Most of the gadgets in Bond's car are never mentioned by Q except for the standard issue ones - stinger missiles under the headlights, etc., but are of course vital to Bond's survival, which is probably why Bond is laughing when he finds and successfully uses some of the better devices, like auto-inflating tires. He's just as surprised, impressed and giddy as the viewer is, so this is an example of Tropes Are Tools.
The remote-controlled detonator activated by the Chinese copy of a Q-watch ranks up there with Live and Let Die's buzzsaw, being alluded to incredibly briefly by the flashing lights on the watch and Bond messing around with some sort of chip on a glass jar.
Author's Saving Throw: Despite coming equipped with gadgets galore, the BMW Z3 had criminally little screentime in GoldenEye and never got a chance to deploy its arsenal. Bond gets so much mileage out of the BMW 750iL, his new ride for TND, that the car itself probably warrants an entry on the character sheet.
Like Tina Turner's, um, turn in GoldenEye, Sheryl Crow's theme for the film is also a nice throwback to the big, sweeping Bond themes of yesteryear.
After the score of GoldenEye was soundly criticized for its drastic departure from the usual Bond motifs, new composer David Arnold gave an apology to the fans in the form of making sure no Bond Moment was complete without the classic tunes of the series. In fact, the James Bond theme is heard in four of the first five scenes Bond has!
The awesome jazz/techno soundtrack that Carver plays at his Hamburg party certainly qualifies.
"White Knight", "Station Break" and "Backseat Driver", as well as Moby's James Bond Theme.
Stamper is liked by some for his menacing presence and hammy evil lines, while others think he's just another dull "Red" Grant ripoff.
The Big Bad Elliot Carver is similarly divisive. Some like him for Jonathan Pryce's magnificently hammy performance and screen presence, while others think that the idea of Bond fighting an evil news mogul is just too silly to take seriously.
Broken Base: A great number of fans prefer k.d. lang's song "Surrender" as the film's true theme, especially since the orchestral version of the song is laden throughout the movie. However, the Sheryl Crow version, despite being a last-minute replacement, is absolutely beloved by many and is often regarded as one of the best themes of the Brosnan era if not the whole franchise.
Character Perception Evolution: Elliot Carver was originally seen as just a veiled parody of media barons like Rupert Murdoch and William Randolph Hearst, with his plot lacking the more forward thinking of other Bond villains and making him seen at best mid-tier. As social media rose up with both regular citizens and network news channels going to great lengths to get bigger and bigger viewer numbers and increasing scrutiny from the public, Carver's plan to watch the world burn while he gets wealthy off being the first to cover it became much more relevant satire.
Complete Monster: Elliot Carver is the head of the Carver Media Group Network who utilizes various unethical practices to enrich himself. Carver sinks a British ship, guns down the survivors, and destroys a Chinese jet in order the escalate tensions between the two countries. Carver then plans to launch a stolen missile into Beijing to destroy the Chinese government and start World War III, all so that he will get exclusive broadcasting rights in China from the new government. When James Bond investigates this, Carver murders his wife Paris when she gets too close to Bond, taunting him with a broadcast that frames it as a murder-suicide committed by Bond. Carver later orders the brutal torture of Bond and Wai Lin by Richard Stamper, and guns down his own associate when he's "outlived [his] contract". Already a wealthy man, Carver is willing to cause millions of deaths just to satisfy his greed.
Contested Sequel: Is it a fun, entertaining romp with some fairly keen satire that plays all the Bond tropes wonderfully straight or another forgettable, at times boring installment playing a somewhat hackneyed formula that doesn't bring anything new to the table? It's seen as a step down from GoldenEye but it does have its defenders.
Crosses the Line Twice: Carver making exaggerated kung-fu moves and noises in front of Wai Lin. Under normal circumstances it would be offensive, but Jonathan Pryce's performance makes the scene hilarious.
Wai Lin was received as one of the best Bond Girls, and many fans believe she was one of the few Bond Girls who deserved the honor of returning to the franchise one day.
Dr. Kaufman is also loved by the fanbase because of his pitch-perfect "classic Large Ham Bond henchman" persona, being both genuinely threatening and genuinely funny. Many were sad he had only one scene.
Fan-Preferred Cut Content: A lot of people wish that k.d. lang's "Surrender", which plays over the closing credits, hadn't been replaced late in production by Sheryl Crow's "Tomorrow Never Dies" as the main title song.
