Line #17 Headscratchers/TomorrowNeverDies


1	* Why didn't the Chinese [=MiGs=] report the, to them, inexplicable sinking of the HMS Devonshire? Or, for that matter, the mysterious vessel that was only swimming distance away and yet wasn't visible on radar?
2	** The obvious assumption is that they DID, and that the British simply didn't believe them. Their ship's last transmission was 'torpedoed by Chinese [=MiGs=], sinking'. And you're surprised that the Chinese response of.... 'well gee whiz guys the ship sank but we're not sure why' didn't convince them?
3	* Does NATO not exist in the ''Film/JamesBond'' universe? In real life, if a British battleship were sunk by the Chinese, the United States would be obligated to come to its ally's aid. This makes Jack Wade's comment about how "Uncle Sam is officially neutral" a huge wall banger. It's not 1940 anymore!
4	** It would have made the threat of nuclear war much greater, but I suspect it was just to appeal to some nationalist British sentiment. Wasn't it referred to as a "global power" in the film?
5	** It was a destroyer, not a battleship. The US is probably hoping the two will stop short of war.
6	** The NATO Treaty only covers attacks in Europe or North America though, China would be outside it's scope just as the Falklands were
7	*** This. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty stipulates that Article 5 can only be invoked on an attack A) "on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer" or B) "on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer." The South China Sea is not covered.
8	*** This. The previous quote is inaccurate to the North Atlantic Treaty as currently in force (it was amended when Turkey joined), but not in a way that changes that South China Sea is not covered (it simply appended "on the territory of Turkey" so it wouldn't be limited to East Thrace for them).
9	* Britain and China are grossly disproportionate in every way--noted by M, who for example doesn't want the Navy in range of the "largest Air Force in the world"--except for the fact that both have nuclear weapons. If it came to war, Britain could call upon America and other allies to bring about World War 3. Either that or both sides would write off the event rather than escalate tensions given the alternative is Armageddon.
10	** Except for the fact that Jack Wade said, officially, America is neutral in the growing conflict. And unofficially, they have no interest in seeing WorldWarIII unless they start it.
11	** Writing off the event is the villains' plan. Remember, he intends to use the Stealth Boat to bomb a meeting of the Chinese Politboro, or whatever its called, so that General Chang becomes the de facto leader of China. Chang sues for peace, Britain accepts because the faked attack makes them look like a worldwide Heel, and Carver gets his broadcast rights under the table.
12	** The use, or even the threat of use, of nuclear weapons in a conflict is now considered a Crime Against Humanity. Nukes are really for show, or as a last resort. The fact is that two nuclear powers going to war does not mean that said war will be nuclear; the only reason it was ever an issue was due to the United States and Russia having a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (in the event of war, both sides would immediately resort to nukes, thus war was a very, very bad idea), and that was abandoned under UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan of all people (the feeling being, the fact that war would be insane just wasn't safe enough). Nukes were not brought up because, the simple fact is, in RealLife they wouldn't be.[[note]] There have actually been several occasions where 2 nuclear powers got into an armed conflict with the other. China vs the USSR in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict 1969]]. India vs China in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Sino-Indian_skirmish 1987]], and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_China%E2%80%93India_border_standoff 2017]]. India vs Pakistan in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War 1999]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001%E2%80%9302_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_standoff 2001-2002]],[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Indo-Pakistani_standoff 2008]], and[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Pakistan_border_skirmishes_(2016%E2%80%932018) 2016-2018]].[[/note]]
13	*** The term "Crimes Against Humanity" has never formally included the use of nukes in conflict, let alone the mere threat of using them. ''Genocide'' is a crime against humanity, and all-out nuclear war would likely qualify, but a limited nuclear strike probably wouldn't count as genocide. Also, during the Cold War Russia and the U.S. ''didn't'' have a policy of automatically resorting to nukes in the event of war between them. Obviously there was a ''possibility'' of nukes, but it was never an official policy. On both sides the "policy" basically amounted to "We've got a lot of nukes. Don't do anything that would tempt us to use them." But what exactly would trigger a nuclear response was always a bit vague. In this scenario, the possibility that the enemy might resort to nukes is something that both sides would be worried about. Though it's true that they'd both want to avoid an all-out war, so it makes sense that they'd try conventional weapons first, keeping the nukes on standby in case things actually escalated that far.
