I just saw Tomorrow Never Dies. Or how the writers originally envisioned it: Mass Media is EVIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!
But really, out of all of the Bond movies I've seen, this seems quite unfocused. I get the feeling they were trying to go for something more serious, but things just went south. Brosnan is OK, Michelle Yeoh as this movie's Bond girl is fine, the intro is fine, the score is fine, the set design and the fighting scenes are quite good actually (that helicopter stunt is ridiculous, but damn if it's not effective, and the "Bond drives using his phone" is also hilarious)... It all seems quite decent if somewhat mediocre, with the exception of one big thing: the villain. Oh, the villain of this movie. What were they thinking? What were they going for? This is without a doubt the worst villain yet, at least the worst when dealing with campy villains. Elliot Carver is a mass media mogul that somehow has enough power to cause World War III, fine, but his ways to go about it are incredibly obvious and in the face. The very first scene we see him is gleefully orchestrating chaos and mayhem all throughout the world, and when he announces the "discovery" of the Anglo-Chinese crisis with a cracking tone that almost souns like moaning. That's the first scene. This is the kind of stuff that I'd expect on a Bond parody, like Austin Powers or something similar, not an actual 007 movie! But it gets worse. Everytime we see his organization's logo, it's accompannied by a massive portrait of him, sometimes multiple copies of them. Even while inside of his office and there's no need for any kind of cult of the individual advertisement. Have we mentioned he's a narcissist yet? No? Then let us remind you of that through the entire flick? Seriously, the guy has his face printed on the side of a massive skyscraper! It almost takes half of that side, what happened to the people working there, aren't they allowed to use windows? His schemes are also horribly put together. If he knows so much about information, then he must know that by publishing the conflict before anyone could've really heard of it would put a target on his head immediately. He would at the very least get officials from both countries knocking at his organization trying to know how did he know that, why was his organization there, and what else does he know. But no, instead he apparently goes unnoposed, and he gives a speech during the satelites' big presentation in which he sounds completely deranged and thristy for power. How does anyone trust this guy? Especially when he was just joking about ruining someone out of spite to his guests (also, can we just stop to wonder why Bond decides to go to Carver directly to tease him about what he knows? You're a secret agent, you know, you need to be more subtle than that). He orders his wife's murder when he suspects she's been working with Bond, instead of just, you know, questioning her (if you're so much focused on the idea that information is power, why don't you extract the info out of her, if you're evil enough to order her assassination, you shouldn't really have any problem with questioning under torture. Hell, the guy has a two torturers under his payroll!). From here, your typical Bond villain clichés start happening one after another: the villain brings the heroes to his lair, he has an evil, gloating monologue, a "you're insane - no I'm a genious"... the whole thing. He also decides to go in his evil cloaked an armed to the teeth ship, and instead of ordering stuff from his headquarters, he goes into the thing, despite it obviously being at risk of actual naval battle. This is where he reveals his reasoning for orchestrating the whole thing: on top of getting the news of the event, he would get exclusive broadcasting rights in China for a century. Ok... how do you know that? I mean, yeah, you have a puppet in the Chinese government, but, you know China is a very strong dictatorship, yes? Even by then, they kept quite a stern control of the information going around, what makes you think that your puppet won't turn against you once he gets all the resources available to China? What's stopping him from just sending a couple of special agents to kill you once he's the Chairman? Carver struggled against a couple of special agents, imagine if the chinese sent a dozen or so against him. Once we get the hostage showdown, he kills his henchmen to prove how evil and how above Bond he is. But... why not kill Yeoh's character? No, really, Bond villain stupidity aside, why not? You kill one of the enemy agents and you make Bond mad. And in the ultimate showdown between Bond and Carver (by the way, how the hell did Carver sneak upon Bond?) he commits the ultimate Bond cliché and monologues instead of shooting him. While this is a common thing, the difference between him and other Bond villains is that most others are either capable of going mano a mano against him, or they have a great deal of distance to avoid tricks and outmanouvers as much as possible. Carver is just RIGHT THERE, and he gets immediately overpowered and killed by Bond. What did you expect, moron? What was your plan? How the hell did you think it was going to work? If we assume that he acts like that because he's crazy, then we must also assume he acts like this all the time, and in that case, how did he amass so much power without being backstabbed and taken over by more competent people? What the hell were the writing team thinking?
Overall, a mediocre Bond movie, but the villain and everything around him derails the movie for me. A sad 4/10.
Also, I find amusing that noone mentions the internet in all of this. Guess that, for a mass media mogul, he's very short sighted.
