Location of a thrilling car chase between Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and Zao (Rick Yune) in Die Another Day. The specific setting was Jökulsárlón, an ice lagoon one thousand feet deep with wind chill that comes off the glacier at temperatures around minus ten degrees Celsius (fourteen degrees Fahrenheit).
The key question for the production team was whether the ice could accommodate heavy sports cars like the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish and the Jaguar XKR. Fortunately, the weather continued to provide favorable conditions for the production—specifically, a foot-thick ice cap on the lagoon that was growing every day—which allowed action unit director Vic Armstrong to get started on the sequence two days earlier than expected. However, some sections of ice were deemed too thin to accommodate the chase, so the production was forced to complete the sequence back in England, moving into a business park in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, and a former RAF airfield in nearby Upper Rissington.