History Film / TomorrowNeverDies

* MisguidedMissile: In a variation on the theme, a Tomahawk missile is launched at an ArmsFair in the PreTitlesSequence. ''After'' it's fired, Bond manages to communicate that one of the planes there is armed with a nuclear torpedo, and if the Tomahawk blows ''that'' up it will make the fallout from Chernobyl look like spring rain. When the Royal Navy are unable to self-destruct the inbound Tomahawk, he nicks the plane.

* CoolGuns:
** Bond gets a Walther P99 from Wai Lin's armoury. He later fits it with a suppressor and dual-wields it with an [=MP5k=] during his assault on Carver's stealth boat, until it finally runs dry.
** FAMAS can be seen amongst many other guns on a rack.
** Carver's troops wield Heckler and Koch [=MP5s=].

A British warship and a Chinese aircraft are destroyed off the shore of China, an incident that threatens to ignite all-out war between the two countries. The British claim that their [=GPS=] locator showed they were in International Waters, causing [=MI6=] to suspect foul play.

* ArtisticLicenceNuclearPhysics: {{Averted}}. A missile is going to be fired at Bejing in less than a minute. Since James Bond doesn't have enough time to delicately disarm, he just attaches some explosives to the tail end of the missile so when the missile ignites to lift off, the flames detonate the explosives, safely blowing the missile to hell. However, the movie does play the trope straight at the beginning, when the top brass is talking about some Soviet nuclear torpedoes detonating or spreading plutonium from their missile strike.

-->'''Dr. Kaufmann:''' [[NothingPersonal Wait! I'm just a professional doing a job!]]
-->'''Bond:''' [[PreMortemOneLiner Me too]]. ''[shoots him dead]''

-->'''Kaufman''': I am a professor of forensic medicine. I could shoot you from ''Stuttgart'' and still create the proper effect!

---> "Even if they were looking for me, ''we're on a stealth boat!'' They can't see me. Or you. Or even your friend, the late Commander Bond, who is, I believe, at this moment, on his way to the bottom of the South China Sea. ''[{{beat}}]'' He's my new ''anchorman.''

--> '''Creator/JamesRolfe:''' ''[on why this chase is one of his favourites]'' How do you go wrong with a remote-controlled BMW that shoots missiles?

-->Looking for a new story?

* ConcealmentEqualsCover: Averted during the battle on the stealth ship when Bond shoots a {{Mook}} above him through the floor.

-->'''Bond''': ''[sees the bloody streaks on the newspapers coming out of the machine]'' [[BondOneLiner They'll print anything these days.]]
* CunningLinguist: {{Subverted}} when Bond is completely bamboozled by Wai Lin's keyboard. (It's meant as a joke, by the way; Chinese computers [or Mainland China ones at least] either use Pinyin or Wubi [a system of four-digit codes to stand for characters] for word input and processing).

* DemotedToExtra: Jack Wade.

-->'''James Bond''': ''[while in bed with his Scandinavian language tutor, and on the phone with Moneypenny]'' I always enjoyed learning a new tongue.
-->'''Moneypenny''': You always were a cunning linguist, James. ''[Hangs up and sees M at the office doorway]'' Don't ask.
-->'''M''': Don't tell.

-->'''Carver''': And it seems you can't resist any woman in my possession.

-->'''Kaufman''': Wait! I am just a professional doing a job!
-->'''Bond''': Me too.

-->'''Bond''': They'll print anything these days.

-->'''Dr. Kaufman''': Wait! I'm just a professional doing a job.
-->'''Bond''': Me too. ''[shoots Kaufman]''

--> '''Q:''' It's the insurance damage waiver for your beautiful new car. Now, will you need collision coverage?\\

* JustFollowingOrders: [[spoiler: Dr Kaufman]] protests as much after Bond gets the drop on him. 007 is suitably unimpressed.
--> [[spoiler: '''Kaufman:''']] Wait! I'm just a professional doing a job!
--> '''Bond:''' [[PreMortemOneLiner Me too.]]
--> ''[[[BoomHeadshot gunshot]]]''
* JustOneLittleMistake: Carver was so eager to get the news out fast that his newspaper printed them… before the recovery of the bodies had even been done, let alone had gotten out info to the authorities. Bond and M figure it out when Bond contacts MI-6's station at the country that recovered the bodies, which makes Carver a person of interest, and well… [[StuffBlowingUp you can guess what follows]].

-->'''Doctor Kaufman''': I am a professor of forensic medicine. Believe me, Mr. Bond, I could shoot you from Stuttgart und still create ze proper effect.

* MilkmanConspiracy: Elliot Carver's Media Group blackmails a President, is implied to orchestrate global floods, riots and plane crashes, sells buggy software (to force people to upgrade it for years), sinks a British Destroyer, massacres the survivors, steals one of its cruise missiles, plans to use said missile on Beijing to set up a new Chinese government friendly to its interests (i.e. broadcasting rights) after bringing Britain and China to the brink of nuclear war, and employs terrorists, torturers and professional assassins, plus the average Carver Media Group employees, who based on the evidence, are AlwaysChaoticEvil and whose uniforms always come with machine guns. All for the [[InsaneTrollLogic sake of its ratings.]] Carver also apparently faked the Mad Cow disease scare of 1997 because a British beef baron owed him money (from a poker game, a mere £10,000) and refused to pay... then the French paid him to run the stories for another year.

