Pros and Cons: Never Say Never Again
caractacus potts
Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 4,108MI6 Agent
We need a Pros and Cons thread for Connery’s rival Bond film.
For links to the previous Pros and Cons threads, see: Pros and Cons: Compendium
how to play?
List a series of aspects of the film in bullet point form, and assign each to either the Pros or Cons category. Maybe say why if you're feeling verbose, but you don’t need to. It may seem artificial to force everything into a yay or nay, but I find it more artificial to sum up an entire work of art as either Good or Bad (or even moreso to Rank them as so may of you all do). This exercise makes me think a little bit more granularly about how the whole is constructed, and to appreciate how it is put together from so many small parts.
For more general talk about this film, I like this thread, which had lots of fine and learned discussion:
Does anyone regard 'Never Say Never Again' as better than Bonds 1-24?
PROS
-second Bond film in one year (third if you count Return of the Man from UNCLE)
-Connery is likable as he always was, and his dynamic with the new M here clearly marks him as the naughty schoolboy in contrast to MooreBond’s class nerd.
-plot and dialog in early scenes acknowledge ConneryBond is fat and old, and this becomes a theme throughout the film. The trip to Shrublands actually makes more sense with a Bond actor who is visibly aging and out of shape.
-The fight scene at Shrublands is brutal! Connery’s not so out of shape as he looks, and Moore would never have attempted this.
-Bond defeating a villain with his urine sample anticipates Austin Powers’ Mojo superpowers.
-Shrublands scenes are dispensed with more quickly than the original, and the business with Domino’s brother being here almost makes more sense. Though I don’t think Bond or M actually make the connection, it seems like a coincidence unnoticed by our heros.
-High tech hijacking looks really good and is more exciting than the equivalent scenes from Thunderball.
-Fatima Blush. Her entrance in leather pants and stilletos. Her retrieving the snake from the car crash and giving it a kiss. This character steals every scene she’s in, and the film grinds to a halt after her death.
-Fatima Blush is an actual unused Fleming character name (from an early Thunderball draft), though Fleming imagined her as an ally, not a villain.
-BasingerDomino is hella-sexy, and her body is fetishized in a way even the classic Bond films had not done, at a time when the real series was finally treating the women as characters rather than objects. Her opening scene features the stiffest nipples in any Bond film ever, then there's sideboob in the scene where she meets Bond. And check out that leg-stretch in front of the one-way mirror (all the kinkier because she does not know her creepy boyfriend is watching)
-Connery dances a tango, and chooses this as the moment to give Domino the news. Basinger’s acting is good in this scene as she tries not to blow her cool.
-More graphic sex scenes and adult innuendos than regular Bond films.
-Rowan Atkinson (though I normally prefer his Black Adder type characters to his Mr Bean type characters). Fleming actually wrote a few characters like this, brainless toffs with cushy jobs at the local consulate who waste Bond’s time.
-Klaus Maria Brandauer is a bold variation of the original Largo, a creepy boy wunderkind, the kind you could imagine buying Twitter today. This film is at its best where it dares to do things very differently than the original. And the Flying Saucer is a fantastic villains headquarters.
-Algernon is a great variation on Q with funny self-referential dialog, and the budget-strapped variation of the Q’s lab scene is great too
-Max von Sydow is a very good Blofeld.
-Final act deviates greatly from Thunderball, and instead looks suspiciously similar to Octopussy. If they filmed the North African scenes after the release of Octopussy. I might count this is a Con, but I believe both films are borrowing from Raiders of the Lost Ark And if both films are borrowing from Raiders, NSNA may actually be more creative in what its doing with the swashbuckling imagery . The slave market rescue actually looks like something from Conan the Barbarian!
-Elements used in later EON films: training exercise as opening scene in The Living Daylights, actual “plot” of the training exercise (kidnapped heiress who has been brainwashed) is that of The World is Not Enough, New M who does not like Bond and has technocratic tendencies. Xenia Onatopp is very similar to Fatima Blush (more so than Fatima resembling Fiona Volpe). The picnic basket would reappear in tLD. The toxic Largo/Domino relationship looks a lot like the Carvers in Tomorrow Never Dies. The theme of an older Bond no longer appreciated by his employers would be reprised in SkyFall and No Time to Die. I’m sure theres many others I’ve missed, who can name a few? EON may have tried to stop this film being made, but they were pretty shameless about swiping its best ideas.
