I went on holiday recently to the South of France, and because I was flying into Nice Airport and I'm incredibly James Bond obsessed, I watched Never Say Never Again on the plane there. (Nice Airport, by the way, has been redeveloped so it's entirely unrecognisable from the film; I may as well have watched Alien for its relevance). On the plane back, I watched Thunderball, and this meant that I was able to do a pretty accurate compare and contrast between the two films. This means that I can now, with the help of SCIENCE, do a definitive run down of which of the films based on a story by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham is actually the best film based on a story by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham. I should make it clear that neither film is one of my favourites, so when we find which is "best", this is still very much relative. We will be ranking based on a series of categories which will be exhaustive and exhausting and this will enable a score based total at the end.
TITLE
Considering it doesn't come from the twisted mind of Fleming, Never Say Never Again is actually pretty good. It's not got "die" in it, it sounds like it should be a proper phrase, it has a meta significance. It's sort of said in the film. But Thunderball is a really, really exciting title, and became so legendary they named a lottery game after it.
WINNER: Thunderball
JAMES BOND
Obviously this is the same James Bond, Sir Sean Connery, only with eighteen years between appearances. The Bond of Never Say Never Again is far more relaxed and casual than the cruel and less, shall we say, reconstructed Bond of Thunderball. But therein lies one of the faults; the Connery-Bond in 1983 is arriving after ten years of Roger Moore-Bond (and actually, Diamonds Are Forever just before that), so he's been reshaped to reflect what audiences of 1983 expected 007 to be. He's quippy and suave, but not as interesting as Thunderball Bond. Also Sean Connery in a cut off wetsuit over tiny white shorts? HOT.
WINNER: Thunderball
PRE-TITLE SEQUENCE
Obviously I'm including the training exercise as NSNA's pre-titles, because that's clearly what it's intended to be. Thunderball's got the jet pack and the assassin in drag, both of which are legendary, but I'm going to give it to NSNA. The later sequence is just more fun to watch; the various different ways the men are killed, the exotic location, the Wendy Leech cameo. It ends with a moment of genuine surprise, too, with our 007 getting murdered. Thunderball's sequence is more bitty, more fractured, and the fight is no great shakes either. Also I hate all that orange dust over the Aston Martin - it looks like it's gone rusty.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
TITLE SONG
Not even a competition.
WINNER: Thunderball
STORY
Both films are about stealing nuclear weapons and holding the world to ransom, but I'd say that Thunderball hangs together that little bit better. We really get the sense that this is a crisis in Thunderball, with the conference room full of 00s, the cuts back to the British Government officials, the reminders about how much time they have left. In NSNA, we get the message from Blofeld being announced to NATO, but after that there only seems to be one person actually looking for the missiles: James Bond. The Americans seem to only assign Felix Leiter as Bond's assistant, and none of the other countries appear to be doing anything about it at all. It feels a bit languid.
WINNER: Thunderball
VILLAIN
Emilio Largo looks like a proper villain, of course, with that eyepatch and silver hair and Roman nose. He also looks like he could properly smack you about - he's a massive beast of a man. Maximillian Largo, though, is an actual psychopath. The way he giggles then threatens to cut Domino's throat; the smashing up of the dance studio; the little tune he whistles as he leads his love off to be sold. Klaus Maria Brandauer's performance is head and shoulders above Adolfo Celi's, and it's not even close.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
DOMINO
This is a tough one. Both are played by extremely beautiful women. Both have an interesting character arc, going from bored mistress to vengeful killer. Both are, in terms of acting... let's just say Kim Basinger was never going to win her Oscar for this performance. Claudine Auger's Domino gets more to do - I swear for the first hour of the film all Kim does is wobble her bottom lip and look like she's about to cry - but she's not overly convincing as a trapped woman, and her conversion to Bond's side seems to come out of nowhere. 1983 Domino, on the other hand, definitely grows throughout the film, and she really cares about her brother and what was done to him.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
VILLAINESS
Fiona Volpe vs Fatima Blush; let's be honest, we'd all tune in to watch that cat fight. Fatima is undoubtably more comic book than Fiona. The purring, the elaborate outfits, the dancing down the steps when she gets permission to murder Bond. She's never anything less than magnificent (which is probably why the official film series ripped off her character wholesale for Xenia in GoldenEye; tell me I'm wrong). However good she is though, Fiona is just better. She's sexier (that bed scene is absolute filth), she's funnier (winding Bond up as she drives him through Nassau), she's cleverer. She commands the men beneath her and even seems to intimidate Largo. Luciana Paluzzi is an icon.
