Director: Terence Young
Year of Release: 1965
Should you watch it? Feel free to skip.
Why?
Thunderball feels like the first James Bond the negatives outweigh the positives. The filmmakers feel a little too high on their own supply. The racism and sexism are ratcheted up. And for what? A vague takeover the world plot with SPECTRE again? With a flat female lead and an uninspired villain, this movie was always going to have a hard time standing out. It basically just has the charisma of Sean Connery to make it watchable.
How is the Bond?
He’s a bit more rapey here. While the movies up until this point always had Bond pushing boundaries when it came to consent, it did genuinely always seem like there was a line they would not cross and a cliff they would not jump off. The lines were crossed and the cliff was jumped off of here. It kind of sums up his characterization here. He’s a bit too overconfident and it is off-putting.
How is the Bond Woman?
Domino is barely a step above Honey Ryder. Her motivation is slightly more clear and less vague, but she feels barely more significant. Bond films, past and present, have never been shy to delay revealing the major villain or woman character until later in the story. The problem here is they waited too long and then had her do nothing.
How is the Bond Villain?
Emilio Largo is essentially just an eye-patch. It’s a good eye-patch mind you but still. After two early films revolved around SPECTRE, it’s hard to think of SPECTRE as anything but a bag of hot air. There’s not much there. Whether it’s an emotionless henchman like Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love, or an ambitious #2 like Largo, they are all really the same. They are all participating in an incredibly vague desire to take over the world. It just doesn’t compare to someone like Goldfinger coming up with a semi-clever plan to make himself richer.
Does the film irresponsibly present the West as the hero of the world and thus promote imperialism and colonialism as inherently positive?
Yes.
The Reel World 