BOND 50 LICENCE TO KILL

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of James Bond on the big screen. To celebrate, SFX's Nick Setchfield revisits each and every 007 adventure in a week by week countdown to Skyfall ...

TANKING CRISIS Licence To Kill ’s centrepiece action scene finds Bond at the wheel of a tanker, manoeuvering its long, gleaming bulk through tortuous Mexican mountain roads filled with dust and fireballs and the chatter of machinegun fire. There’s a muscular Monster Truck Show vibe to this stunt sequence, never more so than in the moment the tanker performs a gravity-mocking wheelie (Kenworth Trucks fitted a 1000 horsepower engine, close to three times the amount of horsepower on a normal tanker – five tons of weight were also placed over the back wheels so it could attempt the feat). Filming took place at the La Rumorosa Mountain Pass in Mexicali and required a total of 16 18-wheeler trucks, corralled by veteran stunt co-ordinator Remy Julienne, who performed the astonishing tanker-tilt without recourse to a special rig that had been constructed for the shot.

TRIV AND LET DIE

Originally titled Licence Revoked , the movie was renamed after the studio fretted that the word revoked would be a hard sell in the US.

Robert Davi played Bond in the screentests for Lupe.

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN IN GOLDENEYE

Nick Setchfield is the Editor-at-Large for SFX Magazine, writing features, reviews, interviews, and more for the monthly issues. However, he is also a freelance journalist and author with Titan Books. His original novels are called The War in the Dark, and The Spider Dance. He's also written a book on James Bond called Mission Statements.