Should've Said Never - Never Say Never Again (1983) || From Rewatch with Love Ep14

[Music] hello and welcome to from rewatch with love a james bond cinematic rewatch podcast my name is graham stark and joining me as always is matt wiggins hello and today we are looking at a little bit of a detour we're looking at 1983's never say never again which is not produced by cubby broccoli and the team at eon productions and in fact premiered practically head to head with an actual aon productions bond film which was octopussy with roger moore if you've been listening along with the podcast assuming this is not your first episode you have known for a while that this was coming [Laughter] we talked extensively in the thunderball episode about the legal battles between aeon productions and kevin mcclory and kevin mcclory and ian fleming that even led to this whole thing but to briefly go over it again before dr no ian fleming was looking at getting a james bond movie made and he and kevin mcclory and jack whittingham wrote a screenplay for thunderball that didn't end up being made so fleming used elements of the screenplay to write the james bond novel thunderball leading to a legal dispute mcclory claiming that many of the ideas in the book were ideas of his from the original screenplay and the end result of that was that mcclory ended up with the film rights to thunderball so when aeon finally made thunderball kevin mcclory was a producer on that movie and there were a lot of changes from mcclory's treatment of the screenplay to what they actually ended up shooting and if you recall from that episode it was not our favorite movie i believe it still is fairly low down on our james bond lists it's fascinating seeing this movie and having thrown into sharp contrast the things that thunderball did correctly yeah as a movie you know yeah because after further disentangling themselves from kevin mcclory and his thunderball rights mcclory took with him the rights to use blofeld and spectre and had been trying for many years to make a bond movie because somehow this is how it all worked out that he could at any time he wanted to and could get the funding together could make a movie with a character called james bond in it and he thought well i should do that and so eventually he did and it's so hard to find behind the scenes information on this movie partly because if you look for behind-the-scenes information most of the articles are everything i just told you right which is just about how this even happened there's very little information about how this movie happened there's no bonus features for me to have watched because as you discovered the blu-ray is out of print yeah and very expensive if you can find one what what did i find on amazon it was like 165 canadian for a copy of the blu-ray something like that yeah 80 or 90 bucks u.s because the blu-rays had a print i had a lot of difficulty finding it on streaming services i ended up buying it on itunes which was still it was still 14 which seems awfully high that is outrageous isn't it yeah so yeah made in you know 1983 for 36 million dollars which is adjusted for inflation uh 93 million dollars which was over their original budget connery himself was heavily involved in the production of the movie i don't know why actually i i think it's he just thought it'd be a bit of fun he got involved with the scripting process not thinking that he would actually be in it right and then eventually you know they had many people in mind and then they were like well what do you want to do it and he was like you know what sure and so he negotiated like three million dollars to be in it and ended up doing a bunch of the production as well and even commented what's the quote from one of the interviews it's like a bloody mickey mouse operation [Laughter] because kevin mcclory has served as an executive producer on this movie but the actual producer like the person who oversees the production was jack schwartzman who had not done that before [Laughter] yeah that's uh definitely a you know good sign yeah screenplay by lorenzo semple jr and i saw that name in the opening titles and i was like where have i seen that name before why do i immediately know the name lorenzo simplejunior and he's written a whole bunch of stuff nothing groundbreaking probably the biggest thing that he's written movie wise would be flash gordon okay the 1980 flash gordon and he wrote 1976's king kong but the reason his name is burned into my brain is because i've seen created by lorenzo semple jr in the opening titles of every episode of batman because he created the adam west batman tv series right acted as like a show runner and script supervisor for that entire series right now the director is where it gets really weird because it's directed by ervin kirschner and i'm gonna be frank irving kirschner has directed around 30 movies that you have never heard of and the empire strikes back and robocop 2 and robocop 2 [Laughter] which everybody definitely considers the good one it's just so weird because it's always like i've never looked into what ervin kirschner has done but it's always been sort of spoken of when you talk about star wars you know but like well empire strikes back was definitely the best of the original trilogy and that's because lucas didn't direct that one right that was always the shorthand right it was like right yeah you know like lucas directed a new hope and that was good then empire strikes back was some other guy who no one knows who he is and then lucas directed return of the jedi and empire strikes back was definitely the best one in the you know so it's must be because of this this other director and i don't know maybe maybe he is a fine director but i i i don't see it on display in this movie the fact that it's so difficult to find a copy of this to watch is not going to be a problem for most of you i think where did we find it streaming in the u.s amazon prime was it streaming on amazon prime in the us yes it is it yeah but i couldn't because i have the canadian prime but yes it is yeah if you have amazon prime video it's it's available there if you already have amazon prime then you know i mean go for it but i i guess tipping our hand early this i was kind of let down by this movie [Laughter] and again i had never seen it but i did remember catching the very very very end of it once oh yeah okay with no context like ages ago i just if you'd asked me if rowan atkinson was in a james bond movie then i would have been like oh yeah absolutely i remember a scene with him and blonde uh probably timothy dalton it was he was probably in one of the dalton movies and turns out no he's in this one it's sean connery yeah if you're curious of course the media in the day had a big field day about like bond versus bond no doubt and both films did very well the thing is this this movie was a commercial success 160 million dollars at the box office in 1983 416 million today it was not a failure and in fact it was received very well at the time people were like hey sean conner he's never lost it and yeah i think he's lost a little bit of it but you know people are like all right sean connery's back and you know the master returns hooray it's bond versus bond octopussy in the end performed better at the box office i think coming out prior to this one might have helped maybe i don't know it probably it ultimately doesn't matter yeah it doesn't have to be a head-to-head competition i don't i think it would have been to their benefit to have had it not be a head-to-head competition probably i mean i like i don't know i'm trying to think of this in a modern well more modern context that's 1983 right but like franchise movies are all the rage now can you imagine marvel puts out a captain america movie and then sony pictures in the same year marvel does a captain america movie starring like sam wilson as the new captain america and then sony runs a captain america movie having brought back chris evans but that captain america is not in the mcu yeah it'd be very strange and i mean i think i think audiences today care a lot more about the interconnectivity continuity stuff like i i think at this point i i doubt people cared frankly yeah it just like it's a lot of bond in one year yeah i feel a little bit bad almost for roger moore oh yeah because it does feel like there would be a sort of delegitimization of his bond by this well he's the one that that's doing like the official bond movies but connery's the real bond and that's definitely the angle they were going for the the producers of this movie they were like you know right the real james bond returns and it's like meanwhile somewhere off in the woods george lazenby sheds a single tear yeah but ultimately it was not received that poorly at the time and only sort of through a more modern film critique i has it maybe not faired as well yeah and on that note let's start talking about it there is no pre-title sequence we launch right in the screen has it looks like scan lines but as they increase in size you see that it says double 07 which is a cute little effect yeah it is it is cool and then we get a a very traditional opening title sequence with just the cast and crew names being brought up over the footage we're about to see for the next couple minutes i i think this was a big mistake like if if you're making we're at zero seconds in the movie and i'm like don't like it if you're making this unabashed we're doing a james bond movie you've got decades of examples of how to do that and obviously you want to put your own spin on it but like you should really be able to be like let's just do that but better or even just do that like i despite the budget it makes the film feel cheap in comparison it does it really does it's fascinating too because they they fully do a functional pre-title sequence right like the title song is running over top of what would in any other bond movie be the pre-title sequence yeah opening it on just it is an establishing shot but it's just like a helicopter shot of trees as we move to where the action is happening is like you're right it feels cheap it feels like a cheap 80s action movie that you know you found in the bargain bin at target and the music i don't know where this falls on the bangers belters and ballads this is is i asked kathleen i played a bit for her and i was like what genre is this and she sort of scrunched up her face and was like i guess adult contemporary more or less so this song is to me the quintessential it is practically an archetype of the completely meaningless artistic void of an 80s opening title song yeah it's got no teeth it has no teeth whatsoever like it's all it's a little catchy but it's like i don't know i could listen to the instrumental version of this as elevator music like it's it's nothing it's it's actually it's funny i i remember this like anecdote from around this or a little after this i guess but around about the time that the simpsons came on in 1989 i don't know this may be sort of apocryphal i'm not gonna source it i just remember hearing this quote from danny elfman being like the reason the simpsons song is the way it is is because like every show had this completely toothless 80s sitcom opening that like i say toothless 80s sitcom opening and immediately 20 of them spring to mind and you cannot remember which show belongs to which theme song and he wanted to do something that was completely out of left field relative to the the prevailing standard on the air at the time to sort of indicate that they were aiming to go sort of completely out of left field with the show as well so he tried to make something that was catchy but like nothing that was on the air at the time to set it apart this isn't that no this is very much the like the thing that danny elfman at the time was trying to like break away from this song could apply to literally any other movie from this era and it would suit just as well yeah absolutely music by michelle legrand who did the music for the movie and the score of this movie is not looked upon well lyrics by allen and marilyn bergman these are all people who have been nominated for academy awards for their work but not for this yeah and performed by lanny hall who is the wife of herb alpert him of the tijuana brass oh really yeah strange connection once again that is a strange connection to casino royal 1969 but under this music we see connery as bond sneaking around this sort of it looks vaguely south american let's say cuban they're definitely going for that kind of look with the dress that people are wearing the like sort of beards and hats you know of sort of like they're they're trying to look for sort of like cuban revolutionaries is the kind of imagery they're trying to invoke here which which is funny because i watched the first 15 minutes of octopussy by accident forgetting we'd said that we were gonna do never sin ever again and that's also how octopussy starts oh really not not sneaking around the jungle but with quasi-cuban revolutionary looking people anyway i see so bond is sneaking around being a lot more brutal than we're used to seeing connery's bond be you know like garating people using grenades like he kills a bunch but he's also like he's got like a blow gun he's got a zip line he's he's using every trick in the book eventually kills enough of them that he can get into the room where we are led to believe through the way that it shot the girl that he's there to rescue can be rescued after a bit of a scuffle between him and the last guy standing by the way all the fight scenes in this movie were choreographed by steven seagal really yeah like so in fairness to mr seagal there are a few good fight scenes in this movie there are you know i wouldn't even call the problem with this scene the fight scene the actual fight choreography is pretty sweet yeah i mean it looks like a steven seagal movie but it's still pretty sweet the end result of it is that after finally defeating the last guy