World is Not Enough: Millennium Edition, The

Solid fan edit. Felt a tad short. The trims of quips and one-liners definitely made the movie more enjoyable. Most of the other small trims made throughout were good decisions as well. Cutting Denise Richards' screentime was a brilliant move - though sadly nothing can be done about her bad acting in what's left of her scenes. There were some abrupt scene changes which mostly weren't too distracting, but for one - vat of caviar - which was somewhat jarring (I actually rewound it, and had to watch that bit again to make sure it was as abrupt a scene change as I thought I saw.) Audio was solid, and I didn't notice any real issues with sound transitions. Moving the opening credits was a good change. "Millennium" playing over the end credits didn't do it for me, but the original audio was added as a separate track too, so no points taken off for that one.

Great job, man. Keep up the good work.

Before I asked for this film I didn't read the entirety of the cutlist nor did I follow the progress. I have the film in my collection but I can't remember the last time I took it down from the shelf so I thought my memory would be a litte hazy.

I liked the re-arranging of the boat chase to after the credits, I always felt the pacing was a bit too long for a pre-credit sequence compared to other films in the series, I felt the fade to the credit seemed slightly abrupt but it was the best that could be managed given how the rest of the scene plays out.

That said the post credits from Millennium dome to the Funeral worked particularly well and I enjoyed the rest of the film. I couldn't remember the helicopter sequence too well, But I as others have stated could see a transition had taken from the visual clues in bond's appearance. In my head I knew what had transpired but I chose to ignore it for the sake of storytelling.

That's one thing I particularly like about this edit, the cheesy quips and one liners have gone, so is the worst of Denise Richard's performance and some equally hammy acting from Goldie. Everyone has a role to play and they more or less set about doing it, character motivations are clear. We don't need to see that Renard is impervious to pain (except emotional) because it feels like a retread of Stamper from Tomorrow never Dies.

I disagree with the other review that the jacket has no pay off, it feels like one of the sillier gadgets that would have been seen in the background of another bond or spy movie. So it silencing John Cleese was it's own pay off. :D

I do wish I had read up on the second audio track having the original closing track, I would have swapped it in an instant. I didn't need a friendly reminder that Robbie desperately wanted to play the next bond. But knowing Lapis did put the option there for people means I can't penalize him for it.

It's a fun edit and definitely easier to watch than the theatrical cut. Yes I recommend it.

I really enjoyed this edit. It's much faster than the cinema cut and cuts out a lot of nonsense. Granted, there were a few obvious edits (e.g the buzzsaw, the jacket set-up with no payoff), but nothing too distracting.

I quite like The World is Not Enough to begin with, it's probably my favourite of the Brosnan Bonds, but it's certainly far from perfect. It's a film with a great first act, an OK second act and then a flat ending.

I'm glad to report that this fanedit improved things all around - but I especially found the third act worked much better. I don't remember finding the submarine fight at the end particularly entertaining before but in this cut it works well. I suspect it's the old adage: if the third act doesn't work go back to the second act and fix it. By cutting a couple of largely extraneous sequences earlier on, especially the ski chase, the whole thing moves much better and we stay engaged through to the end.

Reducing bad puns, having less focus on Renard not feeling pain - a totally underdeveloped idea within the script which ultimately goes nowhere - and cutting back on Denise Richards' acting (but fortunately not cutting back on her wet t-shirt shots, ahem) - it's an excellent set of choices which have been made to smooth out a film which, IMO, is actually pretty good when the occasional missteps are removed.

Is it a perfect edit? No, I had some minor issues with the audio. You can hear engines approaching when Elektra and Bond are on the mountain. And the last minute isn't great, but I understand why the editor wanted so badly to cut the painfully bad "joke" at the end. It's just that without it the whole thing ends too abruptly. Plus the audio I felt could have been slicker in that last minute.

But overall, I thoroughly recommend this edit. It cements itself for me as the best Brosnan Bond film

A new Bond fanedit is always of interest to me. It's little secret in this fanediting parts just how much of a Bond fan I am, so I was intrigued with Lapis Molari's cutlist on this one.
As a film, I've always enjoyed The World is Not Enough. Granted, there are issues with it, but I think it contains Brosnan's best performance as Bond, where he's finally allowed to explore a little of the more ruthless side of Fleming's fallible superspy ("I never miss"). The balance of serious spy and the more humorous scenes however, is still a little off kilter and not as finely tuned as Martin Campbell's excellent Goldeneye for example... it's nowhere near to the extreme of Die Another Day, but Feirstein, Purvis and Wade's script is still not what it could be. Despite this, there's a devilishly good villainous performance from Sophie Marceau who clearly enjoys every moment, whilst Robert Caryle lends his secondary villain Renard with enough depth and dimension to make one almost feel sympathy for him.

