YMMV / GoldenEye

• Adaptation Displacement: The licensed video game is at least as famous as the movie, and in some circles, definitely more so.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • It's hard to pin down Ourumov's real motives because of his deceitful character and the many double standards he displays. According to MI6 he's angling to become the next "Iron Man of Russia", suggesting he wants to Make the Bear Angry Again, but this report was drafted before they found out that he is an asset of the Janus syndicate. Perhaps he's just in it to enrich himself personally, but his discomforted reaction when Bond informs him that Janus is a Lienz cossack hints that he might have some sympathies for the former USSR as well. Then again, he was already working with Janus during the Soviet era, so who knows?
  • Is Xenia Onatopp just a minion to Alec, or are they lovers? There does seem to be a bit of chemistry between them on the train, especially when they smile at each other while escaping in the helicopter.
  • Similarly, many viewers question the nature of Xenia's interactions with Bond, whether she's genuinely attracted to him just like any other Bond girl but cannot express it by any other means than trying to kill him, or if she views him as just another target to kill and use to gain pleasure; this is perhaps the most unclear thanks to the spa scene, with Brosnan himself remarking that it appears to be both a fight and the two 'making the beast with two backs'. There's also the added suggestion that Xenia's actions in the spa are fueled by him besting her at cards and rattling her cover in the casino, and that her more vicious approach in the jungle is due to Bond escaping her in the spa - is Xenia a professional killer doing her job, or does she feel like a spurned lover at that point?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Bond drifting with the tank is actually plausible, but it could only work in a Soviet tank, as those are, sometimes, outfitted with solid steel tracks, which have very low friction and could rather easily drift the way shown in the film.
• Awesome Music:
  • "GoldenEye Overture". Even Eric Serra's detractors have a soft spot for this one.
  • Eric Serra's "The Experience of Love" over the Closing Credits deserves a mention. Retroactively appropriate, as Pierce Brosnan's 007 was portrayed as being the most romantic within the original continuity (and he's also more caring and protective towards the ladies than Craig's Bond), as he had fallen in love with two women (Paris Carver and Elektra King), and sincerely likes three others (Natalya Simonova, Wai Lin, Christmas Jones and even Jinx^note watch how emotional Bond gets when he attempts to resuscitate her).
  • Tina Turner's title song showed she's a good successor to Shirley Bassey in that department.
• Base-Breaking Character: Jack Wade. For some, he falls into the category of an acceptable substitute for Felix Leiter, who would make no further appearances in this continuity due to the injuries he had sustained in the previous film. Others are less keen on him, however, feeling that his dress sense and buffoonish mannerisms make him more reminiscent of J.W. Pepper than Leiter.
• Broken Base: Éric Serra's score for the film. Some heavily dislike it, with even some critics saying it was the most unlikely soundtrack for a Bond film up to that point (the retirement of the great John Barry had left kind of a vacuum in their eyes, at least until David Arnold came along). Others however genuinely love it for the same reasons. See Awesome Music above.
• Complete Monster: Xenia Onatopp, a sadistic Russian assassin working for the Janus Syndicate, has the dubious honor of being the most depraved Femme Fatale that Bond has ever come across. Initially seen as a charming, elegant woman, Xenia reveals her true nature when, in bed with her target, she kills him by crushing him between her thighs to suffocate him, getting clear sexual ecstasy from the murder; she later tries to kill Bond the same way. She steals his security clearance and murders several innocent sailors before eluding Bond. Later, when Xenia arrives in a Russian facility, she massacres all the techs with machine gun fire, getting very visibly aroused by the killings; even her partner for the mission looks a bit stunned at this. Xenia has one of the largest body counts for a Dragon in the franchise, and unlike the majority of her male counterparts, Xenia is in it for money and thrills. She has no issue helping to use the GoldenEye satellite to plunge England into the dark ages as long as she gets rich from it. The fact that this gives her the ability to express her sexualized love for killing is just a bonus.
• Contested Sequel: As was always going to be the case with a series as long-running as Bond. While largely well-received upon release and being a favourite of many fans – in part due to being their first Bond film because of the issues in the series' development – there is a large crowd that considers the film overrated and unfairly popular, particularly in the wake of Craig's Bond. Others consider it to pale in comparison when compared to Dalton's Bond.
