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Thunderball: Hide the Nukes!

Thunderball: Hide the Nukes!

Last updated on: June 23, 2026 at 5:07 pm by Chase Padusniak

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Thunderball: Hide the Nukes! 2026-06-23T17:07:11-04:00 Chase Padusniak

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Thunderball
Source: Flickr user James Vaughan
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Thunderball (1965) is bloated. Let’s get that out of the way. It’s overlong, has unnecessary (and perplexing) sexual assault sequences, and gets a bit sloppy with its menagerie of characters. Still, I think it’s quite good.

I bother saying that because I took a beating, both online and in real life, for saying I thought From Russia with Love (1963) is the worst of the first three Bond films. Unfortunately for me, I believe that also applies within the first four. Thunderball blows it out of the water.

I’ve been pondering why I feel this way. After much rumination, I suspect that it has to do with my expectations. I don’t go to Bond films for gritty Cold War realism or believable romantic pairings. I want goofy gadgets, shlocky villains, and explosive action. It’s not enough for a rocket to hit a car—it must also crash and explode (which one does in Thunderball, of course).

From Russia with Love, in my view, takes itself just a bit too seriously. It wants us to believe that Bond and this Soviet double agent love each other. The film desires our investment in a semi-realistic storyline about a code machine and its exchange from the communist block to the Western one. The only trouble is that we never have any reason to think they care about each other, and the espionage storyline is unrealistic. In the movie, Spectre, a globe-spanning extortion and villainy organization run by numbered men in eyepatches, sets the events into motion. How can I buy the story as anything but pulp?

Thunderball and those like it never ask us to take Bond and his shenanigans seriously. At no point, did I feel the need to believe that 60s plastic surgery could produce a full body double of a French NATO pilot. Nor did I lose myself in the truth of Spectre stealing two nukes and hiding them in a secret underwater cave in the Caribbean. I just enjoyed the ride.

This movie, for example, contains a scene in which James Bond lies on a spine-stretching machine table. A villain turns the machine on “high,” and the film treats us to a full 15 seconds of Sean Connery vibrating at immense speed, complete with quick zoom camera tricks. Believable? No. Fun? Absolutely.

I hope to continue my trip through the early Bond films. Will I like the Roger Moore ones? We’ll see. I suspect that we’re going to see some Flanderization here. Perhaps these movies will become even a bit too themselves for my taste. Only one way to find out.

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