On top of this, there's a terrific score from David Arnold (you remember, when Bond scores used to be amazing right?? For God sake's just bring Arnold back!) even if some of the questionable sound mixing means it gets buried a little too much. Michael Apted's direction is solid, if unremarkable, and it's clear he's trying to get as much depth out of the script he's been given, as he can. Of course, there are a few over the top scenes such as the chainsaw-wielding helicopters, plus a remarkably flat ski-chase which is easily the worst in the film series' considerable history of such sequences. In addition, Denise Richard's character of Christmas Jones is not as well defined as she should be, and comes across far too dumbed down for a nuclear physicist - I don't actually blame Richards for this (even though she had a rough time during the shoot according to her), but more the script which falls back too much on stereotypes of Bond girls from yesteryear.

So, there's definitely room for some fanediting here... so how did I think Lapis Molari fared? Let's find out...

Firstly, the edit looks great, so no issues at all from this perspective. I even liked the idea of a short pre-credits sequence and moving the amazing boat chase down the river thames (a genuine classic Bond action sequence) to after the credits have rolled. True, the pre-credits scene does now feel a little underwhelming, but it takes away the problem of having the longest pre-credits sequence in Bond history (something like 15 minutes). It's executed as well as can be expected in terms of transitioning to the cool theme tune by Garbage, but unfortunately I wasn't so keen on the transition coming out of the credits into the next scene, as whilst the Garbage theme tune is finishing, you can then hear other music just ending from the new after credits scene. To me, this could have been easily solved by doing some sound replacement work (for background ambience) so that we just hear the Garbage song fading out. It may seem a small thing, but it just feels a bit clumsy as it stands.

Thankfully, as far as I remember, this is the only noticeable audio issue I experienced during my viewing. Otherwise, I thought Lapis did a solid job.

In terms of the visual edits, again, I didn't have an issue with most of them and in terms of the purpose of this edit they work very well. Occasionally, the pacing might feel a little off due to some scenes missing, but not to the point where it ruins your enjoyment on any level. For example, I was delighted the ski chase was excised. I didn't miss that at all. In fact I am eternally grateful. However, the one scene which I thought would cause a problem, is indeed the excising of the chainsaw helicopter as Bond is trying to get information from Valentin. One minute Bond has Valentin up against the wall, next minute he's falling into a vat of caviar. Plus, on top of what feels like an unnatural cut (my wife actually said to me "what happened there?"), Bond is suddenly seen to be much more dishevelled and even has a slight cut on his face. Whilst I totally appreciate the intention of this cut (as I too feel the helicopter chainsaws are a little unnecessary and as Lapis says, the stakes for this scene are not as big as say the boat chase), I just feel that the scene literally feels like there's something not right... something is missing.

That aside, most of the other trims worked well. The work done on removing Moneypenny from a shot where she's walking behind the Doctor during the briefing about Renard is exemplary, and there's tons of other nips and tucks which definitely help the film. I particularly loved Bond's somewhat emotional reaction to killing Elekta in cold blood, being cut. As much as Bond loves women, to the point where they are indeed a weakness of his, the emotion of having to kill her was already etched on Brosnan's face before he pulled the trigger - that was enough. Nicely done Lapis.

I also, to my surprise quite enjoyed the use of Robbie Williams' Millennium over the end credits. Thankfully there is the option of a second audio track which maintains David Arnold's score if your prefer that - to be greedy, I would have loved a 3rd track, which reinserted Scott Walker's "Only Myself to Blame", which was actually included over the end credits during the film's theatrical run, but has since been removed on all home media releases.

I have to say that I didn't like the post-credit scene at all. It's from a deleted scene, so the quality is significantly reduced, but most importantly it just doesn't do anything interesting and feels very much like an after thought.

Otherwise, I would say that I thoroughly enjoyed this Millennium edition of The World is Not Enough. It may seem I've been a bit harsh on some of the choices, but this is purely my opinion and Lapis, please be assured that I still had a great time watching this. It has also given me some good ideas for my own edit of this in the future. It's an ambitious edit, not afraid to tackle and change technically difficult scenes, and for that I would applaud you. Not all of it works, but overall this gets a hearty 007 recommendation from me.