The history behind 1983’s unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again could form the basis of a university dissertation. It marked the return of the original Eon actor Sean Connery to play Bond for a seventh time, financed and produced by a rival studio and Kevin McClory who retained the rights to SPECTRE and Ernst Stavro Blofeld along with the storyline of Thunderball with the assertion, as upheld in court, that he collaborated with Ian Fleming on creating these aspects of the Bond tapestry.
McClory had, on this basis, managed to block the official makers from using SPECTRE and Blofeld after 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. Meanwhile Connery had walked away from the series twice. Following You Only Live Twice in 1967, he stepped down from the role as he felt it was impinging on his privacy and that Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman weren’t adequately remunerating him. After the anxieties of re-casting George Lazenby and seeing him promptly refusing to make any more films following On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the makers decided to pay Connery what he felt he was worth along with granting other incentives and so we had Diamonds Are Forever.
But Connery was only really there for the pay cheque and to presumably reap the rewards of making the character the stuff of legend in the 1960’s. He declined another movie so that the producers eventually secured Roger Moore in the part.
Fast forward to the late 1970’s and Connery’s second departure from Bond had been more successful than the first in 1967. He’d registered critically acclaimed or commercial hits in the shape of Robin & Marian, The Man Who Would Be King and The First Great Train Robbery. Meanwhile Kevin McClory had not only stopped the official Bond makers from using Blofeld and SPECTRE (the story goes that Blofeld would have been the villain in The Spy Who Loved Me without his lawyers) but was also hawking round the idea of a remake of Thunderball with Connery firmly in his sights.
Connery, presumably realizing his career was slowing down and seeing the commercial potential in returning to the role given that the official series was still performing exceptionally well at the box office with The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, was happy working with McClory on the new project.
On reflection, the movie seems to be driven by dubious motives. McClory didn’t really have a plan for more films of this ilk hence Connery’s Bond retiring before the closing credits. For Connery, it comes across merely as a money making exercise although, because it did well at the cinema, it re-ignited his career in the 1980’s as he went on to star in The Name of The Rose, The Untouchables and Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
Of course, there is absolutely no escaping the fact that this was going to be a remake of a film made less than twenty years before. They made a rod for their own back as Thunderball had done incredibly well commercially and this correspondent would argue it is one of the finest entries in the series.
But the remake and the attempt to mimic the official series is where the problems in Never Say Never Again lie. Strange given McClory was adamant he was one of the chief architects of the original story.
The film opens up without the traditional gun barrel sequence so that instead the screen is filled with dozens of little 007 emblems before Bond infiltrates what appears to be enemy hideout in a tropical setting. He seemingly duffs up or kills several heavies prior to releasing a woman tied to a bed who then stabs him between the ribs. Switch to Bond with M watching back the footage on television and it becomes clear this was a roleplay but the violence within this so-called training exercise is difficult to reconcile. Rock of Gibraltar in The Living Daylights anyone?
This is a bum note to start on. Remember this is a film pretending to be part of or a spin off or knock off of a cinematic franchise. The very first action scene turns out to be a pretence.
Bond is hurriedly dispatched by M to Shrublands health farm. Ironically, a better job is done here to explain why Bond ends up there than in Thunderball. The novel goes into details about M having a preference for new health methods but in the film, he just appears there with no reason as to why.
Meanwhile, naughty old SPECTRE have a plan in mind to hijack two atomic missiles and hold the western powers to ransom. A rather underused Max Von Sydow plays the latest incarnation of Blofeld while a very smug Klaus Maria Brandauer is Largo. More on the latter in time but he is not a patch on the original Largo.
Anyway, Bond drinks green tea and gets some massages before discovering that a mysterious fellow inmate of the health farm with his own personal nurse and SPECTRE agent Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) is clearly being groomed for something. Indeed, Captain Jack Petachi is being given heroin and made to have surgery so that his retina is the same as the US President so he can activate the launch of warheads from a nearby airbase.
It’s similar to Thunderball in that Petachi is used but here there is no doppelganger and more sophisticated methods are deployed to circumnavigate security. Fair enough.
The warheads are abstracted while Bond’s presence in Shrublands is noted by SPECTRE who send in a henchman to kill him which fails. Blofeld holds the western powers to ransom and M sends Bond to Nassau.
Now this where the movie is inexplicable. In Thunderball the agents in the double-0 section were assigned to various locations in a race against the clock / lucky dip strategy. Bond managed to persuade M to send him to Nassau based on a lead he has from his contrived stay in the health farm. Here, there is no such lead although Bond did coincidentally encounter Petachi and SPECTRE in Shrublands, there is no reason to go to Nassau but goes he does.
It’s as if McClory had forgotten the plot of the film he supposedly had lots of creative input into and could just about remember that Bond must start in the Bahamas but for what reason we never find out. To compound the stupidity, once Bond gets to Nassau, Fatima Blush is there and trying to murder him. It turns out that there is absolutely no reason for Bond to be there but he drinks plenty of Martini, does some snorkling and adds two notches to the bed post.
There might be an explanation as to why the Nassau section of the movie is fairly action sequence free and spends a lot of time focusing on Blush and Bond having sex on a boat. Apparently the filming schedule meant the southern France parts were made first but they then ran out of money before heading to the Bahamas.
The film and McClory apparently suddenly remember that the plot needs to move on to Bond locating Largo and eventually finding the warheads so a wafer thin lead sends Bond to…not anywhere near the Bahamas, not Cuba, not Jamaica…no! Nice.
