Never Say Never Again (1983) | Story

Plot Summary

A new M has mothballed the Double-O section, but reinstates it and Bond when SPECTRE steals a couple of nukes.

Influences

Since Kevin McClory had the rights to Thunderball and SPECTRE, he made his own movie and convinced Sean Connery to return and play Bond. The title comes from Connery's promise to "never again" play the character, but he didn't like Cubby Broccoli and couldn't pass up the opportunity to ruffle those feathers.

How Is the Book Different?

Never Say Never Again sticks closely to its source material for legal reasons. McClory only had the rights to this one story. But he was able to mess around with details like locations, how particular events go down, and even characters' motivations and personalities.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



One thing that NSNA keeps straight from the novel is M's sending Bond to Shrublands because M's a health nut. In the book, it's just a fad that M's latched onto, but we don't know NSNA's M well enough to know if that's it or if he's always this way. From the way he acts the rest of the time, you get the feeling that he's just got a big ol' stick up his butt.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



Bond playing video games. You could argue that it's merely an update of Bond's general passion for gaming and I'd let you have it. It feels cynically contemporary to me, but that might say more about me than about the movie.

Cold Open



There's not really a cold open in NSNA. The credits start right away, but the scene they're running over sort of serves the same function as a teaser in the official series. It's a short adventure in which Bond infiltrates a jungle base, rescues a girl, and is betrayed and apparently murdered by her. It's easy to imagine this running without credits up until the point where Bond is stabbed. Then after the credits, they could open with the reveal that it was all a training exercise.

I'm not saying they should have done it that way though. I certainly see the rationale for not getting too close to the way Eon was doing things. All I'm saying is that it's easy to pull this scene out and compare it to the Eon teasers. But doing that, it doesn't stand up super well. It's nice to see Connery back in action, but there are no stunts or even really a story. It's a standard, '80s action movie sequence. Even so, it's still better acted than the Diamonds Are Forever teaser and more exciting than the From Russia with Love one, so it's gonna crack the Top Ten for now.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Moonraker
3. Thunderball
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. Goldfinger
6. The Man with the Golden Gun
7. For Your Eyes Only
8. Octopussy
9. Never Say Never Again
10. From Russia With Love

Movie Series Continuity



You wouldn't think there'd be any movie continuity in a film so separated from the official series, but NSNA builds in and refers to its own continuity and it's interesting how it potentially intersects with the Eon films. M is obviously not the same man whom Bond is used to working for. Bond mentions that since the new M took over, he's "had little use for the Double-Os." In fact, Bond's been stuck in a teaching gig and the training exercises are just to measure his fitness.

What's interesting to me is that Octopussy, released the same year, also introduces a new M (or at least a new actor, but I think of him as a whole different character). With the death of Sir Miles Messervy sometime after For Your Eyes Only, we've got two different scenarios that explore the results of two possible replacements. Octopussy's new M has a different temperament from his predecessor, but the same regard for MI6's traditional methods. The NSNA M feels very differently and only reactivates the Double-O section to deal with the new SPECTRE crisis.

It's also curious that when M starts talking about Bond's health, Bond anticipates that M's sending him to Shrublands. Bond's either heard of colleagues being sent there or has been sent there himself. The latter possibility raised a question for me about whether or not Thunderball happened in this timeline, but I shot that down quickly. It's madness to think that SPECTRE's pulled this exact scheme before and no one even mentions it.

A couple of other things leak in from the official series, though one of them is probably just pulling from the novels. That's the reappearance of Bond's Bentley, last seen in the movies in From Russia with Love. It's a different color than that one, but it's also a different color from the gunmetal gray car in the books. I love Bond's line about how it's "still in pretty good shape." He's obviously not just talking about the car. I wish the script would have left that subtle though instead of having Bond repeat the comment seconds later in explicit reference to himself.

The other thing NSNA has in common with the Eon films is Bond's notoriety. When Fatima Blush catches sight of him at Shrublands, she immediately identifies him as 007.

You Only Live Twice (1967) | Bond

Actors and Allies



After such a wonderful, relaxed performance of Bond in Thunderball, Sean Connery is clearly fed up with the part in You Only Live Twice. He was frustrated with Saltzman and Broccoli for not cutting him a larger slice of the enormous financial pie the Bond series was creating, but he was also irritated by the shoot in Japan and the large crowds of fans who continually disrupted the process. Part of the problem with YOLT's Bond is the script - Dahl's isn't nearly as charming as the one for Thunderball - but Connery looks bored with the whole deal. There are moments of levity, but mostly he's phoning it in. It's especially noticeable in the action sequences where he can barely be bothered to aim.

