Of course From Russia With Love probably owes a lot of its popularity due to JFK saying it was one of his favourite books. I've yet to read Thunderball, still got Dr. No and Goldfinger first but I know it's most infamous for being a source of controversy as there was a battle over the rights to it. Ian Fleming apparently adapted the novel from a script, which involved director/writer Kevin McClory and screenwriter Jack Whittingham. Fleming published the book and McClory and Whittingham took legal action feeling that deserved some credit for the work. They eventually settled out of court with McClory getting the rights to literary and film productions and Fleming the rights to the novel as long as he acknowledged that it was based on the screenplay.
In 1965 the film Thunderball was made with McClory as one of the producers, and in 1983 he produced an unofficial remake of it called Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery taking up the role of James Bond again.
For me it is entertaining but it's one of the weaker movies, the plot takes too long to get going, the Bond girl isn't in the movie much and has little impact save for constantly appearing in swimsuits and it's impossible to sympathise with her brother as he really got what he deserved. It's never clear why Domino is with Largo, she says she was attracted to him once, and there is an implication that it would be dangerous to leave him and yet she seems to enjoy life in the Bahamas just fine until, of course, James Bond seduces her and thus endangers her. He tries to get her to alert them to the bombs but she fails, and her only worthwhile moment is when she kills the villain with a harpoon gun, thus saving James from being shot.
The highlight is definitely femme fatale Fiona Volpe, played by Italian actress Luciana Paluzzi, who was one of the few females not to be dubbed. Originally meant to be Irish Fiona Kelly, she was changed to Italian in honour of the actress. Sexy, seductive, heartless, cruel and mocking with a biting tongue, Fiona really deserved a bigger appearance. She was a better villain than Largo and certainly more memorable, as a woman who finally matches up to Bond and despite bedding him does not fall for his charms, as she mockingly points out. She seduced him purely to keep him occcupied so that her minions would have time to arrive to hustle Bond out of the hotel, although why Bond slept with her is a mystery to me, he knew she was a villain by then after all. I guess it's like Fiona said, he thought he could make her change sides.
Fiona meets a dramatic end when Bond uses her as a human shield to stop himself from being shot by one of her minions, while they are dancing. That whole sequence with the carnival was definitely one of my favourites, and not just for the random dog peeing lol, it was edgy and exciting, watching Bond being tailed as Fiona follows his bloodtrail and he can only limp as he's been shot and he takes the desperate measure of trying to disappear into a crowd by dancing with a stranger but Fiona finds him. It was the edginess the film needed instead of all those underwater sequences.
It has the usual formula of Bond movies- Bond girl in bikini, bad girl, women for Bond to seduce just to show he's Bond, sharks, a menancing look villain, complete with eyepatch, a memorable introduction, complete with jetpack, a woman who gets killed for knowing Bond, gambling, exotic location, and the shady appearance of SPECTRE and Blofeld. Yet it falls flat for me, you don't see enough of the decent characters, Felix and Domino lack appearance and development, and the plot drags. I mean it's strange because the underwater sequences are only approx 20% of the movie in total and yet to mean it's seems like much more and I can't dismiss them as weighing down the plot and making me lose interest.
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