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MI6 looks back at the The World is Not Enough world premiere in 1999, and what the press had to say...

The World Is Not Enough - The Premiere & Press
26th November 2003

The World Is Not Enough premiered at Mann's Village Theater in Los Angeles on 8th November 1999. The cast were out in full force, and the red carpet was cordoned off by local police to ensure the stars were able to make the event. The primary cast and guests began arriving at 6:30pm, attendees included Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceau, Carlyle, Dench, Denise Richards, Robbie Coltrane Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Heather Graham, David Boreanaz, Brooke Shields, Talisa Soto and Laurence Fishbourne

"Pure Entertainment" - Michael McLean , Odeon Marketing Co-Ordinator

 
Above: Mann's Village Theater

"What makes Bond pictures work is the action" - Larry Gleason, MGM Worldwide Distribution President.

"The new James Bond movie, "The World Is Not Enough," has everything one expects from the series: the gadgets, the gunfights, the girls" - Jacob Adelman, The Korea Herald


Above: Serena Scott Thomas who played Dr Molly Warmflash.

Figures: Exhibitor Relations..

 

The British premiere was in benefit of 'Children's Promise' and took London's Leicester Square Odeon theatre by storm. On the cold evening of November 22nd, further cast member were in attendance in London - flanked by thousands of fans. Pierce Brosnan was joined by, then girlfriend, Keely Shaye Smith adorned with a diamond necklace and a pair of matching earrings reportedly worth £3.5m.

"The World Is Not Enough" went on general release in the UK on Friday 26 November, after the USA where it went on general release the 19th on 3,163 screens. The US box office for the "The World Is Not Enough" went on to gross $23.2 million in a 3 day period. In ten days the film had made a massive $75.5 million compared to "Tomorrow Never Dies" $62.2 million and "Goldeneye" $57.2 million. TWINE went on to be the fourth biggest opening weekend in British history with a massive $10 million.

North America opening week:
The World is Not Enough, $37.2 million.
Sleepy Hollow, $30.5 million.
Pokemon: The First Movie, $13.3 million.
The Bone Collector, $6.5 million.
Dogma, $4.1 million.
Anywhere But Here, $3.3 million.
The Insider, $2.9 million.
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, $2.5 million.
The Bachelor, $2.4 million.
Being John Malkovich, $1.9 million.

In four days on 320 screens in Australia "The World is Not Enough," made $2.4 million, $492,000 in just 3 days showing on only 82 South Africa, $257,000 on 34 in Israel and Malaysia and Singapore got to see the film on November 19th in an attempt to stem piracy.

What The Critics Said...

The Good

`The minute [Brosnan] appears on screen you reckon there's not a precision bomb, lippy girl or shaken martini in the known world that will offer any meaningful resistance to his native charm. Brosnan can run away from a fireball and still find time to fix his tie; Brosnan can ski off a mountain, land on his bum, but still think clearly and save the girl; and Brosnan, kingly, flashing, debonair, self-mocking Pierce Brosnan, will churn out jokes in the face of approaching band saws, nuclear holocaust and Robert Carlyle's deathly Glasgow stare. Roll out the scarlet carpet: Bond is back." - Andrew O'Hagan, The Daily Telegraph

"Continuing the revival of the franchise established by the confident GoldenEye and slightly threatened by the somewhat wobbly Tomorrow Never Dies, this checks off all the boxes on the form with something like panache, if not actual inspiration ...Continuing the trend of hiring shaky A-list directors, this employs Apted - who probably worked hard on Brosnan exchanging pointed dialogue with pouting Marceau (who is very good in an unusual Bond Girl role) and baldie Carlyle (who could have been given a bit more business), but stood back and let second-unit specialists take over for the money-spinning scenes of helicopters dangling giant chainsaws and explosions chasing Bond out of tight spots."' - Kim Newman, Empire magazine

 
Above: Desmond Llewelyn, who sadly died shortly after TWINE went on release in a tragic car accident.

"Carlyle is fascinating to watch. He never does anything quite the way you expect them to be--yet they're riveting. And in the end, that is what makes for a great actor--to take what's written on the page, and bring it to a different level." - Bruce Feirstein, Eon magazine


Above: Pierce Brosnan and Denise Richards
 

"The World Is Not Enough'' provides all the usual attractions. Bond goes skiing, which is an occasion for assassins to drop hand grenades on him. There are gadgets, double entendres, stolen warheads and vivid characters. Judi Dench plays M with authority. Robbie Coltrane is a pleasure as a Russian gangster. That a Bond movie should be amusing is expected, but that it should linger in the mind is the surprise here. "The World Is Not Enough'' is one of the few films in the series in which one feels Bond's mental strain. Bond is a killer. He has to live with that, and it's not always easy. Though he may look as smooth as Roger Moore, Brosnan gives us a Bond who is capable but emotionally scarred." - Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

