Original vintage 1997 Omega advert for the Seamaster Professional 2531.80.00 Chronometer watch, "James Bond's Choice - Tomorrow Never Dies.”
Dimensions: Approximately 9.75 inches wide by 12.75 inches high.
Tomorrow Never Dies was a 1997 Jamese Bond spy film, the eighteenth in the series and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode from a screenplay by Bruce Feirstein, it follows Bond as he seeks to stop Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), a powerful media tycoon with a God complex, from engineering a third world war.
Tomorrow Never Dies performed well at the box office, grossing over $339 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1997 and earning a Golden Globe nomination.
Despite mixed reviews upon release, retrospectives on the film highlight its prescience at predicting the prevalence and dangers of fake news. While its performance at the U.S. box office surpassed that of its predecessor GoldenEye, it was the only one of Brosnan's Bond films not to open at No. 1 at the box office, as it opened the same day as Titanic, and finished at No. 2 that week. It was followed by The World Is Not Enough in 1999.
In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, writing: "Tomorrow Never Dies gets the job done, sometimes excitingly, often with style" with the villain "slightly more contemporary and plausible than usual," bringing "some subtler-than-usual satire into the film." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune wrote it was the "first James Bond film I've liked in many a year," most notably favoring the character Elliot Carver, which he felt added "contemporary writing to the Bond series, and that is most welcome." On his website ReelViews, James Berardinelli described it as "the best Bond film in many years" and said Brosnan "inhabits his character with a suave confidence that is very like Connery's."
The Omega Seamaster Professional has been worn by Pierce Brosnan in all of his James Bond movies. He wears the stainless-steel full size with blue face, blue bezel on a stainless-steel bracelet, models 2531.80.00 Chronometer with automatic movement or the 2541.80.00 with Quartz movement which he wears in GoldenEye (1995).
In the movies Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Die Another Day (2002), James Bond wears to the Omega Seamaster Professional 2531.80.00 Chronometer. In Tomorrow Never Dies the watch is used to detonate a small charge which breaks a glass jar, which in turn activates a hand grenade.
In The World Is Not Enough, the Omega used by James Bond has a very strong light, as well as a built-in grappling hook. The small piton shoots from the crown and Bond uses it to lift himself up.
In Die Another Day, Bond uses his Omega watch as a remote control to detonate a bomb, with Bond taking out the helium escape valve (the detonator), and using the bezel of the watch to set the timer. The detonator activates the bomb in the suitcase full of diamonds in the pre-title sequence in North Korea.
Omega’s design of the first Seamaster, the 300, drew influence from older waterproof watches worn on the wrists of the British military during WWII. However, what would initially distinguish the first Seamaster from its other predecessor watches from Omega competitors was its rubber O-ring gasket, which separated the dive watch from other lead or shellac gaskets which were more susceptible to temperature changes. Instead, Omega’s rubber gasket prevented any water infiltration in severe temperature changes ranging between -40° C to 50° C.
In the 1950s, Omega engineers were so confident of the Seamaster’s durability, they attached one to the outside of an aircraft and flew it over the North Pole in 1956. The Seamaster 300 performed so well, in fact, that Jacques Cousteau’s team used it during experimental dives in 1963 and beyond.
First making an appearance in 1963 as part of the Seamaster lineup, the De Ville became its own collection in 1967, occupying the dress watch position within the Omega catalog aimed at a younger clientele. The De Ville clearly draws inspiration from the Seamaster, but once it became its own line, it developed a unique personality all its own.
James Bond has worn it in films since 1995; other famous Omega wearers, past and present, including John F. Kennedy, the UK’s Prince William, George Clooney, and Astronaut Buzz Aldrin – and do we really need to note where Buzz wore his?
For the past 70+ years, Omega has produced a staggering array of Seamasters to suit a variety of needs; from solid gold dress watches to solid blocks of stainless steel used for dive watches, from soccer timers to world timers, the Seamaster has seen them all. While other watch companies have various families to cater to various customers, Omega’s Seamaster is unique in its versatility: at one point or another there has been a Seamaster for just about everyone.