The Moneypenny scene is again mutually playful. Later on, Tanaka will suggest that Moneypenny is interested in more from Bond, but I don't see that in Lois Maxwell's performance. And I like that Bond calls her "Penny," which I'm guessing isn't her first name, but just a nickname. I don't think that ever comes up again though.

Speaking of Tiger, Tetsurō Tamba was a great choice to play him and he's what I imagine now when I read the book. His ninjas are the worst though. The polar opposite of stealthy, especially when they invade the SPECTRE volcano.

Q shows up and he's cranky as usual, but there's no real animosity between him and Bond.

And then there's Henderson. I mentioned yesterday how he's different from the crude bigot in Fleming's novel, but I still don't like him. Charles Gray's performance is a cartoon. He's a spoof of a stuffy Englishman and impossible to take seriously. And of course there's the famous blunder in which Henderson offers Bond a "stirred, not shaken" martini. Bond's too polite to correct him, but geez, Henderson. You had one job. (Well, that and get murdered.)

Best Quip



"Bon appétit," as the piranhas are eating Blofeld's henchman, Hans.

Worst Quip



"Just a drop in the ocean," in response to Tanaka's fishing for a compliment after dropping some bad guys from a helicopter into the ocean.

Gadgets



Bond doesn't have many British-issued gadgets in You Only Live Twice. Tanaka and SPECTRE both have a few, most notably the cigarette rockets that Tanaka loans Bond, but the only ones provided by Q-Branch are a safe-cracking device and Little Nellie.

The safe-cracker is lame, because it's never mentioned before Bond conveniently pulls it out of a coat pocket to use. There's no reason for him to be carrying it since he'd gone out that evening just to meet with Henderson.

Little Nellie is cool though. The gyrocopter is outfitted with machine guns, missiles, rocket launchers, flame guns, a smoke machine, and aerial mines; almost all of which get used in the excellent dogfight with SPECTRE helicopters.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
2. Jet pack (Thunderball)
3. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
4. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
5. Attaché case (From Russia With Love)
6. Propeller SCUBA tank with built-in spearguns (Thunderball)
7. Rebreather (Thunderball)
8. Camera-tape recorder; mostly because it reminds me of a camera my dad used to use (From Russia With Love)
9. Seagull SCUBA hat (Goldfinger)
10. Book tape-recorder (Thunderball)

Bond's Best Outfit



I do dig a light gray suit.

Bond's Worst Outfit



Pink shirt. Gray, high-waisted, sansabelt slacks. Brown sandals.

Thunderball (1965) | Music

After the worldwide success of Goldfinger, the budget for Thunderball got much much bigger. One of the improvements with the new money was to film the whole thing in Panavision anamorphic widescreen, which meant reshooting the opening gun barrel sequence. In the first three films, the Bond that walks into the gun barrel, turns, and shoots is stuntman Bob Simmons. And he's in black and white. With Thunderball, they replaced Simmons with Sean Connery on color film.

According to title designer Maurice Binder, who had resolved his dispute with Saltzman and Broccoli and was back after sitting out the last two films, he'd seen the pre-title sequence and knew that it ended with the Aston Martin's shooting water at the screen. He decided to merge that into the title sequence and went the opposite direction from the two Robert Brownjohn sequences. Instead of projecting light onto women's bodies against a dark background, Binder filmed swimmers and projected their silhouettes against colorized images of bubbles in the water. The effect was a huge success and became the template for almost every Bond title sequence that followed. It's a good sequence, hinting at the underwater motif that's so important to the film, and I love the way the titles come in looking like light reflecting on water.

Meanwhile, John Barry brought back "Goldfinger" co-writer Leslie Bricusse to help write the new title song and they came up with "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" after a nickname for Bond created by the Italian press. Shirley Bassey was also brought back to record it, but Saltzman and Brocolli weren't totally happy with her version.



Part of why they didn't like it was the arrangement, so the second version featured a longer intro that works in the Bond theme and allows the lyrics to start after we've seen the name of the film. But they could have rerecorded that and still used Bassey, so there was apparently something about her performance that they also didn't care for. In the second version, they used Dionne Warwick. I don't know what the producers' specific issues were, but Bassey's version is bombastic while Warwick's is sultry. I love Bassey, but if they were going for a seductive quality, I can see why they preferred Warwick's take.


