I was initially hopeful that adding the inverted L+R channels to the Center channel would yield the best result but it caused glitches and only addressed the music not the sound effects). (A very gentle Compression of the Center channel in Audacity. I've boosted the dialogue so as to not have to adjust the volume so often while watching the film. The writers compound their misstep by showing it was "okay" because she liked it so much she slept with Bond some more afterwards.įortunately, these problems can be addressed without sacrificing too much of the film.Ī technical shortcoming of the blu-ray is the 5.1 audio mix: dialogue is too quiet relative to the music and sound effects. While seducing Bond girls is exciting, raping one is an offensive crime. But Bond is also a role-model to the movie-going audience, he fights for what's right.
Those flaws make him more interesting than a boy-scout caricature. Fleming wrote Bond as a rough, over-sexed alcoholic. Bond blackmails a spa employee into having sex with him. But rather than advancing the story, it feels like a James Bond medley. The evil Bond girl, Ms Volpe, refers to previous Bond girls (meta language!). When Bond tells Leiter "even the kitchen sink" it could refer to the film itself. When they said Thunderball has it all, they weren't kidding! They just overdid it, throwing in everything they could think of. After the overwhelming success of the preceding three Bond films, the makers were determined to top all that came before. Its sum is not greater than its parts, perhaps because Thunderball had five writers. Many logical moments to cut away to the next scene are wasted by staying with a scene for too long. Usually that's a good thing but Terence Young takes it too far.
One cause is that the director shows us too much and implies too little. Early on (the plane theft), in the middle (huh, wha., how much did I sleep through?), and at the end (can someone please hurry up the final battle?). Thunderball has imperfections, but only a few that really hurt the film.