Die Another Day

In the pre-title sequence, James Bond leads a team to infiltrate a North Korean military base belonging to Colonel Tan-Sun Moon, an army officer who is illegally selling weaponry in exchange for African conflict diamonds. Bond poses as a weapons dealer, rigging his briefcase of diamonds with C4. He meets Moon and his assistant, Zao, to whom he gives the diamonds for inspection, but during the exchange, Zao's PDA uploads Bond's true identity from an unknown source, and Zao informs Moon. Moon demonstrates one of the weapons to Bond, using it to blow up the chopper on which Bond flew in undercover. Colonel Moon learns that his father, General Moon, is approaching, and orders the weapons hidden and Bond killed, taking flight in a large hovercraft. Bond detonates the C4, embedding several diamonds in Zao's face. He then steals another hovercraft and pursues Colonel Moon, who tumbles over a waterfall, still on his hovercraft, and Bond assumes him dead. No sooner does Bond himself evade death than North Korean troops capture him under General Moon's orders, and he is imprisoned and tortured.
Bond and Jinx meet in Cuba.
Bond and Jinx meet in Cuba.

Fourteen months later, Bond is released in exchange for Zao, who was captured during that time. He is sedated and taken to a frigate off the coast of Hong Kong, where M informs him that his 00 status is suspended because the allied forces believe that he may have leaked information under duress. Determined to take Zao out and find out who betrayed him, Bond escapes the frigate and swims to shore. In Hong Kong, he learns that Zao is in Cuba. He travels to Cuba, and while on the beach, he meets NSA agent Giacinta 'Jinx' Johnson. After spending the night with Jinx, Bond and traces Zao to a gene therapy clinic—a private and pricey establishment that allows patients to have their appearances altered—on Isla Los Organos. Bond runs into Jinx there, and with her help, he locates Zao's room inside the clinic and briefly tortures him. Zao gets away from Bond and flees in a helicopter, leaving behind a pendant. Bond opens it and finds five diamonds, which Raoul identifies as conflict diamonds, each of which bears the laser signature (a unique identifier) of the company of British billionaire Gustav Graves.


Bond locates Graves at a fencing club in London, where he has arranged for a fencing lesson with Verity. While there, he meets Graves and his fencing partner/public relations representative, Miranda Frost, who is a world champion in Olympic fencing. Bond engages Graves in a semi-friendly duel, putting up one of the diamonds as a wager. Bond wins, and Graves—in a show of feigned sportsmanship—writes a check to Bond for the market value of the diamond and invites him to a ceremony that Graves is holding in Iceland, where he will be conducting a scientific demonstration.

In a derelict London Underground station, M restores Bond's 00 status and offers assistance in the investigation in exchange for the intel he has gathered on Graves. Frost has been recruited by MI6 to learn Graves' intentions, but she has failed to uncover anything. To further his inquest of Graves, Bond takes Graves up on his invitation at an ice palace Graves has prepared for the occasion, and there Bond meets Jinx again. That night, Graves demonstrates his new orbital mirror satellite (which he has dubbed "Icarus")—an apparatus that can harness solar energy and focus it to provide year-round sunshine for crop development.

At midnight, Jinx infiltrates Graves' palatial command center, where she finds Zao, who is trying again to use the Isla Los Organos technology to alter his appearance. Mr. Kil subdues her and straps her to a table, standing over her menacingly, intending to use a laser to kill her. Fortunately for her, Bond arrives at that moment, and works together with Jinx to fry Kil's brain with the laser; and it occurs to Bond that the equipment Zao was using to change his appearance was already here, and used by another North Korean—Colonel Tan Sun Moon, who survived his plummet over the waterfall and has changed his own identity to that of Gustav Graves. When Bond confronts Graves, Frost shows up and points her gun at Bond; Graves reveals her as Bond's betrayer. Bond escapes from the pair and takes flight in his Aston Martin Vanquish, followed closely by Zao, who pursues him in a Jaguar XKR through the rapidly melting ice palace (which Graves has exited and is using Icarus to destroy). Bond kills Zao by luring him under a collapsing chandelier, and then rescues Jinx from drowning.


