Elliot Carver is a fictional character and the main villain from the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. In the film he is portrayed by Jonathan Pryce.

Jonathan Pryce as evil media baron Elliot Carver.

Biography: Born in Hong Kong, Elliot Carver is the illegitimate son of a German woman who died in childbirth and Lord Roverman, a press tycoon. A Chinese family takes the boy for a one-time fee of 50 pounds. Thirty years later, Carver confronts and blackmails Roverman into suicide and takes over his media empire. This expanded background is found in the official novelisation of Tomorrow Never Dies. Over the course of the film he is shown to be insane.

In the novelisation, Carver went to college in Hong Kong and received a degree in the communication arts. He was hired as a meteorologist at a Hong Kong Television Station, a few years later, he became the anchorman of the station. He was not too nice to the women at the station, Carver would harass women sexually, he made one of women leave the station and Hong Kong completely due to his advances. This was before the term sexual harassment was being used.

Carver is an international media mogul of the German-based mass media company, the Carver Media Group. He frequently uses his influence to gain an advantage for his firm or wreak havoc on opponents. He threatens to release scandalous photos of the President of the United States with a Chicago cheerleader if a bill lowering cable rates is not signed, and then orders them to release it anyway. Another time, after a British beef baron loses a bet to Carver and refuses to pay up (on the grounds that the bet was rigged), Carver gets revenge by releasing stories on Mad Cow Disease.

In the film, he attempts to start a war between the British and Chinese, hoping to wipe out the existing Chinese leadership in Beijing so his cohort could take over. Beyond the massive publicity such a war would produce, a friendlier political atmosphere would allow his television network, the Carver Media Group Network, to secure exclusive broadcasting rights in China for the next century, something that the existing Chinese politicians have denied.

Carver first appears in the film at the headquarters of his media empire in Hamburg, Germany, overseeing the sinking of the British warship HMS Devonshire in the South China Sea at the hands of his torpedo-like “SEA-VAC” drill. He then has his men steal a cruise missile from the sunken ship, which they have made impossible to be tracked by the British Government. He is later seen at the launch party for his new satellite network, where he gets unusually aggressive with his wife, Paris. He develops an instant suspicion of James Bond when the secret agent questions him regarding the sunken ship. He has his henchmen capture and attempt to interrogate Bond, but he escapes and cuts off power to Carver’s live international broadcast.

When learning it was Bond who caused him and his network international embarrassment, Carver tells Paris to get information from him as to why he was at the party and what he knows. Carver believes that Bond is merely a former acquaintance; when he discovers that they are ex-lovers and that his wife was less than honest with him about her past relationship with 007, he has Paris killed by his henchman, assassin Dr Kaufman, who is skilled in the art of chakra torture. This establishes for Bond a personal motivation to complete his mission, although many Bond movies include the “sacrificial lamb” to spur the British secret agent along the way.

Carver runs his operations on a stealth boat that can move undetected by radar. Bond and Chinese People’s External Security Force agent Wai Lin infiltrate his boat and learn he’s going to fire the missile at Beijing so as to wipe out the existing Chinese government and replace them with a government who will grant him his desired broadcasting rights.

Carver is ultimately killed by Bond at the film’s climax, as 007 pushes him into the path of the running “SEA-VAC” drill which mashes him into a bloody sludge. M later releases a news story stating that Carver presumed missing, having drowned while onboard his luxury yacht in the South China Sea, while the authorities believed he committed suicide.

See also:

• Bond villains