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Overall it's really not bad - however I like TB much better.
Excellent post.You are right in that the film actually makes a point of Bonds age ( Something which the official series at the time failed to do with Roger ) and its a fine film for Connery to bow out on.Also Barbara Carrera is superb as Fatima Blush and actually gives Fiona Volpe in TB a run for her money in the femme fatale stakes.I honestly cant choose between the two as to who was better they were both so good!
Aren't we slicing things a little bit thin here? We like the fact that they acknowledge Bond's age? How come then they don't do anything with it? Is it ever an obstacle, like in SF? Is it ever actually called out by anyone other than M? Does Bond get some kind of redemption, other than his retirement - which, coming from Connery, had become a joke at this point, and not a funny one.
Barbara Carrera may have been enjoyable, she still stays miles behind Luciana Paluzzi. Yelling like a madwoman and purring like Eartha Kitt doesn't make her performance great. Luciana oozed danger, Barbara's performance said "lights out!". If that's good, then Michael Keaton was the greatest Thespian alive in [img][/img]this scene from Batman.
Where are the great stunts? Where are thrilling car chases? Where are the great action set pieces? Where is the wonderful, groundbreaking score? Where's the kick-ass Theme Song? Even some of the lesser EON films like DAF, TMWTGG and AVTAK had those. NSNA instead opts for all the bad things. The opening scene feels pried from the average Golan-Globus actioner, the power ballad that they have playing is headache inducing and the rest of the film just feels "off". As a curiosity, and only as a curiosity, NSNA works. Connery isn't Bond in this film but just Connery and I guess I'm okay with that. Brandauer is a fine actor but probably should have been given a far better part in an EON film. I love Kim, but not for her "acting" in this film. Algernon is funny I guess. Bernie Casey will always be that guy from Revenge Of The Nerds, but hey, he's fine as Felix. And the video game scene is enjoyable if only for its nostalgic power. That's it, I guess. That is what little good I have to say about NSNA in a nutshell.
McClory lost every bit of credibility with NSNA. I don't care what he contributed to that screenplay that Fleming clumsily used for his book, if NSNA is any reflection of his creativity, I can't imagine it's a lot. NSNA... if that's the best McClory can do after all those years of suing EON, mocking Cubby - who, by the way, had NOTHING TO DO WITH FLEMING'S WRITING OF TB! - courting Connery and claiming he should own James Bond because of that tremendous creative genius of his that contributed who knows which two words to Fleming's ninth novel, he should have ran off to an unpopulated island in the Pacific and hope no-one would ever find him there. Connery called Cubby the greatest Bond villain, well, McClory wasn't even good enough for that. He was a fart that would keep stinking up the place. That OP beat NSNA at the BO, was delicious.
It's better overall than at least 4 or 5 EON Bond films including sleep inducing TWINE (after the "plot twist") or the one that makes any working brain throw up (Brainfall...Skyfall).
Connery is on top of his game in NSNA, the supporting cast is awesome and Blofeld and Felix Leiter are actually my favourite versions of the characters. Not to mention M who is great as well. Even Q is great for Heaven's sake.
And Brandauer is one of the best villains in the series.
And in retrospect even the missing Bond traits like GB, proper Bond theme don't bother anymore as we got such nonsense like butchered GBs somewhere in the film and "songs" like AWTD for the Craig era.
I will take Herb Alpert any day over the likes of Adele, Keys/White, Crow, Madonna...
I couldn't agree more. I maintain the belief that only NSNA should have been a Bond to NOT include the GB at the start, or the Bond Theme. Yet, in the past ten years it's become a struggle just to get the GB back to the beginning. It's a become a weird tradition to wait until the end credits to include The James Bond Theme. In addition it sounds like the same arrangement every time. Luckily SP prevailed, and redeemed some of the mistakes that NSNA never seems to get a pass for. Even without those iconic elements, NSNA feels more like a classic Bond to me than QoS.
That's not strictly true, @DarthDimi. McClory wanted to first make James Bond of The Secret Service and then Warhead, two completely different stories to that of Thunderball, but was forced by Eon to stay within the parameters of TB. As far back as 76 McClory intended to present a new 007 venture, first calling it James Bond of The Secret Service then later it was completely rewritten and retitled as Warhead, always insisting that he had the screen rights to the Bond character and not just TB. He lost the case and ended up remaking TB instead. Interestingly, the first draft, titled James Bond of the Secret Service, is dated November 11, 1976 and one of the first things noticeable is that there is a character named Steinberg and a gigantic tubular structure called Arkos that rises out of the ocean. Sounds a lot like Stromberg and his underwater base, Atlantis in The Spy Who Loved Me, no? Even Blofeld's henchman, Bomba, is a less inventive version of Jaws (superstrong, invulnerable, and he doesn't speak). McClory lost the battle to stop production of The Spy Who Loved Me (released in the summer of 1977) on the grounds that the new Roger Moore film was too close to his own treatment, but he was able to stop EON from using Spectre as the villains in their film. Clearly, the development of McClory's two Bond movies were hindered by legalities, which was why he resorted to a last-minute straight remake of TB, especially as he still had a willing Connery onboard.
I tend to agree that NSNA falls short as a Bond movie. I think Connery is way too casual, losing that brusque edge of earlier Bonds, and coming over more like Cary Grant. It's certainly a shame that we didn't get to see a mid-70's Connery reprise his role in one of the earlier treatments. It does seem that TSWLM is mired in a lot of claims of plagiarism from various writers, and the original treatment for Cubby's movie was quite different to the final product. Makes me wonder if Cubby got hold of the early draft of James Bond of The Secret Service and decided to put one over on McClory, much like he did at the start of FYEO, and incorporate much of McClory/Len Deighton's story ideas into his own movie.
And tut tut, Gustav, fancy not knowing that George Lazenby was nominated for a Golden Globe. I think you need to go back and study harder on your Bond history. :-/
Great one liners and Connery.
Great bad guys too.....some of the best of the 80's.
This.
You have to apply the same mantra to the majority of the official Bond outings anyway. No idea why NSNA isn't extended the same courtesy.
There is half a PTS actually during the title sequence. That's good enough.
The sometimes jazzy score is great, I love Herb Alpert actually. But of course it's special, like Bill Conti has provided a special score, or Serra.
Connery is looking swell in NSNA, actually much, much better than in DAF, maybe even better than in YOLT.
The humour is priceless. So many of my favourite Connery moments happen in NSNA, he really put his heart in this film. His facial expressions in many scenes are just great.
My favourite moment is when he walks away from MI6 novice Nigel Small-Fawcett in disgust when Nigel once more doesn't get Connery's joke. The face Connery makes has me in stitches every time. Also, I like Rowan Atkinson, never cared for Mr Bean, but he is great in NSNA and I love, no LOVE Johnny English.
Barbara Carrera provided me with some of my first wet dreams...damn she is so hot!
How Connery is playing her in the final scene of hers is just brilliant writing and both play the scene so well.
I could go on and on, I really like NSNA.
The supporting cast is in a league of its own and I dare to say it's the best ever Scooby-Gang/villain gang of the entire series (EON/NSNA).
Bernie Casey as Felix is the best of them all. Clearly.
The same goes for Blofeld. Max von Sydow nails him.
Edward Fox as M would probably be a legend had he been the M in the EON films.
Even Q is great, Desmond can never be replaced, but boy did they try and almost succeed. Alec McCowen plays Q brilliantly.
Brandauer is infinitely better as Largo than Celi (imho). Celi was downright boring.
I often think Silva was modelled after Brandauer's Largo. Of course Brandauer is a capable actor. Unimaginable he had played Silva. WOW just at the thought.
If there is anything that can be complained about imho, then it may be the production value towards the end of the film. The castle is a bit "B-movie" feel, but the underwater battle and the underwater hideaway is beautiful and so well made and never once boring.
I also strongly believe the first 45 minutes of NSNA are so much better than in TB, it's practically scene after scene identical to TB (after the PTS/titles) but never boring and with much better humour. The fight scene in the wellness center with the big guy is bloody brilliant.
The whole ball sequence is brilliant as well from start to finish, some great, great humour (Connery putting the poor bodyguard/door guard into the closet with the "bomb"), the dance with Domino, and of course the futuristic game which I like immensely, again brilliant, if not flawless acting from Connery and Brandauer.
A bloody shame, just because it is not EON, so many people just dismiss NSNA.
