quote:
It was a comedy spoof, not based on any Ian Fleming material other than some character names. No other reason necessary. (And it was really stupid, too.)
Technically, Never Say Never Again is not an "official" James Bond movie because it wasn't produced by Eon Productions, the production company which held the movie rights to all the other Ian Fleming novels. Although the James Bond character is in the movie and the plot is based on Thunderball (due to a very long legal battle over the rights to that novel) the traditional Bond gun barrel opening is not in the movie and neither are some other trademarked Bond elements. It sort of stands by itself in its own NeverNeverLand category, along with the original TV production of Casino Royale starring Barry Nelson. (Which actually predates Dr. No!)
Kind of funny. As I understand it, one of the screenwriters for Thunderball (which Fleming novelized) retained rights to the story. Apparently he was short of ideas. He remade it later as Never Say Never Again. He then spent more or less the rest of his life trying to remake it again.
Back on the topic:
Octo***** was the first Bond movie I saw. And when it came out on cable I must have seen it a million times. If it was on, I watched it. Even though I had no idea what the plot was (I was too young then, and now as an adult I can see it has one, it's just a mess). I loved that movie though. And because he was the first James Bond I saw, I thought of Roger Moore as James Bond.
This is before you could really watch these things just any time you wanted.
I probably saw A View To A Kill 5 times at the movies. It just didn't really dawn on me that Moore was by that point way too old for the role.
Looking back at those movies now, I can see that Octo***** had plot issues and A View To A Kill, notwithstanding the fact that I loved it then, just has too many problems. The first of which is that Moore was no longer at all believable as Bond.
