Brosnan's path to Bond was a long and winding one. In 1986, he had beaten out Sam Neill and Timothy Dalton for the part in The Living Daylights and went so far as to take publicity photos at Pinewood Studios. His NBC show Remington Steele had been canceled, so he was free to take the job. But the news generated so much interest, that ratings on Steele spiked, and NBC reversed their decision, ordering six more episodes as a mid-season replacement. This angered Bond producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, whose aide was quoted in People magazine as saying, "He's not going to have another company riding on our publicity." The role instead went to Dalton.
So, when the part became available again for GoldenEye, Brosnan was the obvious choice. He felt the pressure, as he told The Guardian: "The skeptics were out in full: the world felt there was no need for another James Bond. So the challenge was enormous. I didn't want to get caught between what Sean and Roger had done. Yet, at the end of the day, my take was a little bit of what both had brought to the role. I leant towards Sean's style, but I couldn't deny Roger because GoldenEye was in the tongue-in-cheek style people had become used to." The film's pre-credit action sequence in the USSR takes place in 1986, essentially retconning the casting process so Brosnan has been Bond the whole time.
And the opening stunt, conceived by director Martin Campbell, is a stunner. It was a 700-foot bungee jump down the face of the Contra Dam in Switzerland, performed by stuntman Wayne Michaels, who, according to Campbell in The Guardian, nailed it on the first take. It is a bravura re-introduction to the character and by itself might have ensured GoldenEye's success.
The story by Michael France and screenplay by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein reframes the post-Soviet Bond universe, including a more analytics-oriented MI6 led by Judi Dench as the new M and Samantha Bond as the new Moneypenny. Both women joust with Bond over his attitude towards women, with M calling him, "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War." But they still need him to save the world, of course. This time the world is endangered by Bond's former partner Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), who has gone rogue and started an international crime syndicate known as Janus. With the help of Russian General Ourumov (Gottfried John) and the man-crushing Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) he seeks control of two "GoldenEye" satellites, electromagnetic pulse weapons that could shut down all electronic devices it targets, causing chaos.
Bond is aided by Russian computer programmer Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco), the sole survivor from the first blast of the GoldenEye satellite. Their search for Trevelyan and the satellite takes them from St. Petersburg to Cuba, with some assistance from the CIA in the form of Jack Wade (a gruff and delightful Joe Don Baker). Pinewood Studios was at full capacity at the time of shooting, so according to James Chapman's Licence to Thrill, they "converted a disused Rolls-Royce factory at Leavesden Aerodome, near Watford, into a makeshift studio facility."
The most memorable moment shot in the studio occurs in a chase through the streets of St. Petersburg after Bond borrows a tank. Campbell told The Guardian, "We were getting very tight on budget by the time we got to the tank chase through the streets of St Petersburg, so we built replica streets in the studios at Leavesden. We had three or four Soviet battle tanks, T-55s, the proverbial unstoppable force. You just let the bloody thing go and it knocks anything down." It was everything a James Bond sequence should be - preposterously thrilling, seamlessly crafted and pulled off with a gleam in Brosnan's eye. GoldenEye would go on to make over $350 million worldwide and ensure a future for James Bond.
By R. Emmet Sweeney