It was United Artists that put the halt on even that version though. They thought the theme song ought to actually mention the name of the movie (and generally speaking, they weren't wrong), so they sent Barry back to start over. This time he teamed up with Don Black, who was the manager and occasional song-writer of From Russia With Love singer Matt Monro. Barry and Black quickly banged out the "Thunderball" theme, brought in Tom Jones to sing it, and the rest is history (though elements of "Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" are still in the soundtrack, particularly in the song the band's playing at the Kiss Kiss Club when Fiona's shot.

Incidentally, Johnny Cash also submitted a song using the film's name. It's a pretty good Johnny Cash song, but - and I say this as a huge fan of Cash - it's not a passable Bond theme. Maybe Barry could have done something with it, but I still think he made the right choice.



I love Tom Jones and I love the music of the final song, but I don't love the lyrics. Maybe it's because I've never been able to decide whom they refer to. Is the song about Bond, like "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"? Or is it about the villain - Largo, in this case - like the theme to Goldfinger? The words are ambiguous enough that they could refer to either, which sort of makes them refer to neither. They're generic.

As with Goldfinger, Barry doesn't use the James Bond Theme a lot in Thunderball. It shows up during the pre-credits fight (helpful for getting audiences in the mood) and again to close things out at the very end, but for the most part Barry uses elements of the two theme songs and also the 007 Theme he created for From Russia With Love. I guess another way of looking at it is that Barry's using the Bond Theme more and more sparingly as the series goes on.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. Dr No
2. Thunderball
3. Goldfinger
4. From Russia With Love
5. TBD
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Thunderball (1965) | Villains

Blofeld is back in Thunderball, again played by Anthony Dawson's (Professor Dent from Dr. No) hands and Eric Pohlmann's voice. He's more effective here though than he was in From Russia With Love where he was closer to the planning of the caper. In Thuderball, he's able to remain in the shadows and leave the success or failure of the plot to the movie's real villain, Emilio Largo.



Italian actor Adolfo Celi plays Largo, but like so many early Bond villains, his voice was dubbed. The voice actor was Robert Rietty, who would go on to voice Blofeld in For Your Eyes Only and also have a bit part in the Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again. Celi is a memorable villain, thanks in large part to his eyepatch, but he also has some of that calm aloofness that I admired so much in Auric Goldfinger. He's more suave than Goldfinger though, so his emotional detachment feels like an affectation. A very polished affectation, but disingenuous nonetheless.

Some of that also has to do with his big weakness and the reason he fails in his mission. He's too attached to Domino. That was also true in the novel, so it's not like the movie is dumbing Largo down. He's actually a very smart bad guy, but he does occasionally let his passions get the better of him and needs to be reined in. Someone should have told him that keeping Domino around after having her brother murdered was a bad idea. She's the hole in his armor and the whole plan would have succeeded if not for her.



I hate calling Fiona Volpe a henchman, because she's actually smarter than Largo. When Largo wants to have Bond killed, it's Fiona who advises him against it, knowing that Bond's death will let MI6 know for sure that Bond was on the right track. But she takes her orders from Largo and fits the henchman definition in every way, so that's how I'm going to classify her.

She really makes no mistakes though, except for maybe wearing her SPECTRE ring in public, but that doesn't lead to any serious defeat. Bond knows she's a bad guy, but she still captures him and it's only through his own awesome resourcefulness that he gets away and she ends up dead. She makes Bond look better because she's also so good at her job.



There are a couple of other henchmen that need mentioning even though they don't do much and I don't like them. Count Lippe is a fool and turns Bond onto the whole caper by needlessly trying to murder Bond at Shrublands. Yeah, Bond saw his tong tattoo, but that needn't have led Bond to SPECTRE.



Vargas has the ingredients for an interesting villain with his cold ruthlessness and lack of vice, but the movie doesn't do anything with him except let him be killed really easily (though wonderfully and memorably). He's a wasted character and barely qualifies as a henchman. More of a glorified thug.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Doctor No (Dr. No)
4. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
5. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
6. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
2. Grant (From Russia With Love)
3. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
4. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
5. Professor Dent (Dr. No)
6. Morzeny (From Russia With Love)
7. Vargas (Thunderball)
8. Count Lippe (Thunderball)
9. TBD
10. TBD

Thunderball (1965) | Women

For the most part, the women of Thunderball are served much better than those from Goldfinger. There's not much to the first one we meet though. In fact, the movie never reveals her name. According to IMDB, it's Madame LaPorte, a French spy played by French-Japanese actress Mitsouko. We get no sense of who she is or what she's like; she's just there for Bond to explain things to so the audience isn't lost.



