The World Is Not Enough, 1999
Director
Cast
- Pierce Brosnan
- Robert Carlyle
- Sophie Marceau
- Denise Richards
- Judi Dench
- Desmond Llewelyn
- John Cleese
- Samantha Bond
- Patrick Malahide
- Robbie Coltrane
visit the film locations
London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport
Visit: Scotland
Visit: Eilean Donan Castle, Dornie, by Kyle of Lochalsh (tel: 01599.555202)
Spain: Flights: Bilbao Airport
Visit: Bilbao Turismo
Visit: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Avenida Abandoibarra 2. Virtual Tour
Turkey: Istanbul: Flights: Istanbul Ataturk Airport
Visit: Azerbaijan
Trivia
Bond, in the person of Sean Connery, previously visited Istanbul in From Russia With Love
The World Is Not Enough location: the opening teaser: Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
Photograph: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Third in the increasingly confident Pierce Brosnan Bonds, given a little more weight than usual by a top-drawer cast and the director of Gorillas in the Mist.
The opening teaser is set against the backdrop of Frank O Gehry’s stunning, titanium-plated Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Avenida Abandoibarra 2, on the Nerrión River in the centre of Bilbao, in the Basque Country of northern Spain.
When test audiences felt a bit short-changed with a single stunt, the titles were shunted back to include the Thames boat chase as part of the pre-credits sequence.
The World Is Not Enough location: MI6 HQ on the Thames: Vauxhall Cross
After decades of lurking about in vaguely specified buildings around Whitehall, the intelligence services came out of the closet with the purpose-built post-modern bulk of the MI6 HQ building, Vauxhall Cross, 85 Albert Embankment, on the south bank of the Thames alongside Vauxhall Bridge.
The building made its screen debut as the start of the movie’s river chase, with special effects blowing a hole in the building in the film (though the IRA did a more convincing job in real life). Pierce Brosnan returned to the building, as a shabbier, seedier agent, in John Boorman’s 2001 film of the John le Carré novel The Tailor of Panama.
The subsequent boat chase (much cut down) was shot, not so much on the Thames, as on nearby waterways and docks.
The World Is Not Enough location: ducking under the bridge: Glengall Bridge, Millwall Inner Dock
The rollover is the Royal Victoria Dock, at Canning Town – actually across the Thames from the chase’s climax.
West of the Dockland Light Railway’s Crossharbour Station, in the shadow of the London Arena, is Glengall Bridge across Millwall Inner Dock, the bridge under which Bond dives as it closes, on the Isle of Dogs – the great loop in the Thames, which Bond appears to use as a shortcut.
Then it’s back west, toward Wapping, to Tobacco Dock on the tiny Ornamental Canal, at Wapping Lane.
The World Is Not Enough location: leaping the canal steps: Tobacco Dock, Ornamental Canal
The commercial redevelopment of the dock seems to have failed, with the shopping complex currently deserted and dusty. It’s on the right-angle bend of the Ornamental Canal that the traffic wardens (a dated cameo by long-forgotten, minor celebs from reality-TV) get drenched as Bond’s Q boat leaps up the canal’s steps and tears through the ‘London Canoe Club’ clubhouse (specially built for the movie) alongside the pirate ships of Tobacco Dock.
A crafty cut has Bond’s boat tearing ashore at Chatham High Street, in Kent, before emerging opposite the then uncompleted Millennium Dome, now the O2 Arena, Greenwich.
The World Is Not Enough location: MI6 HQ ‘Castle Thane’: Eilean Donan Castle, Dornie, Scotland
Photograph: iStockphoto © Jeremy Voisey
The temporary MI6 HQ in Scotland is made up of two separate locations. The funeral scene uses the chapel at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire (seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), though ‘Castle Thane’ itself really is north of the border. It’s Eilean Donan Castle on an islet in Dornie, eight miles east of Kyle of Lochalsh on the A87, Wester Ross, probably most familiar from Highlander.
The vast, sprawling oilfields of Azerbaijan are the real thing, at Baku on the Caspian Sea, though closer shots are of the familiar old standby Black Park, near to the Pinewood Studios, and Hankley Common, Tilford Road south of Tilford in Surrey. The oil pipeline site itself is at Cuenca, central Spain (but don’t go looking for the beautiful little chapel, which was only a set).
The skiing sequence, where the paragliders attack, supposedly in the ‘Caucasus Mountains’, is high on the slopes of Mont Blanc near Chamonix on the Italian-French border.
The World Is Not Enough location: the interior of the ‘Baku’ palace: Luton Hoo, Luton, Bedfordshire
From here on ‘Azerbaijan’ is largely fake. The exterior of Electra’s ‘Baku’ palace is Küçüksu Palace, Beykoz, on the Bosphorus in Istanbul, while its interior is Luton Hoo, Hotel, Golf and Spa, near Luton in Bedfordshire, a veteran location seen in Eyes Wide Shut, Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Wilde among many other films. And it provides more backdrops here too, as the casino bar.
The casino itself is Halton House, the one-time residence of Alfred de Rothschild, now used as the Officers' Mess for RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire. It’s featured on-screen in Alan Parker’s Evita, with Madonna, in Bride and Prejudice and The Queen, as well as in numerous TV productions.
The airport from which Bond makes his nighttime escape is Northolt Airport, South Ruislip.
The World Is Not Enough location: M is imprisoned: Maiden’s Tower, the Bosphorus, Istanbul
Photograph:iStockphoto/Murat Sen
The ‘Kazakhstan’ site, where Bond meets Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), is Bardenas Reales near Tudela in Spain, while the gleaming pipeline terminal is the Motorola Building at Swindon in Wiltshire. The pipeline itself is in the mountains of Snowdonia in Wales, but the explosion from which Bond and Christmas escape was faked back in Black Park.
M is imprisoned in Kiz Kulesi – Maiden’s Tower – an 11th century lighthouse at the mouth of the Bosphorus at Istanbul, Turkey.
