The World Is Not Enough’s Cut Ending Explored Something All Bonds Ignore

The World Is Not Enough may be one of the campier Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies, but the movie’s vetoed original ending did explore an element of Bond girls that the series as a whole doesn’t often discuss. Beginning in 1995 with the critically acclaimed Goldeneye, and ending in 2002 with the regrettably goofy Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan’s tenure as a suave super-spy James Bond remains a divisive era of the iconic character’s on-screen history.

Some viewers enjoyed Brosnan’s charm, influenced by the Sean Connery version of 007, while others found his take on the character too campy and over-the-top. The escapism of the Brosnan era directly contributed to the darker tone of Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies, which makes it surprising that one of Brosnan’s lesser outings almost touched on some heavy territory that the 007 franchise has usually tried to shy away from to maintain a fun tone.

Throughout Bond’s 25 cinematic outings, it is a longstanding (and ethically dicey) routine for Bond girls to sell the heroic 007 out to a villain, only for them to then be brutally killed off for their troubles. Outside of Casino Royale’s Vesper Lynd, whose more realistic depiction signaled a tonal shift in the James Bond franchise, these characters are rarely given much depth before their inevitable betrayal of Bond and subsequent death. But one character almost avoided this fate — only for producers to decide that a more realistic outcome was actually more of a downer than killing her off.

In The World Is Not Enough, Sophie Marceau’s Electra King is the duplicitous double-crosser in question who almost garrottes Bond in service of Robert Carlyle’s Renard. A memorable villainess, King proves a formidable challenge for Bond before the super-spy is saved just in time to kill her and Renard. But in the original ending, Brosnan’s Bond only subdued the double agent instead of killing her, and a later scene would have seen her receiving treatment for Stockholm syndrome after years spent in the villain’s service. In the original sequence, Bond would have visited King in a psychological treatment facility as professionals attempted to deprogram her brainwashing, a bizarrely realistic and grounded ending that was understandably kiboshed for being too bleak and downbeat after the campy, goofy story that preceded it.

Despite its subversive appeal, the ending would likely not have been the right fit for The World Is Not Enough. A solid Bond outing, the Brosnan movie was nonetheless criticized by reviewers for its lack of believability, and such a realistic coda would have been tonally jarring. However, the idea of Bond girls (sometimes) being victims of psychological manipulation is one that the franchise rarely addresses, but it’s one that makes a lot of sense and could be interesting to explore in future films. While Vesper Lynd may have been portrayed more realistically, her death was still mostly a catalyst to provide Daniel Craig’s darker Bond with a compelling backstory, and her character was defined mostly via her relationship with the spy. Only time will tell whether the next James Bond (whoever that may be) will revisit this interesting territory that The World Is Not Enough almost explored, but it’s an interesting route for a less camp James Bond movie to travel.