-Connery began a late career renaissance after this film, with The Name of the Rose, The Untouchables and Hunt for Red October following (just to name three). And he even played Indiana Jones’s father!
CONS
-No gunbarrel, weak theme song, cheap generic opening credits: the first impression is of a typical forgettable made for TV movie. Proper Bond movies work because the signature opening is so damn exciting, these rival filmmakers don’t even try.
-The theme song is bland and forgettable (though not so much worse than All Time High), and for the most part the score also sounds like something from a bad 80s b-movie. So they couldn’t use the Norman/Barry theme, but why couldn’t they have done an allnew pastiche of the classic sound with big Connery-era brass? (I do like the bass-heavy fownk grove Domino dances to)
-Connery has gotten fat and lazy, sauntering through most of the plot, looking even older than Moore in 1983 than he did in 1971.
-Most obvious toupee ever
-The video games, especially in the context of that beautiful casino set. At the time I hated Pong and Space invaders and all those because they displaced the pinball machines, which were works-of-art. Now they’re displacing chemin-de-fer in a Bond film.
-The actual video game duel between Largo and Bond looks dreadful and makes no sense. Does Largo otherwise keep this game on board his yacht and for what normal purpose?
-Why does the scene suddenly change to the French Riviera? I don’t notice any dialog explaining this. Nor why Bond is in Nassau in the first place, come to think of it.
- Underwater showdown is just as dark and slow-moving as it was in the original. (For Your Eyes Only two years earlier found a way to make this stuff clear and exciting.
-Domino killing Largo underwater is from Fleming, yay. But with scubamask on and dark underwater lighting, it lacks the drama needed for the main villain’s death..
-Impossible to reconcile into cinematic Bond continuity, both because Bond has met these characters before, and because it is so important to the plot that Bond is older and less valued by his employers.
-Makes Octopussy look rather good in comparison, and lets down the argument Connery is the Real Bond. (And I don’t even think Octopussy is that good)
-This film was highly anticipated by all of us, especially us ConneryPartisans. There was a lot of hype leading to its release. Octopussy had already come and gone and turned out to be a return to silly Moore, only increasing the expectation the new ConneryBond film would satisfy. Yet it turned out to be redundant and amateurish, and also silly. I’m ashamed to say, after that underwhelming one-two punch I did not see a new BondFilm again until Goldeneye twelve years later.
-All these years later NSNA continues to be offered as evidence Bond should not fall into the Public domain, only EON can make these films. And yet EON themselves seem to have forgotten how to make recognisable BondFilms, and sometimes appear to not even like their own franchise. Truth is, I do think NSNA delivers the classic Bond experience better than recent CraigBond product.
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In sum, I’m surprised to find I've listed many more PROS than CONS. It's really the opening moments that let the film done, once underway there’s a lot of good ideas well executed, and I especially like the parts where they dare to stray and tell an original story.
We still need a PROS and CONS thread for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Comments
PROS-
CONS
Rather than create a movie that branches off into some weird alternate timeline where TB doesn't exist, I wish they had made it as a direct sequel to TB. (So Maximillian Largo, for instance, is the son of the late Emilio Largo and wants to retry his father's plan for nuclear blackmail.)
Chronologically, it sort of fits just before FYEO. In that movie Blofeld is killed, and we don't see M. So M in FYEO could've been Edward Fox, or perhaps he left MI6 at this point and Robert Brown's M (Admiral Hargreaves?) encourages Bond to return from retirement at the end of NSNA.
I don't love this movie by any stretch, but for its pros I'll say everyone gives a great performance and - long before Daniel Craig in NTTD - this is the only other Bond movie that actually gives the fans a send-off for a Bond actor (with Connery's retirement announcement at the end and a fourth-wall-breaking wink to the audience).
