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The theories of Bond films! What is your theory on the poisonous gas cave in YOLT?

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  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited August 19 Posts: 18,898
    As I've said elsewhere on the forum I think they will only use the Bond continuation novels as a source if they are really in a creative bind of some kind with the script. Only if they're caught between a rock and a hard place, so to speak. That's why the torture scene dialogue from Colonel Sun was used in the Spectre torture scene after they'd tried and rejected another scene between Blofeld and Bond. Sadly that's the only way I can see them really using the Bond continuation novels as a source - if they really have to. And I say that with much regret as a big fan of the Bond continuation - check my username for proof of my commitment to the cause! I think there are some excellent Bond continuation novels they could adapt but I think they'll keep on churning out their own scripts and mostly keep the Bond continuations at arm's length.
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 6,085
    Let's do a frivolous one after being so serious about literary Bond.

    What is your theory on the indestructability of Jaws?

    When I was a mere child watching a VHS copy of TSWLM on my TV I was scared and amazed at Jaws. A towering man who could survive trucks banging him into walls, buildings falling on top of him, car crashes into villas. He seemed to be indestructible. Fast forward to me watching the MR in the drive in as a 10 year old boy. This time Jaws survived cable car collapses, falls without a parachute, and plunges down waterfalls. Pretty impressive and one of the only henchmen that our man never killed.

    Lets have some fun and come up with some creative theories on just how or why is Jaws indestructible?
  • MalloryMallory
    edited August 20 Posts: 2,341
    Jaws didn't just have metal teeth, he had a metal skeleton much like Wolverine. Hence almost indestructible.
  • GerardGerard
    Posts: 6,215
    Jaws was looking all these years for Sarah Connor.
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 15,343
    No steel caps on the work site though, tut tut.
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 6,085
    Okay something that has always left me wondering. After the exciting PTS of TB we find ourselves in Paris and a man pulls into a spot marked no parking. An officer is quick to shout "Hey no parking here...oh sorry Mr. Largo."

    Does this mean that the officer is a SPECTRE agent? Or is the officer bought and paid and "dirty" as the Americans say? Why would SPECTRE have a street cop on payroll or be dirty? Not knowing French policing it would seem to be a low level cop on the beat, maybe it was to allow SPECTRE to park illegally on the street?

    Secondary to that, Largo is seen entering a crowded office where clearly some work is going on with loans to people who need assistance. This would appear to be a money laundering operation. Except one of the clients say they will pay back "everything" and the clerk say there will be no need due to benefactors. This means it wouldn't be money laundering as money is coming in but it is going out to people who aren't involved in the scheme. I think for money laundering to work it needs to come back...clean.

    So why does SPECTRE run the charity? Merely as a place to run cover for their meetings?

    Tackle one or both, but share with me,

    What's your theory on the opening scenes of TB and SPECTRE?

  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 16,067
    Regarding the police officer, it simply shows that Largo is seen as a perfectly legitimate gentleman, even by the police. If he allows himself to park there, it's because he gives himself the right to. The French tend to be hierarchical by nature, they respect social and political standing. So the cop doesn't need to be corrupt: he just knows Largo is a wealthy man with a spotless reputation, a man who is used to this part of town, giving his precious time to a charity, no less, so he doesn't cause trouble to Monsieur Largo. Monsieur Largo has obviously better things to do than driving around finding an available parking spot in Paris Had he ordered Largo to move his vehicle, he would have had problems with his superiors at the gendarmerie.

    As for the charity, it's both a great financial and reputational cover.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited August 27 Posts: 18,962
    The charity (is it for missing persons?) is explained in the novel. I'll have to have a look.
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 6,085
    Maybe you are right @mtm been a while since I gave it a read. I am only going by the dialogue and the poor guy

    "We will pay back everything!"

    "There will be no need. We have certain..." I love how the clerk drops his voice while delivering the sentence.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 16,067
    I think the charity is both a money laundering operation and a way to give good publicity to the SPECTRE members with some kind of a public persona, like Largo.
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 6,085
    I always thought the police officer was bought and paid for. That it wouldn't matter if the person was well thought of or not. Interesting angle to say he recognizes that Largo is a man of substance. Going to have to re-think my thoughts.
  • GerardGerard
    edited August 27 Posts: 6,215
    No, the officer was not corrupt. ?The parking spot was simply reserved for the higher-ups at FIRCO. They were the only ones allowed to park here, and the policeman probably knew who had the right to park, and who doesn't. As for why he didn't recognize Largo's car, which, for France at the time period, was pretty distinctive, especially with a foreign plate like "CZ421", well, Emilio had changed cars firly recently, that's all.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 16,067
    thedove wrote: »
    I always thought the police officer was bought and paid for. That it wouldn't matter if the person was well thought of or not. Interesting angle to say he recognizes that Largo is a man of substance. Going to have to re-think my thoughts.

    For me it just shows that Largo is a villain with a good reputation. Like Alain Charnier/Frog One in The French Connection.
  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,870
    The Police officer has been properly explained bu @Ludovico and @Gerard . No, not corrupt.
    mtm wrote: »
    The charity (is it for missing persons?) is explained in the novel. I'll have to have a look.

