The James Bond franchise has delivered some of the most spectacular stunts in movie history, but not all of them are winners. Case in point: the infamous CGI surfing sequence in 2002’s Die Another Day, which finds Pierce Brosnan’s 007 riding a massive wave using a makeshift parachute and a piece of wreckage.
When Die Another Day hit theaters in 2002, the effects looked laughably unconvincing, and it’s one of the big reasons why this film typically winds up last in rankings of Brosnan’s Bond movies. As it turns out, audiences weren’t the only ones who thought the sequence was a disaster. From Brosnan himself to the executives at MGM, pretty much everyone involved in making the movie couldn’t believe how badly it turned out.
Lee Tamahori Pushed for the CGI Sequence
In Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films by Matthew Field, director Lee Tamahori admitted that it was his idea to push for the sequence to be done in CGI rather than attempt a real stunt.
“Bond films like to do things for real and not go CGI,” Tamahori said, adding that franchise producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson “had to question whether we were betraying a fundamental part of the Bond myth. But my argument is that CGI is just another tool and you’ll have to embrace it sooner or later or you’ll be overtaken by other action movies.“
Even Brosnan wasn’t convinced. “There’s a certain frustration where you just feel rather foolish, hanging on wires or attempting to do some kind of stunt which just seems absolutely ludicrous,” he said, “and, of course, consequently turns out to be rather silly.” Indeed it did.
It Originally Looked Even Worse
And believe it or not, the kite surfing sequence originally looked even worse. Chris McGurk, who was serving as the vice chairman of the board and chief operating officer of MGM at the time, recalled how shocked everyone was at the first screening.
We were all convinced by Lee and by the effects house that they could do it in a way that it wasn’t going to look stupid. When I went to the first screening, I remember telling Barbara Broccoli that I thought it looked like Gidget does to Malibu on a surfboard. Like right out of the fifties, that’s how horrible it looked. We were stunned because we’d spent a ton of money on that sequence and we had heard everybody telling us, ‘Don’t worry.’ We repaired it to a huge extent after that, but everybody was let down by what was delivered.
That would have been something to see. Tamahori explained that throwing more money at the sequence wouldn’t have solved the problem. The technology of the era simply wasn’t up to the task. “In 2001/02 we didn’t have what we have now in terms of CGI and the elements were never as good as we wanted them to be,” he said. “It would have required research and development for several years to get it to work. I’m aware that it is less than spectacular. I will take responsibility for that.“
The sequence has been mocked for years, but does it deserve all the hate? Sound off in the comments!
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