For cons (other than what was mentioned before) every villain always comes up with some elaborate way to kill Bond. But Largo's idea was perhaps the most unique when he captured Bond in Palmyra - chain him up and leave him to slowly die of boredom like all the other skeletons in there.
I should also add for a Bond movie that gets no respect, GoldenEye seemed to suspiciously borrow a lot of plot elements from this one: Xenia Onatopp is Eon's version of Fatima Blush. Bond is dealing with a new M. A laser watch. An explosive pen. A terrible soundtrack. 😉
Also notice how Bond villains were before this: usually older, urbane, rather sexless patriarchical figures. But this features a villain who is a young blond psychopath and his rather unhinged attitude towards his girlfriend: he’s not really urbane, more on the edge of madness. And what do we get in the very next Eon Bond film? Max Zorin 😄
"A terrible soundtrack" 😁😁😁 but also 👍️👍️👍️
Good points all.
That music score... 😕
I really must do an all-encompassing Pros and Cons rewatch, but I fear I'll just get bitter...
Agree with all the cons and here's another - every action scene ends with an anti-climax along the lines of 'It was all a dream'... it's not real, it's a training session. He's had urine flung in his face! The bomb isn't really under their bed, it's under another one! It's robot sharks (sorry, what's that about?) The boat doesn't blow up! It's not a killer, it's Rowan Atkinson. And so on.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Pros:
• Connery's performance is excellent, and he looks younger and fitter than he did in "Diamonds Are Forever" 12 years previously.
• I like the reinvention of tough Sicilian gangster Largo as a camp, psychopathic playboy.
• Max von Sydow's dignified portrayal of Blofeld contrasts nicely with some of the over-the-top interpretations from the Eon series.
• The reimagining of Q as a frustrated backroom boffin coping with government spending cuts is amusing.
Cons:
• The film is a straight remake of "Thunderball" and "Thunderball" did almost everything better.
• Edward Fox's M is simply obnoxious and the normally excellent Pamela Salem is bland as Miss Moneypenny.
• Fatima Blush is a ridiculous caricature and confirms how wise Luciana Paluzzi was to play Fiona Volpe straight in the original.
• Kim Basinger's Domino is bland and characterless.
• The film as a whole has a rather low-budget, TV-movie feel.
• At its worst, it is truly grotesque: I'd pay good money never to see Bond in denim dungarees or playing an arcade game again.
• It can also be incredibly contrived: Bond has a pen firing explosive darts at precisely the moment when a sex-crazed villainess wants him to write a letter confirming that she is excellent in bed.
• The music is surprisingly poor.
• The film manages to get an unfunny performance out of Rowan Atkinson: something I would otherwise have considered impossible.
Pros:
1. Connery was clearly enjoying in the film compared to his previous Bond performances (YOLT and DAF).
2. Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush (she oozed sexiness, but at the same time vicious, probably moreso than Fiona Volpe, she's much more lively and have more personality, she's more like the prototype Xenia Onatopp).
3. Klaus Maria Brandauer's version was more closer to how Fleming wrote Largo, playboy, sophisticated, energized, youthful, a real match to Bond, but Brandauer did a lot more with the character by making him a bit lunatic, for me, he's the prototype Max Zorin long before Max Zorin.
4. More action scenes, my favorite of the lot was the motorcycle and car chase between Bond and Fatima, Thunderball is good, but one of my main complaints to it was the lack of adrenaline rush action sequences, something that would get me hyped, and NSNA delivered this in complete spades.
5. Pacing, again, another of my complaints regarding Thunderball was the pacing, I liked how NSNA improved on this by making it more fast paced than Thunderball, the underwater scenes are reduced and not that slow, there are many things happened in the film, and it's a quick watch compared to Thunderball, which I'll admit gets me to drowsiness.
6. The casts were not dubbed, yes while Kim Basinger's version of the character may have been a bit bland compared to the original Domino, she's at least wasn't dubbed and gave a better performance and acting, she's a better actress than Claudine Auger (the only problem was they didn't gave Basinger a proper script to worked with), the same for Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max Von Sydow, Barbara Carrera and the rest.
