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-A realistic threat
-Connery on top of his game
-One of the series' most beautiful leading ladies
-One of the great henchmen and the best female henchman, Fiona Volpe
-A great location that provides plenty of eye candy
-Despite complaints, the underwater sequences present almost a different world, much like Japan in YOLT, becoming almost a character in itself
-A script that has some of the very best one-liners and dialogue
-A sense of what's at stake with the powers that be scrambling to combat the threat, missing from many of the later films
-An extra dimension in the personal feud between Bond and Largo about Domino
-A real sense of romance between Bond and Domino
-A great John Barry score
Those are just among the main things I find compelling about TB. I have many other things that add to my enjoyment of it.
Are we talking about the script here? If so, do you also feel there's too much focus on the planning of SPECTRE's plot in FRWL as well? Bond is hardly aimlessly on holiday in the Bahamas in the film. What he does relates to his investigation and it all pays off.
I love your list @BT3366 ...
I've never really understood the Thunderball critiques. I've always found it a wonderfully stylish, exciting and elegant film. But I also love the underwater scenes, so...
But if you look up his experiences in World War II, he becomes a lot more sympathetic. And knowing the details for his business dealings with Ivar Bryce and Ian Fleming (who mid-stream started redirecting to other players), there are reasons the court awarded him the rights to Thunderball as they did.
I still don't like him or his actions, still he can be generally understood.
Me too, @matt_u, there's much to enjoy in both films and I've been doing that since they were in theaters. No apologies. Specific to Die Another Day, at the time of its release I gave my positive assessment to a friend and he came back with what about the CGI, the dialog. I could only respond well. that's what they're doing these days. I've seen wildly different content over the years, history also says even so there are always moments to key in on and relish. That's never stopped.
Spectre I have pretty much no reservations for, it's a smooth ride with a lot to enjoy from the first viewing. That assessment hasn't changed for me, very easy to revisit.
I totally concur!
Exactly!
FRWL is a very different film to TB, in terms of its tone, which is done realistically in an espionage thriller style. The story/script itself I'm really taking issue with is the TB novel, but this is adapted fairly accurately to the film too. The SPECTRE plot drags on far longer than it does in FRWL (or feels like it does), particularly the entire scene of the plane hijacking the bombs and taking them under water to hide. That is one scene I skip entirely every time I watch TB.
Having said all this, I don't hate TB. Plus points for me are Connery's performance. Most of the time he is ultra cool, and also the sequences at the health farm and the Bahamas I actually do mostly like, even if it does feel like Connery is just swaggering around in the Bahamas on holiday for most of the time.
Where it drags are the underwater sequences. There are way too many, and are mostly dull and lifeless. And the less said of the catastrophic speeded up boat end scene, the better.
McClory reminds me of one of the characters in Dickens' Bleak House who spend their lives engaged in endless lawsuits. If he was a filmmaker with genuine creativity he would have enjoyed his profits from Thunderball and then gone on to film his own projects, instead of trying to make endless Bonds.
The novel and script of TB deviate a great deal from the Whittingham scripts, and the film is a direct adaptation of the novel, not the Whittingham material.
For more details, I encourage everyone to read John Cork's superb article "Inside Thunderball":
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
There I have to disagree. I think TB is one of Fleming's best books, partly because he wasn't making up the plot as he went along and was free to concentrate on characterization--which is where the film falters.
The movie is a superficially faithful adaptation but lacks the book's heart. Because it was cursed to follow Goldfinger, Thunderball succumbed to excessive gadgetry and story-bloat. As Raymond Benson pointed out in The James Bond Bedside Companion, the script needlessly over-complicated the book's plot by throwing in plastic surgery shenanigans, a pointless reconnaissance of Largo's estate, excessive underwater scenes, and so on.
The result is a rather impersonal film, especially since it lacks the book's strength in characterization. In Fleming's TB Bond is a much more human and vulnerable--in the movie he's a bored superman and you have no idea why he's at Shrublands. In the book, Largo was a dark mirror image of Bond--a suave, handsome ladykiller and mankiller--in the movie he's a fat old man with no personality. Movie Domino is equally dull because they gave most of her personality to Fiona Volpe. But the Domino of the book was equally fiery and sensitive, one of Fleming's best heroines.
The success of Goldfinger was the greatest and worst thing to ever happen to the Bond series. It gave Bond immortality but trapped the films in an ever-tightening formula and set of audience expectations. Thunderball was the first victim.
Me too. TB is near perfect IMO.
And I think that's a key to my enjoyment of TB. We have the inevitable creep into bigger scope and all that comes with it, but the character focus and grit are still there and that imbalance becomes alarming with YOLT. The characters work for me in TB where they just exist to get to another action scene or in another vehicle in YOLT.
Likewise I’ve always enjoyed Adolfo Celi’s character in TB. He was a terrific actor and his roles in other films from the extravagant wealthy building contractor in That Man from Rio, or wife cheating vacationer in Slalom, or the fawning uncle in that awful Stewart Granger thriller Target For Killing, which also starred Karin Dor, are great fun.
TB has always been among my favorite Bond films, but became even more so after doing a night dive on the remaining super structure of the Vulcan aircraft, which rest at 50 feet underwater just off Paradise Island in the Bahamas. It has become a kind of reef and is home to multitudes of sea life. I also had an opportunity to meet and talk with several people who had been extras as divers during the filming. Their stories of course, adding great background to the movie.
SP and TB remain as two of my favorite Bond movies, and are even part of my “goto” collection when I just want something on as background, while I’m doing paperwork.
lol good point, I guess he didn’t! The argument could be made that that wasn’t really even Blofeld, as they’d lost the rights at that point hadn’t they?
Clearly for all intents and purposes he was, but still... ;)
As my great grandmother always used to say, "When one encounters an UFDD (unidentified flying delicatessen dealer), one must make sure he delves deeply into the nearest factory smokestack."
Really massive:
Probably too bonkers of an idea for the tone Spectre was going for, but I'd love to see a version of this pop up in one of the post-Craig Bond films.
To the extent that Madeleine is trying to be Tracy 2.0, Seydoux got the pout right but forgot to pivot to romance (or perhaps Mendes cut those scenes out--and if so, why?).
The emotion in the film should have been firmly centered on Madeleine, but they put it on Blofeld instead. And that's why Logan should not be let near a Bond film again.
There is a hint of Madeleine could have been when she was drunk at L'Americain.
Nobody did it better than Rigg.
I might feel differently about the film then.
But yes, Spectre could do with a good fan edit. If only I knew how to edit film!
Better just to have Madeleine guess who it is because she's been on the fringes of Spectre forever?
You're right, some essence of this scene should exist, but not at all in it's current form.