Is there anything more British than turning on the telly at 11pm and finding an old Bond film on ITV? There’s an opening that I probably couldn’t get away with on any other major games site, hey. But, really: that moment of channel-hopping and catching the smirking visage of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, or Pierce Brosnan as a bit of late-night terrestrial TV filler is as British as fish and chips, smashing up your shiny new alloy on a pothole, and needing to do a blood sacrifice for his majesty’s government in order to send a DM on social media.
Anyway, the other night I had that classic experience. I was meant to be getting ready for bed but channel-hopped, as if that’s something anyone under fifty still does – and there he was. Sean Connery. Greying, undoubtedly phoning it in, but still brilliant. A mega ropey theme song played out over footage of his Bond on a training exercise without a psychedelic title sequence in sight. It’s Never Say Never Again, then – the redheaded stepchild of the Bond franchise.
Never Say Never Again is honestly rather rubbish, but it’s also fascinating. Even a crap Bond film has something about it – that Bondian stickiness – to draw you in. And with IO Interactive’s 007: First Light weighing heavily on my mind, I ended up rewatching the whole thing. Right through ‘til nearly 1am. Doh.
As noted, this film is bewitching in its mix of vague crapness and true directorial flair from Irvin Kershner (at this time fresh off directing a little independent film called The Empire Strikes Back). Also compelling is its status in legal purgatory, and how it thereby has to differentiate itself from the ‘main’ franchise. That last point is how this all tenuously connects to video games, which I’ll come to in a moment.