14	** The UK was likely intending just to scare China via a show of force.
15	* He went through all that just to secure ''broadcast rights''? Surely some bribery would have been easier.
16	** The implication is that he tried, but failed to achieve the necessary penetration of the Politburo.
17	** He also gets a massive story with which to launch his network. IIRC he admits as much.
18	** Plus, well, Bond villain. Coming up with ridiculously OTT plans is kind of the whole deal.
19	** Carver engineered the Mad Cow Disease scare because a British beef magnate wouldn't pay up a bet, and the French paid him generously to run the stories for an additional year. Doesn't seem that outrageous by comparison.
20	** Exclusive Broadcast rights for an audience of ''one billion'' people. That's a lot of advertising revenue. He's also replacing the Chinese government with his own flunky. So it's really more of a coup d'etat.
21	* Ok, I admit I haven't seen the movie, so it may be explained better... but under IrrevocableOrder it says they fire a Tomahawk cruise missile at a terrorist camp, it gets out of radio range, however far that is, and they have to send James to remove the nukes from the camp before the missile gets there? I got a big WTF in the face on that. The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile) Tomahawk]] has a 1550 mile range, and travels at 550mph. Assuming they fired it from maximum possible range, they have less than three hours (2.8181, [[LeeroyJenkins repeating, of course]]) to get him to an airplane, fly to the camp, talk/fight his way in and remove the nukes somehow, all before the missile gets there? [[FlatWhat What]].
22	** This is why we watch films before commenting on them. At the beginning of the film, Bond is infiltrated in an Illegal Arms Fair, feeding info back to HQ. After the generals think they've got all the info they need, they command their ship to shoot the missile at the fair. Right then, Bond notices a parked Jet fighter at the fair which is carrying nuclear missiles. HQ is notified of this and try to abort the missile they've just fired in order to avoid a massive blast and a political catastrophe. However, the missile by then is out of range and impossible to abort. Bond, who, again, is already AT THE LOCATION, promptly pilots the jet carrying the nukes away from the missile's target. The missile does hit and everything goes up in flames, but Bond is already airborne by then (though he still had to deal with an enemy jet fighter and an annoying "backseat driver".
23	*** Ok, that makes more sense... but it's not how the IrrevocableOrder listing is written.
24	*** Precisely. Bond saved the day again in this film's ColdOpen because he stayed a few more minutes more meticulously gathering info, spotted the plane with nuclear torpedos (which is what made HQ try any Missile-Abortion at all) and successfully piloted the plane out of harm's way.
25	** The IrrevocableOrder example was phrased incorrectly and has now been rewritten. Problem solved!
26	** There's another interesting point, which is that nuclear missiles don't explode with the force of a nuclear bomb unless they've been activated correctly (a bit of a no-brainer.) They would make a nice "dirty" bomb if the tomahawk hit and caused them to rupture, but since we're in the middle of nowhere and there are no innocents within many dozens of miles, is there really any big deal about that happening?
27	*** You'd still have nuclear material being spread uncontrolled - even if it's in the middle of nowhere that one sentence is a media bonanza of panic inducement. Also, who knows where the nuclear material that gets spread can reach - just the wrong amount of wind current and you might have radioactive material settling on northern India.
28	*** The Russian General describes it as "enough plutonium to make Chernobyl look like a picnic" . Wherever the meeting is it's not going to be isolated enough for it not to matter. Plus they were worried the torpedoes could go off if hit.
29	* Something that's always bothered me: was the plan to nuke the entirety of Beijing, or just the government quarter to take out the current leadership? As he's expositing the plan, Carver seems to suggest that his ally, General Chang, is going to be ''in'' the city and "delayed in traffic" until after the missile has killed China's leaders, leaving him to take over the government and negotiate a truce. But, Gupta says "Press the magic button, Beijing disappears." According to Wikipedia, HMS ''Devonshire'' was a Type 23 frigate and those don't seem to carry a nuclear armament.