From left: Gustav Graves, Miranda Frost, Verity, James Bond
From left: Gustav Graves, Miranda Frost, Verity, James Bond

After the confrontation, Bond and Jinx are deployed at the border between North and South Korea, where they infiltrate North Korea using experimental stealth sleds and parachutes. They stow away on Graves' cargo plane, which is also carrying General Moon (who is unaware of his son's new identity), his lieutenants, and Frost. Graves reveals the true purpose behind his creation of Icarus—he uses its beam to cut a swath through the minefield in the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Once the minefield is destroyed, North Korean troops can invade South Korea, reuniting the two countries through force. Icarus would also destabilize the western nations by destroying any WMDs fired on North Korea. Graves wears a sophisticated armor that not only gives him electrifying capabilities, but allows him to control the Icarus satellite remotely. In an attempt to preserve peace, General Moon draws a gun on his son, but Graves uses his armor to disarm the general and then shoots him.

Bond advances to kill Graves, but is thwarted when one of Graves' soldiers attacks him, causing him to shoot through a window and bringing about cabin depressurization. Jinx manages to stabilize the plane, but is accosted by a sword-wielding Frost, who forces her to set the plane's controls to autopilot. While doing so, Jinx alters the plane's heading so that it will fly directly into the beam cast by Icarus. During the climatic fight that follows, Jinx kills Frost with a knife to the chest. In the cabin, Graves gains the upper hand against Bond and puts on a parachute. Bond pulls Graves' ripcord, causing the parachute to open inside the cabin, and the slipstream pulls Graves out of the plane, sucking him into one of the engines. Bond and Jinx escape the plane using a helicopter in the cargo hold.

The World Is Not Enough

The pre-title sequence finds Bond in Bilbao, Spain, retrieving from a Swiss Bank a large sum of money that belongs to Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and close personal friend of M. Though Bond returns to London successful, King is killed by a bombing inside MI6 Headquarters—the recovered money had been rigged to explode, detonated by King's lapel pin. Bond immediately hastens to pursue the perpetrator of the bombing/assassination—the cigar girl from the Swiss Bank in Bilbao—in a boat on the Thames. The chase ends at the Millennium Dome, where the assassin attempts to escape via hot air balloon. Bond jumps from his pursuit vehicle just in time to grab a safety line dangling from the balloon and asserts MI6's protection in return for her cooperation, but she refuses and destroys the hot air balloon, killing herself in the process. Bond lets go of the safety line, falling a short distance to the dome and sustaining a severe shoulder injury on impact.

After King's funeral, Tanner tells Bond that, because of his shoulder injury, he's off the active duty roster until he is cleared by a physician. Bond earns his reinstatement in classic Bond fashion—the doctor who treats Bond is female—and searches for information about King's assassination and the abduction of his daughter, Elektra. In doing so, he finds a connection between the money he recovered and Elektra's kidnapper, a terrorist to whom Bond refers in a briefing as "Renard, the anarchist." Renard survived an assassination attempt by 009, but with the intended bullet lodged in his brain. The female doctor who cleared Bond for duty appears and explains that the bullet is "moving through the medulla oblongata, killing off [Renard's] senses; touch, smell, he feels no pain. He can push himself harder and longer than any normal man. The bullet will kill him, but he will grow stronger every day until the day he dies." M assigns Bond to protect King's daughter; as Renard previously abducted and held Elektra for ransom, MI6 believes that Renard will be targeting her.
James Bond with Elektra King
James Bond with Elektra King

Bond flies to Azerbaijan, where Elektra is overseeing the construction of an oil pipeline that will travel through the Caucasus, from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. Checking on the route for the proposed pipeline in the mountains, Bond and Elektra are attacked by a team of gunmen in airborne snowmobiles. Bond causes them to crash and protects Elektra in the ensuing avalanche with his inflatable jacket provided by Q. While there, Bond visits a casino owned by his ally, Valentin Zukovsky, to get some information. Elektra shows up there to assume her father's credit line of $1 million, which she quickly loses to Zukovsky. Bond tries to talk her out of the high-stakes bet, to which she nonchalantly responds, "There's no point in living if you can't feel alive." That night, Bond discovers that Elektra's head of security, Davidov, is secretly in league with Renard. He stows away in Davidov's car to a nearby airstrip, Bond kills Davidov and boards a plane bound for a former Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan. There, Bond poses as Russian nuclear scientist Mikhail Arkov to enter the silo and find out why Renard's men are there. On his way into the facility, he encounters Colonel Akakievich and American nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones, who is immediately suspicious of his true identity.