there bond cuts the ropes that are restraining this woman and she pulls out a knife and stabs him in the side of the rib cage and rather than look pained like he's dying he looks like he's about to swear and cuts himself off he just sort of goes and looks really upset and i agree with you completely having this as a pre-title sequence and then having him get stabbed and look like he's dying and then cutting to opening titles would have been way better way to start this movie absolutely i mean it would be doing the bond dies in the opening again but who cares that's fun yeah so it then immediately cuts to vhs video footage of what bond was just doing and it's apparent that he was doing a training exercise basically to be allowed back into the field it's being watched by bond and m played by edward fox who has been in a whole bunch of stuff amusingly played agent nine in 2018's johnny english strikes again i i don't get like supremely negative about a lot of stuff that we talk about in these movies i hate his portrayal of him oh yeah it's so bad he's just angry and distrustful and talks to bond like bond as a child but not in like an endearing way like when q would get annoyed with roger moore for like breaking his toys like he just he shows no trust or respect for bond and just gets angry and doesn't listen to or believe him this is the head of mi6 and he's just like well that sounds stupid whatever go away yeah bond will be like but what about this thing for example and he's like no you're an idiot stop that leave and it's like wow how are you in charge of this division of government it warrants noting that that in this movie he is implicitly he is playing the subsequent m from the m that we know there are a few lines to sort of give it away he talks in this scene in fact he talks about how he is basically like decommissioned the the double o program because unlike his illustrious predecessor he believes in other methods to get the job done he has been putting bond through this training program because he believes it's his responsibility to keep his agents up to snuff and able to handle the field but bond complains that he's like well you've got me teaching courses like of course i died it's not the same as being in the field there's no edge on it and if all i'm gonna be do is working at the academy then you should expect me to sort of get you know rusty basically but you're a hundred percent right like he's just such a dick yeah this isn't even the scene that that i think he's the the worst and it's just it's like m was always kind of tired of bonds shenanigans in the aeon productions but as we commented on there was always that respect of like but this guy's actually really good at his job you know like bond would say something and you know and would be like oh come on 007 whatever you know stop that and he's like well what about this and then m would go oh holy crap he's onto something right yeah this guy's just like i don't want to talk to you or look at you i i hate you [Laughter] so they they have this back and forth about like you know you died in the training thing he's like well i was doing training drills for a week and i you know i only died once and m says you died twice bond says if i may offer a correction the land mine didn't kill me it merely blew my legs off which is something of a distinction without a difference in this context but it does make for a good quip yeah speaking of the quips connery is he's totally fine in this movie like he's he's older yes he's got like gray through his hair it's certainly been god 12 years since he's been in diamonds or forever yeah he's in good shape physically and you know he's he's fine honestly i have no real complaints with connery and bond in this movie my problems are largely with other things though i will note he's talking with way more of an accent than he used to well that's true we've already talked about one big mistake this movie made in the first five minutes i want to credit the movie now with a good decision the good decision being reactivating an aging agent who has been working in training for a while because that makes connery way more believable yes in the context of this film and so setting it as like this is connery's one last ride as bond within the narrative of the film it's bond's last mission i think serves connery's position in the role very well i agree and much more like it makes him feel much more at home in this role than he did in diamond sir forever yeah i totally agree having that as a narrative thing of like training other agents and now we're putting you back in the field for this mission does make that sort of thing make more sense related to that though i detest how often they make some kind of cute fourth wall quip about it because they do one in this scene and i was like aha got you cool you know that's your this never happened to the other guy fair on you and then they keep doing it like there are just so many little side mentions of like nice to have you back you know you were always you were always the best agent great you're back back in it again you know like referencing a car like oh they don't make them like this anymore it's just like constantly through the whole movie so what ends up happening here is that after the discussion of bond dying or not dying as the case may be em decides that bond is not sufficiently up to snuff he needs a strict regimen of diet and exercise and so he is ordered off to shrubland's therapeutic facility yeah exactly just like in thunderball he's going to shrublands to recuperate and on his way out he says goodbye to moneypenny played by pamela salem who is absolutely randy for him this is my other complaint about this movie is there are so many women in this movie to the point that on more than one occasion i got them confused yeah and every single one of them is incapacitated by how randy they are for bond yeah yes i i get that we're talking about james bond i understand that it is almost to the point of parody that every single one of them is just like doopa do just doing my normal job yeah it's like settle down yeah no you're not wrong it is uh 100 correct bond arrives in his car that they do not make them like anymore it's a bentley i think at shrublands did they make some quips about how he's still in good shape this is like again more of these jokes about how he's still got it in him and the doctor makes a joke about how he's gonna we'll give you a colonic that'll that'll perk you up and then the nurse asks him to fill up a jar for a urine test and she's standing on the other side of the room and he makes some sort of quip about like what from over here i honestly like that quip because she she just sort of points the cup at him yeah i it's weird because it's like yeah i don't know why she doesn't walk towards him and hand it to him she just stands on the other side of the room and goes i need you to fill this up and like tips it towards him yeah i think the joke is meant to be like he pees into it from there but her reaction to it is as if he was saying like i'll just unfurl my enormous dong across the room i don't know her reaction is very like flirty it's odd but not as odd as the skechers commercial we go to because [Laughter] the next scene is we just follow people walking watching only their feet yeah we follow a woman walking into a place and then a man lets her into another place it's a bank and then we eventually see who this is the character is fatima blush who was changed to fiona volpe in thunderball the red-haired assassin specter number 11. that is who this is as well she is also an assassin specter number 11. she doesn't have red hair she wears big furs and high heels and is incredibly extra in every single scene that she's in she's kind of great actually in terms of just raw entertainment value of the movie because yeah she is giving a hundred and twenty percent all the way through this movie yeah i don't think she's in the same movie as anybody else like she's and i don't necessarily mean this is a criticism because she is entertaining but it's like she she had made a decision about what this movie is and certainly is supported by the cinematography of like following her feet around and then later there's a bit of her like prancing down an enormous staircase and it's like what what movie or do you think you are in oh yeah i mean in this very scene so this is like this is a similar scene from i think thunderball as well where it's largo in the case of thunderball goes into the charity for displaced peoples and then like goes down the stairs and into the secret chamber and it turns out to be that like specter meeting room yeah this is precisely the same thing happens here she goes into the bank she goes up to a wall with a banker they both put their keys into deposit boxes turn them and the wall opens up revealing a staircase that she walks down into the spectre lair but you are right she is in a completely different movie from everyone else because here she is in like leather and high heels and giant furs and a jaunty cap and everyone else everyone else in the room is in suits and ties yeah you know who isn't in the room is largo and this is one of those things where it's like for all the problems we had with thunderball there are things that we did like in thunderball and one of them was the thunderball's equivalent of this scene largo goes in we hear from specter number one we don't see his face at that time and then he unveils their plan and this movie doesn't establish largo for a while they set up they introduced blofeld in this scene blofeld played by max von sydow with a full head of hair and a beard and the cat and everything and he's he's honestly kind of great even though he is inconsequential to this movie yeah fatima blush comes in and sits down a guy sort of looks at her side long and it's like oh they're gonna do the thing where he talks about how someone's betrayed them and then that guy gets killed and that doesn't happen no maybe that was recorded according to kim basinger kim basinger's in this movie according to kim basinger they filmed like three movies worth of footage that doesn't surprise me it definitely feels like there's some stuff missing one of the things that's missing that we'll get to is like you're right they don't establish largo for a long time i don't know like i thought i was watching this movie pretty good i literally do not remember why bond catches on to largo as being like the person to pay attention to at all yeah same okay good it wasn't just me because there will come a point a few scenes from now where he's like largo largo's the guy we need to chase after and i could not tell you why in in recollection at the moment maybe we'll be able to remind ourselves while we're doing this podcast hi you know what i honestly think they just don't that's reasonable blooffeld talks he addresses the people there and then there's a video call from largo in this movie maximilian largo not emil largo maximilian largo played by claus maria brandauer a hungarian i believe actor who was in the main role in a movie called mephisto which won an academy award the year prior oh we'll talk more about him but anyway he just sort of like radios in and is like yup the plan's going ahead but like there's nothing he has no because he's a video call and the scene focuses so much on fatima and blowfeld there's no gravitas from him it's just like this guy that blowfeld's radioing into for an update he's just like some dude yeah anyway he he does explain that it's like we have the air force guy working for us under threat of hurting his sister i mean it's basically the same situation in thunderball domino is his sister in this case he's an american air force pilot as opposed to like there are a few distinctions here from thunderball that we'll we'll get to as the scenes play out but basically he's like yeah you know i i have ingratiated myself to domino we have introduced the air force pilot to heroin right yes rather than replace him with a body double like in thunderball they've got him hooked on smack and given him a like they did some sort of surgery to his eye yeah they gave him a false cornea yeah to mimic the cornea of the president of the united states right so that when an eye print scan is required to authorize the arming of nuclear warheads he will be able to take the place of the president to authorize the arming of nuclear warheads cool yeah yeah and that surgery happened at shrublands or at least he's recovering at troublin so it's the same kind of similar thing with the guy walking around with the bandages in thunderball back at shrublands we see him being wheeled through in a wheelchair and bond tries flirting with a nurse she's like well let's go take care of that and then it cuts to what looks like a weird shot of them having sex at a strange angle but she's actually just stretching his back because she's doing like chiropractic stuff i will say that unlike thunderball bond does not grotesquely force himself upon this nurse or anyone in this movie it's true to his credit yeah that's a positive i actually think this scene is kind of cute i i like the fake out it's not a very good fake out but i like the fake out anyhow yeah i also like how completely put off bond looks every time a bone like cracks sean connery is doing good work in this scene they get a little insert shot of patachi the pilot smoking and then we cut to connery with bond sort of doing what looks like spy stuff inside his suitcase because then he hides it very quickly when there's a knock at the door and it's the nurse who has come around and decided that she does actually want to spend the evening with bond even though she really shouldn't and could get in trouble but she's brought him food because he's been given horrible get health food from parsley tea yeah from the doctor she brings him slightly better but still terrible sounding food and then he flips up his suitcase and shows that he's got like vodka and foie gras and truffles and caviar yeah yeah she and bond enjoy their evening and fatima blush now disguised as a nurse makes contact with petachi they end up getting into a fight basically because she you know she reminds him that if he doesn't do their bidding he not only won't get his heroine but they will hurt his sister in some way so they start having a fight which potassium does a terrible job at like fatima blush legitimately kicks the crap out of him and bond hears this happening and looks out the window and sees this happening they're not being very subtle about it so he gets dressed and goes over to investigate and sneaks up to the window and sees her investigating this corneal implant and they have this machine that he's going to test that the cornea works he's like reciting numbers he has eight seconds we we don't know this yet we'll like it'll sort of pay off eventually but he's basically she tells him he has to succeed in this test in eight seconds and so he has to like enter some numbers and have his cornea validated in eight seconds or he fails the test yeah if you do it baby gets his candy waves the the hypodermic in front of him bond in trying to get a better view inadvertently flips the blinds up patachi freaks out calls blush back in he's like there was a man outside so she gets her spy gadget which is just a night vision scope and looks around and sees that it's bond hiding in the shadows and staring at the window waiting for them to to stop looking for him i guess and she recognizes who it is immediately she's like oh okay i see what's going on the next day bond is snooping around patachi's room where it's been completely cleaned out he's been moved they've left he finds potachi's cigarettes and matchbook that he's hidden in the mattress and there's a logo of some flags on the matchbook no idea what that could mean yet then you remember the scene where bond has sex with a table i do yeah that doesn't happen in this one which is kind of a shame he's doing like not bench he's doing like an opposite of a bench press he's doing like pull downs it's weird it clearly is it's like a smith machine for bench pressing because he clearly is like he's actually sort of it looks like he's pushing in both directions pushing up and then pulling down because it's counterweighted which is why it looks like a pull down but like he's about to be attacked here and as soon as the counterweight goes it immediately slams down on his neck and pins him to the machine so there's there's got to be downward weight as well yeah by the way the the guy that comes in to attack him this movie's version of lippy right who's not count lippy he's just lippy the enormous indestructible man [Laughter] yeah as you say that he pushes down on bond and tries to you know like strangle him or whatever and bond eventually gets out and then they have this ridiculous fight that nobody seems to hear this is one of those fights that i think is actually kind of great this is like a good bond fight in my opinion because it's like it's the classic indestructible bad guy there's a unconventional weapon used in it which i think is cool and there's some good comedy in it i mean it's easy comedy but it's good comedy lipe tries to kill him with the smith machine bond tries to hit him with an exercise device of some description i can't see what it is and he just tears it apart in front of him that's great bond wings a dumbbell at him and it just bounces off his chest without any reaction at all i do obviously as has come up many times now i have a soft spot for bond absolutely getting trash canned in a fight that happens constantly bond is so completely out of his depth in this fight it's hilarious but they fight their way out of the gym they fight their way down a hallway in the hallway there's like a bunch of patients or like watching a sports game of some description on tv they manage to like fight down the hallway behind them while they're all excited and cheering for something so they don't hear them fighting past them bond manages to mash lippy's nose in a door eventually they get to a kitchen bond gets thrown all around the kitchen it's in the kitchen where lippe pulls out his weapon bond picks up a knife to sort of defend himself and lipe pulls out his belt buckle which has this like spring two and a half foot long highly it's a spring basically like a condensed one so it's wiggly bond like brandishes the knife adam and he just wings this thing through the air and it just breaks the top of the knife off bond grabs like a serving platter to defend himself and he just cracks the thing right in half it's just a fun fight scene like all sorts of weird stuff happens in this scene it honestly is the oh my only complaint about it is like for example the chef just pieces out and then they go into a woman's room and bond flings her blankets all over lippy and she remains completely silent and doesn't move or do anything and it's like nobody notices or reacts to this path of destruction and they really do tear a path of destruction they come out of the kitchen into a hallway and bond like tips a bookcase full of china and plateware over top of him and then pushes a laundry cart at him they make their way down the hall you're right he like they bust through a room where a woman's asleep and he grabs all the blankets and wraps them up in them and she just sort of like curls into a ball they make their way into a laboratory bond gets put through like all manner of racks of beakers and vials and the fight finally comes to an end when bond grabs a beaker off of one of the tables and throws it in lippy's face which causes lippy to react as if he's been like horribly burned and goes and walks back against another case of vials and what have you at the back of the room hits it stops reacting and then falls over forward and we see that when he smashed into the thing and behind him it impaled him on a whole bunch of beakers and and like broken glass and so he falls dead and bond looks at the beaker that he tossed in his face trying to figure out what he threw in this guy's face that saved him and it is his own urine sample the i do like i actually i prefer how they play it because he throws it in the guy's face and he goes like ugh because he just had stuff thrown in his eyes and there's ammonia in p then backs into the shelf of glassware and then looks like he's died basically and then bond is like what the what did i throw in his face and then looks at it it's the urine and he's like what's wrong with my pee and then and then looks up at him and then he falls over and it's like oh he's actually got impaled on stuff okay that makes more right and then we got toupon being chewed out by em who's like you how dare you i'm gonna have to pay them all this money and apologize for you destroying the place and bonds like a man tried to kill me and m just goes like uh probably someone whose wife you slept with just just completely like bond's like do we not want to follow up on why that might be and and no the end result of that scene is no we just cut to the air force base where stuff's about to go down so currently bond is not on a case he just had someone try to kill him and he doesn't talk about hitachi or any of that at the air force base again like thunderball they're about to do this special test in thunderball they're moving the warheads on that plane that carries warheads in this case they're doing a test of these like self-guided amazing yeah they're like cruise missiles yeah they're cruise missiles patachi takes his little briefcase with the eye device and like hacks into the circuit board it's very like don't worry about it and takes off his contact lens and reveals his horrible cornea eye and uses the president's cornea to replace the dummy warheads that they will be testing with live nuclear warheads because they're testing the systems by which they are launched and fly so he's sending fresh ones out there and he's like communicating with it sounds like a person at a call center who's like hello you have to do the you have to make sure you have the president's eye around okie dokie thank you have a nice day you know it's a little weird it could have served to stand more robotic i think yes it is a very polite robot yeah so they load the things up and pedagi immediately gets in his car and leaves the air force base because he knows that something's going to go down hitachi makes his way off the base we cut to the plane carrying the missiles initiating the test as it fires its two cruise missiles and then we we cut back to pitachi again you know making his escape as he's driving along through the countryside fatima pulls up next to him in a car and she's cheering jack bravo and and you know she she cheers him on which draws his attention he rapidly looks over because she's just come up behind him and he doesn't know who it is he's like oh okay cool thank you and then she gestures you know keep your eyes on the road so he snaps his head forward to keep his eyes on the road and you may want to pull up our favorite website graham oh no snakes on film [Music] [Laughter] so we talk about ridiculous ways to murder somebody this is fatima starting at uh at 100 and going up from there while jack's eyes are on the road she reaches over to the passenger seat where she has a snake and she wings it into his car this causes jack to panic this causes graham to burst out laughing uh this causes jack to panic so he oversteers the car steers it off the road steering it off the road causes the car to jump and flip in midair as it crashes into the side of a building landing upside down the team up pulls up next to the crashed car which is through a building walks over sees that jack is severely injured picks up her snake which is still alive jack not so much but snake's still good gives a smooch slaying like oh my baby very sorry places a brick of c4 with a remote detonator on it in the car walks back to her car and blows up jack's car in a huge fireball pick one of those three ways [Laughter] you don't need to use a poisonous snake more on that in a second make him crash and flip his car and blow it up i mean she gets the job done yeah we can be fairly certain that jack patachi is no more yeah anyway according to californiaherps.com it is a boa constrictor so not poisonous uh alas he had nothing to fear except a good hug so then we cut back to the cruise missiles cruising over the british countryside i am a little dubious of this test myself but sure why not we get a great shot of like two little kids playing on the beach as two cruise missiles fly over their head which is uh a little incongruous it's very strange like some of the shots are cool like they've got obviously models of these missiles overlaid on rapid helicopter shot and you know some of it looks kind of cool and some of it's like okay it's a little odd and then aboard this boat we see some people with a radar scanner and they're like oh yep they're getting closer it's all it's all going ahead as planned they start freaking out back at the air force base because now the missiles are losing altitude then this sorry this really bugs me it cuts from shots to missiles flying through the air and then the radar technician scientist guy going yup we've got a hold of them and he turns on a display and it shows them descending and then we see two little inflatable zodiacs leaving the bigger boat we assume to go and retrieve the missiles and then we just hard cut to one of the missiles landing on the sea floor there's no shot of them crashing into the water and it's jarring that there isn't one i found it jared you're right i was waiting for like the moment of impact yeah and it's just like they're underwater now yeah the closest we get to that like sort of payoff is the air force watching them and seeing them like descend descend descend and then cut to black yeah there's this weird cut of the scientist who helped do this turning off his radar and looking remorseful for a moment and if you remember in thunderball that character ends up having a change of heart after largo threatens to torture domino breaks her out and he and bond and domino get away from the boat at the end of the movie right in this movie there is no payoff yeah he just looks sort of remorseful and then nothing happens with that okay yeah so then we cut to largo in a helicopter who's like hey how'd it go and they're like i went fine and he's like oh awesome cool i'll tell blofeld and then he tells blofeld like there's a metal skull that like tilts back and a camera lens comes out of its mouth and he tells blofeld that it's all good and blowfeld's like great good job and then we see blowfeld addressing i don't know a lecture class like where is this filmed this looks like a university yeah it's in context like narratively this is the heads of nato but it does look like a university lecture hall where they've set up a screen yeah and you know put some flags around the room maybe nato looks like that i don't know but it is not a very like extravagant set no it really isn't smartly blowfeld and spectre are demanding 25 of all the nation's annual gdp to not detonate these two nuclear missiles at unnamed targets somewhere on earth and i say smartly because then you don't have to worry about the movie getting old because percentages cover for inflation you remember in the first austin powers movie dr evil was like demanding one million dollars and everybody was like that's not a lot of money yeah and then he had to be like oh whoops and like reframe it and so this you know 25 of the gross national product of all of all the nato countries that's a lot of money then and it's a lot of money now yeah which is why they all freak out and get angry at england for losing these missiles yeah m is there as is the i think it's the british foreign secretary and they they basically are like all right we'll get we'll get someone on the job that's basically it it's like we we are facing a global nightmare but we'll get someone on the job we will reactivate the double o's and find these two bombs and then we cut to bond reviewing pictures of largo and i just realized the answer it's a little tenuous but the answer to your question from earlier is largo's boat has a flag that's the same design as we're on patachi's matchbook okay you're right it is tenuous because i don't think we learned that in this scene no we learn it in the next scene so we see bond holding the matchbook looking at oh no there is actually a shot of like a bag on the deck of that fishing boat earlier and then after the scene of bond looking at the thing and i think moneypenny being like why are you here stop working so late come with me and him just sort of being like okay whatever and going with her then we cut to a shot of largo's yacht with that symbol on the helipad right and i remember the seeing the symbol on the helipad and so like i knew there was that connection and he you're right he does hold up the matchbook in this scene it's the fact that they if they had reversed the order of those scenes so that we knew that largo was associated with that logo in any kind of direct way yeah rather than show the the yacht and the helipad and then this b-roll not b-roll but this shot of largo getting landing his helicopter shot of largo in the helicopter then the pov shot that we have in the movie of the helicopter landing on the helipad with that symbol then cut to close-up of bond holding the matchbook with the same symbol and looking up looking at pictures of florida pictures of largo hell looking up a picture of this yacht and seeing who it's registered to yes exactly this is all how to edit this better with existing footage that they have too yeah so largo gets on board his boat and he has a big staff of folks and he asks for updates on you know various stocks and things and just sort of says hi and then we cut back to bond talking to em and saying that he wants to look into this boat so here's more of why i dislike em in this movie in this scene okay bond asks sam what's the american story for what happened here and em says well this can't happen without the president's approval and even then there are safeguards they need the president's right eye and bond who saw padachi at troublins doing stuff with his eye bond said well could they do it with a false eye and m is like come on bond you're being an idiot what a stupid what a stupid idea let's think of something logical and then we just cut we just cut away m doesn't come around bond's like what about this and em's like that's a stupid idea and then we just cut back to largo yeah they even mention in that scene that the only lead they have is that petachi left the air base shortly after the plane launched right like we do get that establishing in that in that shot yeah or in that scene yeah you're right oh do come on bond yeah let's think of something logical it's like well logically they shouldn't have gone missing in the first place so we cut back to largo sitting in his like little secret room with lots of control panels and everything and then he hears people talking and he hears music and he turns up the radio where he's hearing this from and hits a button one of the walls in this little room slides open it's one-way glass and he's looking into a dance studio which is where the music and talking is coming from and in the dance studio is a woman we will discover this is domino and a man who is i guess her dance instructor and they are practicing dancing and then largo just sort of watches this happen for a little bit sure does this continues for some time and then it is implied that he sneaks around into the back of the room and sits down and starts playing the piano because they keep we keep watching them dance and then he starts playing the piano then they're surprised and they're like oh largo and she's really excited to see him and it's like oh yay you're back cool hooray so yeah this is domino's played by kim basinger and she's really really happy to see him which is notably different from their relationship in thunderball where domino tolerated largo like maybe at one time liked him but now is just sort of like yup i'm this guy's mistress and that's just sort of what i have going on in my life yeah whereas like kim basinger is definitely playing this very like jubilant and excited to see him and he has a gift for her he sure does what a contrivance i'm sorry what a thing um it's a pendant that he calls the tears of allah and it looks like cheap costume jewelry and he says it's very valuable she gets a little nervous about that i i have to say one of the things that overall i don't love brandow's portrayal of largo okay but there is something about his performance that i i still don't like but in a different way and i think is maybe a credit to him is that the character does this thing repeatedly where he tells domino about this object that he has and is like this thing is amazing and it's super valuable and really expensive here hold it and she's like no i don't want to hold it because it's super expensive and he's like no hold this because he wants to see her uncomfortable he wants her to hold this thing that she is uncomfortable holding because he enjoys making her uncomfortable he enjoys having that power over her right that's like that's too real that's like that's like a thing that emotionally abusive partners do in real life like that it's not uh like outlandish james bond villain thing that's like a creepy boyfriend thing yeah and it's like okay well done you did that very well i don't like it [Laughter] so i differ a little little bit on my overall assessment of largo in this film like i did just in terms of of like whether i like him as a villain or not i definitely like him as a villain more i think than i liked largo in thunderball if only because he's not boring like he has personality i don't think this movie is very good spoilers the plan is worse like the actual execution of the plan and how this movie goes is mostly worse than thunderball's version of it but largo in this at least has personality yes he is at least interesting i completely agree with you there he's like a gross schizoid but he he at least has personality yeah no it's i i guess what it comes down to is that he's not what i expected of a bond villain but he's a good villain like he's he's a good bad guy and he's upsetting and uncomfortable but i guess he's not like quite as over the top as i would have thought but you're right he's not boring speaking of not boring we cut to the q scene except it's not q it's a guy in q division who bond refers to as algae or algernon he's essentially q he's the q stand-in and while bond is practicing his marksmanship algae uses a missile in a fountain pen to blow up one of the targets bond is looking at so this is extremely dangerous there's a man downrange algae yeah he fires like over without bond being aware he's in the room yeah cause like bond is doing target practice and algernon walks up behind him fires this pen blows up a target startling bond to the extent that bond still not realizing that algernon is in the room almost looks down the barrel of his gun trying to figure out what just happened before looking back and realizing he's there and then what follows is a very strange version of a cue sequence they sort of walk through the mi6 workshop algae makes reference to the fact that they're building a motorbike that will pay off later there's a shot where bond is sort of like looking at a table of stuff and i stared at this table to try and see if there was some sort of in-joke or reference or something and it's there's nothing it's just a table of junk algae gives him a watch that's better than his watch because this one shoots lasers and then they have an extended talk about how algae's just happy that he's back in the service that this this great spy is better than the spies they had recently and i'm glad that you're back and it's another one of the like yeah you're a better bond yep the payoff line from algernon in this one is i do hope we'll have some gratuitous sex and violence on this one eh yeah it's so on the nose it is so we cut to the bahamas bond is walking around the dock and there's a woman unloading her car because she's gonna go fishing and he offers to help her out with that and she makes some sort of joke about how she's hoping to catch something oh i don't know about six foot three 190 pounds and he's like oh i might be able to help you out with that and before he can get into the boat and occupy himself for the next several hours someone yells across the the square you know mr bond mr bond mr bond and this is this is a character by the last name of small faucet small faucet hey it's hyphenated small faucet yes and this is their man in the bahamas as played by rowan atkinson this was ron atkinson's first movie really yeah 1983 this would have been this the year after the first series of blackadder or contemporaneous with blackadder and rowan atkinson was already well known as a comedian for several seasons of not the nine o'clock news at that time but this was his first actual movie and what an odd choice yeah i mean he's serviceable in the role that he's cast in as the sort of hapless local agent he's fine he is i'm gonna actually revise something i said earlier i think he and barbara carrera who plays fatima blush are in the same movie yes i agree with that but nobody else nobody else is this is presented otherwise as a much more serious modern i hesitate to use the word gritty bond film in a lot of ways except for this dopey idiot and fatima police yeah exactly yeah because you know he's like i wanted to come get you because i figured you'd like to keep a low profile he's like oh is that why you were shouting my name across the square and he's like oh shoot did i do that oh i did do that didn't i yeah nigel gives bond a little bit of information right his first name is nigel yes it's nigel's small thoughtful gives him a little bit of information about the local landscape and i think he tells him a bit about the flying saucer which is like anchored in port that is largo's ship in this version disco volante in thunderball i was going to say yeah disco volante means flying saucer which we didn't talk about in thunderball but yeah it's the same ship i think bond says discoverante once at one time and then everyone else just says flying saucer from that point on i i didn't catch that maybe maybe it comes out you may be right but i didn't catch it yeah so then bond is looking at the photos of the thing of the boat at a harborside bar and a woman goes by on a jet ski and i thought this was the same woman that he'd been talking to with the harbor ah but it isn't it isn't this is fatima blush even though you don't know that right away and anyway so she splashes him as she goes by and then there's like an on ramp to get right from the water and up to the bar that seems incredibly dangerous well it almost is as she heads right up the the ramp and crashes into bond and he catches her there's i actually i have the scene up and i just noticed that in the shot in the background one of the parasailers totally eats it and bails off there really bails off their board in the background of the shot that's really funny they chat and you know she's putting the moves on him and he's more than happy to have the moves be put on him they shake hands and then they do not let go it's very odd like they shake hands and he doesn't let go and then he uses that to sort of like gesture slash lead her to sit down with him at the bar so they sort of move over and then she sits down and then they still don't let go it's a it's like uh let go of my hand please you're right yeah it's so odd i i have like got this up now it is i don't know it seems to me like given the circumstances if you're gonna put the moves on each other using the handshake to like lead them over to the table that's good yeah you know that works that's that's a thing it's very smooth but once you're both seated at the bar you can put your hand down now we cut then to bond's boat i guess this is bond's boat because she's told him you know i know a great place to see stuff underwater or something i this doesn't seem to have anything to do with why he's there no it has this was one of the things that i was like this is super super weird she's like i want to help you find what you're looking for that that's basically her sales pitch to like you should hang out with me right is like i will help you find what you're looking for and then they're out on this boat they're getting ready to go scuba diving but there's never any kind of explanation as to what they're scuba diving for or why they're scuba diving or how scuba diving is gonna help them because they don't it's not like they're scuba diving at at least at this point to go like look at the flying saucer or literally there's no indication whatsoever as to what he hopes to find here or what she's leading him to okay good it's not just me no it is a complete this whole sequence is a complete waste of time yep she says that they still have hours before they even get to where they're going so they should occupy their time and she starts slipping her clothes off and then there's an extended sequence of cuts of the exterior of the boat and then their torsos just visible through this door on the below deck of the ship just like where there's scuba tanks and ropes and stuff hanging out like this does not look remotely comfortable while they clearly just have a lot of sex it's like cut to fish cut back to them having sex cut to more water cut to them having sex it just goes on for a while it goes on for a while and gets progressively more ridiculous which i kind of love we're looking through the door into this room and their bodies like we can only really see their heads and shoulders through the door frame in the first shot very standard they're lying on the floor in a rumpled pile of like clothes and towels and you can see them and they're like in an embrace and smooching and what have you and then it cuts away and then it cuts back no one is in the door and then suddenly fatima leans back into the doorway looking pleased then it cuts away and then it cuts back and they're back in an embrace on the ground and then the the ship lists and they slide out of shot and uh there's a really good little transition there too because they like they slide out of shot with the listing of the ship and then it cuts to underwater as two divers drop into the water at an angle and so like i don't know i i think in so far as silly james bond sex scenes go i think this one is actually pretty clever it's just fun it again it is huge tone problems with this movie but the actual scene is pretty fun all right fair enough what do you think about the scene underwater huge waste of time why are we here yes fatima attaches a magnetic thing to bond scuba tank i just realized this has to be her boat because this sets off some sort of a alarm on a receiver in the bridge of the boat and she's like look a wrecked ship and bond goes towards it he can't see that she's doing this but she like waves all right peace and leaves and then passing her going the other direction is a shark yay sharks with a receiver thing attached to its dorsal fin the implication here is that sharks are being mind controlled to home in on the receiver that she has attached to bond scuba gear yeah we have sharks with fricken homing devices on their heads yeah it's about as close as it gets to dr evil honestly pretty close i mean homing sharks is certainly a step up from every other manner of shark we've had in a bond movie to date yeah and so there's it's a very long sequence with what looks to be some amount of injury happening to actual sharks the end result of which is that bond realizes what's happening pulls the thing off his scuba tank throws it down into the bowels of this wreck and escapes and then we cut to actually the woman that he met at the harbor who is fishing and she literally reels bond in because he saw like they were going by and he's like i told you you'd catch me haha that's it that's it that was the whole purpose of this scene yep there's a very brief sequence evocative of the junkanoo perhaps of some local music and fatima is dancing around and then sees bond arriving back to land with the woman realizes that he's not dead yet so she heads to his hotel to ensure that he actually becomes dead at some point and just every scene that she's in she she flounces through she does i actually really like fatima again she's in a different movie you know what movie she's in goldeneye oh yeah she is so completely the template for zhenya onotop she's very close to that isn't she yeah yeah she adds so much flavor to this otherwise kind of bland movie her costumes are are garish and outlandish and big the way her ultimate undoing is various any very zinnia on a top as well which we'll get to eventually but yeah she fully like she walks up a flight of stairs in this scene and pivots on the the landing to go up the next flight of stairs with like a toss of this cape she's wearing and it like furls in the wind she's very theatrical yeah she seems to also have a similar joy if not quite to the extent of the sexual pleasure that anatop finds from killing but we'll talk more about that when we get to golden eye i'm sure uh-huh so she goes to bond's room and we know this because there are some there are some good shots in this movie they're like there's some stuff in this movie that's operating on a pretty again in a different movie but is trying to do clever things and sometimes it works so the shot in bonds room is underneath bond's bed and we know it's bonds room because there are a pair of gentlemen's shoes untied sitting in the center of shot fatima is wearing a pair of pants one one leg of which is black and one leg of which is red with black and red high-heeled shoes and we see these shoes on either side of the gentleman's shoes she clearly sits down on the bed and then reaches under the bed places a brick of c4 with a remote detonator on it and then gets up and leaves and then we cut to bond and this fishing woman checking in or checking back and getting their keys and they say like oh i'm in room whatever what room are you in and she says oh i'm in room whatever and you immediately know ah so they won't be in bond's room like i figured that out yeah as soon as they had that exchange because what then happens is that we see them making out and kissing and having sex and fatima hits the trigger and a thing blows up and from outside the building we see the room blow up but it's not the room that they're in yeah and it's like oh well i guess we got it uh so scrolling back a minute to the checking in scene what do you think of bond suit in this scene yeah why is he wearing why is he dressed like the lead singer from dexy's midnight runners [Laughter] so all he had was his wetsuit because she fished him out of the sea and presumably i don't know maybe he had a bathing suit under the wetsuit but he presumably got this pair of overalls that he is wearing along with nothing else because it was all she had on her boat i guess yeah so it's not a great look this is sean connery as tom sawyer like yes [Laughter] it's yeah not a great look no we then cut to nice in the south of france we see a plane landing bond is walking through the airport and this woman comes in step beside him and i thought it was the woman he was just having sex with this is the other part where i was like who is this but no this is a different this is the local person who is in two scenes it's just there's just so many supporting female characters in this movie this her name is what nicole yeah i think yeah yeah so he steps out of the airport and a man hurls i think it's a cricket ball at him it is yeah and he like flinches and catches it and then the guy's like i got you and bond goes oh felix what's up and it's felix slighter played by bernie casey i forgot that felix was in thunderball he does a pretty good job of felix yeah i'd buy it yeah yeah yeah for sure so they all get in the car and there's a trailer being dragged behind the car i don't know if they say what it is at this point but it's something from q or lg i guess and it's pretty clear what it is yeah based on the size and dimensions of the trailer they're at a house very high up in the mountains but near the harbor where they can use this enormous telescope to take a look at the flying saucer and do some reconnaissance the flying saucer itself this super yacht hell of a boat it's a hell of a boat um so in the end credits they make reference to thanks to the owner of this yacht for your kindness in allowing us to film on it thanks ak no full name is given okay at the time that yacht called the naila at the time the nibila that's it it was the the bailout anyway at the time it was owned by adnan khashoggi who was very heavily implicated as the middleman in the iran contra affair oh yeah like a key arms dealer yeah yeah which is i assume why they didn't want to say his name maybe yeah had he already been implicated at this point i i admit i don't know the the years or the timeline of the iran contra scandal uh no this was a couple years before that okay so it may just be that they wanted to keep him relatively or he had asked to be kept relatively anonymous perhaps yeah who knows that won't be the only uncomfortable political association that we have to deal with future pawn movies no that's true it's not even the last one with this one because if you want to know where that uh ship ended up it is currently owned by one of the crown princes of saudi arabia but in between those people it was sold to the sultan of brunei and then donald trump cool cool cool cool cool cool cool there's a very limited number of people who can afford super yachts you see yeah anyway bond sees domino dancing around on the deck of the boat and it's like hey felix come look she's dancing around in the deck of the boat then they see largo and they're like oh yeah look there's largo that's cool nicole is able to confirm that yes she's the sister of that guy it's weird that they're having this confirmed now since we the audience already know this maybe they're just hammering at home yeah i i mean yeah i assume that's the case the connection has now been made and bond has a target she goes ashore to a health club for a massage appointment bond follows in behind her and it's just sort of like do you service men and the woman at the front desk once again just enamored immediately is like we do it's very weird and then in the next moment we see bond he's now dressed like staff yeah it's like what what what just happened and even if they do service men at this spa there aren't any others inside there's just a room full of women who all every one of them their heads are just like oh who's that and heads into where domino is and is like hey what's up i'm sorry i'm late i'm here to do your massage how's it going to speed through this scene he gets information out of her basically about largo and the boat and everything without her realizing who he is she just thinks that he's a masseuse who works there even though it is clear that this man has never performed or i guess received a massage in his life yeah it is the world's most awkward bizarre massage how how has bond made it this far in his life and not even received a massage to the point of being able to accurately pretend like he knows how to do one cause he's standing at her head trying to rub the length of her back it just looks super awkward it does truthfully my favorite thing about this scene is the little bottle of baby oil that he pulls up and like squirts into his hands because it's clearly empty as they get more and more comfortable and she asks him to go lower and lower on her back he spots the actual masseuse arriving and excuses himself and then there's a comedy moment of like you know what happened to the guy that was just doing that and she's like what do you mean he doesn't work here and she doesn't seem too perturbed by that she's yeah she gives sort of a like disapproving look and then immediately sort of realizes that i guess she enjoyed it and is willing to go with it nicole drives bond to a casino and bond says okay head back to the villa and we then cut to fatima in a nearby car telling her driver to find out where that villa is and she goes into this casino after bond wearing again another amazing costume yeah the casino is hosting a charity ball for orphaned children this is the casino royale in monte carlo yeah not ever named it's just it's only visible on the sign because i just paused the video and there's a very strange interaction with the man at the door because bond just wanders right in and the guy is like no no you get back out here there's a noise from off camera and the guy who's chased after him comes back into shot doubled over as if bond has just kicked him in the stomach or groin it's a little unclear bond directs him with no protest from this man into the broom closet or whatever and then puts his hand up and is like okay i'm gonna put this thing in your hand it's a grenade it will explode if you do not keep it exactly level do you understand okay bye and like pushes a button on it and leaves it's it's just why not just knock him out it's so weird it's kind of you're right it is weird it's unnecessary just put him in the broom closet knock him out and tie him back i guess okay but i again it's cute i don't you're right i don't mind that moment as much as i am confused as to why the guy just doesn't object while bond is steering him into a closet well he's got a gun on him did he yeah oh he's got his gun right right yeah he takes his gun and points it at him i forgot the i forgot the doorman had a gun because like bond has to do this because he was told in the previous scene that he wouldn't be able to get in because it's invitation only right and then ditches the bouncer's gun in a champagne bucket in the middle of the room yeah so he wanders around everyone's playing casino games he spots domino follows her because she's tired of playing whatever it looks like craps maybe whatever they're playing and she wants to go and play gravatar yeah graviton yeah the casino royale has a whole arcade yeah it's ridiculous there is a kind of a cool shot where she lets herself into the arcade room with the mirrored doors and the doors open she does not close them behind her and we see fatima reflected in the door who then sort of keeps an eye on her but yeah she goes up she's looking there's like centipede and galaga and she's like oh gravatar and like she doesn't say that but she's like ooh i'll take a look at this at no point does she get to play because bond appears immediately but it's like man atari what were you doing getting them to worm this into this movie this is so this arcade is so out of place in casino royale it's i i love it it's ridiculous it's a super well kitted out arcade too yeah but it's like people in suits and amazing gowns and dresses and it's like yeah let's play dig dug [Laughter] so they head over to the bar they get their drinks fatima alerts largo to the fact that this is happening he's sorry this is a great shot of him hiding behind a centipede machine yes with an enormous like snarly centipede from the art on the machine largo and fatima have this little conversation where she's like yo domino's gonna be a problem just fyi and he's like well you keep failing to kill bond so your problem is that and yeah yeah one day you'll you might have to kill domino we'll see how that goes it's like yeah oh jesus okay but yeah he does sort of lay into her a little bit being like how many times have you tried to kill him again i think he accuses her of like wanting bond for herself yeah then largo crashes them out of the bar yup and introduces himself and is like hello how's it going welcome i see you've met domino i'm max largo i have a cool thing i want to show you why don't you come with me and walks them into this palatial room that has a giant table with this weird perpendicular apparatus in the middle and largo explains that it's a video game that he designed it is two player you are playing for nuclear conquest of a country select selected at random he does some bad manners in this because he does not fully explain the rules or the like gameplay mechanics he does offer a practice well he doesn't offer a practice round but he he ends up providing a practice round so the gist is a country will be selected at random from the countries of the world sectors of the country will light up and they have to use the joysticks in front of them to illuminate the sectors whoever claims the most sectors wins conquest of the nation and as this is a casino they are putting dollar values on the line and each country is worth a different amount of money each player has two nuclear missiles that they can use to fire the other one to take them out of play but they also have shields that can be deployed to stop the nuclear missiles from making like from connecting whoever wins wins the money and and largos you know largo is doing this as a fundraiser for his charity for orphan children so he's like i've never found a worthy opponent so play me and you know you you can make your donation to my charity basically so then we we have this extended sequence of them playing this video game against one another you have just done a better job of explaining how to play this game than they do in the movie that's true because this scene sucks cause you it sure does you as a viewer have no idea what's going on and you're just watching bond and largo make bleep bloops on this cg video game and you're like i can't tell what's happening it's edited so quickly numbers are going up who's winning how are they winning how how how do you succeed at this game it is completely unclear how you be good at it so bad yeah it it does remain unclear how you be good at it but you can sorta you can sort of piece together sort of retroactively once the scene is over what's going on and i've seen this scene enough times in my life that i have a pretty good grasp of it the thing that largo neglects to mention is that if you are losing the joysticks deliver an electric current into your hands causing pain you feel the pain of the country you are failing to well he describes this like you feel the pain of your soldiers so as you lose sectors of the country you feel the pain of the men who have died under your command is like the meaning of it but mechanically bond loses a few rounds here all we really need to know is they play each other largo's kind of getting off on causing bond pain they play the first round he's like oh since i forgot to mention that it's painful let's we won't count that round let's let's play another and so they play another and bond starts trying to sort of like tolerate the pain and like fights longer but still loses he can't hang on long enough they do a few countries i think they do like france and spain and the us and bond keeps losing and the dollar values of the countries that he keeps losing get added together as the amount he owes the casino and he ends up owing something like 56 000 like it's it's not a small sum of money and largo is like well you know you can make your donation to my charity bond is like can we play one more margo's like well i mean you already owe a ton you sure and he's like yes can we play one more for all the remaining countries in the world florica was like it's your money and sits back down and and they play another one for the the remainder of the world and of course bond wins he trash cans largo you can sort of watch the scores because the scores that are listed at the top of screen actually are relevant so when bond is winning his score is higher yeah but i can't tell if it's a purely like a like a speed twitch gaming thing with the joysticks or if there's strategy or like i i don't understand no the actual the way the game works is total nonsense okay it's just lights and bloops but at least in terms of the mechanics of the scene it sort of makes sense even if the mechanics of the game don't bond forces largo to concede by letting go of the joysticks because that's the rule if you let go of the joysticks you forfeit the round because all of the countries of the world are worth much much more than the three countries that he had already lost to largo we never learned how bond suddenly got good but he apparently just threw three games in a row apparently he's amazing at this game he's never seen before that largo designed himself but anyhow it's it like it's relevant because largo loses and so largo digs out his checkbook and is like all right 325 000 minus the 56 000 so i owe you 270 odd thousand dollar 267 thousand dollars i think is what he comes to is the total and he's like all right who should i make that out to bond is like keep the money i will consider us even as long as i get one dance with domino this scene happened much more quickly with baccarat in thunderball in fact it wasn't even that it was the because he he'd won like a hand at baccarat and domino asked for a drink and then he said i'll get her a drink and largo was like oh that'd be great yeah and that was that was all that it needed instead it's like five or six minutes of screen time spent playing the stupid game to then get to a full-blown ballroom dance scene so this is utterly wild this is completely like having a dance with domino right it's like oh okay sure so they're gonna go dance no no this is everyone has stopped what they are doing and is watching bond and domino dance and it's really weird it's really uncomfortable and during the dance is when bond is like trying to finish the conversation they were having earlier including like oh don't react because everyone's looking at us right now but largo killed your brother yeah like in the middle of a dip yeah this is i don't like it it's not a good scene it's completely weird and like what a strange tonal shift i like kim basinger in other things but i don't like i don't i don't like domino yeah and so for the record they're given a tango they're they have been given a tank yeah yeah sorry so we it is like they are the only two people on the dance floor is the entire casino is gathered around watching them tango and it's staged like we're in a dance movie like we're dancing with the stars they they have command of the floor i it is so weird and so out of place in a bond movie watching from above is largo and fatima and largo tells her is like oh you get to you get to do some killing now and she's really excited about it yeah she's super jazzed prance is down the stairs and largo first of all largo interrupts their dance so does that mean he has to write a prorated check for the difference thank you [Laughter] he cuts in yeah what the hell i need to make up my mind do i want them to dance or do i not want them to dance because at this point largo's released me from the dance scene yeah on his way out bond takes his hold level bomb device back from the doorman which of course is his cigar case and presumably never would have exploded at all he heads back to the villa only to find nicole is dead in the bottom of a like a weird like waterbed thing it's i don't know yeah it's not clear what this thing is anyway yeah and as fatima is just on her way out and bond gives chase boy howdy does he give chase so he sees her leave in her red renault car not rental sorry renault renault i suppose how it would be spelled and so he dashes into the garage and the sides of that strange trailer fall apart and it's the motorbike that algae mentioned earlier so we do get some payoff for that yes can we talk about how much this motorbike sucks uh please as a bond gadget yes okay so remember when algernon was like if i can get this darn thing to work have a motorbike it's just a motorbike it has two gadgets it has bumpers and it has well it has rocket propulsion which i guess is the differentiating factor but it has little deployable bumpers it doesn't have guns it doesn't have rockets it doesn't have laser beams doesn't have an oil slick it even looks kind of bulky and ugly yeah this motorcycle sucks it's not good and i i put it to you that it's not the worst thing about this chase either okay what what i found really jarring about this particular car chase which does have a cool moment in the middle of it which i'll talk about is that it has awful continuity it is oh yeah really difficult to tell who's chasing who and where they are and what's going on there's it's just a lot of disconnected shots of vehicles moving but with no greater sense of what's happening yeah so like pretty quickly there's a bit where she radios in and they corner him in a tunnel there's a trailer truck with its back down they all use their cars to sort of herd bond on his bike and also at gunpoint to like herd him into this semi-trailer and he eventually relents and goes up into the trailer whips the bike around inside the trailer and then as they raise the back of the truck because it's hinged at the bottom he then tears back out of the trailer and uses that as a ramp to jump over the cars that are boxing him into the tunnel that's the coolest part of this sequence yeah because then they're chasing him and there's some bits with the gadgets like you mentioned like the bumpers and the rocket propelled thing and he makes them flip and then now he's chasing fatima again but how that happens isn't shown on camera and so it's just like oh now those two crashed and now he's behind her again how did where are they now what's going on oh no it they do they do show it but it's way earlier in the scene huh fatima is the first one out of the tunnel ahead it is fatima and then the two chase cars and bond after escaping from the tunnel pulls into an alley fatima and one of the chase cars goes by and then bond pulls in between the two chase cars he fights the two chase cars and they both crash and go off the street or whatever like geographically that puts him behind fatima in the chase line because she was the she was the lead car hmm i mean it's a terrible scene because we've had to deconstruct it in order to get to that point like it's not even to be clear car chases are hard and it's not even the worst car chase from a bond film oh for sure i again it's been a while but i'm prepared to make the call now that i'm pretty sure the worst car chase in a bond film is the one from the beginning of quantum of solace where bond is driving a dark grey car being pursued by two black cars and it is effing impossible to tell who is who i think that's the worst car chase but i'm gonna have to wait till i watch that movie again but this was i just found it very confusing oh it is the end result is they end up in a this looks like a cave it's like the base of a big like stone structure down by the docks and it's all full of like maritime supplies and things fatima knocks him off his motorcycle and holds him at gunpoint god her pants are out of this world so she demands this is at gunpoint and her job is to kill him she demands that he say that he would do her or that he thinks that she's amazing or something she she says like as she's gonna kill him she basically is like well at least you got to spend one night in my rapturius presence before you met your end and he's like i've had better and she's like no that is a lie you have not no one has not only am i the best you've ever had here's a piece of scrap paper right damn you as your final pro like proclamation that i am without rival as the number one sexual partner you have ever had in your short time on this earth right it's what a strange demand so of course bond pulls out the pen that we know has a rocket inside it while he makes a bit of a show of it before he goes to write he ends up pointing it at her and shooting her with this rocket that explodes so she she explodes she explodes yeah there's a bit of a fake out where it like impales her and she's like ow what the haha you fool i'm not dead and then she explodes she really explodes too she goes she goes up in a fireball he tries to leave there's a bunch of police outside but luckily felix has come in the secret back entrance or whatever and he's like come on we gotta go and they sneak away undetected by taking off their suits and going by disguised as a boxer and his trainer yeah by wearing just their like their underwear yeah i kind of like that that's kind of funny it's cute bond riding his uh his bicycle with the weirdest upturned drop bars for some reason but uh bond riding that bike barefoot well lighter jogging in his dress shoes [Laughter] so they both get their scuba gear and start poking around underneath the disco volante this is something that also happened in thunderball and there's a trapdoor which bond gets through but felix doesn't and bond is now in the bowels of the i'm sorry the flying saucer bond is now in the bowels of the flying saucer so he sort of lets himself up to try and sneak around and as soon as he pops out on deck a butler appears and says mr largo's expecting you and he gives bond a fuzzy dressing gown and brings him to see mr largo so how i don't no not a clue sure but how yeah should like shot of a security camera or a sonar something please anything no so largo shows him around there's a brief shot of felix looking annoyed that he didn't get on the boat largo shows him around and it's really funny he you know he shows him the main sort of you know central hub room he gives bond a drink because he's like yeah would you want a drink and bond's like yeah martini sure and then he's like yeah so here i go bun here's my cool stuff anyway i got work to do so um you just wander around for you're free to go around the boat and do whatever you want which is like what what what that's terrible wrong with you like i know i jokingly hammer on that from time to time of like why not just kill him but like particularly in this instance it just seems baffling and it gets worse but it seems baffling that it's like how are you cool with him just hanging out yeah on his way out of this room bond notices that one of the tvs says something about the tears of allah which will come up oh yeah this movie has a plot vaguely there's actually a story it's been a while yeah as he wanders past the dance hall domino pokes her head out and is like hey we need to we need to talk and the butler like apparates and goes doors clothing for you this way and they sort of indicate that they'll they'll catch back up with one another uh and they do bond heads back to the to the dance hall and it's like hey how's it going bon's like i think you know because he thinks the room is bugged so he turns on some loud music in fact the room is bugged as we know from before so largo opens up his one-way glass and sees that they're talking and he tries to fiddle with the radio to hear what they're talking about but he can't bond is like what's going on do you know anything about this thing called the tears of allah this is just something i saw on a monitor in a room full of monitors of things i don't understand but this is what i'm asking about a little unbelievable and she's like oh it's this but i don't know bond goes and looks at this thing it's like a rock with some shape on it in metal they continue talking and then bond sort of susses out the one-way glass and is like all right here's what's gonna happen i'm gonna kiss you and i want you to react like you're really really into it okay and she's like why and he's like ah well one i'm hoping to provoke a reaction two for me i don't exactly recall what he says for the second thing but basically it's like because it seems fun or whatever it is yeah so she's like okay sure and they do that and this does indeed get the intended reaction and we cut to largo running out of his room and bursting into the dance practice room which is now empty because they both ran out of there and then domino pulls the fire alarm all the dudes leave the central control room for some reason and bond runs into the central control room because he's trying to get a radio message out he finds a way into largo's secret little revolving hidey hole does get a message out while he watches largo wander around the dance hall with a fire axe breaking [ __ ] provoking like reaction provoked yeah and it's weird because it's like then largo looks at the one-way glass and is like he must be in there and then runs out of the room and then we cut away to him yeah my one thought about this is you have just given the british secret agent that you know is trying to foil your plans and whom you have repeatedly tried and failed to kill free reign of your boat and then the fire alarm goes off yeah why are you following evacuation procedure under those circumstances why are you just standing around in your dance room attacking stuff with an axe i'd why would you vacate the control room literally the alarm goes off if i'm largo or any of the staff i'm like that's bond largo's motivations do not make sense to me the brief scene with m is that the guy comes in and says here we've received word from double07 it just says palmyra because that's the name of largo's house yeah same as it was in thunderball located in north africa this time north africa palmyra is i think the radio that went through and then we cut to like them looking at palmyra which is like a stone castle in the north of africa through binoculars bond and largo and domino are there on the deck of the boat they've all changed clothes and they're all just palling around yup this is the this is the part where i was like it gets weirder it's just like what is happening like there's always some amount of like the villain treating bond like a guest you know following sort of like rules of etiquette you know like well you are a guest in my home mr bond you know like that sort of thing yeah but this is just like do you not remember what happened five minutes ago [Laughter] yeah there's it's like why do they even want to bring bond to palmyra i don't know there's no re like shoot them and huck them overboard in the mediterranean like there's literally no possible reason to bring him here because he's showing off his like house an amazing collection of artifacts but he's showing off to domino he's not like check me out mr bond look how cool i am no he locks bond in the the dungeon yeah they have a dungeon they do have it done it's like up in a tower but yeah it's full of vultures too it's it's amazing the vultures are a nice touch the vultures and the numerous numerous desiccated skeletons it's very all over the floor very silly so yeah this is the point that i mentioned earlier where he does the thing again where he's like this is the most expensive thing in my collection here hold it she's like no i really don't want to hold it he's like hold it because he wants to see her be uncomfortable or whatever and then there's like a weird thing where i i he kisses her which she's not into and then he grabs it and like makes her drop it it looks really awkward like i can't tell if it's meant to look like an accident or if it's meant to look like he's doing it on purpose because he very clearly grabs it and lets go out of her hands yeah i get the feeling that them it doesn't matter no like it doesn't come up or matter in anything other than this scene but going with the sort of like emotionally abusive nature it's the kind of thing you would do it's like well now you owe me a new one of those yeah you were holding it and it broke so now i'm gonna sell you to the oil sheiks which is what he tries to do yeah yeah she gets tied up to a place in the square then he goes and talks to bond and we'll find out what happens to her so yeah there's these vultures that live in this place because there's no way for them to come in and out it seems i mean oh maybe they can fit through there's like small windows bond is shackled to the wall assuming that the intent is that he's gonna get picked to death by these vultures largo puts the radio he has like a boom box which he puts in front of domino hits play on some music and then leaves because he's got to go do his stuff with those remember those bombs they stole i do he tells bond one of them is under washington dc one under the white house of washington dc and the other one ah maybe i won't tell you where the other one is and then he leaves because he's got to go do spectre things bond uses his laser watch to break his shackles as he looks out the window and sees a bunch of men on horseback arrive to bid on domino this scene is not unproblematic no it sure isn't this scene is real troubling yeah in just a variety of ways oh yeah bond for his part breaks uses the laser to break the bars on the window and then the guard outside hears this happen and runs in and sees that the bars are broken goes over to the window and looks outside where bond hasn't escaped but has just hidden himself just outside the window so grabs the guy and yanks him out the window yup i actually liked that bond then sneaks around disguises himself as a man on horseback by wrapping himself up with a head covering rides the horse past domino scoops her up on his horse and they ride away i don't know well they try to ride away there's a portcullis that lowers and then they try to escape from all these men and horses with guns that are chasing them horses with guns sorry men with guns on horses i mean a horse with guns would be able to defend himself from the stunt where bond and domino and the horse go flying off the top of this castle that's true which it looks very problematic for the horse so i was thinking about that they do like diving horse shows are a thing they are still a thing i don't know that they're inhumane maybe i mean maybe they're inhumane on principle but i don't necessarily think this is like inherently injurious to the horse that's fair but it it i mean it makes her a good stunt except except for the like really poorly matted horse and bond and domino falling down the side of the falling down the side of the building yeah luckily for them mi6 has received the message and a submarine is firing pew pew rocket laser whatever's at the castle and blowing up all the men with guns and so so i took it as artillery but i wanna i wanna know which submarine the british navy has that has like a howitzer mounted to the tower of the submarine to the base of the tower like it appears to be firing artillery shells which seems like the kind of thing that maybe a destroyer could do but not a submarine so much no thus on the submarine bond and domino have a shower together and try to figure out how they're gonna stop largo from blowing stuff up well they better hurry because we got 24 minutes left in the film this movie's so long they've tracked the flying saucer to a bay near egypt or possibly in egypt and it's stopped and they don't know what that means for where the missiles could be and bond sees the bay and is like oh wait a minute yo domino do you still have that thing even though you clearly weren't wearing it in the last scene when you jumped off the castle but we'll just sort of pretend to not worry about that he grabs it and looks at it and the shape of the metal work on the thing is the same as the shape of the bay and there's another little piece of metal work indicating some distance inland and they're like that must be where it is why did largo make this thing why did he give it to domino why does this exist they discover that there's an underwater cave and that must be where it is which that's very reminiscent of thunderball uh not reminiscent of thunderball is that there is not an enormous underwater fight scene in the back half of this movie so you know it's it's it's not all bad it's not great but it's not all bad yeah so we see largo and some scuba divers with their little submersibles going underwater to this cave and when they surface in the cave it's this egyptian temple it's this underground underwater temple that they've excavated to some extent yeah they built it around a spring like a freshwater spring so how are bond and felix gonna get there quickly enough to help out well you know what thunderball had what did thunderball have a jet pack it did have a jet pack didn't it not to be outdone by thunderball this movie has two jet packs sort of there are these weird little jet pods that felix and bond stand on i assume this is also based on some sort of prototype that some military somewhere has done but there are these little standing jet pods and and so they stand on the jet pods and they pod their way over to land and then immediately get back in the water again so it's unclear why they had to do it that way as opposed to just swimming they fire them out of like missiles like the submarine launches these missiles up and then they like break open and they come out in these little weird jetpack things and it's i don't know i can't find any information about how real these things were or weren't they look really silly they do look really silly it's funny that all they use the jet packs for is flying like past a village that will become marginally relevant later and then landing again immediately yeah and then going back in the water that like that was the thing that gets me is that i guess the bond has already done the being like fired out of a torpedo tube into a diving situation so we got to one-up that it does feel totally unnecessary so anyhow felix and bond don their scuba gear dive back into the water find the underground cave systems we have previously seen largo and crew swim up so they swim through and emerge into this temple area as well we we now sort of get what is the climax of the movie as bond and felix watch largo and crew prepping the missiles wheeling wheeling the missile in to set it up the intent here being from largo that he's gonna bomb this network of like this cave network and cut off access to the world's oil supply right this is never really made very clear over the course of the film at all spectre has told the nations of earth or of nato it's like i want 25 of your your yearly expenditure on oil right and we get a few sort of like dribbles of information over the course of the movie saying that like well the oil fields are connected by this delicate cave network and now we're in this cave network with the bomb that largo's gonna blow up and so they fed us all this information over the course of the movie but they never actually connect the dots for us any other bond movie it would be like we're totally gonna blow up the oil if they won't pay us for the oil then we're gonna blow up the oil driving up the cost of oil which they will then buy from us there's gonna be a much more coherent and well constructed and at least like explained villainous plan in any other bond movie yeah this one doesn't do that this one is just like we're gonna blow up the oil fields and the annoying thing is how on the nose blofeld is with it you know they never really talk too much about what spectre stands for the initialism like it's mentioned once but blue felt in this one is like this will be the extortion and the terrorism like we've done the terrorism now we're doing the extortion and if you don't do our extortion then we'll do the revenge yeah and it's just like i mean i look i appreciate commitment to branding but it's really on the nose and again we get more of that scientist looking like oh i don't know about this that nothing happens with in these scenes and so they're you know loading this missile into position and they have a rope latched around this big old statue which bond manages to lever the head off of to interrupt them and then there's a big shootout felix throws a grenade which lights a guy on fire which is a neat trick i didn't know a normal grenade could do that especially since the guy was not like directly beside the explosion he just sort of bang poof felix manages to hold on long enough for backup from the navy to arrive and so we get this big gun battle between men wearing black scuba suits and men wearing black scuba suits yeah the thing i want to comment on in this scene is how loud would this gunfight be oh my god in real life oh everyone here everyone here has permanent hearing damage now oh that sounds just like automatic weapons in an underground like an enclosed underground cave space you imagine the echo what gets me and you know like on the one hand i hate to keep doing it on the other hand it's impossible not to directly compare this to thunderball but i mean this even just as a bond movie right is like this whole sequence it's this huge it's a massive set and there's like maybe one shot that only kind of shows off how big it is like it's not it it's not the set isn't big enough it doesn't look grand on film yeah it has not done justice right so like the scope the like grand finale battle like i assume this is meant to evoke something like the spy who loved me or you only live twice with the big right you know the navy descending on all the specter cronies and having the big battle in the massive set but like the set just doesn't look that big or impressive and it's hard to tell the people apart and it's just sort of like some shots of dudes with guns and it's not that exciting or interesting yeah the the navy reinforcements are like six guys yeah as opposed to a hundred ninjas yeah no i'm with you it's it's not tremendously interesting the major plot revelation is that at the spring largo gets away with the bomb so as this whole gunfight is going on largo manages to load the bomb into the spring and scoot down further into the cave bond goes to chase but largo manages to blow out the roof collapsing access so bond makes his way back through this huge fight to felix and is like largo got away he's gone deeper into the tunnels but i think i have an idea bond makes an exit gets picked up by a helicopter he's like can you call a helicopter it gets picked up by the helicopter and frogman dives off the helicopter into the well in the middle of the little village we saw while they were on rocket packs this drops him further up the underground river that this cave system has been developed by he manages to catch up with largo and the bomb further along there's a short fight scene between largo and bond in the the underwater as bond tries to sort of reclaim control over the bomb which ends with largo appearing like he may have the upper hand and then being shot by somebody off camera with a harpoon gun and the camera pans over and we see that it's domino yeah here's my problem with that do you only have one i have several actually at no point did she seem nearly as upset with her brother dying she seemed upset but not vengeful towards largo whereas in thunderball domino was like i'm going to kill that guy more importantly in this movie she's a dancer and like not particularly consequential to the plot as it happens but she's she's a dancer and has at no point been shown to scuba dive or use a harpoon gun yeah so it's completely out of nowhere like i was like i wonder how they're gonna do this final fight with bond and largo and then he gets shot with a harpoon gun and i was like oh that's weird i wonder who that was and it pans over and shows domino and i was like why what how also how did she get in here also dropped in through through a well dropped in by a helicopter what possible reason does she even have to be here did she go to the navy guys and be like hey put me in coach and there's a couple navy guys there as well but how did they get there so quickly but like you're the captain of the submarine and and this civilian with no combat experience who has no reason to be involved at all says hey i wanna go kill this dude are you gonna are you gonna clear her to scuba dive off of your submarine no and and that's the sort of thing that you can you can hand wave and i i'm sure we have hand waved sillier things when discussing these movies oh yeah but what bothers me from a pure movie construction standpoint is that it's never been established in the movie that she knows how to scuba dive or use a harpoon gun yeah whereas in thunderball they were really good about that bond meets her diving she has a hoon gun that she uses frequently and in this it's just like oh uh surprise i'm i'm i also know how to do this yeah yeah no i like i i agree with you certainly it's a thing that you can hand wave but you have to do enough groundwork to make it not just total nonsense yeah yes which is that's what this is is total nonsense even if it's at this point in the film at the point where we're headed into the final confrontation bond and the like a bond girl who wants revenge on the bad guy have been working together enough that he can vouch for the fact that he can like she can hold herself in battle or whatever right like it's it's typically not just completely out of nowhere surprise it's very very strange and then it just cuts to domino in a pool yup doing a backflip yeah wearing a like we're in a tiger bathing suit tiger bathing suit yeah bond is hanging out in the hot tub and they're gonna make kisses and then they hear someone enter the garden and bond sneaks around and discovers that it is in fact because he grabs the person and flings them into the pool that it is in fact nigel's small faucet i love the name small faucet yeah who has been sent to to beg to plead on m's behalf right or bonds return to mi6 because bond has retired and he's like things are a mess without you we need you to come back the world could end we we are completely bereft without your presence which bond says never again and i think domino responds never say never and he looks the camera and winks i i we really didn't need yet another please sean connery you are such a good james bond please come back and be at james bond again especially as the outro to the movie and then yeah winks directly at the camera the end the end mercifully [Laughter] yeah man like i did now two hours and 10 minutes of run time there was a couple things i liked and like connery himself was not bad like connery has a lot of innate charisma and did a fine job but so much about this was not good yeah all right so let's go through the power rankings oh god i'm gonna set some ground rules on this one because it's a little weird i can't wait to hear what these are okay well i mean it won't be anything like out to lunch i propose that we consider everything up to the stabbing to be the pre-title sequence that's fair because otherwise there is no pre-title sequence and the song is obviously the song and then the movie is the movie uh so really i only had one ground rule that i wanted to compose but if we agree then cool yeah where does this land on the pre-title sequence power ranking scale i mean it's not great because like i can't give it the benefit of pretending that they stab bond and then it goes to opening titles i can only look at it as what it is which is they stab him and he goes uh and then we cut to the fact that it was all a training exercise yeah and like it's fine it's a fine sequence it's honestly it's made worse by the fact that the opening song is running over it yeah like if it was played straight without the music in it it would you know maybe be better and like the fact that the opening titles are running over this sequence like a made for tv movie also doesn't do it any favors i don't know it's not great yeah i like it's a good action scene it's an okay action scene it is i found it a little i mean i mentioned this when we talked about the first time i found it a little silly that it's like we shoot this guy and then we garat this guy and then we use a blow gun on this guy and then we fling a frisbee into the jungle to distract this other guy and then we use a zip line to get over to the there's just like every single step was like a new thing yeah i i think i know the ballpark for this one for me which is gonna be somewhere in the realm of diamonds ohmss i was looking at exactly those ones do i like it less than o-h-m-s-s do i like it less than see now i'm looking at diamond snow hmss and i'm actually worried that those two are in the wrong order i'm now kind of thinking that i actually like the opening of ohmsss better than the the one in diamonds but the fight scene was really bad and diamonds is really dumb the opening of diamonds is really dumb but this is just so inconsequential and like tonally in contrast to a lot of the movie yeah this goes it definitely goes above dr no i'll tell you what i will make my call right now if this helps you at all and i am in fact gonna put this below ohmss it just did not grab me yeah i think that's reasonable i i mean that's where i was debating it too so i i will i will mirror your opinion and do the same what do you think of the song never say never again never never say never again and so forth it might be the worst it might be just the bottom of the list it might be worse than dr no which i realized we we rated the mango tree right as the theme from dr no rather than the james bond theme from dr no or for that matter three blind mice like is this a better song than look of love which is my number like is my second worst bond theme i mean i ranked look of love higher and i also i know you did i think look of love is definitely better than this i don't know i like man i agree with you i think look of love is better than this as a song like lyrically it's pretty dire but so have been some other ones that we have ranked decently well yeah but musically this one just craters for me it is it's like its peak of its era as soon as i was really trying to place it and as soon as kathleen was like i think you call this genre adult contemporary was when i was like oh my god you're so right that's exactly what this is and that's why i don't like it yeah i feel compelled to put it above dr no because the mango tree is what we rated for dr no but my willingness to put it above dr no is also pretty low [Laughter] because the opening title of dr no was a medley of that and three blind mice and the original james bond theme um nope it goes last this is my least favorite so far fair enough i'm having exactly the same dr no debate that you did and you know what i'm i'm happy to just say that this is the worst yeah i mean like i don't know i i still consider dr no to include the like like the actual bond theme is in there even though it's mixed right i cannot put this above that all right so now we come to where this film rates in terms of overall film power ranking and i think there's an easy answer i was gonna say both of us have at our bottom three from most enjoyed to least enjoyed are thunderball diamonds are forever and casino royale 1967. yeah do we both agree that this is a worse version of thunderball yes so that by nature puts it in our third or second or first worst spots i predict that this is going to be both of us deciding if we think this is better or worse than diamonds are forever because you are correct casino royale 1967 is still despite some continuity things and stuff not being explained amazingly in this movie casino royale is still the much more incomprehensible mess of cinema yeah the couple things that i liked in this movie and the couple things that were actually good like largo was not terrible connery was still very good at being sean connery fatima blush was entertaining at least but there was actually a lot more stuff that i thoroughly enjoyed in diamonds or forever despite that movie being kind of a tacky disaster yeah i am with you a hundred percent of the way yeah uh this is this is worse than diamonds yeah easily and what a shame to get sean connery back to be james bond in 1983 and this is where we landed yeah and just totally wasted yeah why what an utter bummer i wish they'd gotten him there was that rumor again apocryphal that they wanted connery to play the groundskeeper in skyfall oh wow that would have been great and yeah and what a what a much better movie that would have been to have a to have a cameo appearance in but i think he's i mean he's done with everything he's getting on a bit now i think he just turned 90. yeah he did actually yeah can you imagine the web of head cannons that would spin [Laughter] from sean connery showing up as james bond's groundskeeper in skyfall oh boy that would have been very entertaining to to see just like matt griffiths could you put in the shot you know the one from always sunny you know with the web of strings that's the one that's what would happen yeah yeah yeah oh gosh all right well thanks well for joining us for that one everybody at home next episode we're back to the aeon productions in i mean i can't make any guarantees but what will probably be at least a better constructed movie that's a tall order graham with 1983's octopussy which i still can't believe is the name that they put on posters and marquees i can't i that name showed up in lights i still can't believe that but anyway 1983's octopussy with roger moore and maude adams returning to the franchise and honestly really looking forward to it we we talked about doing never say never again as a break from roger moore and i want to go back [Laughter] how naive you were yeah so i mean until then uh that is going gonna do it for this episode thank you so much matt for joining me always and shout outs to featherweight for the wonderful art and matt griffis for doing the video version editing on this and of course heather for doing podcast admin and all of you because this and everything we do is brought to you by you and your kind support of our patreon patreon.com loadingreadyrun thanks ever so much for your ongoing support looking forward to next time this podcast will return [Music] you

Channel: LoadingReadyRun

Views: 68,061

Keywords: loadingreadyrun, comedy, funny, podcast, James Bond, Bond, James, Rewatch, Never say never again, movie

Id: OUfY8H-iCoU

Length: 120min 8sec (7208 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020