Spoiler alert!
Never Say Never Again was a movie that was made by some producer who supposedly helped Ian Fleming come up with the ideas for Thunderball. Ian took the ideas and put them into his novel, and producer Kevin McClorey sued. The results was that Kevin eventually had the rights to make one movie, which had to be a Thunderball ripoff. They were able to get Sean Connery to return for this film and recast all the other major bit players.
I guess I should just compare the two films. The original movie is not one of my favorite Bond films. For instance the underwater scenes are two numorous and boring. One of the major miscalculations of Thunderball was the big underwater shootout at the end. It's hard to give a darn since it's a bunch of extras shooting harpoons at each other. This movie had some underwater scenes but they're thankfully brief. The only problematic underwater scene was the climatic battle with the bad guy. It's too anti-climatic and the villain loses too easily. He's pinned by his own bomb for the last third of the time.
Thunderball does have better action scenes over all. Thunderball had the opening fistfight (think, "It's a MAN, baby!") and Bond's rooftop chase, while the only memorable action scene in NSNA is when he faces the giant henchmen from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The henchmen is as indestructable as Jaws and Bond has to run from room to room trying to find ways to beat him. Too bad it ends with a dumb gag where James throws his urine sample in the bad guy's face, which causes him to land on glass bottles. Other then that, there's a motorcycle chase and a boring shoot out at the end. Nothing memorable happens with the chase scene and the shoot out is like any other. Oh, and the film starts with Bond trying to rescue a woman, but it turns out to be a rather elaborate training course. (please! How much did the garroted guy get paid?)
The plot in this movie seems to be slimmed down from the plot in Thunderball, but I can't say for sure since I can't really remember Thunderball. Thunderball probably had a stronger plot, but NSNA has less underwater scenes. Basically, there's some nukes, SPECTRE steals them, James has to get them. In this movie, the villian Largo is suppose to detonate one of them in the Middle East to destroy the oil supply there. I'm no geologist but that sounds a bit far-fetched.
Eh, that's all I'll say. Once again I'm having problems giving my thoughts. So I'll just get to one of the goofier things about this movie. Basically the Bond movies have always had a bad habit of sticking in something popular at the time that makes the film look dated later. The Man in the Golden Gun had a couple martial art scenes during the martial arts movies craze, while Die Another Day had The Matrix camera gimmicks. This movie was made during the early eighties when Atari was king, so instead of a showdown at the casino, Bond and Largo face off with a vector game. Boy, vector games really were the future, weren't they? I can't wait for Asteroids 07! Largo takes a half minute explaining the rules, but since it's hard to tell who's winning, it's not exactly fun to watch. It's even more silly when it turns out that the joysticks are electrified when you start to lose. It's one of the highlights of this movie. It was also jarring watching Bond-girl Domino walk into an arcade (all Atari games, of course.) I wonder if there were people who burst out laughing when this movies was in theaters.
I have got to share a couple pics!
Bond will be back in, "You Only PWN! Twice"
An accurate photo of what it would be like if Tork and his friend Lita ever met.
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