Genius Bonus: M's cover story about Carver's death is a reference to the mysterious death of media mogul Robert Maxwell six years earlier, his naked body being found in the ocean after a final communication while alone on his yacht.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In China, the movie has a audience rating of 9.3 out of 10 rating on video streaming website Bilibili, while some other much more beloved entries in the 007 franchise are close or has a smaller rating, with GoldenEye having an 8.3 and From Russia with Love having a 9.0. It helps that the movie features Michelle Yeoh as the Bond Girl, and she is depicted as a heroic Chinese character who can hold her own against Bond.
The Big Bad, Elliot Carver, is a Corrupt Corporate Executive and Immoral Journalist who is in charge of a large media conglomerate, and his goal is to get exclusive broadcasting rights in China. To achieve that end, he engages in false flag attacks and fake stories to start a war between China and the UK, so that a friendly politician would take control of the Chinese government in a coup. Rupert Murdoch, a real life media mogul who Carver is based on, has been criticized in the ensuing years for utilizing fake stories and other unethical methods in several of his publications for ratings and political influence, such as The Sun and News of the World in the UK, which led to a parliamentary investigation into a phone hacking scandal; and Fox News Channel in the USA, which led to the rise of right-wing populists like Donald Trump in the 2010s, noted for their usage of misinformation and exaggerated stories.
The novelization depicts Carver as a Dirty Old Man who sexually harassed his female colleagues to the degree that several resigned. This can bring uncomfortable foreshadowing to the Me Too movement in the 2010s, alongside a series of high profile sexual harassment lawsuits in the media industry such as the likes of Fox News Channel's Roger Ailes.
Furthermore, the scene involving the sinking of the British frigate and shootdown of the Chinese fighter in the South China Sea, leading to a confrontation between the two countries, is still haunting today due to the ongoing territorial disputes in the region. By the 2010s, China has been increasingly assertive in defending its claims in the South China Sea, while the UK regularly participates in "freedom of navigation" patrols in the region, and there were many close calls between the two navies.
The entire opening sequence—Bond having only a few minutes to escape an impending missile strike, the video feed going blank, the MI6 crew looking horrified at Bond's possible death— is incredibly wince-inducing after the final sequence of No Time to Die, which actually refers to this film with the shot of the missile launch.
While there is a slight Microsoft jab in that Tomorrow sells buggy software, Carver's black turtleneck look could now easily be seen as a Steve Jobs reference - he returned to Apple the same year the movie came out.
Paris asks James if he "still sleeps with a gun under his pillow". Evidently he does, and this proves to be a serious mistake during the events of Die Another Day five years later.
Love to Hate: Carver is completely and utterly despicable, but he's also a complete and utter blast to watch. Dr. Kaufman as well, who is universally considered one of the best parts of the film, with many lamenting that he only had one scene.
Moral Event Horizon: Carver and his henchman, Stamper, cross it almost immediately when Carver orders Stamper to mercilessly gun down several defenseless and unarmed sailors who had just barely survived the sinking of their ship. As we find out soon after, Carver seems to have made his entire career off of crossing this line just for a story.
One-Scene Wonder: Vincent Schiavelli gets only one scene as Dr. Kaufman but his wonderfully hammy performance and comically exaggerated German accent makes it one of the highlights of the movie.
Older Than They Think: When the debate about if James Bond should be played by a woman emerged in The New '10s, Bond fans pointed to Wai Lin as an example that successful female equivalents can co-exist with a male Bond.
So Okay, It's Average: It generally has a reputation of being "that mediocre/okayish Bond movie after GoldenEye." Wai Lin is a great Bond Girl, and the action scenes are quite good, but Carver — an evil news mogul — is sometimes regarded as a very silly and cartoonish villain.
The creepy circuit board girl in the opening credits. Mid-90s CGI was not quite up to it yet.
When Bond kills Dr. Kaufman via headshot, the latter visibly has no signs of damage as he falls, despite having just been shot in the head.
The bad guys on the helicopter are all sitting perfectly still with their arms down by their sides when the helicopter crashes, making it obvious that the actors have been replaced by dummies.
Ricky Jay, the guy who can in real life throw playing cards with the precision necessary to embed them in a watermelon, is not playing a quirky theme henchman but a forgettable technician. Deleted scenes showed that he was going to be an actual Death Dealer. Alas...