Pat Fearing, Bond's physical therapist at Shrublands, gets more to do, though he doesn't treat her very well. When he's injured by a piece of equipment on her watch (though not due to any fault of hers), he blackmails her into having sex with him. It's a creepy move on his part, but besides giving into that she seems more or less like the kind of woman who can take care of herself. She's strong-willed, but only up to a point, which I imagine Bond finds very attractive.



I'm going to talk more about Fiona Volpe tomorrow when we cover villains, but she deserves a couple of thoughts here too. Like Pat, Fiona is also strong-willed, but she takes it much further and that's what I like about her. She's probably the smartest bad guy in the movie and is Bond's biggest rival in most ways.



The literary Domino is one of my favorite women in the novels and the movie version does a nice job of capturing her. Mostly. Claudine Auger has a hard time balancing the confidence and vulnerability of the book's version, so she seems awesomely unaffected by Bond one minute and then the next she's moaning about the way he holds her.

One of the things I'm tracking in these movies is when the female lead turns totally stupid, because it happens a lot in the series. But I'm learning that that's a later development. It doesn't happen with Honey, Tatiana, or even Pussy, and it doesn't happen with Domino either. Once she knows who the good guys and bad guys are, Domino is very brave and agrees to help Bond even though she's in way over her head. A stronger actress would have made her a better character, but I very much like the way she's written.



My favorite woman in Thunderball though is Paula Caplan. She's Bond's assistant in Nassau and I'll get to why I like her in a second. But first, it's worth noting that she's played by Jamaican actress Martine Beswick, who also appeared in two other Bond films. She was one of the Romani women in the death match during From Russia With Love, but she was also one of the silhouette dancers in the opening credits of Dr. No. Terrance Young, who directed all three movies, apparently liked her a lot. She'd go on to appear in various Hammer films like One Million Years BC, Prehistoric Women, and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

What makes the character so cool though is that she's a beautiful woman, but there's absolutely no hint of sexual anything between her and Bond. No flirting, no nothing. It's all completely professional and knowing Bond, I'm giving her the credit for that. And as much as I hate to see her go, I also love the way she dies. Not by being roughed up by Largo's men (though she is), but by her own choice via cyanide capsule. It's a tragic death, but it's an heroic one too. Absolutely love her.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
2. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
3. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
4. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
5. Honey Rider (Dr. No)
6. Sylvia Trench (Dr. No and From Russia With Love)
7. Pussy Galore (Goldfinger)
8. Tilly Masterson (Goldfinger)
9. Jill Masterson (Goldfinger)
10. The Photographer (Dr. No)

Thunderball (1965) | Bond

Actors and Allies



Yesterday, I mentioned that Moneypenny and Bond's relationship was changed slightly from the novel Thunderball. That's because Fleming had weirdly changed it for the novel. The literary Bond and Moneypenny never flirt (that's something he does with his own secretaries, not with his boss'), but in Thunderball Fleming wrote that Moneypenny had a crush on Bond. It never came up again in the books, so maybe he thought better of it, but it was also creeping into the movies with Goldfinger. In Dr. No and From Russia With Love, Bond and Moneypenny flirt, but it's entirely mutual and there's no hint that she wants anything more from him than he wants from her. In Goldfinger though, I got the feeling that she was starting to have romantic thoughts about him. Fortunately, that's all gone in Thunderball and we're back to sheer, mutual playfulness.

Felix Leiter is also back and I like Rik Van Nutter in the part. He's not a very good actor, but he looks like the literary Felix with his lean handsomeness, sandy hair, and relaxed demeanor. Visually, we won't get another Felix this good until the Timothy Dalton era.

One of Bond's most important allies in Thunderball is his assistant, Paula, but I'm going to talk more about her tomorrow.

An overlooked ally is Bond's Nassau contact, Pinder, played by Earl Cameron. It's a small part, but also an important one. Pinder is competent, useful, and surprisingly ubiquitous through the middle part of the movie. I enjoy watching him a lot.