• Dry Docked Ship: The way James Bond reacts to Alec Trevelyan's betrayal seems more like a lover's reaction than a co-worker's.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Zukovsky, who was brought back for The World Is Not Enough.
  • Both Admiral Chuck Farrell and his impersonator get a lot of love from fans in spite of their tiny amount of screentime. The former for his memorable death, the latter for seemingly pulling off his scheme alongside Xenia without a hitch and vanishing thereafter, surviving the events of the film and earning him a Memetic Badass reputation in spite having no dialogue or even a clear look at his face.
• Evil Is Cool: Alec Trevelyan is going to destroy a country, kill millions and steal even more, and he forces himself on lead girl Natalya before proceeding to crow about how she tastes to Bond; regardless of this he is played by Sharpe-era Sean Bean, meaning some wouldn't object to it too much.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Boris and his infamous Hawaiian shirt may be just be the trope codifier for this one.
• First Instalment Wins: Generally regarded as Brosnan's best Bond film. There are fans who prefer The World Is Not Enough, but that one is a more divisive entry than GoldenEye.
• Foe Yay Shipping: 006 and 007. They used to share EVERYTHING. It doesn't help that their reaction to each others' betrayal — real or perceived — comes off looking more like scorned lovers. Yaoi Fangirls took that and RAN. It also helps that the theme song is explicitly about a spurned lover looking for revenge.
• Harsher in Hindsight
  • Perhaps also Hilarious in Hindsight, but in this film, M criticizes Bond as "A relic of the Cold War." In Skyfall, an M played by the same actress is hauled before a government committee which criticizes her and MI6 as a whole for the exact same thing.
  • Also the famous tank chase; In San Diego, a deranged ex-Army soldier hijacked a tank at a National Guard base and led police on a rampage through the city streets before he was finally cornered and neutralized by police, in the exact same year this film was released.
  • M tells Bond "If you think I don't have the balls to send a man out to die, your instincts are dead wrong. I've no compunction about sending you to your death. But I won't do it on a whim." Raoul Silva's backstory in Skyfall makes clear that it's not an empty threat. On top of that, Silva, like Alec Trevelyan, is a turncoat MI6 agent with a desire for revenge against the agency as its Big Bad, and Silva, while sharing a few of Trevelyan's traits, isn't as devious as him. He is MORE devious and successful, though his plan doesn't involve destroying London entirely.
  • The destruction of the satellite dish and Alec's death became this when it was revealed in November 2020 that the Arecibo Observatory (the filming location for the finale) was on the verge of collapse due to two of its support cables failing, one of which leaving a huge gash in the dish itself. It was deemed too dangerous to repair and slated to be decommissioned. Sadly, the main structure ultimately collapsed on December 1st, 2020, marking the final end of the famous structure. The video footage of the central structure's collapse even looks eerily similar to the film version (only with less fire and not cleanly falling straight down). Naturally, people started asking if Sean Bean was somehow involved.
  • Trevelyan predicting that "Bond will have a very small memorial service with only Moneypenny and a few tearful restaurateurs in attendance" eerily predicted No Time to Die, where Bond does actually die and the MI6 regulars hold a small tribute.
  • The entire premise that corrupt former Soviet officials rising to power and looting the country was already troubling by the 1990s, as Russia descended into financial crisis by 1998. By the 2010s, it has been a lot less comfortable to watch knowing that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, and allied oligarchs now run the country with an iron fist and are attempting to assert their dominance over the region by starting conflicts, like the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• He Really Can Act: Comic actor Alan Cumming can prove how his Laughably Evil Plucky Comic Relief can frighteningly and unfunnily crack in his Villainous Breakdown: "GIVE ME THE CODES, NATALYA! GIVE THEM TO ME!".
• He's Just Hiding: Given the limited amount of time that Xenia Onatopp spends being "squeezed" by her harness during the helicopter crash, some fans wonder if she's only unconscious.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Watched nowadays, the plot can come across as a clever subversion of Sean Bean's penchant for playing characters who die early on. In fact, the film comes from before he had that reputation.
  • When demonstrating the exploding pen, Bond and Q enjoy a joke about "the writing's on the wall." 20 years later and that's the name of Sam Smith's theme for Spectre (not to mention Skyfall lobbed a Take That! to the pen).
