Thunderball, YOLT, Diamonds Are Forever

[terentii]

@CalMeacham

I have to admit to soft spot for You Only Live Twice, the first Bond film I ever saw, and also because it’s set in Japan. It has some supreme moments of Cool (especially the Kendo Ninja taking out all the SPECTRE operatives with his sword), but it is suffused with Dumb. a lot of the effects, even at the time, looked fake (the erupting volcano at the end, in particular. And the running-the-film backwards to make it look as if the sub is coming up under the raft at the end doesn’t work after the first time you’ve seen it.). But it had lots of cool gadgets, that wonderful volcano lair, and the Nancy Sinatra title song. But, overall, and especially in retrospect, not all that great.

You left out Karin Dor. :o

[Robot_Arm]

@Just_Asking_Questions

If, in 1967, you have rocket tech that can take off and land vertically, from inside a freaking volcano, with minimal safety requirements, that can bring back (and, conversely, probably take into orbit) an 8000 pound payload, find and locate and capture other objects in space, and said spacecraft can fly with apparently 100% success rate, then why do something illegal with it? You could have a monopoly on space travel and make more money with it than even SPECTRE would know what to do with. 50 years later and we STILL don’t have spacecraft that can do what the one in the movie did.

Interesting take on the subject, although I don’t think space launch technology was all that lucrative at the time. In 1967 there wasn’t the commercial market for satellite launches that there is now;[sup]*[/sup] putting people and things into orbit was all about national prestige rather than money.

• Would there have been a commercial market back then if there had been a capable launch vehicle; who knows?

[ftg]

Looking back at the novels I’d rate them:

Thunderball. A fairly nice novel. Good read.

You Only Live Twice. Really so-so. An attempt to redo Bond that ends up being a waste.

Diamonds Are Forever. Just plain ugh. A generic pulp novel with nothing to recommend it.

I rate the movies the same and in pretty much the same terms. The source material may have had a big influence on the quality of the movies, even though the movies were moving further and further away from the sources.

[terentii]

@Just_Asking_Questions

YOLT makes me think of Austin Powers and Virtucon, and how Virtucon makes more money from legal ventures than from terrorism, revenge or extortion.

That’s fine, but the whole point of SHPECTRE* (just like THRUSH) was subversion and the ultimate subjugation of humanity. The money was just a nice fringe benefit.

*Voice of Sean Connery.

[CalMeacham]

@ftg

Looking back at the novels I’d rate them:

Thunderball. A fairly nice novel. Good read.

You Only Live Twice. Really so-so. An attempt to redo Bond that ends up being a waste.

Diamonds Are Forever. Just plain ugh. A generic pulp novel with nothing to recommend it.

I rate the movies the same and in pretty much the same terms. The source material may have had a big influence on the quality of the movies, even though the movies were moving further and further away from the sources.

Hard to believe. Thunderball kept pretty close to its source, but they pretty much threw the books out the window for the other two, expect for the occasional reference ( like the mud bath scene in Diamonds are Forever, which they sorta kept for the movie, for no discernible reason).

[DesertDog]

@Robot_Arm

I notice that sometimes in movies; a character watching something on a TV when there really couldn’t be a camera to provide the signal.

That’s right up there with the security camera that has an auto-zoom feature. You know, how it can zoom in on a point of interest in a scene without anybody watching touch anything.