exists because one man sued Ian Fleming, another writer stole a script, and a Scottish former milkman decided that “never” was just a suggestion. It is the film that shouldn’t exist, starring the man who said he wouldn’t return, fighting a villain from a book he didn’t originally write.
: Instead of Desmond Llewelyn's grumpy, beloved schoolteacher persona, Alec McCowen plays "Algernon," a budget-constrained British quartermaster working out of a dreary basement.
In a brilliant opening sequence, Bond wakes up in a bed with a beautiful woman, dreams of a past mission, and then stares at himself in the mirror, sighing at his reflection. Later, M (Edward Fox, replacing Bernard Lee) sarcastically notes that Bond failed the annual fitness test. Bond is sent to a “health farm” (Shrublands) run by a dubious Dr. Kovacs, where his massage is interrupted by an assassination attempt via a mechanical snake.
Moving away from the typical megalomaniacal Bond villain, Brandauer portrayed Largo as a volatile, deeply insecure, and highly dangerous psychopath. The video game duel between Bond and Largo remains a highlight of the film. Never Say Never Again -James Bond 007-
Today, Never Say Never Again is viewed as an entertaining, highly unusual historical anomaly. For fans reviewing the complete history on Wikipedia , it stands as a testament to the complex legalities of intellectual property and a wonderful bonus chapter for those who believe Sean Connery will always be the definitive James Bond.
Bernie Casey made history as the first Black actor to portray Bond’s CIA ally, Felix Leiter. Meanwhile, Rowan Atkinson (long before achieving global fame as Mr. Bean ) provided comic relief as Nigel Small-Fawcett, a bumbling British bureaucracy outpost worker in the Bahamas. Production Style and Creative Departures
Decades later, the film occupies a strange, limbo-like space in pop culture. In 1997, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) acquired the rights to Never Say Never Again after a complex series of legal acquisitions, finally bringing the rogue film under the same corporate umbrella as the official Eon catalog. While it is often included in modern home media box sets, it is still excluded from official anniversary counts and franchise retrospectives. exists because one man sued Ian Fleming, another
The film stands out for its distinct tone, which differs significantly from Eon’s 1983 offering:
By the late 1970s, McClory decided to exercise that right. Simultaneously, Sean Connery—who had famously sworn he would “never again” play James Bond after the exhausting shoot of You Only Live Twice (1967) and the disastrous The Shaws of Kilbride fiasco—was offered a king’s ransom. The offer was a staggering $5 million (over $15 million today) plus a percentage of the gross, making him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood at the time.
The film also leaned into Bond’s aging process. At the start of the movie, 007 is deemed physically unfit by a modern, bureaucratic "M" (Edward Fox) and sent to a health clinic to detox. This meta-commentary on an aging hero gave the movie a layer of wit and vulnerability that the concurrent official Bond films lacked. An All-Star Supporting Cast In a brilliant opening sequence, Bond wakes up
While Octopussy features Roger Moore in a clown suit and some truly silly gags, NSNA feels like a legitimate Cold War spy thriller. Connery looks like he could actually beat someone up in a bar fight, whereas the official series at the time was becoming increasingly cartoonish.
Released in 1983, Never Say Never Again is a unique entry in the James Bond series, famously known as the "unofficial" 007 film because it was produced outside of Eon Productions