7. I liked the idea of MI6 confronting Bond's age and health issues.
8. I liked that some motivations are improved upon the original like the Shrublands sequence and the whole Petacchi scenes that led to Bond investigating Domino, it makes the whole investigation much more better and fitting into the narrative or story.
9. There's no cringe or dated scenes like Bond blackmailing a woman to have sex with him like what he did with Patricia Fearing.
10. Seeing Connery's Bond being a bit nice to women was a pleasure to see and kind of change, no slapping, no manipulating, no forcing, it's a nice change of pace.
11. Seeing Bond's Bentley, I really liked it as it's a callback from the books.
Cons:
1. The lack of good score
2. No Title Sequences
3. As much as they've tried to acknowledge Bond's age better than in A View To A Kill, they still tried to play it safe by having an old Connery paired up with young Kim Basinger who's young enough to be his daughter, at least in Octopussy, Moore's Bond was paired with a much more matured Bond Girl in Octopussy's Maud Adams.
4. The cinematography, I'll admit wasn't great, but then so Thunderball 😅, I mean neither of them are great, but NSNA lacked the style and vibrance with regards to cinematography.
5. The MI6 cast, they're bland, as Bernie Casey who'd played Felix Leiter.
6. Lani Hall! Lani Hall! I know she's a great singer, but she's wasted, they've never gave her proper material to sing with. It's a shame, it's such a bad song in particular, the one with Phyllis Hyman was way better.
7. The Rocket capsule with Felix Leiter, I always felt that Men In Black did somehow copied this scene.
8. Domino was never given much to worked with except of being a damsel in distress, Kim Basinger is a great actress, and I think she did fine here, the problem was the writing.
9. Some characters were unnecessary and miscast (yes, I'm looking at you, Nigel Fawcett played by Rowan Atkinson, he's awkward).
10. The wardrobe was pretty bad, Bond in denim jumpers? The Leopard One Piece Bikini suit of Domino? Laughable, Bond in white sleeveless undershirt while riding a bike? Weird! The only character who had managed to dress right was Fatima Blush (she's very fashionable), but the rest, nah!
11. The effects, it's so bad and cheap, look, EON managed to do a world class effects and visuals in Moonraker, and that's 1979, years ahead of this one, yet this film (which was released in 1983) and was supposed to be modern in effects and visuals turned out to be pretty bad, look at the arcade (World Domination) game for example, it looked pretty dated like it's made in somewhere like 60's or early 70's, but Moonraker in 1979 looked like it's made in late 80's given the visuals and effects that's very much ahead of its time.
12.
I am so sure there was a thread like this before which I commented on. Did it get lost or am I suffering from the Mandela effect? 🙄
I like NSNA btw. It's not perfect but who could be against another Bond adventure starring Connery, just because it's "unofficial"?
"- That is something to be afraid of."
Yeah, and it's an incorrect label which it gets thrown at it too: it's perfectly official; he had the rights to make the film.
https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/55625/never-say-never-again#Comment_1052996 Is it this one you mean, Ornithologist?
@Dovy started his thread not long before I created this one. It was always my belief we needed a Pros'n'Cons thread to go with the rest of the series and intended to create one if noone else got to it first. I just needed to get round to rewatching the film which had been sitting on my shelf for nearly three years, and it was actually Dovy's thread that gave me the reminder to do so.
by the way where is Dovy? for a while he was doing a nice job of stirring up fresh conversation, havent seen him for a while and things have gone dull again. Come back Dovy!
I meant this in no way as a criticism, also talking about a waaaaay older thread. Maby I dreamt it?
"- That is something to be afraid of."
I'm sure theres lots of Never Say Never Again threads, I linked to a good one in my OP.
another good one is the watchalong commentary thread, in which a panel of respected Bond experts from across the planet watched the film simultaneously and posted thoughts, both learned and smartaleck, in real time
Why don't we have a new thread comparing the old Pros and Cons of Never Say Never Again thread with this new one? I'd be up for it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017