Although Die Another Day is hardly as disastrous as some reviews claimed, the James Bond movie’s biggest issue is obvious from its opening scene onwards. It’s not easy to nail the tone of a Bond movie. A good Bond movie needs to balance adventure, action, humor, camp, pathos, and romance, all of which can spoil the broth if over-indulged or under-utilized.
For example, Roger Moore’s later comedic Bond movies are seen by some critics as the zenith of the series, since 007 could no longer be taken seriously after tangling with a series of almost parody-like characters. In contrast, some critics cite this as Bond’s best era and a perfect encapsulation of the character’s cheesy appeal, demanding more self-aware humor from the series. Ultimately, it was an inability to balance these two extremes that made Pierce Brosnan’s final Bond movie, Die Another Day, a failure — something that was evident from the movie’s opening scenes onward.
In the first moments of Brosnan’s final Bond movie, 007 spends over a year imprisoned by the North Korean army. It is a jarringly dark opening to one of the James Bond franchise’s silliest movies, and sets up a tonal issue that plagues the rest of the movie. Die Another Day’s sense of self-awareness jars with the sight of an emaciated, tortured Bond, and the movie’s set-pieces involving ice palaces, invisible cars, and a corny Madonna cameo all seem to belong to a different movie from the austere, grim opening sequence. The usual super-slick, winking charm of Brosnan’s Bond isn’t anywhere to be found when he is liberated from a prison camp, and, when this smirking version of 007 does reappear, his ability to seemingly shake off a horrific ordeal seems more uncanny than charming.
The opening scene of Die Another Day briefly makes it seem as though the 2002 movie is headed for the dark tonal territory that made Daniel Craig’s brutal Bond debut Casino Royale so memorable. However, the rest of Die Another Day then reverts to being a cheesy, over-the-top 07 adventure more akin to Moonraker than a serious spy movie. While there’s nothing wrong with campy Bond adventures (particularly with the charismatic Brosnan as the lead), Die Another Day’s bizarrely grueling opening scene sets up an entirely different type of movie and leaves viewers ill-prepared for the wackiness to come.
Ironically, the harshness of Die Another Day’s opening scene did prove (thanks to the movie’s financial success) that fans of the franchise were willing to watch Bond get tortured and put through the wringer. As a result, this memorably dark Bond girl betrayal may have helped convince the franchise’s producers to take Casino Royale in a bleaker direction. However, while the movie's success may have assisted in the success of that later James Bond adventure, Die Another Day didn’t do itself any favors with its disarmingly solemn opening sequence.
