20 Things You Didn't Know About Die Another Day
9. “We’ve Got To Get On That Plane!”
Originally, the final confrontation between James Bond and Gustav Graves was set on an indoor beach in Japan. Lee Tamahori was dissatisfied with this and a suggested finale inside an underground cavern, so he set the climax onboard a plane.
He praised Peter Lamont for designing and building the interiors of Graves’s Antonov cargo plane - the largest aircraft in the world at the time - in a matter of weeks, fixed on gimbals to show its instability after it has flown through the Icarus beam.
The exteriors of the Antonov on the ground, being loaded and taxiing for take-off, were shot at Manston Airport in Kent. At first, a Russian-owned Antonov was secured for filming but, several days before filming commenced, it was impounded by the Russian Mafia. Mike Woodley hurriedly secured an alternative Antonov from the Ukraine, whose registration number was UR007!
The scenes of the enormous aircraft in flight, however, were shot using miniatures: one complete and another built to literally be torn to bits. For the plane’s disintegration in mid-air, the miniature effects team cut pieces of the skin away during filming and then married the footage together using CGI and clever editing in post-production.