WINNER: Thunderball
BOND GIRLS
Both films are absolutely stuffed with nubile women in various states of undress. Bond manages to bed three women in Thunderball and four in Never Say Never Again, which is quite something. Of the two Patricia Fearings, I'd say Prunella Gee was better than Molly Peters, because she's funnier and cleverer and their relationship is less rapey; however, when it comes to "female assistant who is murdered", Paula Caplan is an actual character, while Nicole is little more than a name. Thunderball has Mlle LaPorte, a saucy little popsy in a great hat, but NSNA has the Lady In Bahamas, who is played by the magnificent Valerie Leon, and therefore it just squeaks the win on points.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
MINOR VILLAINS
Vargas does not smoke, does not drink, does not make love. What do you do, Vargas? Hang around being a sinister presence, mainly, and doing it very well. Maximillian Largo doesn't have any henchmen, really, unless you count his nuclear physicist, Kovacs - and even he's not as good as Kutze. We get two Blofelds, and while NSNA gives him a face and dialogue and he's played by the legendary Max von Sydow, he can't compete with the sinister Thunderball version dispatching traitors with a flick of a switch.
WINNER: Thunderball
FELIX LEITER
Rik Van Nutter is probably one of the best Felix Leiters, which gives you an idea of just how badly the character has been treated over the years. He's extremely bland. Bernie Casey, on the other hand, is enormous fun, and once again Eon copied the idea of casting a Black actor in the role when Jeffrey Wright turned up in Casino Royale.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
GADGETS
I'm not going to compare the two Qs, because that's not a fair fight; obviously Desmond Llewellyn wins that. Thunderball still wins even if you exclude that factor. The rebreather, the jet pack, that weird massive air tank Bond wears in the climax - these are all infinitely better than an exploding pen and a motorbike with a rocket boost on it. Even the villains in Thunderball have better gadgets than 007 in 1983 - the Disco Volante turning out to be a hydrofoil with a heavily armed rear is amazing.
WINNER: Thunderball
SHRUBLANDS
First of all, both Shrublands are kind of grim. Ken Adams' sets are gleaming curves of Sixties modernism, but the outside is a dump; NSNA's version is Luton Hoo on the outside, and a particularly run down inner city comp on the inside. Both sequences introduce extremely tenuous reasons for Bond to become involved (which is actually an improvement on the novel, where the whole Shrublands sequence is pretty pointless) but I'd take a discovery of a match book with Largo's company logo over all that interminable nonsense with the bodies being swapped around. The Lippe in NSNA is basically a thug in a boiler suit but he's still a million times more interesting than Guy Doleman who manages to have negative screen presence. You have a character called "Count Lippe" and for some reason you cast the most boring Englishman in the world? As for the threat to Bond's life - give me a lengthy violent fight over 007 being strapped to an aggro ironing board any day.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
CASINO
In a battle between Monte Carlo and Nassau, you'd expect the Old World to win. The casino in Thunderball is, however, much more glamorous and aspirational than the one in Never Say Never Again, starting with the guests arriving by speedboat and moving on to the luxurious outfits and trappings. Thunderball also has chemin de fer rather than the truly terrible Domination game; it's a good sequence, but does it belong in a Bond film? Absolutely not. Kim Basinger's dance with Bond is more elaborate than Claudine Auger's, but it also loses its intimacy.
