AVIS Car Rental Window Scene Film Location - Hamburg, Germany
N 53° 33.094 E 010° 00.259
32U E 566537 N 5934100
The coordinates lead you exactly to the location where 007's BMW crashes through the window of the (fake) »AVIS car rental« at Mönckebergstraße, right at the city center of Hamburg, Germany. The three blue water markers on the wall still exist!
Waymark Code: WMK134
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Date Posted: 01/27/2014
Views: 50
Just one James Bond movie was at least partially set up in Hamburg, Germany: »Tomorrow Never Dies« (in German: »Der Morgen stirbt nie«, 1997). They used the old »Terminal 4« of the airport (which is now »Terminal 2«), the exterior of the five-star »Hotel Atlantic«, and just the top (with fake signs) of the 1970s multilevel parking block behind what is now »Saturn« (an electronic store) near the central station.
The most impressive action scene though was set up at Mönckebergstraße, the main shopping mile of Hamburg, when 007's BMW crashes from the top of the adjacent parking block (in fact, there is just a business building across the street) down to the street into a fictional office of »AVIS car rental« (the exact place can be found at the coordinates given above: While the car falling down from the roof is just a computer animation, the crashing through the window though was done for real with a BMW catapulted from the middle of the street. They used four cars in total to get »the perfect shot«!
On July 20th, 1997, the whole day was used to film this particular scene: When you watch the Hamburg scenes in »Tomorrow Never Dies« picture by picture, one will clearly see that the department store »Karstadt« is dark and closed since it was shot on a Sunday! Back in those days, »Galeria Kaufhof«, another department store, looked a bit different since there were no windows but open space (as a pedestrians walkthrough) and an additional staircase down to the central subway station.
The »AVIS office« and the adjacent displays were all fake and only temporary installations for the 007 crew on that particular day in July 1997; nowadays, this room is integrated into »Galeria Kaufhof« and the metro entrance has completely vanished. But apart from that (and the fact that all bus stop signs in Hamburg are now red and not yellow anymore), astonishingly not much has changed here in the past 17 years ...
Have fun walking in the footsteps of James Bond in Hamburg!
[The gallery pictures showing the spectacular action scenes are a courtesy by MGM Home Entertainment (1997/2001)].
Location type: Movie
Movie or Book Title: »Tomorrow Never Dies« (1997)
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