Tension is added when the Bond theme tune starts to play. However, the tension is broken up a bit
when Bond drops into the loo where a guard is sitting and he knocks the guard out after apologising for
forgetting to knock. When Bond comes out of the toilet and starts speaking to 006 (Alec Trevelyan),
they both sound very confident that they will complete the mission without any problems. You can
really see this when Alec says to Bond... "“Ready to save the world again.” It makes it sound like he
thinks of it as an everyday thing, not a big mission that will save the world. He sounds very cocky
about it.
When Bond and Trevelyan are both inside, you expect them to both get out alive and in one piece,
because that is what usually happens in films. The villains get killed and the heroes survive. But not in
Bond films. Alec is shot in the head. Humour is also added to this bit aswell because James escapes by
crouching down behind a squeaky cage of gas tanks. This a real time of tension for the audience. You
just want to know whether he is going to get shot or not. Even though you know that he has to stay
alive for the rest of the film, you still find yourself sitting on the edge of the seat waiting to see what
happens.
When Bond gets outside, the chemical weapon facility blows up with an amazing explosion. This is
one of the many parts in the film where the parody is shown. It is like a little child’s cartoon. When
people are killed in cartoons, there is no blood. When Alec was shot, you didn’t see any blood at all.
Also adding tension are the countdowns. Bond sets the bomb for six minutes and Ourumov counts
down from ten as he holds a gun to Alec’s head.
In this section of this sequence, Bond is presented with impossible tasks. These include when he is
falling from the cliff and somehow manages to fall straight into the door of the aeroplane, knocking the
pilot out the plane in the process.
The next time we see Bond is when he is in the car with Caroline. This is quite a witty and humorous
scene. It contains a lot of sexual tension between him and Caroline, and him and Xenia. Caroline and
Xenia are completely opposite in every way possible. Caroline is a very traditional sort or girl. She
dresses in smart, but dull and boring clothes. She doesn’t react very well to James’ fast driving at all.
She is constantly telling him to slow down or stop. She looks like your average everyday, innocent
business woman. She lets James take advantage of her. This is one of the parts of the film when we get
to see James’ sophisticated, charming side. He has to prove to Caroline that he is a man. (Boys with
toys) He seduces her with champagne and glasses, which are stored in a little compartment in his car.
He then has sex with her and we don’t ever see her again throughout the entire film.
Xenia on the other hand is like a wild cat. She is wearing a Red and black tightly fitted outfit that
makes her look devilish, dangerous, sexy but wicked. Her hair is blowing in the wind. She wears bright
red lipstick. When you put her whole outfit together with her car, she looks dangerous, but very very
sexy. Just the type of woman Bond would go for. Xenia is very womanly, but she is also very man like.
She smokes cigars, she swears, she beats up men and kills them. But what makes her masculine side
stand out more is when we find out that she is an ex-fighter pilot. She is definitely not your everyday
average innocent businesswoman like Caroline.
When we see Xenia at the casino, she is wearing a very revealing outfit. It is at this point she reveals
her accent and her unusual sexy name. Xenia Onnatopp. When she orders her drink she likes it straight
up with a twist. This is also how she likes her sex. The twist being the pain she causes the other person.
Her name is not just there to go along with her being a sexual preditor, but because she is foreign.
Xenia actually means alien. In the scene where we see her having sex with the captain, she acts out her
name. And she causes him not just pain, but death but suffocating him during sex.
When Bond is aboard the boat the next day, the film shows Bond being a typical action hero. We are
shown this when he sees the mans reflection on the handle and reacts quickly by turning round and
beating the man up. James fails to stop Xenia and Ourumov from stealing the helicopter. This was
another point for Xenia to show the sexual hold she had over men. She whistles to the pilots and teases
them for a minute or two. She shoots them both. Xenia gets a lot of pleasure from killing people,
whereas when James kills people, he doesn’t get pleasure from it, he doesn’t get anything from it. It is
part of his job. He does what he is paid to do.
When James is at the MI6 headquarters in London we see James in a different light to how we have
seen him in earlier scenes. Before this, we have seen him in charge of the conversation and wittiness
whenever he is in the company of a female. But when he is with Moneypenny in the lift, we clearly see
that she is in charge. Especially when James says, “What would I do without you?” and she replies
with “As far as I’m concerned James, you’ve never had me.” James isn’t used to being turned down,
but Money penny is one woman he wants but can’t have.
