The 1980s File: The one where James Bond plays video games

 

Title: Never Say Never Again

What Year?: 1983

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

With this review, I’m continuing the No Good Very Bad Movies feature with a project I had really started some time ago, but never decided what to do with. For now, I’m fitting it in with a few more odds and ends that should fit the theme. In brief, I decided a while back to look at movies in the Bond franchise (see Moonraker), which meant going through quite a few movies for what amounted to bragging rights. I watched some of the most controversial and outright hated entries, and some of the most popular and praised, which right off the bat presented a startling amount of overlap. I took a deep dive into the really obscure stuff, like the TV episode with Peter Lorre. (Yes, that happened…) Still, I didn’t quite get to the one I had meant to cover all along, in no small part because it lay in the middle of some of my oldest and most tangled pop culture memories. Without further ado, I present Never Say Never Again, the Bond movie that isn’t technically a Bond movie, and that’s just the beginning of the complications.

Our story begins with James Bond breezing through a rescue that ends in his own death. Of course, it turns out to be a training exercise, while the real drama is that M is trying to keep our favorite alcoholic sex addict in retirement. He still becomes the target of an assassination while in a physical therapy spa. It turns out that SPECTRE is back with a standard exercise to steal a few nukes, carried out by an unhinged businessman named Largo and a crazier-than-usual femme fatale. Bond is on the trail, with help from the villain’s lady friend Domino. Will James Bond prevail, or is this his final mission? Actually, it kind of is!

Never Say Never Again was the only James Bond movie released by Warner Bros, and as such not a part of the franchise “canon” produced by United Artists (later MGM/ UA) and Eon Productions. The project was based from a 1960s script written by novelist Ian Fleming and screenwriter Jack Whittingham, which Whittingham maintained was adapted into the novel and film Thunderball without credit; an eventual settlement gave Whittingham and producer Kevin McClory permission to make their own treatment of the script. After the project was greenlit, several actors were reportedly considered to play Bond, including Richard Burton, before Sean Connery agreed to appear as bond for the first time since Diamonds Are Forever in 1971. Independent filmmaker Irvin Kershner was signed on to direct following his successful turn in Empire Strikes Back. Kim Basinger was cast as Domino, with Klaus Brandauer as Largo. Other cast included Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush and Max Von Sydow (see Flash Gordon) as Blofeld. The score was composed by Michael Legrand. The film was released at roughly the same time as MGM/ UA’s Octopussy with Roger Moore.  It earned $160 million against a $36M budget, compared to $187.5M for the Moore film. Availability of the film has been somewhat limited, especially in digital formats. As of mid-2022, it is available for digital rental from Amazon and other platforms.

For my experiences, the big distinction for this one is that it’s probably the first Bond film I ever saw, which I much later came to count as the worst Bond movie I had personally encountered. But what really fascinated me leading up to this review was how many of the choices other people made were simply the ones that departed from the franchise formula. There were Diamonds and You Only Live Twice before it, which ramped up the actual camp under Connery’s tenure, with the disconcertingly odd On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (which I finally watched specifically for comparison with this film) in between. There were the science-fictional The Man With The Golden Gun and Moonraker, which I personally regard as the best of the Moore films (with Live And Let Die maybe in the middle). Then there are the grimdark-leaning “modern” films like License To Kill and The World Is Not Enough. Given this context, the present film emerged even unseen as a striking anomaly. Where almost all the other polarizing films did something different, this was more of the same in the most literal sense. The actual results, finally viewed in cold blood, are no more or less than generally average. 

Moving forward, I have to say that anything which really changed my mind here are things I credit without hesitation to Kershner and the pool of talent Empire would have dropped him into. The camerawork and establishing “environment” shots are consistently good. The motorcycle chase surely matches anything from the “official” films. (Ironically, the most solid entry on that vein is Secret Service.) Then there are the truly superb effects, especially the launch of the missiles around the 40 minute mark, which I knew had to be from people I had dealt with before. When I checked on that, the first three names that came up were David Beavis, David Harris, and Harry Walton, the last of whom also worked on Howard The Duck, InnerSpace, and Willow. As a further annoying mystery, it appears that Walton’s contribution was originally uncredited stop-motion that I haven’t conclusively identified. To quote Burt Gummer, that’s never happened to me before.

As for the rest, the common denominator is that when it comes to characters, dialogue and story, there is nothing here that Thunderball among others didn’t already do better. The story is engaging and fairly realistic for a Bond movie, but it’s still by the numbers even with Thunderball set aside. The music, usually a focus of criticism, is generally good by my appraisal, but does far better when it goes for a 1980s minimalist vibe over ‘60s melodrama. Basinger is gorgeous and vibrant with an arc that gives her real autonomy, except she doesn’t really show up until Bond needs her. The villain has the makings of one of the best, perhaps an improvement on his counterpart in the earlier film, but when it comes to being actually crazy, things get a little heavy on “tell, don’t show”. To me, the bottom line, especially in a franchise is charisma-driven as this, is whether the actors and their characters seem to be having fun. In those terms, the one standout is Carrera as the absolutely feral Fatima, followed if not outmatched by Von Sydow as Blofeld. (The cat gets honorable mention.) By comparison, Connery is at least at ease, as if he has finally made peace with the character that catapulted him to fame, with a little more vulnerability to go with his undisguised age. It’s enough to absolve him of just being here for a paycheck (that ship sailed when he took money to be in Zardoz), but he's still losing a battle that’s ultimately with himself.

Now for the “one scene”, the one I remembered just as soon as I got to it is a little past the halfway mark. Here, Largo challenges Bond to join him in a game, in this case a video game. By way of introduction, he explains, “This game has one objective, power.” What we then see is sort of a cross between Missile Command and Tempest (see… Night of the Comet?), and for once, the graphics and evident game play are good for the early 1980s. We see both the game and the expressions of the players, the villain confident, the (anti?) hero wary and calculating. Of course, it turns out there’s more than money on the line, as the loser is subjected to electric shocks. After getting hit especially hard, Bond asks to go another round, and you don’t need to watch the game to see the dynamic change. It’s an intriguing scene that’s truly unique, which is more than enough for a movie that’s practically a remake of one that not many have counted among the best.

In closing, I must come back to the question, is this “the” worst Bond movie. I would still have to say yes, but I am willing to back down on what I thought that would mean. It’s definitely the weakest of the Connery Bond movies, which in turn places it under a far harsher standard than those from any other phase of the franchise. By the standards of what I do and this feature in particular, however, there was never a Bond movie that was “that” bad. We are, after all, talking about a big-budget mainstream property, compared to a lineup that has included Death Bed, Creepers, the Gobots movie and Ingagi. My final confession is, I still haven’t found a Bond movie I really didn’t like. (Unless you count the 1960s version of Casino Royale; now that is radioactive coprolite.) They can be formulaic, forgettable, frustrating and entirely disappointing, but never on a level that stops you from coming back for what’s good. (Heck, one day, I might even actually watch one with Daniel Craig.) That’s how a franchise endures for 6 decades and counting. That’s enough for me to call it a day.