Movies - Never Say Never Again

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	Movies - Never Say Never Again

Never Say Never Again is an unofficial James Bond film and remake of the 1965 film Thunderball
. Released in 1983, it stars Sean Connery as British Secret Service agent James Bond. It was released theatrically by Warner Bros.

The film is not considered part of the canon of the Bond film franchise from EON Productions and United Artists, despite its currently being handled by the official film series distributor, 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. Its release opposite the franchise Bond film Octopussy
(starring Roger Moore) quickly led the media to dub the situation the "Battle of the Bonds."

Plot summary

Being a remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again follows a similar plotline to the earlier film and novel, 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 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 organization 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 a sweeping and fascinating changes to the James Bond universe. Here there is a grtty realism to the entire environment: there is a real sensibility to then-current weltpolitik (with regard to the worsening political situation in Europe at this time, and with the rising power of the middle eastern powers driven by oil)

MI6 is shown to be underfunded and understaffed, particularly with regards to Q-Branch, and the character Q is referred to by the name "Algernon" and may be a different individual than the Q in the official Bond films (where Q's first name is never revealed). His personailty is also very different, as is his backgournd environment - Algernon makes no bones about expecting violence and sex from Bond, which the Q of the offical series is very much against. James Bond does not have a wonder-car - rather a sprightly and mildly armed motorcycle.

Maximilian Largo's Disco Volante has experienced changes, in many ways for the better. Still launching a wet-sub from a secret chamber, the Disco is now a civilianised frigate, and equipped with the amenities expected within a villian's lair, and particularly of a villian with superb taste and a definite European character - the EON films have in recent years made their villians intensely American in terms of megalomaniac scope.

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Movies - Never Say Never Again

Plot summary

Changes to the Bond universe

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