Inside the silo, Bond watches as Renard removes the GPS locator card and a half quantity of weapons-grade plutonium from a bomb, but Bond is unable either to see or recognize the theft. He isolates and is just about to execute Renard, saying he will do so and feel nothing—referring to Renard's condition—to which Renard responds, "There's no point in living if you can't feel alive." Bond is distracted by this comment long enough to allow the colonel and Dr. Jones to expose him. Renard kills the colonel and escapes with the bomb, leaving Bond and Dr. Jones to die in the booby-trapped missile silo. Bond retrieves the locator card, and he and Dr. Jones just manage to escape the exploding silo. Back in Azerbaijan, Bond confronts Elektra, who denies working with Renard. Elektra has just contacted M to invite her to Azerbaijan under the pretense that she wants more reliable protection.

As M arrives at the pipeline, Bond discloses to her that Elektra may not be as innocent as she seems; M quickly dismisses his theory because he has no solid evidence, but he does give her the locator card as proof of the theft. An attack is launched on the pipeline—the pilfered bomb from the ICBM base in Kazakhstan is attached to a welding rig (a panel that travels through the pipeline to detect and repair cracks), which is headed toward the pipeline's oil terminal. The detonation would set the construction of the pipeline back significantly. Bond and Dr. Jones enter the pipeline ahead of the bomb on another rig, and Dr. Jones discovers as she attempts to defuse it that half of the plutonium is missing (as Renard had removed it earlier). She explains to Bond that even though the bomb isn't nuclear, the explosion would still be enough to kill both of them. She removes the plutonium, but Bond stops her from defusing the bomb, explaining after they survive the blast that Elektra will think that they are dead. Bond radios in and learns that M and Elektra are missing, and everyone else at the workstation is dead; he surmises that Elektra has indeed been working with Renard all along.
Renard presents Elektra with the other half of the stolen weapons-grade plutonium.
Renard presents Elektra with the other half of the stolen weapons-grade plutonium.

In the middle of the night, Zukovsky drives with his underling, Mr. Bullion (a.k.a. Bull), to his caviar factory to answer an apparent break-in, which turns out to have been perpetrated by Bond and Dr. Jones. Bond confronts Zukovsky about his involvement with Elektra and the payoff he took in the casino, which Zukovsky tells him was in exchange for the use of a submarine captained by Zukovsky's nephew, Nikolai, near Istanbul. Meanwhile, Elektra and Renard meet in Istanbul, where he presents the plutonium to her, and Elektra shows him the gift she has brought for him—M, his would-be executioner. Elektra exits the room, and Renard sets an alarm clock on a stool a few feet from the cell in which M is being held, promising he will kill her at dawn, but that he will not miss where she (through orders to 009) had failed previously. Renard kills Captain Nikolai and his crew; Renard and his men board the submarine and begin processing the plutonium. M remembers the locator card and tries to snatch the alarm clock from its perch. The next morning, Bond, Dr. Jones, Zukovsky, and Bull have arrived in Istanbul and are attempting to locate Nikolai and his submarine. Nikolai's submarine is a Victor III class submarine; if Renard puts the plutonium into the submarine's nuclear reactor, the resulting meltdown would level Istanbul, killing over eight million people and sabotaging the Russians' transportation of oil from the Caspian Sea; furthermore, this would clear the way for only one source of oil: Elektra's pipeline is set to go around the Caspian Sea on land through the ruins of Istanbul, which would dramatically increase the value of her own oil.

M manages to get ahold of the alarm clock, and she uses its battery leads to power up the locator card, revealing her location coordinates—and those of Renard and Elektra—to Bond. No sooner do Zukovsky, Bond, and Dr. Jones pick up the location (Maiden's Tower), however, than Bull leaves a bomb to kill them. Bond and Dr. Jones escape unscathed, but are immediately captured by Bull and several of Elektra's henchmen, leaving Zukovsky for dead. Renard returns to give Nikolai's captain's cap to Elektra and give her a final embrace before leaving to fulfill his mission on the submarine. Bond, Dr. Jones, and their captors arrive at Elektra's hideout; Bond is restrained in an ancient torture device, while Dr. Jones is taken to Renard in the submarine. An injured Zukovsky storms into the room where Elektra is torturing Bond, demanding to know where the hijacked submarine is. Bond gestures to the table on which Elektra has placed Nikolai's cap, and Zukovsky, realizing that his nephew is dead, commands Elektra to bring him the cap. Instead, Elektra shoots Zukovsky and starts back Bond to kill him. With his last breath, Zukovsky uses his cane—a one-bullet gun—to shoot at Bond, breaking one of the restraints that bind him to the torture device. Bond escapes and chases Elektra through the building, pausing momentarily to free M. When he catches up with Elektra, he instructs her to tell Renard to call off his plan and shoots her dead when she tells Renard to continue.

