Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility

Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility exterior shot, as seen in GoldenEye.

The Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility was a fictional Soviet weapons research laboratory located in the northern Soviet Union during the Cold War. The facility appears in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, its novelisation and video game adaptions.

History

In 1986 at Soviet-Era Arkhangelsk, MI6 agents James Bond and Alec Trevelyan infiltrate a Soviet chemical weapons facility and plant explosives. However, Trevelyan is captured and seemingly shot by Colonel Arkady Ourumov, but Bond flees as the facility explodes.

Novelisation

The novelisation penned by John Gardner described the facility as being primarily underground, with the only signs of life on the surface being a rough runway, ending only about thirty feet from the edge of a long gorge which ran parallel to the dam. He notes only two ways in and out of the processing plant - a short runway serviced by a modified Antonov An-14 Bee, and a crude underground railway, cut in the late 1960s through earth and rock, enabling personnel and product to be linked with the port of Archangel. Bond later reminisces on the mission (Operation Cowslip), and concludes that there had been no biological or chemical weapons actually in the complex. Noting that "if there had been, the idea of blowing the place up was just about as foolish a concept as you could have." It is implied that M sent the double-0s to demolish the facility before production began.

Behind the Scenes

The opening 220 m (720 ft) bungee jump at Archangel was filmed at the Contra Dam (also known as the Verzasca or Locarno Dam) in Ticino, Switzerland. Performed by British stuntman Wayne Michaels, it was voted the best movie stunt of all time in a 2002 Sky Movies poll, and set a record for the highest bungee jump off a fixed structure. The ending of the pre-credits sequence with Bond jumping after the aeroplane features Jacques 'Zoo' Malnuit riding the motorcycle to the edge and jumping, and B.J. Worth diving after the plane – which was a working aircraft, with Worth adding that part of the difficulty of the stunt was the kerosene striking his face.

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