Thunderball is the most interesting of the Bond films so far, but not only due to the story or the action, but also due to the circumstances. Released in 1965, it made $65.5 million in the domestic box office, outdoing the previous year’s Goldfinger by more than $12 million. Those are amazing box office numbers for the mid-60’s. The term blockbuster was about ten years away from making it into the vernacular, but these Bond films were clearly turning into blockbusters and the franchise had become very lucrative at this point. Thunderball is a fine film, and it can certainly stand on its own against its predecessors, but it clearly took advantage of the momentum that From Russia With Love and Goldfinger had created.
What we also have here is a more mature Bond and a more serious Bond than we’ve seen since Dr. No. By the fourth installment of the series, Sean Connery seems to have really grown into the role, so that it is almost his alter ego. Connery knows Bond as he knows himself and is now playing the part with confidence and gusto that is not matched in the previous film, even Goldfinger. There are very few one-liners in, he seems a lot more comfortable playing opposite the women in the film, and Bond comes across in this film as as a more serious man. Certainly there are lighthearted moments, such as Bond’s meeting with Q, as well as his time in the health clinic at the front end of the picture, but overall, this is a more serious film and a more serious Bond.
Bond has to be more serious because SPECTRE is upping the game. Largo (#2) hijacks a war plane and steals its two atomic bombs, which SPECTRE holds for ransom with the threat of destroying two major cities if NATO does not meet their demands. That leaves Bond to find the bombs before the ransom is paid and before they can be detonated. That gives this film a ticking clock, which is always a great way to create tension in a story and raise the level of intensity and action as the story progresses.
This was also the most sophisticated and most ambitious film making to date in the series. Thunderball became the first Bond film to be recognized by the Academy when it won an Oscar for its visual effects, and a large percentage of the film takes place underwater. There are choreographed fight sequences between scuba divers with spear guns and sharks. There are submarines, mini-subs and an underwater plane crash. The underwater photography is brilliant, and it helped with the storytelling. There some who criticize the lengthy underwater segments in this film. Perhaps the climactic underwater shootout is too long by a couple of minutes, but there are many, many films that have cools sequences that go on too long. Thunderball might have been one of the first to fall victim to this, but it certainly wasn’t the last. What many of the other underwater sequences did, however, was force the film makers to show the story rather than tell it. Since dialogue under water is impossible, the only mechanism that director Terence Young (directing his 3rd and final Bond film) and screenwriters Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins had was to reveal information by showing it. Consequently there is less dialogue in Thunderball than in its predecessors and the less dialogue the better, especially in an action film.
Otherwise, this is not a spectacular script. The structure of the story isn’t great and it takes a long time to get going. Once the story does get going, it’s intriguing and fun, but they essentially developed their own 3-act structure in this one with a long first act, a long-ish second act and a very short third act.
From the standpoint of the Bond motifs, there are some good ones that are introduced or strengthened in Thunderball. His famous escape using a jet pack occurs in the prologue, and Q gives him some cool gadgets to play with. Also, we see a classic motif from SPECTRE where #1 meets with his henchmen and they’re all seated around a board room table. #1 kills one of them for extortion by electrocuting his chair and making him disappear under the floor. This is a motif that would be copied and parodied in other films like Austin Powers for decades to come.
The Bond girl is another motif that continues through this film. In fact, Bond sleeps with several women in Thunderball, but the main Bond girl is Domino, played by Claudine Auger. She starts out the film at the side of the villain, Largo, but joins up with Bond after he shows her proof that Largo was responsible for the death of her brother. Not as memorable as any of the Bond girls that came before her, Domino still has a positive effect on the story,(WARNING: SPOILER COMING!) even becoming the second Bond girl to directly save Bond’s life by killing the villain when she shoots Largo with a spear gun.
Another thought about that was that there seemed to be a concerted effort in Thunderball to turn Sean Connery in to a sex symbol. He is constantly without his shirt, and the underwater scenes obviously trigger that. But this film was clearly shot in a way to accentuate Bond’s sexuality and magnetism.
Overall, Thunderball is a worthy addition to the franchise. The story isn’t quite as good as From Russia With Love or Goldfinger, but it far surpassed those two films in terms of film making quality and sophistication. What Thunderball did was take the Bond franchise to a new level of film making and special effects technique that would be its hallmark for decades to come. Yes, it came at the expense of the story, but that is just another example of the Bond franchise being ahead of the curve with the rest of the film industry.