We begin with James in France attending
a funeral; for a transvestite, that isn’t actually dead. Either extremely judgemental of the man’s
lifestyle choice or annoyed by the fact that he’s still alive Bond proceeds to
kill him and escape using a jet-pack which I believe raises the question. Was
the whole thing just an excuse to finally use the jet-pack?
Thunderball sees the return of
SPECTRE and its many numbered members.
Maybe Dr No gave me false hope of the intelligence of the members of
SPECTRE but number one seems determined to slowly kill off the agents in albeit
rather inventive fashions – surely this will eventually lead to two problems,
firstly a lack of people and secondly having to assign increasingly larger
numbers which is just going to get confusing for everyone. Even though this
film was made in the sixities I still feel that number two’s eye patch is
probably a little out of date; unless channelling you’re inner pirate at a
child’s birthday party. What did intrigue me was the mention of SPECTRE’s
execution branch which given its previous inventions of the blowing up chair
and poisoned spike must be quite the creative workplace.
Once again Bond does not
disappoint on the clichéd seducing of every woman he runs into, except for poor
Miss Moneypenny. Firstly he seduces a
nurse, initially against her will but like so many before her she quickly
becomes needy and clingy; maybe woman have been missing a lot of relationship
advice subtly offered by Bond films because if one thing is standing out its
playing hard to get works – very well but as soon as you get clingy James will
lose interest and very quickly and conveniently get called away to do very
important work things. Later in the film he also claims to have only slept with
SPECTRE agent Fiona for King and Country – what a hard life!
Managing to avoid being sent to Canada
Bond once again finds himself in a tropical climate, and once again everyone is
dressed in suits! We also see Bond back
at the blackjack table demonstrating his questionable card counting abilities
to impress women. This film’s main bond girl
‘Domino’ tells the audience her tragic tale of how when she was young she fell in
love with a pirate with pet sharks but now finds herself trapped and scared;
controlled by number two – who does in fact have a real name! Making it all so
easy for Bond to swoop in and steal her innocent affections.
Everyone’s favourite geek, Q also
is back in this film, unfortunately backing up the stereotype that geeks dress
badly by getting into full holiday mode with a rather garish Hawaiian
shirt. Though once again it would appear
that money has been poorly spent as they seem to have run out halfway through
making James’ wetsuit; leaving him trouser-less.
Things look like they might start
to get exciting as Fiona and various SPECTRE lackies chase an injured Bond
through a parade of the characters from It’s a Small World to a secluded bar
for casual dancing and shooting the wrong person by accident, poor Fiona; all
she wanted was to be given a higher agent number.
With this being the longest of
the films I’ve watched so far I was starting to loose attention towards the
end. However on the whole, I like the sharks and the underwater fighting – much
quieter and much more entertaining to watch than the typical on-land fights.
Leading to my conclusion that we need more underwater fight scenes in films,
and if not completely underwater we should make people just wear the flipper
and snorkels for sheer amusement factor.
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