THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH — IN PICTURES

Beginning principal photography on January 17th 1999, The World Is Not Enough became Pierce Brosnan’s third outing as James Bond following GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. Directed by Michael Apted, the plot sees 007 assigned to protect M (Judi Dench)’s family friend Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) following the murder of her father by the terrorist Renard (Robert Carlyle). The film mixed trademark 007 action — a high speed boat chase along the Thames, a thrilling ski sequence with a twist — with a grounded political backdrop and psychological complexity in the relationships between the characters. Here is the making of the movie told through stunning behind the scenes images. 

ROOTED IN REALITY 

THE SHOT: The World Is Not Enough takes James Bond to Azerbaijan to survey the oil empire of Elektra King. Brosnan is featured in a publicity shot with Bond’s BMW Z8 inside Bibi-Heybat oil field near Baku. 

BTS: The oil field backdrop to the story came from co-producer Barbara Broccoli, who saw a recorded edition of US TV show Nightline on a flight, which detailed the economic value of oil pipelines, and the issues in getting the oil out of Azerbaijan due to hostile neighbouring states. True to the series, the country offered a range of eye-catching locales from desert oil fields to the snow-capped Caucasus Mountains.

ROCK AROUND THE DOCK 

The Shot: Following an explosion at MI6 HQ, Bond jumps in a work-in-progress Q dept boat and chases an assassin (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) down the Thames, finally destroying her boat at the Millennium Dome. Directed by action unit director Vic Armstrong, this shot sees the Q Boat speeding along the Thames near the cranes at Royal Victoria Dock.

BTS: The sequence sees Bond take a detour from the Thames through Tobacco Wharf, a fish market and a restaurant. Staging the sequence in the heart of the city was a logistical and bureaucratic nightmare but, as director Michael Apted recalls, “everybody is in love with Bond and everybody wants to co-operate.”

SKIDOO OR DIE

The shot: In the Caucasus Mountains, Bond and Elektra travel on skis to survey the King Industries pipeline. The pair come under attack by a band of assassins piloting parahawks (skidoos suspended from parachutes), which Bond manages to evade by causing them to crash into the landscape or each other. While expert skiers Stephane Dan, Yan Andre and Camille Jacroux doubled for Bond, the team also employed dummies to capture the sequence safely. 

BTS: The sequence is set in Azerbaijan but was actually shot in alpine woodlands in Chamonix, France. The set-piece was shot in four weeks by a 170 strong crew with the cameras tested in the British Airways refrigerator at Heathrow airport to make sure the equipment would work in freezing conditions.

SHE’S ELEKTRA 

The Shot:  Captured on the villa bedroom set on Pinewood’s C Stage, Pierce Brosnan and Sophie Marceau share a lighter moment rehearsing an intimate scene between Bond and Elektra. 

BTS: “She’s a complex character because she has different faces,” said Marceau about Elektra. “She has a great power, because she owns the pipelines. She’s coming from a great family, so you have this image of a ‘boss woman.’ I think there’s a lot of softness and femininity about her as well, because otherwise Bond wouldn’t fall in love with her.”

CUNNING AS A FOX 

The shot: On the trail of Renard, a terrorist who is actually in league with Elektra King, Bond travels to a decrepit Kazakhstan underground nuclear weapons facility where warheads are dismantled. Here, the crew shoots the scene where 007 briefly captures and interrogates Renard who is stealing an active nuclear warhead.

BTS: “I wasn’t expecting it to be such a realistic portrayal of a terrorist,” said co-screenwriter Robert Wade. “The realism is because it’s Robert Carlyle, who’s very good at getting into the psychology of the outsider. I think that gave us a better terrorist than we could have hoped for.” Incidentally, Renard is the French word for ‘fox’.

KEEPING UP WITH THE JONES 

The shot: Renard plants a stolen warhead onto an inspection cart inside the pipeline with the aim of blowing it up, Here the crew shoot Bond and nuclear scientist Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) against bluescreen, speeding down the pipeline in another rig so the scientist can defuse the warhead. At the last minute, Bond suggests to let the explosive charge detonate giving the illusion the pair have died in the blast.

BTS:  Christmas Jones was named by screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade after Christmas Humphreys, the prosecutor in the Derek Bentley Case, which the pair had dramatised in their screenplay for Let Him Have It. She was initially conceived as Polynesian, an insurance investigator working for Lloyd’s of London’s South Seas Bureau on the same trail as Bond. The character’s profession was changed at the behest of the studio United Artists who had just greenlit The Thomas Crown Affair with Rene Russo as an insurance investigator opposite Pierce Brosnan’s master thief. Jones briefly became a bounty hunter before becoming a nuclear physicist working for the International Decommissioning Agency.

CAVIAR & CARNAGE 

The Shot: Bond revisits his old rival Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) at his Caviar Fishery in Baku. The pair come under attack by Elektra King’s helicopters which are brandishing suspended circular saw blades. Bond destroys the choppers from missiles fired from his BMW then zip wires across the fishery, destroying the second helicopter by igniting leaking gas with a flare gun.

BTS: The buzz-saw helicopters were originally conceived to appear in GoldenEye. Zukovsky’s caviar factory was created on Pinewood’s paddock tank, which was doubled in size to accommodate the set. The scene was shot at night to help conceal the tank, adorned with several thousand fibre optics providing a glimmering backdrop. Designed by production designer Peter Lamont and constructed mainly out of timber (including 300 discarded telegraph poles), the intricate set was dubbed the ‘City of Walkways’. The scene was also enhanced with model work and CGI.

A LIGHTNING ROD 

The Shot: Barely getting on board Renard’s stolen submarine before it dives, Bond’s attempts to get the vessel to the surface see it capsize and hit rock bottom causing a breach in the hull. As the sub starts to fill with water, Bond finds Renard inserting the plutonium into the reactor. A titanic tussle ensues, which ends when Bond activates the emergency ejection of the rod, which blasts directly into Renard. 

BTS: The submarine’s reactor room was built on A stage at Pinewood. The set was flooded by building whole set on a rig and lowering it into the tank. The exterior shots of the submarine were filmed with a 45-foot model over a five-week period one mile offshore from the Clarion Resort, New Providence in the Bahamas.

A TERRIFIC TEASER 

The shot: Designed by Diane Reynolds, the advance poster artwork played with classic Bond imagery, mirroring the iconic main title designs of Maurice Binder. The film premiered in Westwood, California on November 8 1999, eventually grossing over $350 million. 

BTS: In early drafts, the film was titled ‘Elektra’. The final title is a translation of the Latin phrase ‘Orbis non Sufficit.’ The name is Bond’s family motto and comes from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.