1 Topic by SpectreOfDefeat

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Topic: Did A View to a Kill inspire GoldenEye?

This is something I noticed lately. In the early briefing scenes in 1985’s A View to A Kill, Q delivers a lot of exposition about microchip technology. However, there is one line where he refers to the danger of electromagnetic pulse weapons: “Until recently, all microchips were susceptible to damage from the intense magnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion…One burst in outer space over the UK and everything with a microchip in it, from the modern toaster to sophisticated computers and our defence systems, would be rendered useless. We’d be paralysed….” Although electromagnetic pulse weapons do not actually feature in the plot of AVTAK, they do make an appearance in 1995’s GoldenEye, where the threat Q describes forms the villainous Trevelyan’s plan. So my question is- did one inspire the other? Is the reuse of this idea a deliberate reference? Did one of the most critically and commercially successful Bond films borrow its plot from one of its worst-received predecessors?


What do others think of this? Was the electromagnetic pulse idea reoccurring in both films coincidence or not?

2 Reply by Barbel

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Re: Did A View to a Kill inspire GoldenEye?

There's a quote from, IIRC, Richard Maibaum along the lines of how hard it was to keep coming up with outrageous schemes for the villain to be up to. This is at least partially why there's such a degree of repetition in the villain's aims in various Bond films (you don't need me to list them).
I think that the great schemes which 007 must foil are only MacGuffins overall, and much more important are his interactions with the villains themselves. If Trevelyan wasn't using an EMP, some other way of achieving his ends could be found without affecting the movie very much.

(I realize this doesn't directly answer your question, SoD, but I've just been watching Boris Johnson on TV)

3 Reply by caractacus potts

  • caractacus potts
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Re: Did A View to a Kill inspire GoldenEye?

Seems to me I'd heard about the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse being used as a weapon of war before Goldeneye, cant remember if it was from the news or from fiction. Wouldn't have been aVtaK because I hadnt seen it in 1995, but it was an idea being discussed.

Thing is in the mid-nineties, that was when business records were becoming almost entirely digitised and interconnected through the internet. Paper records were being archived or shredded, so all that digital data was potentially vulnerable, and an enemy nation could be crippled if the digital data could be made to just disappear.