In fact, Pinder is a bigger character in Thunderball than Q, who only appears in one scene. That's not unusual for the series, but Thunderball uses him in a weird way, sending him all the way to Nassau to outfit Bond, but then never mentioning him again. There will be plenty more of that in the later Bond movies, but it's kind of surprising here when we see it for the first time. We do get a chuckle out of the situation though when Bond realizes his mission has been invaded by Q and he says, "Oh no" like he means it. The mutual disdain between the men has been escalating over the last couple of films and Thunderball continues to play that up. Eventually, we'll see that Bond and Q's ribbing each other is actually affectionate, but here it can be read either way.

As for Bond, Connery is completely at ease with his character; possibly more than in any other movie. That's not to say that he looks uncomfortable in the first three films, but he's got this part down by Thunderball and he's never funnier. That's largely due to Connery's delivery, but the script is also the funniest in the series so far. As I was keeping track of quips to figure out the best one, I was surprised by how many great lines Bond has in Thunderball.

Best Quip



Choosing the best quip turned out to be easy though. As funny as the whole movie is, nothing beats Bond's setting Fiona's corpse in a chair at the Kiss Kiss Club and asking the people at the table if his "friend can sit this one out. She's just dead." And Bond looks simultaneous pained by the pun and completely amused with himself as he turns away from them. Just perfect.

Worst Quip



There aren't any full-blown stinkers in the movie, but the one with the worst landing is when Bond takes off his jet pack and declares, "No well-dressed man should be without one." It's not horrible, but it's also not trying very hard.

Gadgets



Speaking of the jet pack, it's my favorite gadget in the movie, but there are plenty to choose from. And that's not even counting SPECTRE gadgets like Fiona's missile-firing motorcycle and Largo's tricked out yacht (I've decided only to include Bond's gadgets in my Top Ten). The Aston Martin makes another appearance (this time firing water cannons instead of creating an oil slick), but there's also a tape-recorder disguised as a book, a geiger counter watch, a geiger counter camera, a radioactive pill that acts as a homing beacon when swallowed, a handy rebreather for underwater work, and a propeller-driven SCUBA tank set up with built in spearguns and plenty of underwater grenades. Q really outdoes himself this time.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
2. Jet pack (Thunderball)
3. Attaché case (From Russia With Love)
4. Propeller SCUBA tank with built-in spearguns (Thunderball)
5. Rebreather (Thunderball)
6. Camera-tape recorder; mostly because it reminds me of a camera my dad used to use (From Russia With Love)
7. Seagull SCUBA hat (Goldfinger)
8. Book tape-recorder (Thunderball)
9. Geiger counter watch (Thunderball)
10. Geiger counter camera (Thunderball)

Bond's Best Outfit



I got tired of looking at Bond's suits and trying to decide which color scheme I liked best, so I picked this poolside outfit he wears with blue swim trunks and a watermelon shirt. It's bold, but he pulls it off.

Bond's Worst Outfit



I couldn't find a great screenshot of this entire outfit, but the straw hat is only part of the problem. Bond's pants exactly match the color of his shirt and that's a real issue for me. Looks like he's wearing pajamas.

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": The Comic Strip

When Fleming published "The Living Daylights" in the Sunday Times, the newspaper he worked for, rather than in the Daily Express, which had been the home of most of Bond's other newspaper adventures, it created a rift between Fleming and the Express. In fact, the feelings were so bad that the Express abruptly cancelled the James Bond comic strip less than halfway into its adaptation of Thunderball.

The "Thunderball" strip begins well and looks like it would have maintained the quality of the adaptations that immediately preceded it. Gammidge and McLusky's version is funny, but not as hilarious as Fleming's. On the other hand, they also don't make too much out of Moneypenny's sudden, but retroactive crush on Bond. There's some minor flirting, but it's much less an abrupt change than what Fleming suggests in the novel.

Gammidge continues his recent trend of including as much of the plot as possible, which is either awesome or tedious, depending on the scene. I enjoyed all the shenanigans at Shrublands, for instance, but the SPECTRE meeting went on longer than I wanted it to. Like I've said before though, I'm glad the longer version is in there for me to either read or skim, depending on how I feel at the time.