Bond boards the submerging seafarer, where he frees Dr. Jones and shares with her his plan to make the submarine surface so that it will show up on radar; the navy can then come and destroy the submarine. Bond has a brief battle with Renard's men and, in the confusion, causes the submarine to dive rather than surface, then sabotages the controls. The submarine hits bottom, driving its nose into the sea floor and causing everyone and everything to fall in that direction. Bond catches up to Renard at the reactor, where Renard is just shoving the tip of a rod (made from the plutonium) into the reactor. Bond pushes Renard away from the reactor and removes the rod. He and Renard trade blows, but Renard gains the upper hand and begins again to put the rod into the reactor. Bond climbs up to the reactor pressure ejector, where he reconnects the pressure hose and causes the hole into which Renard has completed putting the plutonium rod to backfire, impaling Renard with the rod. Bond and Dr. Jones exit the reactor room, and Bond seals it, allowing it to flood, which will contain the inevitable explosion. They then use the torpedo tubes to get back to the surface only moments before the reactor room causes the submarine to explode. That evening, Bond and Dr. Jones enjoy some champagne and time together in Istanbul.

Tomorrow Never Dies

MI6 sends James Bond into the field to spy on a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Via television, SIS and the British military identify several wanted men, including American "techno-terrorist" Henry Gupta, who is buying a GPS encoder made by the American military.
Paris meeting up with Bond in Hamburg
Paris meeting up with Bond in Hamburg

The British launch a missile attack on the arms bazaar, but then Bond points out there are two Soviet nuclear torpedoes mounted on an L-39 Albatros, the destruction of which poses potential local radioactive contamination. With the missile already in flight and unable to be aborted, Bond hijacks the L-39 and flies it to safety after a fight with its co pilot, who tries to strangle him. Despite the missile destroying most of the terrorists and weaponry, Gupta escapes with the encoder.

Media baron Elliot Carver, head of the Carver Media Group Network (CMGN), begins his plans to use the encoder to provoke war between China and the United Kingdom. As the existing Chinese leadership is not receptive to giving Carver Media Group Network the exclusive broadcast rights in their country, Carver wants to use the war to eliminate them in favor of politicians more friendly to his plans. Using the encoder Gupta deviates the frigate HMS Devonshire off-course in the South China Sea, where Carver's stealth ship and its crew plan to steal some of its missiles. Carver's henchman, Stamper, sinks the frigate with a sea drill and shoots down a Chinese fighter jet sent to investigate the British presence. Thinking they have been attacked by the Chinese, Admiral Roebuck reluctantly gives M forty-eight hours to investigate before the Royal Navy retaliates.

M sends Bond to investigate Carver after Carver Media releases news with critical details hours before these have become known, and MI6 noticed a spurious signal from one of his CMGN communications satellites when the frigate was sunk. Bond travels to Hamburg and seduces Carver's wife, Paris, an ex-girlfriend; the information she tells Bond helps him sneak into Carver's newspaper headquarters and steal back the GPS encoder. When Carver learns of it, he orders Paris and Bond killed; Paris is killed, but Bond escapes. Bond then goes to the South China Sea to investigate the wreck, discovering several missiles missing. He and Wai Lin, a Chinese spy on the same case, are captured by Stamper and taken to the CMGN Vietnam bureau; they escape and begin collaborating.

