Chateau Lloyd

I recently watched Tomorrow Never Dies for the first time since seeing it in the theater.  I had a blast, really enjoyed the movie, but part of that was that it seems so absurd and campy.  The 1990s were a tough era for spy movies because the ultimate showdown of the Cold War was over.  Russia lay prostrate, and who could possibly challenge the triumphant West?

The idea of a media mogul serving as an arch-villain seemed something of a stretch, but it worked, and the fact that he had a stealth catamaran (we were all about "stealth" in the 90s) and vintage-looking henchmen made for good fun.  There was also a nod to Communist China's increasing influence and importance and the naive hope that maybe China might open up more.

Pierce Brosnan is excellent, and the sequence of him driving his car from the backseat is just brilliant.  Tense, bordering on the absurd, and there are a couple of moments when he smiles to himself that almost breaks character, but doesn't because Bond would also be enjoying himself.

Jonathan Pryce's Elliott Carver was a thinly-disguised parody of Rupert Murdoch, long a conservative bugbear to the left (particularly the British left).  The notion that a private citizen should gain the ability to weaponize information against democratic government was somewhat sinister, but nothing compared to what actually happened, which is that oligarchs aligned themselves with governments to subvert democracy at the source.

Since the film came out in 1997, that's exactly what happened, with hoaxes and manipulation rapidly growing in scope and sophistication.  At this point, its pervasive, and one can only look at Carver's plot as amateurish.  Why foment a war between Communist China and Britain if you can simply make Britain into Communist China?

I think this is the only Bond movie with actual social commentary.