Though Fleming and the Express made up later, "Thunderball" was never properly finished. Six extra strips were added to complete the story for syndication to other papers, but they only sketch out the last two thirds of the novel in the loosest possible way. McLusky's art looks as good as always, but the story is jarring in its speed to wrap up. The legitimate adaptation ends with Giaseppe Petacchi's hijacking the plane carrying the atomic bombs, but not having landed it in the ocean yet. The very next strip has Bond and Leiter discovering the location of the plane. There's no mention of how they found it or why they're even in the Caribbean in the first place. Domino is completely missing from the story and though Largo is mentioned, he's never seen.

"Thunderball" ends up being a lousy adaptation, but it's an interesting look at the people behind it (the creators, but also the newspaper they work for) trying to make the best of a bad situation. I say that without excusing the cancellation of the strip. I don't know the thought process the Express went through before making that decision, so maybe they had a valid gripe or maybe they were just greedy and petulant. But moral judgments about how they got there aside, they found themselves in a creative dilemma with a cancelled strip and syndication obligations to fulfill. I'm not even saying that they made the right creative choices in "finishing" the story, but from a process standpoint, it's fascinating to watch them try.



(By the way, this is my 4000th post on this blog. Yikes.)

Octopussy and The Living Daylights | "The Living Daylights"

"The Living Daylights" was first published in 1962 as part of a color supplement for The Sunday Times. The Times was a rival to the Daily Express, which had been serializing and adapting Bond stories for about six years by that point, so the Express was naturally upset. In fact, "The Living Daylights" created a big rift between Fleming and the Express to the point that the Bond strip was abruptly ended part way through the adaptation of Thunderball. More about that on Thursday, though. "The Living Daylights" was also published in the United States a few months later in Argosy magazine.

I have a lot of praise to gush on the movie The Living Daylights, which I'll do at the proper time, but one of the things I love about it as that it adapts its short story pretty faithfully, but with a twist that propels the rest of the movie. In the short story, Bond is called to Berlin to assassinate the person who has in turn been assigned to assassinate someone escaping to the West. In the short story, the escapee is a returning double agent instead of a defector, but Bond is still supervised by a tiresome liaison and still changes his shot when he discovers that his target is a woman. And not just any woman, but a cellist he's been watching and fantasizing about as she's come and go from a nearby building over a few days.

One of my favorite lines in the movie version is when Bond lashes back at his annoying supervisor by exclaiming that the worst that can happen is that M will fire Bond, but that Bond would "thank him for it." I've always associated that with Bond's attitude at the end of Casino Royale, but re-reading "The Living Daylights" reminds me that it's yet another element right out of the short story. Bond is uncharacteristically sulky in this story and grumbles a couple of times about not minding if he gets kicked out of the Double-O section.

The best explanation that I have for that is that Bond is changing as a person. He's become less and less selfish since Dr No and has apparently become a happier person for it. Certainly his sense of humor has improved in Goldfinger and Thunderball. There's even a bit in "The Living Daylights" where he acknowledges to someone that the Bentley is a "selfish car." That kind of awareness is remarkable and important. It shows that while Bond still loves his car, he's also a little embarrassed about what it says about his past self. He sees that past selfishness and is able to comment on it, which I don't think he would've been able to do in the early books.

As Bond continues to change, it makes sense that he's becoming less patient with the uglier aspects of his job. His current mission is outright, cold-blooded assassination. He's never been super fond of that (as we saw in From Russia with Love), but it seems to be really getting at him now. The only time he's seemed okay with it was in "For Your Eyes Only," but that was more about his compassion for M than about willingly taking another person's life. My theory about Bond's attitude in "The Living Daylights" is that the assignment has got him especially down and is creating a bad attitude about his job and life in general. If it pops up again over the next few assignments, I'll adjust that theory, but it works for now.

One last thing that bothers me (not about Fleming's writing, but about Bond's mindset) is that Domino doesn't come up at all. From a storytelling perspective, I don't actually expect her to, but from a fannish, continuity-exploring perspective, I wish that there was more fallout from that relationship than just Bond's fantasizing about a pretty cellist. I fantasized myself about Bond and Domino's forming a mature relationship, so it hurts a little that she's just disappeared over the last couple of stories. There may be good, extratextual reasons for that (McClory?), but again, I'm just talking about continuity. Something apparently happened between Bond and Domino to sour things and I want some closure. I don't expect Fleming's next full novel, The Spy Who Loved Me to explain it, but I wish it would. And if not, I'm perfectly willing to come up with something on my own.

[Argosy cover found at Galactic Central]

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).