They inform the Royal Navy and the Chinese air force to explain what is happening, then find and board Carver's stealth ship in Ha Long Bay to prevent him firing the stolen British cruise missiles at Beijing. During the battle aboard the stealth ship, Bond sets off an explosive, damaging part of the ship and exposing it on radar, enabling the Royal Navy to attack it, but Wai Lin is captured. Bond captures Gupta to use as his own hostage, but Carver kills Gupta, claiming he has outlived his contract. Bond leads a large battle against the crew and Stamper, and Carver is killed by his own sea drill after trying to kill Bond on his own. As Bond begins to start the process of destroying the warhead, Stamper shows that he has held Wai Lin hostage. A fight ensues when he tries to drown her. Bond traps him in the missile firing mechanism and leaves him to die, while saving Wai Lin as the stealth ship is destroyed by the Royal Navy. Bond and Wai Lin survive amidst the wreckage as HMS Bedford searches for them. Carver's Stealth Ship bears remarkable resemblances to the Zumwalt DDG 1000 manufactured by General Dynamics Bath Iron Worksand the Sea Shadow manufactured by Lockheed-Martin for the United States Navy.

GoldenEye

MI6 agents 007 (James Bond) and 006 (Alec Trevelyan) infiltrate an illicit Soviet chemical weapons facility at Arkhangelsk and plant explosive charges. Trevelyan is captured and shot by Colonel Arkady Ourumov, but Bond steals a plane and escapes the exploding facility.

Nine years later, Bond arrives in Monte Carlo to follow Xenia Onatopp, a suspected member of the Janus crime syndicate, who has formed a suspicious relationship with a Canadian Navy admiral. She murders the admiral to allow Ourumov (now a general) to steal his identity. The next day, they steal a prototype French Tiger helicopter that can withstand an electromagnetic pulse, flying it to a bunker in Severnaya, where they massacre the staff and steal the control disk for the dual GoldenEye satellite weapons. The two program one of the GoldenEyes to destroy the complex with an electromagnetic pulse and escape with traitor programmer Boris Grishenko. Natalya Simonova, the lone survivor, arranges to meet Grishenko in St. Petersburg, where he betrays her to Janus.

In London, M assigns Bond to investigate the attack, and he flies to St. Petersburg to meet CIA agent Jack Wade, who suggests he meet Valentin Zukovsky, a Russian Mafia head and business rival of Janus. After Bond gives him a tip on a potential heist, Zukovsky arranges a meeting between Bond and Janus, who reveals himself as Trevelyan. A Lienz Cossack, Trevelyan faked his death, having vowed revenge against Britain for their involvement in his parents' deaths. He ties Bond up with Simonova in the Tiger helicopter programmed to self-destruct, which the two escape using its ejection system. They are immediately arrested by the Russian police and interrogated by the Minister of Defence, Dmitri Mishkin. Just as Simonova reveals the existence of a second satellite and Ourumov's involvement in the massacre at Severnaya, Ourumov bursts into the room, proceeding to shoot the guard as well as Mishkin and dragging Simonova into a car. Bond steals a T-55 tank and pursues Ourumov through St. Petersburg to Janus' armoured train, where he kills Ourumov as Trevelyan escapes, locking Bond in the train with Simonova. As the train's self-destruct countdown begins, Bond cuts through the floor with a laser watch while Simonova locates Grishenko's satellite dish in Cuba using a computer. The two escape just before the train explodes.

In Cuba, Bond and Simonova fly a plane over the jungle before they are shot down. As they stumble out of it, Onatopp rappels down from a helicopter and attacks Bond, who resists and kills her. Minutes later, he and Simonova watch a lake being drained of its water, uncovering the dish. They infiltrate the control station, where Bond is captured by Trevelyan, who reveals his plan of stealing money from the Bank of England before erasing all of its financial records with the remaining GoldenEye, concealing the theft and destroying Britain's economy.

Meanwhile, Simonova programs the satellite to initiate atmospheric reentry and destroy itself. As Trevelyan captures Simonova and orders Grishenko to save the satellite, Bond triggers an explosion with his Parker Jotter pen grenade and escapes to the antenna cradle. Bond sabotages the antenna, preventing Grishenko from regaining control of the satellite, before turning and facing Trevelyan. Bond shoves Trevelyan off the antenna and into the dish before escaping aboard a helicopter commandeered by Simonova. The cradle collapses, crushing Trevelyan and rupturing liquid nitrogen tanks that freeze Grishenko. Meanwhile on the surface, Bond and Simonova are rescued by Wade and a platoon of U.S. Marines.