Never Say Never Again

Never Say Never Again is a remake of the 1965 film Thunderball. Released in 1983, it starred Sean Connery as the famous British Secret Service agent (as did Thunderball), and was released theatrically by Warner Bros..

The film is considered an unofficial James Bond film because it is not part of the Bond film franchise from EON Productions and United Artists, even though it is currently owned by MGM. MGM acquired the distribution rights in 1997 after their acquisition of Orion Pictures. The film also marks the culmination of a long legal battle between United Artists and Kevin McClory.

Originally, the film was scheduled for release in direct competition against the official (i.e. EON Productions) Bond film Octopussy, starring Roger Moore, which led to the media dubbing the situation 'The Battle of the Bonds'. Ultimately, the two films were released at different times in 1983, and both were box office successes — although Octopussy ended up making more money than Never Say Never Again.

Plot summary

Never Say Never Again follows a similar plotline to the film and novel Thunderball, but with some differences.

The film opens with a middle-aged, yet still athletic James Bond making his way through an armed camp in order to rescue a girl who has been kidnapped. After killing the kidnappers, Bond lets his guard down, forgetting that the girl might have been subject to the Stockholm syndrome (in which a kidnapped person comes to identify with his/her kidnappers) and is stabbed to death by her. Or so it seems.

In fact, the attack on the camp is nothing more than a field training exercise using blank ammunition and fake knives, and one Bond fails because he ends up "dead" (though, confusingly, a previous 'fake' mission saw his legs get blown off by a land mine). A new M is now in office, one who sees little use for the 00-section. In fact, Bond has spent most of his recent time teaching, rather than doing, a fact he points out with some resentment.

Feeling that Bond is slipping, M orders him to enroll in a health clinic in order to "eliminate all those free radicals" and get back into shape. While there, Bond discovers a mysterious nurse (Fatima Blush) and her patient, who is wrapped in bandages. His suspicions are aroused even further when a thug (Lippe) tries to kill him.

She and Blush's charge, an American Air Force pilot named Jack Petachi, are in fact operatives of SPECTRE, a criminal organisation run by Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Petachi has undergone an operation to alter one of his retinas to match the retinal pattern of the American President. Using his position as a pilot and the president's eye pattern to circumvent security, Petachi infiltrates an American military base in England and orders the dummy warheads in two cruise missiles replaced with two live nuclear warheads, which SPECTRE captures and uses to extort billions of dollars from the governments of the world.

M reluctantly reactivates the 00 section, and Bond is assigned the task of tracking down the missing weapons, beginning with a rendezvous with Domino Petachi, the pilot's sister, who is kept a virtual prisoner by her lover, Maximillian Largo. Bond pursues Largo and his yacht to the Bahamas, where he engages Domino, Fatima Blush, and Largo in a game of wits and resources as he attempts to derail SPECTRE's scheme.

Changes to the Bond universe

The film makes changes to the James Bond universe, and to the noticeably older character of 007 – having him drive his beloved new Bentley from the novels, for example. There is a gritty realism to the entire environment and a recognition of the geopolitics of the early 1980s and the rising powers of the Middle East, driven by oil money.

MI6 is shown to be underfunded and understaffed, the new M (this is acknowledged) played by Edward Fox having little time for 007's methods and exploits, and taking an accountant's attitude (which would eventually be picked up in the official EON series with Judi Dench becoming another new M in GoldenEye). With regards to Q Branch, the character Q is referred to by the name "Algernon" and may also be a different individual from the 'Q' in the official Bond series (where Q's first name is never revealed). His personality is also very different, as is his impoverished background environment; Algernon makes no bones about expecting "gratuitous sex and violence" from Bond, which the 'Q' of the official series is very much against. James Bond does not have a wonder-car, either - rather a sprightly and mildly armed motorcycle that Algernon promises to send him if he can "get it to work" (of course he does).

Maximilian Largo's Disco Volante (known here by its English language name, The Flying Saucer) has experienced changes. Still launching a wet-sub from a secret chamber, the Disco is now a civilian frigate, and equipped with the amenities expected within a villain's lair, and particularly of a villain with superb taste and a definite European character.

Perhaps the most notable change is in the depiction of Felix Leiter, Bond's CIA friend and colleague, who is portrayed by a black actor for the first time (the 2006 version of Casino Royale, MGM/Columbia's official reset of the Bond film franchise, also features a black Leiter). This film also appears to take place in an "alternative universe" in which none of the events of SPECTRE-involving films such as You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Diamonds Are Forever (which followed the original Thunderball) has taken place, since Blofeld is active and apparently previously unknown to Bond and MI6 at this point, and of course the events chronicled in Thunderball proceed differently, and at a much later time than in the "official" universe. The film also makes a major departure from "official" continuity by ending with Bond indicating his intention to retire from MI6 (and settle down with his leading lady, for once). Actor Connery also breaks the fourth wall during this scene by winking at the camera (something George Lazenby previously did in On Her Majesty's Secret Service).

