With Thunderball on my mind, I decided to watch it the other evening.

My reaction was definitely different from what it was the first time I saw it. In fact, my reaction was probably pretty close to the way I ended up reviewing it: I think I’d rather have watched Othello. Any Othello.

The movie is definitely showing its age.

That said, there were a few fun things still to be seen. It’s always great to see Sean Connery, of course, and there were some fun quips, a bevy of beauties, lovely scenery, great production values, terrific music, fantastic gadgets, all the things that one associates with a James Bond movie.

Alas, James Bond’s way out-dated attitude towards women was also in view, and this film might very well be the worst of the lot.

For example:

And truth be told, the movie was a bit of a snooze fest. I mean all those underwater scenes. All you can see are the black clad humans fighting against the orange clad humans, and really it does get tiresome after a few hours. It seemed to go on forever. I’d say nearly half the movie was shot underwater, although Wikipedia tells me it was only about a quarter of the film. Seemed like a lot more.

The opening sequence before the titles was fun, although it had nothing to do with the rest of the movie and it made no sense. Here is the last part of it. Note that the gadget that Bond uses to escape was apparently a real thing, although not necessarily practical. Also, I’m substituting the original song that was written for the opening titles as sung by Dionne Warwick. It was eventually scrapped because it didn’t mention the title of the movie and the producers felt that would confuse people, so a new song, sung by Tom Jones, was written. The new song apparently confused Tom Jones as he didn’t understand what was meant by “He strikes like Thunderball” but he sang it anyway and got paid. I kind of like the original.