FAQ for
Never Say Never Again (1983) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

Never Say Never Again is an "unofficial" remake of Thunderball (1965), which was based on Ian Fleming's 1961 novel of the same name. The novel was adapted for this movie by screenwriters Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Lorenzo Semple, Jr. The title of the movie comes from a reference to Sean Connery's insistence back in 1971 that he would never play Bond again.

Yes. Never Say Never Again was Connery's seventh and last movie in which he played James Bond. His previous Bond movies include: Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), and Diamonds Are Forever (1971). In between You Only Live Twice and Diamonds are Forever, another Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), was produced, but it starred George Lazenby in his only stint as Bond.

Never Say Never Again is sung by American singer Lani Hall.

The movie opens with Bond in London where he and M (Edward Fox) are viewing a tape of a training maneuver in some undisclosed Latin American country. Because Bond ended up being "killed", M sends him to a health clinic near London in order to have the "free radicals" removed from his system. When SPECTRE steals two cruise missiles bearing live nuclear warheads, M recalls 007 and sends him to the Bahamas to make contact with Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger), sister of Jack Petachi (Gavan O'Herlihy), the American Air Force pilot who is suspected of switching the dummy warheads for the real ones. Domino lives on a yacht with her lover, Maximilian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who works for SPECTRE. When Bond gets word that their yacht has set sail for Nice, France, he flies there and finally makes contact with Domino. When Bond attempts to board the yacht in order to search for the warheads, he becomes trapped and taken to Palmyra, Largos villa in North Africa. After securing the second warhead, Bond returns to the Bahamas with Domino.

Bond uses his laser watch to break the shackles and escape the tower room in which Largo had him imprisoned. He steals a horse and saves Domino from being sold as a slave to some rugged-looking Arabs. Bond and Domino escape by leaping into the ocean where CIA operative Felix Leiter (Bernie Casey) fishes them out and takes them to a submarine. Bond informs Felix that he's learned that one of the two bombs is hidden in Washington, so Felix alerts Washington and the bomb is located and defused. Bond realizes that the design on the Tears of Allah necklace match the outline of the island where Largo has parked his ship, the Flying Saucer. Bond figures that the diamond on the pendant marks the location of the second bomb, so he and Felix land on the island as indicated, don SCUBA gear, and go looking for the cave in which the bomb has been hidden. The cave leads to a large chamber filled with stone statues and other artifacts. As Bond goes deeper into the cave, Felix goes to get help. While the good guys fight the bad guys, Bond goes after Largo, who is attempting to escape underwater with the warhead. Felix radios for a helicopter which takes Bond to the surface of the island and drops him into an "oasis", which leads him straight to Largo and the bomb. After a short fight with Largo, Bond attempts to disarm the bomb. Just as Largo raises his gun to shoot Bond, Domino appears out of nowhere and shoots Largo with a speargun. In the final scenes, Bond and Domino are relaxing in a pool when Nigel Small-Fawcett (Rowan Atkinson) from the English consulate shows up with an urgent message from M, begging Bond to return to M16 because he fears for the civilized world. "Never again," replies Bond.

The plot is the same. Most of the characters have the same or similar names, and there are versions of scenes that were in Thunderball. The villainess, Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera), has a larger role whereas Domino has a smaller one. Instead of Bond massaging an attractive blonde nurse, he massages Domino. The locations are mainly the same until the end when it moves to North Africa.

Never Say Never Again is considered "unofficial" because it was not created by Eon Productions, the company behind the other James Bond films. Hence the absence of such Bond film iconography as the gun barrel opening, the distinctive title sequences, or the Monty Norman-composed James Bond theme. The story was originally developed by Ian Fleming in conjunction with film producer Kevin McClory as an original big-screen adventure until the creative partnership collapsed. Fleming then adapted the screenplay into his novel Thunderball without giving proper credit to McClory or Whittingham for their part in its conception. Subsequently, the movie rights to Thunderball were acquired by Eon along with the rest of Fleming's Bond catalogue (apart from Casino Royale, which had already been sold off to another producer) and it was intended to be the first entry in the Bond film series.

However, McClory subsequently sued for the rights to Thunderball and while Fleming ultimately retained the rights to his book with the provision that all future reprints must acknowledge Whittingham and McClory's contribution, McClory wound up with the film rights to Thunderball, including the character of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his organization SPECTRE which were first introduced in Thunderball. Unable to get his own Bond project off the ground in the mid-1960s, McClory wound up approaching Eon Productions and collaborated on the 1965 film version. As part of this deal, McClory was not allowed to attempt to film a rival Bond project for ten years.

In 1975, McClory announced his intention to mount an ambitious rival Bond project which was to star Sean connery, with whom McClory established a friendship back in 1965 during the filming of Thunderball. While legal wranglings with Eon Productions and difficulty in obtaining financing prevented McClory from getting his rival Bond project off the ground for several years, he finally found success when he teamed up with lawyer-turned film producer Jack Schwartzman, which led to Never Say Never Again reaching screens in 1983. Because McClory was limited to only producing a film based on the original story of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again is technically a remake of the earlier Bond adventure, albeit with a slant to make it seem as if 007 is now an older, semi-retired agent.

No. Timothy Dalton is in no way associated to this film. There's an extra in the video game room of the casino scene that looks marginally like him (hence the confusion), but upon close examination it's clearly not him. Furthermore, Dalton's appearance in such an insignificant role would make not sense at this point, since he was an established and successful actor on stage and film since the 1960s (hence he wouldn't be doing background work), and having him appear as a Bond in-joke would make absolutely no sense, as Never Say Never Again was released in 1983, and at that time Dalton had no association with the franchise whatsoever, as he wouldn't play Bond for the first time until four years later, in The Living Daylights (1987).