30	** I think Carver only wanted to take out the Beijing government quarter. Obviously, Carver wouldn't want to accidentally kill his puppet, since General Chang was important to his plans and it wasn't quite yet time to eliminate him.
31	** Gupta's a bit of a ham, he was probably just exaggerating. Besides, if they nuked Beijing, there's ''absolutely no way'' that China would let that lie, regardless of how they spun it.
32	** The above two tropers are correct. I think that "Beijing" here is being used in the same way that we Brits use "Westminster", and the Americans use "Washington" as shorthand for their respective governments. Besides, nowhere is it mentioned that the missile being launched at the city is nuclear.
33	*** It pretty clearly isn't, as the missile exploding is what takes out Carver's ship at the end, and while the blast obviously isn't nuclear (not that it exploding like that would cause a nuclear reaction) there's no mention of contamination of any sort or radiation concerns.
34	** The missile stolen from the Devonshire was a cruise missile, not nuclear. A Harpoon class, I think. Enough to level a fair portion of Beijing, but not destroy the whole city. Presumably the Chinese High Command would be meeting somewhere specific, the coordinates of which General Chang would have provided to Carver, and he would be delayed a decent enough distance from the strike.
35	* Carver's plan would've worked perfectly if he had bothered to set up some ''reason'' why his media outlets learned about this story long before official stories did. [=MI6=] was ''only'' onto Carver because his newspaper ran the story before the official sources had even announced that anything had happened. For that matter, it wouldn't have gone nearly as far as it did if Bond didn't tip Carver off the first time they meet.
36	** Carver ''did'' have a cover story of getting his information from the Vietnamese government. It's just it was too quick to be believable. Carver's impatience and ego were his undoing.
37	** [=MI6=] knew Carver was behind the sinking of the ''Devonshire'' as the signal that sent the ship off course was traced to one of his satellites. It was Bond who commented on the newspaper and found the timing odd, but even if he hadn't, M was already planning on sending him to spy on Carver via his wife. So, while it was a foolish and ego-driven move, printing the story early was not the "only" reason they were onto him at all. It shows that Carver was a little overconfident and a little bit on the sloppy side.
38	* This seems like a minor thing, but when Bond is breaking into Carver's headquarters and finds the encoder in the safe, he picks up some drugs (looks like crystal meth, but don't quote me). Were those Carver's or Gupta's?
39	** Pick one. Or both. The drugs, adult magazines and bundles of money are to show they're dirty. Since Gupta was told to place the decoder in a safe place, it's probably his.
40	** Related to this, but why was a very expensive and likely highly sensitive satellite being idly kept in a Hamburg office building? Shouldn't it have been in a clean room, or at the launch site?
41	** Gupta is not all that bright in some areas, being something of a slob to Carver's tastes. It's actually a masterstroke in a way, if [=MI6=] are sniffing around they would be looking to said clean room or launch site. Given how powerful Carver is, a Hamburg office building would be maybe the fiftieth place they look.
42	** The satellite was very obviously a mock-up.
43	*** Then why did Gupta tell them to send it off to the launch site and warn the mooks in the room to be careful with it? What kind of a mock-up costs $300 million?
44	*** I like to think that it was a cheap mock-up, but the mooks were too dumb to realize that, and Gupta was deliberately messing with them. He wants them to get on pins and needles transporting this extremely expensive "satellite" which will inevitably break in transit and then they'll all panic. Gupta is just pulling a giant prank on them.
45	* As far as the world is concerned, Carver is a legitimate multinational businessman. When Bond breaks into one of his offices, he's pursued by armed thugs who keep trying to kill him. They're security guards, not military. Why try to kill him instead of capture him or report him to the authorities?
46	** Bond knows too much - and, in police custody, he could still contact [=MI6=] for aid and to relay information.