Vincent Schiavelli, who's Dr. Kaufmann, immediately proved popular with viewers despite having only a single scene, in which he states he is a brilliant assassin who clearly takes great pleasure in his line of work.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Many fans think that the whole plot of Paris Carver would have worked better if she had been a Bond Girl previously introduced in the franchise.
There is the focus on the newly-rising digital media and the continued use of VHS tapes. Also, the setting. This was one of a number of movies that came out in 97/98 that focused on China and/or Hong Kong as part of the plot in light of their reunification.
After M overhears Moneypenny's "cunning linguist" quip, they say "Don't ask..." and "Don't tell." to one another, a nod to the then-new "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in America regarding LGBT servicemen and womennote a compromise policy where the military could not discriminate or harass closeted homosexual members, while in turn, barred openly LGBT citizens from serving, which was abolished in 2011.
Values Resonance: Despite the fact that this movie doesn't mention the Internet at all, this film paints a surprisingly accurate picture of mass media scaremongering tactics today. Elliot Carver's line "Words are the new weapons; satellites, the new artillery" seemed plain hammy when first released, but the rise of 24-hour news networks like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, along with TV political pundits, increasingly polarized news judgments (including fake news and misinformation), and electronic warfare make Carver's line hit home harder than ever. In addition to that, the major reason why Carver launches his whole scheme is because China refused to allow him access into their markets, similar to how many Western companies are either banned or must submit to heavy regulation to be able to operate within China today. That Carver is a satire of media barons like Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, William Randolph Hearst, etc. also makes sense given that the same news networks are owned by large conglomerates.
Vindicated by History: Back in the 90's, the film was largely seen as GoldenEye's smaller sibling, and the Big Bad being a media mogul was seen as silly. But because of the Values Resonance example above, people have begun liking the film more, as Carver now looks more like a satire than a parody.
The video game:
Breather Boss: The Saigon military commander. He's armed with a rocket launcher, but you can dodge his rockets by strafing and side-stepping repeatedly while shooting. His rockets are really easy to time and he will miss you most of the time (while you shoot him repeatedly with firearms). In fact, the 4 mooks accompanying him are more of a threat than the boss himself!
Difficulty Spike: By CMGN Tower, the game increases the damage the enemies deal to you. Even more so on 007 difficulty as it means the enemies can kill you in a handful of seconds if you get careless.
Presumed Flop: While it isn't looked back at too fondly, the game sold 5 million units when it was originally released and allegedly several million more in its Greatest Hits re-release.
Retroactive Recognition: Prepare to do a double take when the opening credits give a nod to somebody named Chad Stahelski for being the game's motion capture director, along with David Leitch working alongside him as a stunt performer.
Market District even on Agent difficulty is an annoying level. You have both enemies and civilians to watch out for so you have to be more careful with your fire while they don't. The streets are shrouded in darkness so if an enemy sees you, there's a chance you won't be able to. Elsewhere there's a bunch of cheap enemy placements that take advantage of your clunky controls unless you have dedicated yourself to memorizing their placements. Finally there's a boss battle with a helicopter that requires you to use that new rocket launcher you got from a prior boss by stopping in place and slowly aiming where it'll go to hit them. Doubly worse if you're playing with Analog enabled as this slows your aim speed and makes it near impossible to hit the helicopter in the first place. Even after all that, you still got one last ambush waiting for you before the end so you better have stocked up on extra lives.
Stealth Boat can be a daunting level to go through if you haven't been maintaining your lives. Barring one enemy at the start, everyone is ready to ambush you in every corridor and you have a fight with Stamper in the prison wing who's armed with a grenade launcher that can end you just as quickly as you can kill him alongside a flunky who arrives late enough that he can start attacking you as soon you finish a cutscene with Wai Lin after that boss. You later arrive at the missile bay which is just a big open area for everyone to shoot you and can stop you from pressing a button you need to progress. You then need to find and fight Carver who's no slouch and can be the hardest fight if you didn't pick up or think to use Stamper's grenade launcher. After killing Carver, you're now on a time limit to stop the missile (if the guards let you press that button again) and escape with the corridors being repopulated with more guards concerned with your death than their survival.
The Problem with Licensed Games: Unlike GoldenEye 007, the game that came out two years after Tomorrow Never Dies didn't break out of this, being a clunky third-person shooter with bad, awkward controls. While the movie itself has something of a Broken Base, it's generally agreed that Tomorrow Never Dies is one of the worst Bond games of all time.
