Never Say Never Again (1983) | Bond

Actors and Allies



The best among many things that I love about Never Say Never Again is that it's the swan song from Connery that we deserve. His performances in You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever were miserable, but in NSNA he's right at home. He may not be as spry, but he's as relaxed, engaged, and funny as he was in Thunderball.

M's relationship with Bond is curious. Bernard Lee's M was often cranky, but NSNA turns that way up. We see right away that Edward Fox's M has little use for the whole Double-O division, but he's also not too keen on Q-Branch. When Bond meets Q, that whole department has been largely de-funded and shoved into a sub-basement. M gives away his disdain for gadgets when Bond suggests that SPECTRE may have used a fake eye to put real nukes on the missing missiles. M practically rolls his own eyes right out of his head.

He's also frustrated with Bond personally. His response to news of the attack on Bond at Shrublands is, "Caught you seducing his wife, did he?" He also says that he's tempted to suspend Bond for his attitude, which seems unreasonable in the context of the scene, but really drives home that this is not the M we're used to.

That's really the major arc for the movie though. Bond doesn't change significantly as a result of his mission. He makes some noise at the end about retiring, but with a literal wink. The character who changes is M, who finally sees the value of Bond and the Double-Os once they save the world. By the end of the film, M's ready to send Bond out on more missions, hinting at future movies from Kevin McClory and Connery.

Those never happened of course, though McClory said in interviews at the time that he intended to do more. But as successful as NSNA was, no one was clamoring for a whole series of Thunderball remakes; the only Bond story McClory had the right to produce.

In keeping with the downsizing of his department, Q's attitude towards Bond is way different in NSNA than it is in the Eon movies. He's no longer a member of the establishment, so he doesn't have the same irritation at Bond's irreverence. In fact, he says that he's looking forward to the return of some "gratuitous sex and violence." The movie makes it clear though that this Q is not Major Boothroyd from the Eon films, but someone named Algernon.

Sadly, NSNA doesn't do well by Moneypenny. She comes across as dim-witted and never in on the joke. When Bond tells her that his mission is to "eliminate all free radicals," her response is an overly earnest, "Oh! Do be careful!" And when Bond chastises her for working late, saying that she should be in bed, she has no clue she's making a double-entendre when she replies, "We both should!"

I love Bernie Casey as Felix. He's my favorite of the actors to play that character up to this point. The part isn't written any more strongly than it is in the Eon productions, but Casey makes it memorable. Not just because he's a different race from the traditional Felix, but because he gives the character some personality besides just tagging along and watching Bond work. The only other actor I can think of that was able to do that was Jack Lord, but the personality he brought was kind of cranky. Casey's Felix has an easy, believable camaraderie with Bond. It's easy to imagine these guys as old friends.

As in Thunderball, Bond has a local agent assisting him. This time, it's Nicole (Agent 326). She's okay, but she's intentionally written as being green, unlike Thunderball's agent Paula who was experienced, tough, and brave. Instead of committing suicide to protect secrets, Nicole is simply murdered by Fatima.

The MVP of Bond's NSNA allies though is Nigel Small-Fawcett played by Rowan Atkinson. It's Atkinson's first feature film, but he'd already had success doing sketch comedy on British TV and had just started Black Adder when NSNA came out. By which I mean that he knew what he was doing and he's freaking hilarious. My favorite bit is when he's telling Bond about all of Largo's charity work and Bond adds, "I'm sure he's very nice to his mother." Nigel looks very pensive as he helpfully replies, "Don't know his mother..."

Best Quip



"To be perfectly honest, there was this girl in Philadelphia," to Fatima's insistence that making love to her was the greatest pleasure of his life.

But there are several good ones, so a couple of honorable mentions:

"Then I shall cut out the white bread, sir," after M's explanation that free radicals are toxins caused by consuming too much red meat, white bread, and dry martinis.

"I shouldn't have the fish," to party goers as Bond takes away a groaning bouncer whom he's just punched in the stomach.

Worst Quip



"You could write a very binding contract with this," concerning Q's rocket pen.

Gadgets



The rocket pen comes in handy and so does the laser watch. Those are the two, personal-sized pieces of equipment that Bond uses.

Q also sends him a motorcycle, but it's disappointing compared to vehicles in the Eon series. It has a cool turbo boost that shoots flame out the back, but other than some questionable bumpers, it's really just a cool-looking bike. I kept expecting to see some rockets, but I must have been confusing it with Fiona's ride in Thunderball.