Bond rocks up in the south of France which is another sun drenched coastal location and, when I was kid, I found it difficult to distinguish between the pair. Rowan Atkinson as the British sidekick is switched for Felix Leiter as they monitor the movements of Largo on his yacht the Flying Saucer. Bond learns that Largo’s girlfriend is Domino Petachi and, true to form, goes about befriending her by posing as her masseur. Is this an improvement on Connery’s Bond of the 1960’s pushing women to the ground or against the wall before kissing them?
Nevertheless, Bond learns that Largo, who let us not forget is harbouring one of the warheads and should be keeping a low profile, is throwing a big charity ball. 007 gate crashes the party, is drawn into a ridiculous computer game duel with Largo and informs Domino that her brother is dead.
The movie is clearly trying to update affairs and deviate from the original film and that is punctuated by not only the gaming arcades at Largo’s ball replacing the casino scenes of Thunderball but also Blush being killed after a nifty motorbike sequence.
Largo invites Bond over for lunch on his yacht prior to taking him and Domino prisoner. They escape after some staggeringly bad acting from Klaus Maria Brandauer.
The film will then return to the formula of Thunderball although it is revealed rather casually that the warhead Bond isn’t tracking has been retrieved thus meaning Bond goes after the other one. It’s not an epic climax but the outcomes are the same as the source movie with the bomb found and Largo killed.
Bond retires into the arms of Domino and we are done.
It is worth remembering that director Irvin Kershner made arguably the best Star Wars movie in The Empire Strikes Back, a feature with heart and soul and thoroughly cinematic. It is therefore puzzling that he is at the helm here with such a dull film that lacks excitement or charm. Perhaps it is prescient to look at his later effort RoboCop 2 – a malicious and soulless affair – to get a barometer of where he was as a director and not be so surprised by Never Say Never Again.
Yet the real fume is with McClory. After years of blocking the official series from using Bond’s arch-nemesis, he finally got the opportunity to deploy SPECTRE and Blofeld himself and potentially introduce new elements and ideas. Yes, the film gets away from its mid-sixties origins and a few scenes are differently handled, but that it so strictly adheres to Thunderball – even with the completely unnecessary use of Nassau – is frustrating and bewildering. Ultimately, one wonders what all the fuss was about concerning McClory and it is no surprise that this is his only notable cinematic legacy.
There’s also the confusing tone of the piece. While it is made abundantly clear that Connery’s Bond is a mature almost semi-retired iteration of the character, the humour in the movie is not as wry nor dry as his era tended to be. Instead, there is a camp, goofy and crass vibe more typical of the Roger Moore films. Therefore, it is caught between two stools. It alludes to the sixties films and Connery’s persona while adopting ingredients of the series as it had become defined after Connery departed.
As for the cast, Klaus Maria Brandauer is stupendously bad as the main villain. The original Largo had a fierce and formidable air but this one gravitates between full on psychopathic to creepy. He does that 1980’s action movie thing where he is unhinged and don’t we all know it. Kim Basinger fares a little better as Domino while Von Sydow is wasted and Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush is a pantomime ersatz imposter compared to Thunderball’s Fiona Volpe.
Connery himself is okay. He has a knowing look about him and walks in and out of scenes with his usual command of solid screen presence. He is the one member of the cast who isn’t up against a previous actor or characterization because he was in the original and therefore, with the acceptance of his vintage, benefits from this. Is it his worst portrayal of Bond? Perhaps not. In Diamonds Are Forever he looked bored and disinterested although there is an argument to say that Never Say Never Again is unique because it is Connery playing an older version of the character and therefore incomparable where Diamonds Are Forever compares badly to the earlier films because the overweight and ageing Connery is purporting to be the same action hero who dominated the screen in Thunderball or From Russia With Love.
Never Say Never Again did good business at the box office on its opening weekend but took less than Octopussy in the same year. That isn’t surprising. While one suspects Connery returning to the role in an era where his official films were regularly being televised probably caused a stir, one doubts whether word of mouth would have been positive enough for repeat visits to the cinema hence why takings tailed off after the opening weekend.
Some fans choose to include it with the other films, others ignore it but in the first instance, it tends to find itself a long way down the rankings. The basic thing is, if you want to see this story, you watch Thunderball, not this.
There were apparently issues on set between producer Jack Schwartzmann, Kershner and Connery. Plus they had to raise finance mid-way through filming due to going over budget. There were also problems with Klaus Maria Brandauer as Kershner struggled to direct him and, from the performance of the former, one can see why. Along with this, the relatively inexperienced Kim Basinger was reportedly nervous and, during some scenes with Klaus Maria Brandauer, you can detect that as she doesn’t seem sure what he is going to do or how he is going to play it.
But, despite all these problems, it is McClory who is to blame for Never Say Never Again. If he’d had any artistic credibility before this film, it evaporates quickly during the movie and he is outed as a charlatan just wanting his pound of flesh.
Strangely though, while maybe they wanted it to be a thorn in side of the official series from a financial perspective, it had a different influence and arguably changed the direction the official series was going in. By the middle of his stint, Roger Moore was working on a one film contract basis so he could opt out at any point. Watching 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, there are strong hints that Moore and the makers recognise his advancing years. They auditioned other actors for the next movie Octopussy but then, knowing Connery was going to rival it, put pen to paper with Moore for reliability. It worked but, presumably for the sake of convenience, they retained him for the very bad A View To A Kill which even Moore himself stated was one too many.
Any attempt to reboot the series had been thwarted and it was only by The Living Daylights that a course correction was implemented before promptly being stopped by legal disputes, this time not to do with McClory thankfully.
But one final thought about McClory and what a chancer he was. When the official series finally got back going after a six year hiatus with Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye, the series became box office gold once more so that McClory actually considered making Thunderball all over again, using former Bond Timothy Dalton and calling it Warhead 2000. One can only be relieved that project never transpired.
Athon 