Let me make one last snarky remark ;) NSNA's little finger has more Bond in it than the whole of QOS.
I remember being worried about the impact this film would have on the Eon series, and Octopussy in particular. I did not applaud it's arrival and supported OP as much as funds would allow.
The media hyped it and ridiculed Moore as much as they lauded Connery. So I was quietly pleased that Moore's film out performed this one.
Now 30 odd years later I can claim to have seen it once, on TV. And I thought at the time, why bother? It's just Thunderball but without the class.
Great title though.
I guess if you actually experienced it back then in 1983 how it all unfolded you have a point in not being fond of the film as a principle.
But saying NSNA is like TB without any class is like saying Craig is like Connery without any class. Both may have some truth to it, but it's way too harsh a verdict overall.
I shall withdraw that and stick with my abiding memories of 1983. ;)
You had a very long wait to hear Herb Alpert in NSNA
Well, it's the opening song and the end titles song.
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Amusing. But he knows f**k all about Bond! He hates Thunderball....what a bell end. He also likes Rowan Atkinson as his only plus point of NSNA...i.e. The main bad point.
I love CR67 as you know and especially the soundtrack.
Sorry we can't all have the same opinions as you. 8-|
True, I was thinking about his trumpet solo, right at the end of the end credits.
What makes it much greater in my memory was that there was no internet around telling me how poor my judgement or taste was for enjoying 007 twice.
For me NSNA was the last movie Connery should have had instead of DAF which is a decent movie but 007 was more like my fat uncle than 007. NSNA did give us a more streamlined and less naff 007 with Connery for the last time in the part. A better last outing which he deserved.
That's how I feel as well. It was very cool to have 2 new Bond films out in one year. That is something that will probably never happen again. As a fairly new Bond fan it was very exciting to see OP on the big screen, and to have a new Connery Bond to look forward to. I was vaguely aware that it was a Bond from a different production company, but didn't understand the legal side to it, hence the lack of a Bond theme, etc
In fact a recent airing of TB on The ABC Sunday Night Movie had deleted the gunbarrel, so it made me assume not every Bond featured the logo. I actually thought the 007s zooming in was a kind of cool replacement.
Still I very much love NSNA for being it's own take on Bond. In some ways it feels closer to the TB novel, and in other ways not. Still a cool Bond even with a dodgy 3rd act and Michel Legrand score.
@BondJasonBond006, no sir. NO NO NO!
No...
EVERYTHING is NSNA is different! This doesn't feel like a Bond film at all. No GB, no decent PTS adventure, no Binder main titles, no Barry-esque score, different M (and though Fox is a good actor, he's faaaaar from Lee, Brown, Dench, ...), the office is different, MP is different, Algernon is no Q, Casey is no Jack Lord of Jeffrey Wright, ... Brandauer is good but Celi oozed 60s SPECTRE and there's something special about that which Brandauer was unable to achieve. The action is terrible! I mean, they had Steven Segal prep the actors for hand-to-hand combat and while the health spa fight is amusing in some ways, it's no Orient Express fight, no Bond vs Oddjob, not even Bond vs Jaws in TSWLM. It's a bag of comedy tricks, something close to what Blake Edwards might have done with that sequence, but it plays far too long and the urine 'climax' of the fight is a funny distraction from the fact that it really isn't a good way to end this and to reward our patience. The car - motocycle chase was shot in a crude and unimpressive way, nearly twenty years after the exciting car chase from GF, nearly ten years after the exciting car chase from TMWTGG and the same year we'd get a pretty decent car chase in OP.
Everything is different! And of course it had to be since McClory wasn't allowed to emulate EON stuff. But still, technically, this film feels "off", unimpressive, amateurish at times. Look at the opening scenes. Connery blasts his automatic guns like in some cheap C-level Dolph Lungdren actioner from the 80s. Compare this please to the far better gun fights in other Bond films like YOLT and TSWLM. And what the devil is that rubbish with the horse and that ridiculous shot of Bond and Domino jumping off the cliff while on a horse? Or that secret CIA whateveryoucallit that Bond and Leiter use to drop down? Is that how they harken back to the jetpack from TB? They look like a pair of college douchebags. And if the underwater mayhem at the end of the movie is supposed to impress me, come on, it's the discount version of the far better staged, shot and executed underwater battle in TB.