I hesitate to mention the XT-7B missile-fired hover platforms that Bond and Felix use, because they're US Navy property and not MI6 (like M would ever spring for those), but they're pretty cool and worth at least a shout-out.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Glastron CV23HT speed boat (Moonraker)
5. Acrostar Mini Jet (Octopussy)
6. Crocodile submarine (Octopussy)
7. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
8. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
9. Ski pole rocket (The Spy Who Loved Me)
10. Magnetic buzzsaw watch (Live and Let Die)

Bond's Best Outfit



And I'm not just saying that to butter up Kelly. It's even better since that's what Bond's companion was wearing in the scene before.

Bond's Worst Outfit



I know he was just working out, but he has better exercise wear in this movie than this plain, frumpy sweatsuit.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Villains

Karl Stromberg has all the makings of what should be my favorite Bond villain. He's what I'd want to be if I was a bad guy; from his cool, webbed fingers to his giant, submersible headquarters. The HQ is even called Atlantis and is appropriately located in the Mediterranean.

It's too bad then that Curt Jurgens plays him so lethargically. On the one hand, it makes him seem very powerful that he doesn't have to do much for himself. But on the other, it's dull to watch. It's not only that he's physically inactive; it's that he just looks so bored.

His plan isn't original either. He's basically copying SPECTRE's scheme from You Only Live Twice, but stealing submarines instead of space capsules. (That's even sadder when you know that the Spy villain was actually going to be SPECTRE through most of the writing process until Kevin McClory reminded everyone that he had the rights to that organization.) What saves Stromberg's plot from being totally derivative is his motivation. Instead of using the threat of nuclear war to make money, Stromberg means to just go ahead and blow the place up so he can start the human race over in an underwater civilization. There's a great moment when this confuses Bond, who thinks he's dealing with another Blofeld. It's a great twist; it's just too bad it gets repeated in the very next movie. But let me not get ahead of myself.

Stromberg's also pretty smart. He does leave a dead woman's arm in the shark tank where any visitor can see it, so that's kind of lazy and dumb. But that's not a fatal mistake. Bond's already onto him by then. The only way anyone catches on to Stromberg's plans is because he's betrayed from within his organization. Once that happens, Stromberg's pretty powerless to stop it even though he sends his assassins out to try to clean things up.

I even like how Stromberg captures the US sub with Bond on it even though he doesn't need it to complete his plan. Stromberg has no idea that Bond's on there, but it's obvious that the sub is tracking Stromberg, so it's smart to try to neutralize it before it can do anything to stop him.



Jaws is iconic, but he doesn't do anything for me. He's strong and ridiculously tough, but he's also slow. That would be a fine weakness for Bond to exploit, except that the movie likes to pretend that Jaws is fast enough to go head to head with Bond. I'd much rather see Jaws as a smarter villain who has to accommodate for his lack of speed by tricking Bond into getting within reach. That said, there are some great, effective moments with him, like when he's tearing apart the van and when he's fighting Bond in a confined railroad cabin.



It's interesting to me that Jaws and Sandor are a team and that Jaws is in charge. Jaws is never portrayed as very bright, but that doesn't mean he's dumb and I like that his leadership role implies that there's more going on there than we're seeing.

Of course, it could just mean that Sandor is even dumber, which is kind of born out when he meets Bond. He shoots once, kills Felicca, then runs as soon as Bond draws a gun. Even though Sandor has great cover and plenty of bullets left, he takes off and leads Bond to the roof for a hand to hand fight. Even if Sandor is really confident of his hand to hand ability, why give up the easy kill in the bedroom?



Naomi introduces herself as Stromberg's assistant, but she's also a helicopter pilot and assassin. I wish she had a bigger role in the movie, but it might be because she's so sparingly used that she's cool and mysterious.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
6. Doctor No (Dr. No)
7. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
9. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
10. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
6. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
7. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
9. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
10. Tee Hee (Live and Let Die)

Thunderball (1965) | Story

Plot Summary

SPECTRE steals a couple of nuclear bombs and it's up to Bond to get them back.

Influences

It's mostly a faithful adaptation of the novel Thunderball, though that of course was adapted by Ian Fleming from the movie treatment he'd created with writer/director Kevin McClory and others. That's why McClory gets a producer credit on this film.

The court battle over Thunderball had ended during the production of Goldfinger when Fleming - who was very sick by this time - more or less gave up. The novel could remain in print with Fleming's name on the cover, but future editions would have to credit McClory and writer Jack Whittingham as contributors to the film treatment the book was based on. And McClory won the complete TV and movie rights to the story.

McClory was actually working on his own version of a Thunderball movie, but the popularity of Sean Connery as Bond made McClory realize that he'd have a hard time competing. He went to Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli with the offer to make the film together. They weren't keen on it at first, but Columbia's Casino Royale spoof was also in the works and Saltzman/Broccoli realized that a third Bond film would be bad for them. And if they were ever going to be able to adapt Thunderball, this was the time. So they scrapped their plans to make On Her Majesty's Secret Service the next movie and accepted McClory's offer.