"Like all Bond movies, "The World Is Not Enough" is a series of cliff-hanger situations and eye-popping gadgets and toys. It's humorous and exaggerated, and even the so-called sex scenes are really all about expensive bed linens. Whether you're a Bond fan or just a regular 11-year-old boy, you won't want to miss this" - Liz Braun, Toronto Sun

"The World Is Not Enough" is a splendid comic thriller, exciting and graceful, endlessly inventive. Because it is also the 19th James Bond movie, it comes with so much history that one reviews it like wine, comparing it to earlier famous vintages; I guess that's part of the fun. This is a good one." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Times

The Bad

"The storyline is...congested, with too many short, disjointed scenes crammed back-to-back. I know Bond is at his best in a tight spot, but this is ridiculous. All the same, Bond is indeed at his best. Or, at least, Brosnan is: he has never looked more comfortable in the role - though I do think he should chat to the screenwriters about all the rude things they keep shoving in his mouth. I refer, of course, to Bond's double entendres. I know these are a time-honoured trademark, and Brosnan certainly delivers his saucy one-liners with expert timing, but nothing else in his performance suggests that his 007 - a linen-suited modern man - would actually crack such lecherous gags. Yet the script is so full of them, you could be watching Carry On Spying. Still, this is a small quibble and, like I said, Brosnan looks the part. His hair is shorter than before, as is his temper - two small developments that do a lot to convince us that this Bond means business. And, sure enough, 007 saves the day. But Brosnan's best efforts cannot rescue this poorly conceived film. It is the worst Bond movie he has starred in." - Edward Porter, The Sunday Times

 
Above: Maria Grazia Cucinotta

"Intending to turn Bond and his world into what they can't be, these attempts to create emotional depth reveal an underlying contempt for what the Bond movies actually are. They imply realism is not just one mode among many but the superior, most culturally worthy and difficult mode. By that logic, of course, to make Bond films better is to make them more -realistic', like Apted's Nell, presumably. Thank God for action, production values and the second unit." - José Arroyo, Sight and Sound

"Somebody opened a can of weak sauce on this movie. This is the worst of the Brosnan Era. And yet, Bond is still better than your average Bruce Willis action flick. All the key elements we look for in a 007 flick - the sultry babes, the sharper-than-Sharper-Image gadgets, the pulse-racing action scenes - they're here. But they're floating in this movie like soggy oyster crackers in a lukewarm bowl of beef stew. But the rest of the film lacks the luster of "Goldeneye" and the freshness of "Tomorrow Never Dies": Where is the brilliance of the bungee chord dive? The cajones to leap off a cliff to catch a falling plane? The classy spin-kicking Michelle Yeoh? After a muddled and dry beginning, the plot follows the fortunes of an orphaned oil magnate played by Marceau, whom Bond has been assigned to protect from bad guy Renard (Robert Carlyle). But the plot is inconsequential." - Sharon Pian Chan, The Seattle Times

The Ugly

"Let's not get too excited. As an action film, The World is Not Enough is mundanely choreographed, and as a continuation of the myth it is the usual biannual disappointment. The Bond myth comprised a set of very particular elements. The films were frightening, they were genuinely sexy, they had a very idiosyncratic kind of claustrophobia, and they were exotic in a time when that word still meant something - before we all went on package holidays to Magaluf.


Above: Denise Richards
 

But for a long time now, Bond hasn't been scary, hasn't been sexy, hasn't been cruel. All that remains is action, and pretty much everybody does it better these days. These are the same oil rigs and submarines that Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford now clamber around (films like The Matrix are driving the Aston Martin while Bond is in the Lada).

Long gone are the memorable, spidery landscapes. Films like You Only Live Twice and Moonraker moved into space in search of a landscape as frictionless, graceful and frigidly sexual as the hero. Now we open in Bilbao, take a trip down the Thames, and centre on the minarets of Istanbul - all the paranoia about what might be if the computer turned into God that characterised Fleming's books forgotten. They're determined to warm Bond up." - Antonia Quirke, The Independent

"When the Bond series began, Connery with his Martinis, his Aston Martin and his louche sexual habits seemed genuinely sophisticated. But 'sophistication' no longer exists as a concept outside the Ferrero Rocher ad; as an idea it now seems childish and bogus; it's not a word you even use without inverted commas.

Culturally, however, nothing has replaced it. Into this void, the Bond filmmakers originally pumped comic self-awareness, but that could only ever be a temporary expedient, especially with Austin Powers just around the corner. The other problem is that the action sequences are confined to real-life plausibility, or something close, whereas Hollywood special effects can now make humans in a sci-fi film like The Matrix do much more.

Even the best Bond chase - and this film opens with a handsome speedboat caper up the Thames - is no longer anywhere near the frontier of film action." - Sebastian Faulks, Mail on Sunday

Photo's by Trixie Textor

 

 
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