-->'''Dr. Kaufman''': I'm just a professional doing a job.
-->'''Bond''': Me too. [BANG!]

---> '''Elliot Carver:''' Good morning, my golden retrievers! What kind of havoc shall the Carver Media Group create in the world today? News?\\

-->'''Charles Robinson''': [[BigOMG Oh my god!]] Those are Soviet SB-5 nuclear torpedoes! If the cruise hits them...

'''[[BigBad Elliot Carver]]''': Which means...?\\
'''Henry Gupta''': Government agent. When it looks too good to be true, it usually is.

-->'''Elliot Carver''': What did you find?
-->'''Henry Gupta''': I hacked into the mainframe at the bank, they're using an SSL 2 encryption, a hundred and tw-
-->'''Elliot Carver''': Spare me the technobabble, please.

-->'''Bond''': Sorry. I tuned out there for a minute, Elliot.
-->'''Carver''': Touché.
* TreacheryCoverUp: M orders the coverup of Elliot Carver's death as a "boating accident", a bit of karmic irony considering his mass-media manipulation based plan. [[spoiler: (What had actually happened is that Bond killed Carver with his giant drill.)]]

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: [[spoiler: After Gupta reports that the missile aimed at Beijing is ready for launch, Carver says "Then it seems you have outlived your contract." before shooting him dead. This is done partially to deny Bond his hostage.]]

--> '''Carver:''' [[BlasphemousBoast By midnight tonight, I'll have reached more people than anyone in the history of this planet, save God himself.]] ''[{{beat}}]'' And the best ''He'' ever managed was the Sermon on the Mount.\\

* BrickJoke: Bond's BondOneLiner about backseat drivers becomes this when he literally becomes one.

** Carver's favourite newspaper cover regarding the crisis he engineered is one that was printed by a rival newspaper, because it has a {{Pun}}/ShoutOut (both to ''Franchise/StarWars'', a CallBack to an actual headline printed in the UsefulNotes/FalklandsWar and an actual cover of a British military crisis) that he finds exquisite.

** After Bond and Wai Lin are captured (first time for Lin, [[DistressedDude second for James]]), Carver shows them all the newspaper headlines mentioning the impending conflict. The last one reads, [[Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack "The Empire WILL Strike Back!"]] "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" was the actual headline on an April 1982 issue of ''Newsweek'' during the UsefulNotes/FalklandsWar.

* CurbStompBattle: The final battle is between a [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Navy]] intelligence officer[=/=]commando... and a media mogul who has probably never lifted anything heavier than a microphone in the last twenty years. Naturally, Bond disposes of Carver very easily.
* CutLexLuthorACheque: Elliott Carver controls one of the most influential and powerful media empires in the world — and that's ''before'' he goes to the trouble of trying to kick-start a war between Britain and China in order to increase his (already large) share of the market. He could've also made a fortune by selling his stealth ship technology to the highest bidder.

* ChekhovsGun: The usual Q gadgets, including — this time — a remote-controlled BMW 750. Which has a whole host of gadgets that we aren't told about ahead of time, including caltrops, self-inflating tyres and a wire cutter underneath the BMW emblem, just in case Bond needs to sever a wire at a very specific height. Conveniently, the bad guys put a wire across Bond's path at exactly that height.

* ChekhovsGun: The usual Q gadgets, including a remote-controlled car. It also has a whole host of gadgets that we aren't told about ahead of time, including a wire cutter underneath the BMW emblem, just in case Bond needs to sever a wire at a very specific height. Conveniently, the bad guys put a wire across Bond's path at exactly that height.

* ForWantOfANail: If there hadn't been a jeep parked in front of a nuclear bomb, then [=MI6=] and the Navy would never have prematurely launched a missile at the black market bazaar, forcing Bond to act early and allowing Gupta to escape with the encoder that kicks off the rest of the plot.
** In a related incident, if the missile's self-destruct mechanism had worked, then they could have blown it up as soon as Bond told them about the bomb and still kept Gupta from escaping.

* VillainousPlanInertia: Killing Elliot Carver doesn't stop the countdown on the nuclear missile he has aimed at China.

* RenegadeRussian: General Chang was to be conveniently delayed by traffic when Beijing was to be struck by a nuke previously stolen from a British warship, whereupon he would launch a coup and take command of the Chinese government. (In the novelization, the Chinese government sends their agent to find Chang, since he stole a high-tech radar system. He is later arrested for the theft and treason.)

* MinorMajorCharacter: General Chang is Elliot Carver's inside man in the Chinese government and is referred to throughout the film as plotting with Carver to become President of China via eliminating everyone ahead of him in a nuclear strike on Beijing; in exchange for supplying said nuke, Carver would gain exclusive control of China's media once Chang took over. Their relationship is suggested to be a BigBadDuumvirate... except Chang is only in one scene, where he's seen leaving a meeting with Carver to finalize the plot. This may be down to Chang being a villain of another story; Bond meets Wai Lin as he works Carver's case and she works Chang's, and they team up upon discovering they're WorkingTheSameCase.