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Is Thunderball Overrated?
"Here comes the biggest Bond of them all Thunderball"
Thus saith the movie posters, radio ads, theatrical trailers in late 1965. I had friends who saw it and raved about this fourth 007 adventure. I finally got to see it on a double bill with FRWL in 1968 and I gotta say: I found FRWL the more entertaining film...
Thunderball was the biggest money maker (if you factor in inflation) until 2012 SF. It came out at the time of the world wide Bondmania. It has a great title song and an amazing soundtrack. But how does it compare to what came before and after it?
I was disappointed after seeing it. It had been so built up and I found the movie rather dull in some parts. It is the first really epic Bond film and the Carribbean setting and colors really make a splash (no pun intended).
I find the film to be flawed at many levels:
Weak Villian
Largo is just an upper management SPECTRE operative.
The underwater action slows down the tension and makes much of the movie undeniably boring.
The Main heroine, Domino is stunningly beautiful but she pales in comparison to bad girl Fiona who enjoyed more chemistry with Connery.
The final battle aboard the Disco Volante is not edited well, too kinectic and with some editing flaws
Other scenes are not well edited and we see some real goofs (note Leiter's change of wardrob in one scene and the urinating dog in the middle of the Jucaroo chase scene)
My biggest problem is the weak writing. It is so full of coincidences and Bond is just lucky to solve SPECTRE's plan. I find the script to be the worst of the first six films. It was not until DAF that we find a script so bad.
I welcome your comments. do you agree or disagree? Have I committed sacriledge by knocking TB?
Thus saith the movie posters, radio ads, theatrical trailers in late 1965. I had friends who saw it and raved about this fourth 007 adventure. I finally got to see it on a double bill with FRWL in 1968 and I gotta say: I found FRWL the more entertaining film...
Thunderball was the biggest money maker (if you factor in inflation) until 2012 SF. It came out at the time of the world wide Bondmania. It has a great title song and an amazing soundtrack. But how does it compare to what came before and after it?
I was disappointed after seeing it. It had been so built up and I found the movie rather dull in some parts. It is the first really epic Bond film and the Carribbean setting and colors really make a splash (no pun intended).
I find the film to be flawed at many levels:
Weak Villian
Largo is just an upper management SPECTRE operative.
The underwater action slows down the tension and makes much of the movie undeniably boring.
The Main heroine, Domino is stunningly beautiful but she pales in comparison to bad girl Fiona who enjoyed more chemistry with Connery.
The final battle aboard the Disco Volante is not edited well, too kinectic and with some editing flaws
Other scenes are not well edited and we see some real goofs (note Leiter's change of wardrob in one scene and the urinating dog in the middle of the Jucaroo chase scene)
My biggest problem is the weak writing. It is so full of coincidences and Bond is just lucky to solve SPECTRE's plan. I find the script to be the worst of the first six films. It was not until DAF that we find a script so bad.
I welcome your comments. do you agree or disagree? Have I committed sacriledge by knocking TB?
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Comments
I agree, if anything it's underrated. It manages to be a "big Bond" film without going overboard like YOLT or TSWLM, or MR, yet it also retains the magic glow of Bond franchise success left over from Goldfinger. The score is great, the locations are great, the cast is excellent, there is good drama and action. I'd say that the only things that hold it back are the silly jetpack opening and the slowness of the final underwater fight. Other than that I think it's almost a perfect Bond movie. It's in my top 5 for sure...
It seems that about twenty minutes or so could have been cut to make a tighter film. I even think that perhaps Young was the wrong choice to direct the film. He did such a great job with the more character driven stories like DN and FRWL. I don't think he really knew how to make a big, epic Bond film. Not without making it drag anyway. I suppose this was the price of the success of GF. They felt that they had to be bigger and better when really a more low key adventure would have been preferable.
Sean Connery respected Terence Young - you can see that in the performance. Look at the difference between this and YOLT. Granted, Connery was more comfortable in the Bond role by GF but he returns to the "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" character in TB.
Agreed completely. TB on these forums at least is far, far, far underrated. Way superior to the movie that preceded and succeeded it. YOLT was heavy on scifi with an unbelievable plot, stuffed with disjointed episode, while TB has a large scale yet believable plot, a brilliant commander in the field with Largo and three distinctive Bond girls. In GF, Bond spends the last third of the movie not doing much, including during the climatic scene. In TB, he remains active AND proactive throughout. He does actual spying and investigation. The Bond girl in TB, unlike in GF, does not appear two third in the movies and is central in the animosity between Bond and Largo. Compared to her, the tough girl who is Pussy Galore is not really threatened by Goldfinger, even after turning sides (!) and is not the object of any animosity between Bond and the villain. Fine as it is to have the first lesbian Bond girl, she is never the borderline tragic heroin Domino is, a prisoner in a golden cage, dominated (excuse the pun) by Largo and stuck in a dangerous game in which she is potentially collateral. Yes, it has a few silly moments, but overall, what a movie.
Dr No, FRWL, GF learning curve. But Connery was on his game.
I feel this is a film with which observers confuse the terms, 'bloated' and 'epic'. It is certainly epic in its intentions and contains some grand cinematography, but I'm not convinced the film, as a narrative, delivers the necessary components to define it as 'epic'. It starts excellently, Ken Adam's Paris set being a personal highlight. Shrublands is decent, if a little overlong. Volpe is inspired and adds a real Fleming quality and I'm an admirer of Celli as Largo. As a superficial aside, I do love the shark pool, who doesn't? Further plusses - Barry's score is evocative, Connery 'is' Bond and Ted Moore does the 'Bond gloss' exceptionally.
Despite this, I feel the negatives also stack up. It tries to go 'bigger and better', and proves that's not necessarily the greatest mantra to follow. It's been said over and over and over again, but the underwater scenes are, at best, sluggish. Given their billing as the film's, piece de resistance, they just don't hold water (excuse the pun). It takes an age to get going and the ending is a lacklustre affair that does nothing to justify the relative tedium of the build-up.
That said, it's a luxurious, glistening, indulgent, overblown slice of Bond.
Its like we just ate a full and satisfying meal (Goldfinger) and then the waiter brings out a large slice of chocolate cheesecake, covered in strawberries and raspberry jam....guilty pleasure.
Maybe thats what Thunderball amounts to...
excuse me
Excellent points. For that and its geeky, bizarro factor, I tend to prefer NSNA personally while admitting that TB a is much (and I mean MUCH) better movie, for the very same reasons @RC7 enumerates in the second paragraph of his mini-review.
DAF and NSNA are my guilty Bond pleasures.
+1
What's good? Music, PTS, story, girls(!), villain, Connery performance...
What's not good with TB? Some rear projection perhaps, but that's common in Bond films. Oh and that McClory was the producer.
A lot gets said about the underwater part of the movie, which at the time was cutting-edge and new in cinema. The younger among us seem to judge the movies in this time and age when almost everything is possible in movies, which is unfair and lacks critical insight.
TB is Connery at his best and sadly for the next movie they hired Roald Dahl to write an absurd movie which became bearable due to Mr Connery. I never understood why they did not film the Blofeld trilogy in sequence.
Connery & Moore have been the Bond performers that lifted even a mediocre movie up to great levels.
Agreed.
Connery's 2nd best film after FRWL and it sits very nicely at #7 on my list.
Its a film i enjoy .
I agree with you both. I find a lot to like in Thunderball, much of this is again down to Young, who I feel is Bond's best director so far.
Young himself regretted to have directed Thunderball.