WINNER: Thunderball
ACTION SEQUENCES (ON LAND)
Never Say Never Again has a proper car chase, while Thunderball only has Bond being driven very fast by Fiona. It's also a bit mad - I love the bit where Bond uses the closing rear of the truck as a ramp - and uses the location really well. Both films feature a climax that's part underwater, part on land, and both of them are not very good. The battle in the Tears of Allah cave should be exciting, with guns going off everywhere, but it's actually a little bit confusing, while the fight on the Disco Volante is sped up and oddly edited and has some absolutely terrible blue screen effects. As previously mentioned, the fight with Lippe is interesting, but is it better than Bond smacking a man in a frock in the face? The Junkanoo is a great locale for a foot pursuit but actually I think both Moonraker and Spectre did it better. I think we'll have to give it to NSNA because of that car chase.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
ACTION SEQUENCES (UNDERWATER)
There are two underwater sequences in Never Say Never Again and they are both awful. One features a remote controlled shark - I think? The film is maddeningly vague on this. Is it meant to be a robot? - and the other is a lot of clattering around behind a floating missile. Neither is very exciting or intriguing. On the plus side, they are at least short, unlike literally every underwater sequence in Thunderball. I'm not sure how many there are - about four hundred - but each one goes on for a minimum of twenty minutes longer than it needed to. Oh, they're putting a net over the bomber, that's clever. They're still putting a net over the bomber. Are we actually going to watch them hammer in the tent pegs? Apparently we are. The bit where 007 ends up trapped in a cave may be the single most boring sequence in any James Bond film, ever. And even the climax, which is a huge achievement from a technical perspective, goes on forever. Not least because about 80% of it is composed of shots of men getting their masks ripped off or their oxygen pipe cut. Over and over, cut the cord, rip the mask off, cut the cord, rip the mask off. ENOUGH. Never Say Never Again has to win this because even though its sequences are terrible, they are at least short.
WINNER: Never Say Never Again
STUFF THAT HASN'T AGED WELL, AT ALL
You'd expect Thunderball, a product of the 1960s, to be the clear winner here. And yes, Bond blackmailing Nurse Fearing into a shag is pretty icky (until she realises she loves it really). NSNA makes his encounter with Pat entirely consensual, but then adds in a load of other stuff that's awful. Massaging Domino - and doing a lot of eyeballing of her naked body in the process - is not great, and when she learns that the man giving her a rubdown wasn't an employee, Domino actually looks terrified (until she realises she loves it really). The whole sequence where she's stripped down to her undies in front of a bunch of lecherous Middle Eastern stereotypes so she can be sold to the highest bidder is horrible. And did Thunderball ever require intervention from the actual RSPCA? No it did not. (Although it probably should, because I'm not convinced those sharks getting shot are special effects).
WINNER: Thunderball
BELOW THE LINE
I'm using this to cover the technical aspects of the films, rather than cover each individually; suffice to say Thunderball wins on pretty much every one. The production design, the costumes (that lion swimsuit Kim Basinger wears at the end is a crime against women), the sound - all are infinitely superior in the older film. Even Connery's wig is better in 1965. The less said about NSNA's music, the better, and Maurice Binder's got a girl getting a spear shot up her nancy in the titles, while NSNA has a load of bright red 007s. You can see every penny of Thunderball's budget onscreen, while NSNA often looks cheap. Bond movies should never, ever look cheap.
WINNER: Thunderball
And all that means, once the totals are in, that the winner is...
It was a lot closer than you'd think though, with Thunderball winning 10 categories and Never Say Never Again winning eight. I think what we can conclude from all of this is that neither film is exactly the series' finest hour, but let's be honest: if it's a Sunday afternoon and you find either one of them showing on ITV3 - you're watching it.
