Tomorrow Never Dies

 

Fake News: The Movie

18th movie and I'm wondering if I'm getting fatigued on Bond-movies since I can't seem to keep my mind focused on them. Or even watch more than one movie a day. Or the quality of them really is slipping. It starts somewhere in the Russian mountains where terrorist are selling weapons toward different terror groups. Bond is there broadcasting it to London and the Royal Navy orders a missile strike. Turns out that one of the planes are equiped with some nuclear missiles so 007 have to get them out before the missiles strike. Which he does, credits roll and... the music is so boring. Music is really getting worse.

We start up in the Chinese sea where a British ship is being harassed by Chinese MIG:s for trespassing in their waters. In reality there GPS is being tampered by the News media corporation Carvers Media Group headed by Elliot Carver. With him is one hacker that was present at the terror auction and escaped before the missile hit. Carver has a stealth ship which torpedos the ship and then they blow up one of the MIG:s and lastly kills the surviving sailors with Chinese rifle ammunition. And Carver prints it directly so the next morning at London they get the information first from the news. The Navy wan't to retaliate and MI6 wants to investigate. Bond gets 48 hours and are sent to investigate Carver since they noticed something strange from one of his satellites as well as the interesting news that was released long before the Secret Service got news of the death of the sailors. 

007 gets to know Carter and a Chinese Agent. He gets in to the HQ and gets the machine that causes the GPS to malfunction. After escaping heads to South East Asia where he meets the CIA that with the machine can pinpoint where the ship actually sunk. He HALO drops into the water and finds out that a missile is missing and meets the Chinese agent again. Both gets captured by Carver that takes them to Saigon, they escape and finds out where the stealth ship is as it's about to push Britain and China to war as their navy's are standing against each other. 007 blows the stealth cover so Britain begins blowing the ship up. All enemy dies and the plan is foiled. The plan was causing a war, Carver would help by launching the stolen missile on Beijing killing the Chinese high command so that the General in his pocket could take over and give him broadcasting rights for 100 years, which he was denied before. In the process destroying the whole British navy.

On one hand, the fake news angle, media moguls holding the power and all that is off its time and would still works partly today, with the exception that the internet pretty much destroyed the monopolies of information that media moguls had. On the other hand... in what world does the British navy stand a chance against the Chinese military? I get being able to fight off Argentina in 1982, but the Chinese? Why not do it like in the older movies, put USA against China and Britain playing the mediator (think You Only Live Twice between USA and USSR)? On the other hand, we can probably track the huge overconfidence of the British that lead to Brexit from this time, what with New Labour and the British pop invasion of the 90's so why not global security as well? Or, thinking about it... maybe China in the 90's wasn't that military strong? I knew that the economy started to take off in the 90's and its GDP rose with 10 % per year up until the economical crash of 2008 and that they are trying catchup with the US, but the US is so far ahead I hardly see that as feasible for several decades, but they gotta have been able to take on China? Or was it some reaction for leaving Hong Kong to China?