The Nine-Act Structure by David Siegel
| In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond does not appear until after a nuclear catastrophe seems imminent, whereupon he immediately saves the day in the opening action sequence. One of the enemies, a computer programmer, also appears in this early sequence. Thus, even before the opening credits, the first five chunks of the Nine-Act Structure are fulfilled. Once the credits roll, we start with a completely different story thread which begins with the Chinese-English naval confrontation. Again, the structure is slowly fulfilled, with the introduction of the German Front Man and the Mastermind. The first chunk (backstory) is revealed in the Elliot Carver's later diatribes and the dossiers kept by MI5. So there are two structures running through the show. Of the first structure, the first goal was to prevent the nuclear missiles from exploding, the second goal was to retrieve the GPS decoder box (which Pierce Brosnan's character could easily have achieved in the first scene, but did not). There is no reversal in the second structure: James Bond is informed from the very beginning that Carver is a suspect and it remains his goal to take him down. Conclusion |