    • Bond's remark "They always said the pen was mightier than the sword." has gotten funnier thanks to the Saturday Night Live "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketch where former Bond Sean Connery (played by Darrell Hammond) misreads "The Pen Is Mightier" as "The Penis Mightier".
  • M says that the satellite pictures of the Severnaya bombing are live, because unlike the American government, the British government prefers not to get its bad news from CNN. In Skyfall, Bond gets some bad news via CNN in most releases.
    • And in real life, in 2021, Elon Musk and SpaceX were awarded a contract by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office for a project called Starshield, which was aimed to develop real-time intelligence instantly from anywhere in the world via a constellation of satellites.
  • When Bond meets with Zukovsky, he's annoyed with his mistress Irina's singing onstage, asking "Who's strangling the cat?". In 2021, Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver would star as King and Queen in Amazon's musical adaptation of Cinderella.
• It Was His Sled: Janus is Alec Trevelyan, a plot twist so well known it isn’t even spoilered out on this page.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • For a very select group of female moviegoers who usually don't watch action flicks, they paid money to go see the film so that they can swoon over Remington Steele—err, Pierce Brosnan on the big screen. For some girls who were in their late childhood or adolescence in 1995 (and therefore were too young to have watched the show that first made Brosnan a sex symbol), they noticed the ultra-handsome actor in trailers and TV spots, so they were more than happy to accompany their father, older brother or boyfriend to the cinema to catch their very first James Bond film.
  • On the flip side, Xenia Onatopp provides a reason for select male viewers to watch or rewatch the film.
• Love to Hate: However dastardly their designs, Trevelyan, Xenia, Ourumov, and Boris are all such enjoyable villains that it's a pleasure whenever they're on-screen.
• Magnificent Bastard: Once James Bond's best friend, Alec Trevelyan was the son of Cossacks who killed themselves after the betrayal of the British and Stalin's execution squads. Seeking revenge, Alec faked his death, betrayed the British and formed the Janus Crime syndicate. Alec proceeds to manipulate and organize several schemes to get his hands on the Goldeneye Satellite, even completely outwitting Bond and nearly killing him on several occasions, all while intending on robbing the British bank and then using the Goldeneye to erase the records, also nearly collapsing western civilization. One of Bond's most personal adversaries, Alec Trevelyan conducts himself with pure charisma, able to get under Bond's skin like no other by knowing him better than anyone else.
• Memetic Badass: The "Canadian Admiral Impersonator", who viewers have noted in his very short amount of screentime was able to accomplish the Eurocopter hijacking scheme alongside Xenia without any difficulty before seemingly going his own way, never to be seen again. The fact that such a minor background character could technically be considered the most successful villain in the entire film series is a point of amusement for fans.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Brosnan's 'painface', initially shown in this film.
  • 007 has a really wide mouth.
  • "I AM INVINCIBLE!"
  • Mission Failure: Unacceptable non-military casualties! Alec killing a scientist in the beginning of the film, as killing non-military targets was strictly forbidden in the N64 game.
• Moral Event Horizon: Xenia and Ourumov definitely cross it when they slaughter the entire staff at Severnaya without a hint of remorse... with Xenia clearly deriving sexual pleasure as she carries out the massacre.
• Narm:
  • Boris's ridiculously obvious choice of password that he tests Natalya with, which takes her the entire middle act of the film to figure out, and only after Bond guessed it correctly without needing more than half a second to dwell on it. Although it is suggested earlier on that Natalya is used to more convoluted answers to his passwords, having spent months or years stuck with him, and Bond, not knowing Boris' lecherous habits, can instead go for the obvious answer, it's still ridiculous.
  • Bond and Natalya stop for the night to have a romantic interlude on a beach in Cuba. While they're on a race against the clock to stop Trevalyan from destroying the world's economy.
• Narrowed It Down To The Guy I Recognise: While Sean Bean had found mainstream success with Sharpe at the time he was cast, he wasn't quite the famous international star he would later become, making it more plausible that he would be cast as a minor yet significant role as a comrade of Bond's who gets killed before the end of the Bond Cold Open... and more of a surprise when he later shows up again alive and well as Janus. However, in addition to It Was His Sled, thanks to The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones among others modern viewers will be familiar enough with him to suspect that he's not likely to play the kind of character who gets unceremoniously killed off before the movie starts proper (if not entirely surprised that he's likely to die at some point).
