"Tomorrow Never Dies"

Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh

TOMORROW NEVER DIES
Monday, December 15, 1997
About the title TOMORROW NEVER DIES

EW Hotsheet came up with joke number five. Tomorrow Never Dies: It’s James Bond’s most difficult mission. He has to find out what the title means. Of course, kept busy stopping the Evil media, he never did. It didn’t make this Pierce Brosnan’s agent 007 less attractive than his predecessor. This title isn’t about him: it’s about the particular time-capsule he happened to be in. In that capsule super-agent 007 is loosing balance and can not do a damn thing about it. His old flame (Teri Hatcher) gets killed because her entire image is outdated and substituted by the new one played by a well trained and flawless charmer, Michelle Yeoh. The only problem is that the story makes her character look like a well-oiled war machine. The same time capsule drops her femininity and goes on with her masculinity. Now, instead of one agent we have two. One male agent 007 plus one female agent 007 in the disguise of a Chinese charmer. I guess one is enough to make viewers happy. In his mythological world, James Bond has to deal with opposite female energy to produce a feeling of balance as a symbol of his victory over the chaos that he as a hero is expected to straighten out.

Everyone knows that a Super-agent is pre-destined to win the battle with Evil. The only thing that isn’t obvious is how the feeling of balance (peace of mind!) that makes a victory THE VICTORY will be achieved. This is why female partners have such an importance in this 007 franchise and why it is so hard to find a right one.

As we know, myths have a life of their own. At a time when Tomorrow Never Dies tells marvelous stories about the Russian chaos, Chinese order and media craziness, the terrorists’ weapon bazaar in Russia, at the end of the known world, a China store that turns into a weaponry instantly, or media madness—myth conveys its own story. And this is about the death of femininity that marks the death of the world as we know it.

At the last shot the tradition makes James Bond kiss the Chinese Agent, but this kiss didn’t turn a war-machine into a woman. A miracle doesn’t happen in spite of the distinguished artistry of every separate scene, like a speedy bike ballet, or gliding down the wall on the stripe out of the [ruined] dictator’s portrait. (As a person from the former Soviet Union, the homeland of such portraits, I consider this scene the most enjoyable!)

Jackie Chan's comical action films squeezed a comic effect out of the image of a female karate machine. It made us laugh because we didn’t expect a female character to act as a karate machine.

Then this character started a life on its own in the film G.I Jane. Demi Moore’s heroine had to accept the challenge to become a man. She cuts off her hair, develops physical equality and tops it with a war-cry: "Suck my Dick!". To say so is not about a "good" or " bad" upbringing; it is about a certain state of collective mind. In the battle for survival the heroine drops her femininity as an unnecessary toy. But when this "toy" is dropped, life dies.

The former Soviet Union didn’t collapse because of Ronald Reagan’s threats to deliver a "Star War" that the Soviets couldn’t afford. The empire collapsed because the Communist regime couldn’t reverse the process of shrinking population. The Communists used up their own people’s sperm bank in Siberia labor camps and W.W.II. (For every German soldier killed, 5 to 10 Russians died.) But Communists never stopped. They made women work as men in fields and factories. As a result, these equalized women stopped bringing children into this world. Period.

In 1988, at the beginning of perestroika, some facts were revealed. DAY AFTER DAY, there were 300 villages dying daily. Somewhere in the heartland, according to a five-year plan, Communists started to built a factory only to discover that there was no one to work in that factory... Russian Communism collapsed because women stopped being women and became work machines, war machines, struggle machines. And Mother Nature took care of that regime.

A war-machine will not produce children. And the mythical story Tomorrow Never Dies picks up the feeling on its own. Born to win, James Bond wins of course, but viewers don’t feel this as a victory. Lack of male/female balance robs them of that feeling. It doesn’t matter whether 007 wins or looses, because the time-capsule he is in doesn’t have any future.

I think the mysterious title Tomorrow Never Dies addresses that feeling of dissatisfaction regarding the world without tomorrow. And myth handlers rush to reassure us that this will not happen. Tomorrow never dies. Maybe the two agents 007 belong to different time capsules after all; the traditional image of an impeccable male agent 007 belongs to the past and the aggressive female projection of agent 007 belongs to the future that will reinvent the balance between male and female energy. In the Soviet version men drank letting female work machines to do all the work, and only time can show what the American version of that new balance will be.