If you give a lot of time to watching film franchises, it’s not long before it becomes apparent that loathed entries in said franchises are a lot like opinions and backstory, every franchise has them. Think of: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, Alien 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Shrek The Third, Jaws: The Revenge, Batman And Robin, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Exorcist II: The Heretic.
That’s plenty of bad franchise entries and like lots of things such films will have their share of ardent defenders who will stand up and speak of why they like it regardless of what the prevailing opinion is. I know this because as a longtime admirer of the James Bond films, there’s one entry that often has mockery and disdain-fuelled missiles pointed in its direction – what else could it be but Die Another Day?
Yes, Die Another Day. A film that’s had to live with this seemingly immovable reputation for over two decades. Last year I was at a concert where Bond music was being performed and Die Another Day was made the butt of a joke and the audience lapped it up. I don’t remember what was said exactly but an F-bomb was dropped. Newer films with at times polarizing viewpoints may have come in its wake but it was clear that Die Another Day was still the favoured punchbag for Bond films. When I think of Die Another Day, I don’t loathe it and I don’t even hate it. I can see why some people would have such strong takes on it but I am not among such people.
From the moment it made its presence felt Die Another Day faced problems out of its control. It was born into the cruel, unforgiving and bleak world of 2002 – the world was still reeling from being turned upside down by 9/11 which would have an impact not just on the landscape of how the world was at the time but also on entertainment, and Bond would soon feel the impact. In terms of releases 2002 was stacked: Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, About A Boy, Spy Kids 2, Stuart Little 2, Spider-Man, Road To Perdition and many more.
2002 was not just any old year for the Bond films. It was the 40th anniversary, forty years since Ursula Andress walked out of the sea, Sean Connery burst onto the screen as Bond smoking a cigarette and three assassins pretended to be blind. This was an important year for Bond and while the videogame aspect would be covered with 007: Nightfire, the centrepiece of this milestone was a new film, Die Another Day. Not only was it a new film but also the one that would take the franchise into a new millennium, the groundwork of how it could thrive in a post-cold-war world had been laid down by the preceding three films but this was bigger. To say a lot was riding on it would be a gross understatement.
Looking at the trailers that had to ready the filmgoing public for what was in store, there was nothing to get alarm bells ringing. A mission goes wrong, Bond is betrayed and of course wants to go after who did it while throwing in snippets of expected action and car chase scenes, a main trailer even had the Vanquish car and the teaser had ice, lots and lots of ice and Halle Berry channelling her inner Ursula Andress.
Due to the misfortune of my being only two or three years old when the film came out I have no memory of what people thought of it at the time. However I became aware of how the film was viewed and how what was said was far from complimentary. I knew that Die Another Day was derided as silly in such a way that a Bond film had not been since the days of the eyebrow-twitching Roger Moore. Mainstream film critics like Roger Ebert called it “utterly absurd from one end to the other.” Whereas fellow critic Leonard Maltin deemed it “fun to watch.” Of course the backing of a prominent film reviewer wasn’t enough to give it a good reputation among the hardcore fans.
I can see where the negativity comes from. Even if you find someone who would happily shed no tears for it, there is one part that even the strongest detractors hopefully get some enjoyment from – that being the prologue and first few minutes. Bond is betrayed in North Korea, where he’s captured and held for months before being freed. That has the set-up of a darker and more serious Bond film. Anyone who has seen the film or other moments knows that once Bond is out of North Korea the colour palette brightens and any gritty seriousness is stripped away in favour of more light-hearted and action-packed fodder. Anyone expecting gritty and serious would have had their expectations shattered and crushed like bones.
Taking the views of Ebert, Maltin and the Bond fanbase into account, the best words that I think can be used to sum up the responses to Die Another Day is “mixed to negative.” There may have been positive reviews but the negative ones shouted the loudest and its fate was sealed.
Serious and gritty opening aside, the film’s tonal mix of serious and fun had always been a part of Brosnan’s tenure. One point I won’t shy away from is that while the film may have been made and released in 2002, with Brosnan still playing Bond, Judi Dench M and Samantha Bond Moneypenny, the product may have been made in the 2000s but it wore the uniform of a 1990s Bond.
