Never Say Never Again

Template:BondInfo Never Say Never Again is a 1983 remake of the 1965 film Thunderball, with Sean Connery reprising his role as secret agent James Bond. The film is not considered canon or a part of the "official" Bond film series from EON Productions and United Artists. Never Say Never Again was originally released by Warner Bros., but it is now handled by MGM, also the current distributors of the official Bond film franchise.

Never Say Never Again also marks the highpoint of a long legal battle between United Artists and Kevin McClory. For more information see: the controversy over Thunderball.

Contents

1 Plot summary 2 Cast & characters 3 Crew 4 Trivia 5 External links

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 enrol 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 sneaks onto an American military base in England and steals a plane loaded with two nuclear missiles, which SPECTRE uses in order 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 brother, who is kept a virtual prisoner by her lover, Maximillian Largo.

The film makes a few changes to the James Bond universe. MI6 is shown to be underfunded and understaffed, particularly with regards to Q-Branch, and the character Q is referred to by the name "Algy", and is presumably a different individual than the Q in the official Bond films (whose name is Major Boothroyd). The most notable change is in the depiction of Felix Leiter, Bond's CIA colleague, who is portrayed for the first (and, to date, only) time by an African-American actor. This film also appears to take place in an "alternate universe" in which none of the events of You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Diamonds Are Forever have happened yet, since Blofeld is alive and is 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; actor Connery also breaks the fourth wall during this scene by winking at the camera.

Cast & 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

Crew

• Directed by: Irvin Kershner
• Written by: Kevin McClory, Ian Fleming, Jack Whittingham
• Screenplay by: Lorenzo Semple Jr.
• Produced by: Kevin McClory, Michael Dryhurst, Jack Schwartzman
• 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 animal rights disclaimer saying "no animal was harmed or mistreated during the production of this film" which appears in many movies, was instituted as the result of a scene in Never Say Never Again that showed a horse jumping off a cliff.
• The Flying Saucer, Largo's ship, is a translation of "The Disco Volante", the name of Largo's ship in Thunderball.
• The casino where Bond and Largo go head to head in a videogame 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". Interestingly, the Battle of Waterloo would also play a part in the later official Bond film, The Living Daylights.
• Originally, both this film and the official Bond film, Octopussy were to be released to theatres simultaneously, which led to a brief flurry of media activity regarding the "Battle of the Bonds." Ultimately, it was decided to separate the two release dates.
• 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.

External links

• Template:Imdb title
• MGM's page on the movie (http://www.mgm.com/title_title.do?title_star=NEVERSYN)

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"Never Say Never Again" is also a song by the Bee Gees. It featured on their 1960s album, Odessafr:Jamais plus jamais