James thinks M is all to do with numbers. She doesn’t go with her instinct. She is the first female M in
a James Bond film.
M thinks Bond goes by his instinct too often. She thinks he puts his life in danger too often. At one
point in their conversation she calls him a “Sexist, misogynist dinosaur”. From this we can see that this
is another woman who is in charge of the conversation.
Also in this scene we see just how clever James is when he is proved right about the GoldenEye. (A
nuclear device which creates an electro-magnetic-pulse from a radiation surge caused by an explosion.)
This portrays the intelligence that is expected of an action hero.
Bond meets Trevelyan in the municipal dump filled with unwanted statues of past communist leaders
and thinkers, like Lenin, Stalin and Marx. Bond is more shocked because his friend is alive more than
anything. This is the twist in the story because Trevelyan reveals that he is a Lienz Cossack. He is
getting revenge for the killing of his parents. This conversation is unusual for a Bond film because it
reveals the motivation in both characters. Trevelyan shoots Bond but not killing him directly, just
putting him to sleep. He wakes up in the helicopter with Natalya screaming at him to wake up and save
them both. Yet again He manages to save himself and the girl. But they are still arrested by the Russian
army and taken to headquarters to be questioned.
The tank chase is a prime scene in the film. When the tank has the statue of Pegasus on the top of it, it
is showing that it is the great one and no one can defeat him. This is also shown when Ouromov is
swigging his drink, and shouting at the driver to go faster and what way to turn, whereas Bond is sat in
his tank, as cool as a cucumber as if he chases cars in a tank everyday. This is also another point in the
film where there are what are usually impossible odds, but Bond seems to break them. This is shown
where he rides straight through a brick wall as if it wasn’t even there. I think this is very cleverly done.
The set where the tank chase takes place is half-made and half-real. The place it is set in Russia were
afraid of their town being ruined by the tank and fast cars, so they only shot a little part of the film in
the actual place, but they upped their budget by a quarter of a million pounds to build a replica of the
place on an abandoned railway.
This Bond film has been made slightly different to other Bond films, because usually Bond wouldn’t
let himself get emotionally attached to the mission or the girls. But his motive has changed. He gets
attached to the mission because he wants to get his revenge on Trevelyan for what he has done. It is
like a personal vendetta. He also gets emotionally attached to Natalya. You see how he falls in love
with her as the film goes on. But like Moneypenny, Natalya is in charge most of the time. This is
shown when Bond has derailed the train and she is the one who finds out where they need to go by
hacking in to the computer. Then when they are outside she is the one who makes the first move and
doing the seducing, where-as it is usually James who is seducing the ladies.
The opening shot of Cuba is very romantic. Overlaying the main scene you can still see Natalya and
Bond kissing. The scene is made romantic by the sunset and sea. You can hear violins playing in the
background and nobody is on the set. When it goes into the bedroom there is a fire, which is there
purely to make the set romantic because it would actually be too hot to actually have a fire in a climate
like that. All the time you can hear the violins playing romantic music in the background.
When Xenia gets killed it is quite dramatic because there is a big fight before hand. You expect Bond
to shoot her, but he shoots the pilot of the helicopter and attaches her to it and she is hanged.
The computer-generated scenes of the antenna coming out of the water are very spectacular and very
realistic. You expect a smallish sort of thing, but instead out comes a massive thing, which looks
magnificent.
Another magnificent computer-generated scene was the explosion of the antenna and centre. Again it
was like a child’s cartoon. When Alec falls from the antenna, he miraculously survives, with little
blood. Although he is then smashed to a pulp by the burning antenna, but you don’t actually see the
body or any blood. But again humour was added when Boris shouts, “I am invincible” when he is one
of the few survivors, but he is then frozen by the gas.
I really enjoyed this film. It was a parody of action films, but also a parody of other Bond films. This is
shown when he falls in love with Natalya and is out for revenge against Alec, instead of staying
focused on the mission and not getting his emotions involved. I would recommend GoldenEye to
almost anyone.
