FAQ for
The World Is Not Enough (1999) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The World is Not Enough can be found here.

No. The movie is based on a story and script co-written by screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein. The title is taken from "Orbis non sufficit ", the English translation of the Latin phrase seen on the Bond family's coat-of-arms in the movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). The screenplay was subsequently novelized by American author Raymond Benson. The World is Not Enough is the 19th Bond film in the EON series, and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.

The World is Not Enough is performed by the American rock group known as Garbage.

In the precredits scenario, Bond is in a Swiss bank in Bilbao, Spain where he is attempting to recover money stolen from Sir Robert King (David Calder), oil tycoon and a personal friend of M (Judi Dench). Even moreso, he is looking for the name of the assassin who killed the MI6 agent who discovered that Sir Robert was buying stolen reports, the latest one from the Russian Atomic Energy Department purportedly identifying the terrorists who attacked a new oil pipeline that King is building. After making a daring escape but without the name of the assassin, Bond returns the money to MI6 headquarters in London only to see King, the money, and the MI6 bankvault blown up by a fertilizer bomb. After attending King's funeral in Scotland, Bond is sent to Baku, Azerbaijan to shadow King's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau), whom M suspects may be next on the terrorist list, as well as to see if he identify the terrorist as Victor "Renard" Zokas (Robert Carlyle), the terrorist who kidnapped Elektra several years ago and demanded $5,000,000 in ransom.. When he finds the dead body of Russian scientist Mikail Arkon in the car trunk of Elektra's chief of security, Bond kills the security chief and takes Arkon's place on a flight to a Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan. There, he meets Dr Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), an American nuclear physicist, and the two of them barely escape with their lives when Renard succeeds in stealing a bomb and blowing up the entire ICBM base. Bond and Christmas return to Azerbaijan, but Bond now suspects that Elektra may be working with Renard. When Elektra and Renard rendez-vous in Istanbul, Turkey, Bond and Christmas follow them there in order to stop them from using the bomb to blow up Istanbul.

A fertilizer bomb is an explosive made out of common fertilizer. In this case, the money was dipped in urea, a source of nitrogen in fertilizers. In one of the notes, the anti-counterfeiting strip was replaced with magnesium which acted as a detonator. King's lapel pin was switched for a copy which contained a radio transmitter to trigger the blast. Bond was alerted to the fertilizer bomb when he picked up some ice cubes for his drink after touching the money. The water on his hands started a chemical reaction with the urea, which Bond recognized as telltale of a fertilizer bomb. M is convinced that only someone close to King could have switched his lapel pin for the rigged copy.

Azerbaijan is located in the western shore of the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region on the border between Europe and Asia. Kazakhstan, on the northeastern shore of the Caspian is in Asia. A map of the Caspian Sea and surrounding countries can be viewed here.

Stockholm Syndrome is the name given to a psychological response where a captive victim comes to love his or her captor(s). The term was coined in the 1970s when four employees of a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, were held hostage for six days by two ex-convicts. Upon their release, the hostages showed abnormal emotional attachment to their captors, even to the point of refusing to testify against them in court. Two of the female hostages, in fact, became engaged to their captors. The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of abuse. It has been observed in battered spouses, abused children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors. Bond suspects that Elektra may have acquired the syndrome during the time she was held captive by Renard.

Renard begins to submerge the submarine carrying the nuclear warhead, so Bond leaps in the water after it and climbs on board. He first frees Christmas. Then, while holding off Renard's men, he attempts to make the submarine surface so that it will be detected on navy radar but instead makes it dive deeper, causing the sub to hit bottom. As the submarine begins to flood with water, Bond and Christmas work their way toward the hatch, until Christmas notices that Renard has locked himself in the reactor room and is attempting to load the plutonium rod, which will set off an explosion that will destroy Istanbul. To get to the reactor room, Bond exits through one escape hatch and then re-enters the sub through the escape hatch in the reactor room. Once inside, he opens the door for Christmas to gain entrance to the reactor room and, together, they try to stop Renard from inserting the plutonium rod. Just as it looks like Renard is going to win, Bond reconnects a blown pressure hose, causing the reactor to backfire and eject the plutonium rod, which impales Renard through the chest. The reactor floods with water, and Bond and Christmas escape by ejecting themselves out thrugh a torpedo tube. As they swim to the surface, the submarine safely blows up underwater. Back at MI6 headquarters in Scotland, M (who has returned safely from Azerbaijan) asks if there's been any word from Bond, who is still in Istanbul sharing champagne with Christmas. R (John Cleese), Q (Desmond Llewelyn)'s understudy, manages to pick up Bond with his thermal imaging card. When the MI6 staff realizes what Bond and Christmas are really doing, R discretely flicks off the image.