47	** Plus, they're kind of running a ''major international crime'' out of that building as well. It's a laboratory not even Carver's wife is supposed to know about, with the clear implication that the stealth ship, the drill, and the satellites used in the operation are being designed and at least partially built there. Calling the police on Bond leads to the police asking the reasonable question of what Bond was doing there in the first place, which potentially leads the police towards further, more awkward questions about what exactly Carver does there. Carver has plenty of reason not to want any authorities, particularly those with the legal authority to investigate and arrest him, nosing around in his operations.
48	** On top of that, by that point Bond is known to be a target, not simply a trespasser, as he's beaten down Carver's mooks at the launch, Gupta had figured out he's an intelligence agent, and Bond was in an area he definitely shouldn't have been in. Besides, Wai Lin also broke in, so at that point presumably they were just going to kill all witnesses. Past a certain level of importance, the line between security guard and mercenary gets a little thin.
49	* Just a small one. After Bond's stolen the jet fighter in the pre-title sequence, there's a moment where he's facing the other jet fighter nose-to-nose on the runway. This other fighter jet is moving and active. More to the point, Bond has just blown up half the terrorist arms market, so it wouldn't be anything but hostile towards him. So why doesn't he just shoot it while he's taking off? (I know, I know, we wouldn't have that dogfight afterwards if he did.)
50	** He shouldn't even have been able to use the jet's weapons while still on the ground. It and other planes capable of being armed have a 'Weight-on-Wheels' switch, a safety mechanism that stops weapon discharge on the ground. A NL F-16 recently had an incident when its switch was disabled and the gun fired at a group of parked F-16s. Most if not all planes are unable to disable the switch from the cockpit.
51	** Also, many aircraft don't have the cannon pointed dead-ahead precisely in front of the nose. Some models have it canted up a few degrees for air-to-air combat or down for air-to-ground. Bond may not have had time to check if everything was loaded, the safety pins were pulled from the weapons (before takeoff, the crew chief is supposed to pull them and show the pilot) or even how much fuel was in the aircraft. Bond may be flight trained, but there's no indication he was completely familiar with that model of fighter.
52	* Okay I get the writing reasons why the climax happens the way it does, but why is Carver on the spy boat at all? He's never had any reason to be about for previous incidents, nor is he in any position to be gloating when he would be better off milking his wife's death and/or prepping the newspapers for the next part in the upcoming war.
53	** Carver is a bit of a control freak, and has a bit of an ego. This final attack is the culmination of a plan he's been working towards for years. He'd rather be there to witness his master stroke, rather than leave it to his underlings.
54	** Carver seems to think he can get away with anything. Before (not) killing Bond, he mentions that the British navy destroying the boat will destroy the evidence, and he'll be in a Carver News helicopter covering the event. Flimsy logic at best as at this point both governments are decidedly wise to his tactics. The man is unstable.
55	* What's Kaufman talking about when he asks Stamper, "Did you call the auto club?"
56	** The European version of Triple A. Basically, he is asking if they called the European version of the guys who get you into your car if you accidentally lock yourself out of it. This is why, when Stamper replies 'Do YOU want to call them?' he sounds kind of exasperated, as it isn't their car and they are obviously villainous. It would basically be like a member of the Mafia or a major gang calling Triple A to help them get into the car of a rival.
57	* This always bugged me about the ColdOpen, but when Bond has stolen the plane, with another guy in it, the moment the other guy regains consciousness, he tries to garrote Bond...while another plane is trying to shoot down the plane both of them are in. Does this guy just not have any self-preservation, because the moment Bond dies, the other guy won't be able to pilot the plane, and that doesn't resolve the situation of the pursuing plane still trying to kill the escaping plane. It just doesn't really make much sense for the guy to be trying to kill the person attempting to save BOTH of their lives.
58	** Most likely he was angry at the death of most of his associates in the camp and hoped that once Bond was out of the picture he could radio the other plane to affirm their enemy was dead so he could work out how to take the plane somewhere safe.
59	* Bond has a First in Oriental Languages from Cambridge, why's he so confused by the Chinese keyboard?
60	** Chinese uses different alphabets, he might not be familiar with that particular one, and/or given the importance of the messages he prefers to let a native speaker to send them.

Context Headscratchers / TomorrowNeverDies