Sunday 22 August 2010

The Name's Bond

Recently I've started watching the James Bond series of films. I've never seen most of them before, which might surprise you, but I don't go to the cinema, since I prefer to watch films in the comfort of my own home, and I only buy DVDs when they're cheap, which means that I sometimes have to wait a while. A few weeks ago I found a box set of all 22 Bond films for £50, reduced from around £200. You can't go wrong at under £2.50 a film, right?


So far, I'm up to 1965 and Thunderball. The evil SPECTRE folks have stolen a NATO aeroplane carrying a couple of nuclear bombs. Luckily for our heroes at British and American Intelligence, they've decided to hide them at an idyllic island in the Bahamas. If they'd chosen somewhere without bikini clad secret agents and a plentiful source of Martinis, 007 would never have found them and Miami would have been nuked. And the world would have been spared from David Caruso's sunglass juggling act.

You don't have to get very far into one of these films to realise that plausibility wasn't given the highest priority by the moviemakers, but even so, I was disturbed by the ending of Thunderball. If you haven't seen the film, you might not want to read any further, as I'm about to reveal the ending.

SPOILER SPACE


ANOTHER SPOILER SPACE


I mean it. I'm going to tell you what happens at the end.


MORE SPOILER SPACE


You would never guess...


YET MORE SPOILER SPACE



...Bond finds the bombs and saves the world.

Anyway, at the end of the film, some random guy appears, tells the Bond girl (Domino - isn't that a bit masculine, or is it some kind of double entendre?) that he's disabled the bomb, and unties her (saving her from the evil baddie's cigar and ice torture routine). Just before the boat that they and 007 are travelling on crashes and blows up, Bond, Domino and Random Guy abandon ship. Random Guy complains that he can't swim, but our ever resourceful hero finds time to hand him a life belt, and come out with a hilarious one-liner as the boat speeds to the crash site.

After the explosion, Bond and Domino get into an inflatable dingy and are rescued. But what happened to Random Guy? The one who disabled the bomb and saved David Caruso? Did he not manage to get far enough away from the boat? This seems unlikely since it was travelling so fast that you'd have thought they sped the film footage up or something. Or is he still bobbing around with his lifebelt in the middle of the ocean?
Three would be a crowd

The person who comes up with the best explanation gets a holiday* to the Bahamas.

*Terms and Conditions

Judge's descision is final. No correspondence will be entered into unless bribes are involved.

Bribe must be provided in full before the judge is prepared to consider any change in winner

Winner must be prepared to participate in publicity for this blog, which may include being photographed with a stupid grin, being prepared to have details of their favourite M&M colour published, and being otherwise publicly embarrassed.

Winner must supply their own holiday

9 comments:

Jean Knee said...

ummm.......what?

Brian o vretanos said...

Three people jumped off the boat, but only two got rescued.

Jean Knee said...

okay see the random guy was probably paid far less than the two hot stars, naturally. So he was only paid for half a day's work- which time ended before the rescue scene so they left that part out. Happens to me all the time.

Super Happy Girl said...

Sharks.

On the first picture I thought she was spanking Bond.
Maybe that's good?

Bee said...

I don't know what happened because the *spoiler warning* scared me away.

I have never seen a single Bond movie but if I ever do, I'm going to start with the most recent first and work my way backwards just to piss Andy off.

Jean Knee said...

did I win yet?

Rhonda Sloan said...

I'm going with SHG's answer. Sharks. Or really mean dolphins.

Sean Connery is yummy.

Jean Knee said...

YET?

Jean Knee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.