While not strictly influences, there are a couple of references to other movies in Thunderball. For instance, when Bond tells SPECTRE assassin Fiona, "I've grown accustomed to your face," he's quoting the Audrey Hepburn version of My Fair Lady that had come out the year before. And earlier in the movie, he tells Shrublands employee Patricia Fearing that he'll see her "another time, another place," which was the name of a Sean Connery movie from 1958.

How Is the Book Different?

The plot is very close to the novel, but McClory had continued tweaking the script and there are changes, mostly great ones. For example, the movie drops M's interest in fads as the reason Bond begins the story at the Shrublands health resort. The alternative reason it offers isn't super plausible, but I'm glad that M is less of a joke than he was in the book. Speaking of which, Bond and Moneypenny's relationship is also different from the book, but I'll say more about that tomorrow.

A third, positive change is Bond's reason for going to the Bahamas to search for the missing bombs. The book makes that a hunch on M's part, but in the movie it's Bond who suggests it and he has a good reason for doing so. Which brings me to...

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



Because Bond goes to Nassau on his own hunch instead of M's, he's putting his reputation on the line with the Foreign Secretary who's running the operation. That's a big change from the book, but it gives M the opportunity to stick up for Bond to the Secretary, which is totally something that the literary M would do.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



As Sean Connery's Bond becomes increasingly solidified as a character, he moves further and further away from the literary Bond. I'll talk more about this tomorrow, but it's not entirely a bad thing. It is partly a bad thing though, because as sadistic and chauvinistic as the literary Bond is, he's not as oppressive and creepy as Sean Connery in his interaction with Patricia Fearing. Bond not only packed a weird, mink glove to take to the resort; he also blackmails Pat into having sex with him. That's in line with the way he treats Pussy Galore in the Goldfinger movie, but I can't imagine Fleming's Bond doing that. In the novel, Pat supplies the mink glove and blackmail never enters the picture.

Cold Open



The cold open for Thunderball doesn't have much to do with the main plot, but I can see what they're going for. Each cold open so far has tried to outdo the one before. From Russia With Love featured a quiet, moody death, Goldfinger had a couple of gadgets and a short fight, and Thunderball offers a prolonged fight sequence and some major gadgets, including the return of Bond's Aston Martin.

And it's not like the opening has nothing to do with the main plot. Not only does Blofeld refer to it in his SPECTRE briefing, but recovering from that fight is at least part of the reason Bond starts the movie proper at Shrublands. It's the best cold open so far, even if the opening shot of the initials JB on a coffin is a sad and poorly executed idea.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. Thunderball
2. Goldfinger
3. From Russia With Love
4. TBD
5. TBD
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Movie Series Continuity



Blofeld and SPECTRE are back of course, after sitting Goldfinger out. As in From Russia With Love, we still don't see his face and he still has the white cat.

Bond's trick of throwing his hat onto Moneypenny's hatrack makes its fourth appearance in as many movies, though with a humorous twist. Bond enters her office and is about to toss his hat when he realizes that the hatrack has been moved right next to the door where he's standing. Disappointed, he just puts it on the rack like a normal person.

And finally, there are apparently a lot more Double-O agents in the movie universe than in Fleming's. The books only talk about three, but when Bond attends the conference room briefing with "every Double-O in Europe" there are nine chairs. Incidentally, the seventh one is Bond's.

Thunderball by Ian Fleming

The creation of Thunderball is notoriously complicated. If most of For Your Eyes Only was the result of Fleming’s trying to bring Bond back to television, Thunderball was the result of his trying to get a film made. In late 1958, he teamed up with a few people including Irish writer/director Kevin McClory, hoping to create a Bond movie. Fleming and McClory weren’t the only people involved, but they were the two who ended up in court, so I’ll focus on them. Not that I’m going to spend much time on that drama, but it’s important to see how the book developed.

According to Wikipedia, Fleming’s confidence in the potential movie fluctuated throughout its development, in part because one of McClory’s other movies bombed at the box office around that same time. So Fleming was more involved at some times and less at others, but between him and the other writers, close to a dozen different treatments, outlines, and scripts were created with lots of different titles. It’s impossible to verify who created what exactly, especially when it comes to the story’s most famous contributions to Bond lore: Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE. Though the courts gave those elements to McClory for years, there’s a strong case to be made for Fleming’s contributing to them, especially since Diamonds Are Forever and From Russia with Love clearly show that he had a fondness for the word “spectre.”

Regardless of who contributed how much and which parts, Fleming was certainly on ethically shaky ground when he turned the collaboration into a novel with just his name on it. Once McClory got wind of that, he petitioned the courts to stop publication. That was denied, but the courts left the door open for McClory to pursue later action, starting a long, bitter feud between him and Fleming (as well as future caretakers of Bond’s adventures).