This was of course Brosnan’s fourth time playing Bond. It would be the last time he played the role on film but not the last time he played the character as he would do again in the videogame Everything Or Nothing. In this film nothing changed about the way he played Bond. It was the same post-Cold War mix of serious and light-hearted. He could do just about anything that could be asked of someone playing James Bond.
In the matter of the main villain Gustav Graves played by Toby Stephens, who (spoiler alert for an over twenty-year old film) is really North Korean Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee) … who changes his appearance due to what is called “gene therapy” or “identity transplants.” Once Stephens arrives little time is wasted before he starts chewing the scenery. It’s an unfair comparison for sure but he goes big with the part in the same way that his father Robert Stephens was known for with his own performances. He has moments where he feels like nothing more than an eccentric millionaire before letting go of any restraint and the rest follows on from there. He does try to have a father-to-son moment with Kenneth Tsang’s General Moon, but it sticks out as odd even if there’s a hint of sincerity to the moment.
If you are so inclined you could point to many things that could be deemed “wrong” about Die Another Day. Maybe it’s the jarring shift in tone and how it goes from North Korean prisons to ice palaces, people getting lasers through the back and coming out of their mouths, the infamous Tsunami surfing scene and the line “time to face gravity.” No matter how you look at Die Another Day, all roads lead to Tsunami Surfing.
On a much more minor matter, another part of Die Another Day that gets less than pleasant things said about is Madonna’s title song. Like the rest of the film it’s been the recipient of much disdain. I don’t have much to add to that conversation other than I like it enough, even as it relishes in how early 00s it is.
After the film had been out there had to be a question of where to go next? The first answer was found in another 2002 spy film, The Bourne Identity, with its lack of anything over-the-top and its much more visceral tone feeling more at home in the post-9/11 cultural landscape that was biting its way into spy fiction – and showed just how anachronistic Die Another Day was. Shows like Spooks and 24 already had people glued to the TV but even with those it was obvious Bond had some serious catching up to do.
In 2004 any chance of a fifth Brosnan film faced a similar fate to most of the cars Bond drives, as a grittier tone was being contemplated for the next film, that would make Bond more human and vulnerable. It would be a chance to start anew and one of the ways to get that working was to cast a new actor in the part of Bond, so as far as Bond onscreen was concerned, Brosnan was gone.
The final element of what decided the new tone was EON obtaining the film rights to Casino Royale. There was no going back now but they still needed someone to play the new Bond. In time he’d be found and in some ways his tenure would be just as divisive as what it was trying to do away with.
Since 2002, Die Another Day has spent years being branded as a franchise low point, but as time has gone on and more films have come something has shifted. Some people feel that Craig’s Bond was not the saviour he was presented as – that’s credible enough, but to my mind the real motive for the shift would be a sense of nostalgia. Those who first saw Die Another Day in the cinema are likely to be in their thirties now and with over a decade of Craig and his tenure’s devotion to grittiness, I can see how something like Die Another Day could feel like a good palate cleanser. Consider the attitude of Bond youtuber Calvin Dyson who has made several videos about Die Another Day and been through something of a journey with it. He liked it when he first saw it in 2002 as a teenager, followed the crowd in hating it for a while, then thanks to seeing it in a cinema for Bond’s 60th anniversary (and Die Another Day’s 20th) his view has gone in a more positive direction. He made a video that ended with him speaking with what I thought was a great deal of candour towards the film’s director the late Lee Tamahori. He mentioned the “crass comments” that he made in the past but in the end feels that Tamahori made “the Bond film that 2002 wanted” And that is something I agree with.
I welcome the shift in viewpoint even if it’s one I’ve already had for years. Die Another Day will always have those who will go for it the way a school bully goes for their target in the playground, but if those who love the Bond films want to unite against a film that is truly bad, Quantum of Solace is right there. Die Another Day may have taken over-the-top Bond to heights that no one had ever dreamed of but at least it doesn’t have an opera house scene packed to the brim with shaky cam and quick cuts left, right and centre. But that’s just my opinion.