Reference.com

Never Say Never Again

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Never Say Never Again, released in 1983, is the unofficial remake of the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball. 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 produced by EON Productions and United Artists, even though it is currently owned by United Artists parent 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, 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

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" (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.

Blush and her 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.

Cast

Filming

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. Bond observes that Largo has the offices and computer power to "run a small government from here." Largo replies that he could actually "run a large 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.

The film re-used submarine special-effect footage from Ice Station Zebra.

Klaus Maria Brandauer, who played Largo, was originally cast as Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October; the role eventually went to Connery.

Casting

Rowan Atkinson, who later became world-famous for the Blackadder and Mr. Bean comedy series, played a British agent in this movie, the bumbling 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.

Barbara Carrera was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Fatima Blush.

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 old (vintage) 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, a new M (this is acknowledged) played by Edward Fox, who has 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".

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 reboot 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) have taken place, since Blofeld is active and apparently previously unknown to Bond and MI6 at this point. 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). 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. Also, the credits are shown after the sequence after the gunbarrel in the official films. In "Never Say Never Again", the credits are shown during the sequence.

Another notable difference is Bond's gun. The official films had Bond using a Walther PPK colored as dark brown with light brown sides of the handgrip. Bond's gun in "Never Say Never Again" is a Walther P5 that is completely black.

Release and reception

Domination within the film

At a casino, Bond and Largo play a holographic table-top video game called “Domination” designed by Largo himself. The losing player is subject to electric shock. Bond wins, but instead of taking cash for his victory he takes a dance with Domino.

Other 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.

References

External links



Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Monday February 18, 2008 at 06:24:55 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation