BlogalongaBond Thunderball: Water, water everywhere

The majority of the BlogalongaBond posts for Thunderball thus far have been fairly negative, view them all HERE. So when I sat down to watch it I really wanted to like it just so I could offer a contrasting view of the film. Unfortunately, Thunderball really isn’t all that great.

From the opening, where Bond kills a man dressed as his own wife and then flies away in a jetpack, it all just feels very flat and uninteresting, despite sounding amazing on paper. There are a few moments during the first hour where it looks as though the film is going to pick up, such as Blofeld being a bad ass by electrocuting one of his top men just because he stole a few quid, but sadly the film never gets out of this rut, mostly due to the fact that nothing really very thrilling happens.

After the halfway mark the plot gets very confusing, due to long, boring conversations between some of the key characters where they discuss lots of spy things. Most of these conversations don’t really make much sense, and I’m pretty sure the director Terrence Young realised this, so whenever any of these spy talks are taking place, he just stuck a beautiful woman in the corner of the shot in hope that she would draw the audience’s attention away from the nonsense that the other characters are spouting.

There is also far too much water in the film, it seems as though the baddies set themselves a little target in which they have to kill Bond while he’s in the water. After many attempts of this, I actually got a bit bored of looking at water. I know the fact I’m getting annoyed about the use of water in a film seems very pedantic, but it’s a theme that doesn’t really have any depth (lol) or major relevance. Anyway, imagine my distain when I realise that the big climax of the film is set, you guessed it, under water. Usually the final battle is the part of all Bond films that is the most energetic and fun, but all the bloody water ruins this and makes things disastrously sluggish. Bond moves on from one wet suited enemy to the next, as though he is in a video game where the object is to discover how many places you can impale a man with a harpoon. The sequence goes on for ruddy ages as well, which makes things ten times worse.

When he miraculously survives the ordeal, I was actually looking forward to seeing him getting some nookie while the credits rolled, BUT THIS DIDN’T EVEN HAPPEN. He just gets pulled away by a helicopter or some shit.

However, the film did give me the opportunity to make this;

Yup. (It’s probably even better if you’ve never even seen the film.)

Stay tuned next month for: You Only Live Twice