The James Bond franchise is renowned for its globetrotting adventures. Sean Connery’s Bond confronted SPECTRE in Japan, Roger Moore’s Bond skied off a cliff in Austria, and Daniel Craig’s Bond was shot off the roof of a moving train in Turkey.
Pierce Brosnan’s 007 was no different. A big chunk of his movies surprisingly took place in London, but Brosnan’s Bond traveled all over the world – from commandeering a tank in Russia to being imprisoned in North Korea to surfing on a tidal wave in Iceland.
Russia
All the best scenes in GoldenEye (except for the big finale) take place in Russia. In the opening scene, set in 1986, Bond and fellow 00 agent Alec Trevelyan break into a Soviet chemical weapons facility in Arkhangelsk. Trevelyan seems to have died, the grief from which becomes the basis of Bond’s emotional arc in the movie.
However, the midpoint twist reveals that not only is 006 still alive; he’s the latest diabolical villain that Bond is chasing. St. Petersburg is the site of one of the film’s most explosive set-pieces: the tank chase.
Cuba
After the first half of GoldenEye takes audiences across Russia, Bond travels to Cuba for the big finale. He finds a secret base in a lake and ends up fighting Trevelyan on top of his own satellite dish. Like all the best Bond villain deaths, the grandiosity of Trevelyan’s evil plan ironically becomes his downfall.
Bond later returned to Cuba in Die Another Day. He stops off in Havana during the movie’s central investigation and meets Halle Berry’s iconic “Bond girl,” Jinx.
Germany
At the beginning of Tomorrow Never Dies, M tasks Bond with investigating suspicious media tycoon Elliot Carver. 007 travels to Hamburg to seduce Carver’s wife, Paris, who happens to be his ex.
Paris gives Bond the clues he needs to infiltrate the headquarters of her husband’s newspaper and get to the bottom of his megalomaniacal plan to kickstart World War III so he can have exclusive media coverage.
Japan
James Bond is no stranger to Japan. Connery’s Bond went to Japan to take down Blofeld in You Only Live Twice and Craig’s Bond jetted to a remote island between Japan and Russia for the thrilling finale of No Time to Die.
In Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond stops off at a U.S. Air Force base in Okinawa to receive the crucial exposition that somebody has interfered with the encoder.
Vietnam
When Bond goes searching for a wreck in the South China Sea, he finds that it’s actually in Vietnamese waters. 007 teams up with a fellow spy – Chinese Ministry of State Security agent Wai Lin, played by the great Michelle Yeoh – to explore the sunken ship.
They’re captured by goons and taken to Saigon, where they escape from the bad guys and decide to work together on the case.
Spain
The opening action sequence in The World is Not Enough takes place on Bond’s home turf in London, across the River Thames and atop the Millennium Dome, but the movie begins in Spain.
Bond meets a Swiss banker in Bilbao so he can pick up money for a British oil tycoon and friend of M’s named Sir Robert King. Bond presses the banker for crucial information that will help with an investigation, but the banker is killed by a mysterious assailant.
Azerbaijan
After King is assassinated, Bond is tasked with protecting his daughter, Elektra, from any potential killers. Bond meets Elektra in Azerbaijan, where she’s overseeing the construction of an oil pipeline.
Here, Bond gets a long exposition dump about the pipeline’s proposed route through the mountains, which sets up Elektra’s diabolical plan when she’s revealed to be a villain. The sequence reaches an exciting conclusion when a goon squad shows up riding armed snowmobiles.
Kazakhstan
The first sign that Elektra isn’t as innocent as she seems arrives when Bond realizes her head of security, Sasha Davidov, is a double agent working with Renard.
Renard is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world; he supposedly wants to assassinate Elektra, but they’re actually working together. After killing Davidov, Bond manages to escape on an airplane heading to a Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan.
Turkey
The finale of The World is Not Enough brings Bond to Istanbul, where he learns from Christmas Jones that Renard is planning to jam stolen plutonium into a submarine’s nuclear reactor, which would destroy the entire city with a nuclear meltdown.
This is where Elektra’s master plan comes together: the destruction of Istanbul will wipe out the Russians’ oil pipeline in the Bosphorus, vastly increasing the value of Elektra’s oil. Like Goldfinger, Elektra is a Bond villain who has everything and still wants more.
North Korea
Bond doesn’t really “visit” North Korea at the beginning of Die Another Day; he’s imprisoned there. In the opening sequence, he engages a North Korean colonel in a hovercraft chase – an explosive display of good old-fashioned Bayhem – before they catch him and lock him in a prison camp.
The Bond films have always reflected real-world political tensions, and the North Korean setting of Die Another Day’s opening set-piece is a prime example of that.
Iceland
The climactic set-piece in Die Another Day takes place at Gustav Graves’ ice palace, which is located next to a diamond mine site in Iceland.
This is a visually stunning backdrop for the movie’s action-packed finale, but it falls apart when Bond surfs on a tidal wave.