• No Problem with Licensed Games:
  • GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64 is regarded as one of the best games of all time.
  • GoldenEye (2010), while not as famous or groundbreaking as the Nintendo 64 game, was still critically acclaimed, and is generally considered to be the best FPS on the Nintendo Wii.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • As in many Bond flicks, the MI6 officials only appear once in the beginning for mission briefing. However, Judi Dench steals the show in her debut as M, giving Bond a tongue-lashing that her predecessors could have only dreamed of (and contributing, no doubt, to M's increased prominence in subsequent films).
  • The return of Desmond Llewelyn's Q is delightful as always, snarking up a storm and just generally being a Cool Old Guy.
• Retroactive Recognition: Minnie Driver right before her acting breakout plays Zukovsky's cabaret mistress Irina.
• Signature Scene:
  • The dam bungee jump scene at the beginning.
  • The tank chase through a very crowded St. Petersburg.
  • Bond and Xenia's Interplay of Sex and Violence in the steam room.
  • For some automobile buffs, it's Bond racing his Aston Martin DB5 against Xenia's Ferrari.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The two scenes of a cutting laser in the film fail under even casual scrutiny due to the actors: the piton gun laser is an actual laser beam being filmed, which shakes and wiggles off the actual cutting metal regularly and reveals that it's nothing but a light, while the special effects of Bond's watch laser bend as the actor moves his hand out of line with the sparks.
  • A model jetfighter crashes rather awkwardly into a model radar dish.
  • The tank upsets a truck hauling obviously-empty Perrier cans.
  • The shots of the GoldenEye satellite in orbit around 'Earth'. While shots of Earth in You Only Live Twice (made in 1967) look convincing, even in the modern day, Earth in this film is rendered as a swirling mass of blue with a hazy atmosphere, leading it to resemble an amateur painting of a cloudless Neptune than anything even remotely terrestrial. The copy-pasted trail of flames as the satellite burns up in the atmosphere isn't any great shakes, either.
  • The draining of the lake in the Cuban satellite dish is very obviously achieved by reversing film of the dish being filled with water. It's impossible not to be a little distracted by water that appears to be spontaneously jumping into the air as it "drains away".
• Tough Act to Follow: It's by far the most well-received of Pierce Brosnan's Bond films, and is generally rated as one of the best in the franchise. Then again, this was the film that revived the series after Development Hell.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: For many people, this movie may have been the first time they heard about the post-World War II repatriation of the Cossacks to the Soviet Union and the atrocities that followed.
• Unintentional Period Piece: All Bond films are a product of their time, but this one stands out as being particularly dated to 1995, featuring a mid-1990s plot laden with computers, Hollywood Hacking, and the early Internet. Plus, there are a lot of post-Cold War themes unique to the time period.
• Values Resonance: Viewers might raise an eyebrow at the idea of Bond being a relic of the past, but in an age of warrantless wiretapping and internet surveillance, the world of espionage in general has become a place where computers and the data-crunchers that sift through the data they gather are the movers and shakers of the profession, not glorified detectives in trench coats or suave ladies' men sipping martinis. This film and later, Skyfall and Spectre, all wrangle with the question and essentially come to the same conclusion: there's still a place for Bond, even now. Technology is limited and made fallible by the people that control it, the world is still just as dangerous as it was before, but in a different way, and there will always be a time when men like Bond are very much needed. Taken to its logical conclusion in Spectre, when a motion is passed that wipes out the Double-O section entirely (albeit briefly).
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: A woman being pressed against a tree and then asphyxiated. Said woman kills countless people with a machine gun and with her thighs during sex, and tries doing this to Bond twice. Notably, the BBFC reclassified the film on home media from a 12 (the equivalent of a PG-13) to a 15 (the equivalent of an R-rating) in 2006, presumably due to concerns over the violent content. GoldenEye remains one of the only Bond films to receive a 15 rating.
• Win Back the Crowd: After the low-grossing (in America, at least) Licence to Kill and six years of no films, Bond fans and the general public were very happy to see GoldenEye. The movie was also well-liked by critics.
• The Woobie: Natalya's just an innocent girl who happens to work at an outpost containing the Goldeneye control device. She manages to cleverly escape getting massacred like her co-workers, only to spend the rest of the movie having the villains trying to kill her because She Knows Too Much.

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