Michael Coate
Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)