A change that the movie makes to the Bond films as a whole resides mainly in the introduction. In the EON productions, Bond is shown through a gunbarrel, then turns swiftly and shoots the screen. In Never Say Never Again, the camera zooms in on a long sequence of '007s', through which the set for the beginning of the movie appears.

The game Domination within the film

In the film at a casino Bond and Largo play a holographic table-top video game called “Domination” designed by Largo himself. The objective is power with the computer picking random countries that light up on the map and are worth variable dollar amounts. The two opposing players then target the country with their lasers, with the first one to hit it marks it with their corresponding color (either red or blue) and wins the award. The left controller can fire two nuclear missiles at the opponent which can be blocked by timely use of a shield controlled by the right controller. Should the shield not be activated in time the player struck loses the game automatically. The loss of countries also causes an electric shock in the handles of the controllers which increases along with the stakes at play. There is no safety cutoff on the shock levels and should the player avoid the pain by releasing the controls this registers as an automatic loss. The computer’s voice over begins the game saying “Thank you, gentlemen. Eternal battle for the domination of the world begins.” It also announces random target selections, dollar values, and the pain levels being administered to the players. Should a certain threshold of electric shock be reached the machine announces “Danger level.” At first Bond is unaware of the electric shock and releases the controls but after explaining the detail he left out Largo invites Bond to play again which they do. Bond then loses through gameplay, but invites Largo to play again with all the remaining countries in the rest of the world at stake which would mean that the machine would administer lethal shocks should one of the players falter. Bond while losing at gameplay is able to inflict enough damage to make it a contest of pain tolerance between him and Largo and with Largo’s release of the controllers Bond is victorious. Instead of taking cash for his victory he takes a dance with Domino.

Many cultural works have been inspired by this scene. The aspect of two men playing a three dimensional table top video game at a high end cultural venue drawing the rapt attention of beautiful women and sophisticates was used during a Super Bowl XLI commercial featuring Jay-Z and Don Shula. This portrayal of a game in the film is also often mentioned in discussions of the German art project/video game called PainStation that applies electric shocks to players as they lose at a table top 2-D variant of Pong.^[1]

Cast and characters

• James Bond - Sean Connery
• M - Edward Fox
• Q (a.k.a. Algy) - Alec McCowen
• Miss Moneypenny - Pamela Salem
• Maximillian Largo - Klaus Maria Brandauer
• Fatima Blush - Barbara Carrera
• Ernst Stavro Blofeld - Max von Sydow
• Domino Petachi - Kim Basinger
• Felix Leiter - Bernie Casey
• Nigel Small-Fawcett - Rowan Atkinson
• Patricia - Prunella Gee
• Lady in Bahamas - Valerie Leon
• Jack Petachi - Gavan O'Herlihy

Crew

• Directed by: Irvin Kershner
• Screenplay by: Lorenzo Semple Jr.
• Produced by: Jack Schwartzman, Kevin McClory (executive), Michael Dryhurst (associate)
• Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe
• Music composed by: Michel Legrand

Trivia

• The movie title comes from Sean Connery's statement when asked if he would ever play Bond again after Diamonds Are Forever, to which he replied "Never Again".
• The Flying Saucer, Largo's ship, is a translation of "the Disco Volante", the name of Largo's ship in Thunderball. In this film, the Flying Saucer dramatically dwarfs the vessel present in the official film continuity and, as Largo observes, has the offices and computer power to "run a big government from here." The Disco is still the base of underwater operations by Largo. In real life, the 282' yacht used in long shots was known as the "Nabila" and was built for Saudi billionaire, Adnan Khashoggi. The yacht was later sold to Donald Trump who renamed it "Trump Princess." Later Trump sold it to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud who christened it the "Kingdom 5KR."
• The casino where Bond and Largo go head to head in a video game was called Casino Royale.
  • This scene also prevented author John Gardner from having a somewhat similar scene involving Bond playing a computer game over a LAN in Gardner's novel Role of Honour. Bond was supposed to be playing a simulation of "The Battle of Waterloo", this was later changed to a different type of game involving "The Battle of Bunker Hill".
• McClory originally planned for the film to open with some version of the famous "gunbarrel" opening as seen in the official Bond series, but ultimately the film opens with a screenful of "007" symbols instead. When the soundtrack for the film was released on CD, it included a piece of music composed for the proposed opening.
• Klaus Maria Brandauer, who played Largo, was originally cast as Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October; the role eventually went to Connery.
• Rowan Atkinson, who later became world-famous for the Mr. Bean comedy series, played a British agent in this movie, the bungling Nigel Small-Fawcett. Later he would play a James Bond parody in Johnny English.
• According to the Lee Pfeiffer/Philip Lisa book "The Films of Sean Connery," Richard Donner was given the chance to direct but declined.^{[citation needed]}
• Barbara Carrera was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Fatima Blush.
• This is the only 007 movie to not have a traditional "gunbarrel" opening--Casino Royale is an exception because the gunbarrel doesn't come until about five minutes into the movie.

See also

• Thunderball

Sources

1. ^ PainStation (EN). Retrieved on Feb. 6, 2007

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