    The charity was indeed for missing persons after WW2. People were still looking to what happened to displaced persons, those sent to internment camps, concentration camps, etc. etc.
    It therefore would be a great front for any criminal organisation. It has connections whithin all branches of government of various nations, good reputation, etc. etc.
    Largo, as beeing one of the men running the show, would certainly be 'famous' or 'ell known', as many businessmen who run greater organisations in the public eye are. Another reason why it is such a good cover.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 14,703
    s-l225.jpg
    Thunderball. Ian Fleming, 1958.
    Chapter 5 - S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
    It is appropriate that among this extremely respectable company of tenants, suitably diversified by a couple of churches, a small museum and the French Shakespeare Society, you should also find the headquarters of charitable organizations. At No. 136 bis , for instance, a discreetly glittering brass plate says: "F.I.R.C.O." and, underneath: "Fraternité Internationale de la Résistance Contre l'Oppression.'' If you were interested in this organization, either as an idealist or because you were a salesman of, say, office furniture, and you pressed the very clean porcelain bell button, the door would in due course be opened by an entirely typical French concierge. If your business was serious or obviously well-meaning, the concierge would show you across a rather dusty hall to tall, bogus Directoire double doors adjoining the over-ornamented cage of a shaky-looking lift. Inside the doors you would be greeted by exactly what you had expected to see---a large dingy room needing a fresh coat of its café-au-lait paint, in which half a dozen men sat at cheap desks and typed or wrote amidst the usual accouterments of a busy organization---IN and OUT baskets, telephones, in this case the old-fashioned standard ones that are typical of such an office in this part of Paris, and dark green metal filing cabinets in which drawers stand open. If you were observant of small details, you might register that all the men were of approximately the same age group, between thirty and forty, and that in an office where you would have expected to find women doing the secretarial work, there were none.

    Inside the tall door you would receive the slightly defensive welcome appropriate to a busy organization accustomed to the usual proportion of cranks and time-wasters but, in response to your serious inquiry, the face of the man at the desk near the door would clear and become cautiously helpful. The aims of the Fraternity? We exist, monsieur, to keep alive the ideals that flourished during the last war among members of all Resistance groups. No, monsieur, we are entirely unpolitical. Our funds? They come from modest subscriptions from our members and from certain private persons who share our aims. You have perhaps a relative, a member of a Resistance group, whose whereabouts you seek? Certainly, monsieur. The name? Gregor Karlski, last heard of with Mihailovitch in the summer of 1943. Jules! (He might turn to a particular man and call out.) Karlski, Gregor. Mihailovitch, 1943. Jules would go to a cabinet and there would be a brief pause. Then the reply might come back, Dead. Killed in the bombing of the General's headquarters, October 21st, 1943. I regret, monsieur. Is there anything further we can do for you? Then perhaps you would care to have some of our literature. Forgive me for not having time to spare to give you more details of FIRCO myself. But you will find everything there. This happens to be a particularly busy day. This is the International Refugee Year and we have many inquiries such as yours from all over the world. Good afternoon, monsieur. Pas de quoi. So, or more or less so, it would be and you would go out on to the Boulevard satisfied and even impressed with an organization that was doing its excellent if rather vague work with so much dedication and efficiency.

    On the day after James Bond had completed his nature cure and had left for London after, the night before, scoring a most satisfactory left and right of Spaghetti Bolognese and Chianti at Lucien's in Brighton and of Miss Patricia Fearing on the squab seats from her bubble car high up on the Downs, an emergency meeting of the trustees of FIRCO was called for seven o'clock in the evening. The men, for they were all men, came from all over Europe, by train or car or airplane, and they entered No. 136 bis singly or in pairs, some by the front door and some by the back, at intervals during the late afternoon and evening. Each man had his allotted time for arriving at these meetings---so many minutes, up to two hours, before zero hour---and each man alternated between the back and the front door from meeting to meeting. Now there were two "concierges'' for each door and other less obvious security measures---warning systems, closed-circuit television scanning of the two entrances, and complete sets of dummy FIRCO minutes, backed up one hundred per cent by the current business of the FIRCO organization on the ground floor. Thus, if necessary, the deliberations of the "trustees'' could, in a matter only of seconds, be switched from clandestine to overt---as solidly overt as any meeting of principals in the Boulevard Haussmann could possibly be.

    At seven o'clock precisely the twenty men who made up this organization strode, lounged, or sidled, each according to his character, into the workmanlike board room on the third floor. Their chairman was already in his seat. No greetings were exchanged. They were ruled by the chairman to be a waste of breath and, in an organization of this nature, hypocritical. The men filed round the table and took their places at their numbers, the numbers from one to twenty-one that were their only names and that, as a small security precaution, advanced round the rota by two digits at midnight on the first of every month. Nobody smoked---drinking was taboo and smoking frowned upon--- and nobody bothered to glance down at the bogus FIRCO agenda on the table in front of him. They sat very still and looked up the table at the chairman with expressions of the sharpest interest and what, in lesser men, would have been obsequious respect.

    logo_24.jpg
    https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_19079-Ford-Thunderbird-76A-1965.html
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  • zebrafishzebrafish <°)))< in Octopussy's garden in the shade
    Posts: 4,465
    I wonder in what make of bubble car the masseuse, Miss Fearing, would have had the pleasure of scoring with Mister Bond in 1961? And were those not awfully cramped?
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 6,085
    As always illuminating to hear different thoughts on the logic of certain plot developments.

    Lets stick with Thunderball. Later when Bond is in the Bahamas deep into the case he asks Pinder for a huge favour. He asks for to get the lights out of Palmyra.

    Pinder: "Governor's not very happy, but you'll have a power cut as you requested, all over the island."

    Bond: "I don't give a damn about the rest of the island. I just want the lights out in Palmyra."

    Pinder: "You'll have it."

    One wonders what strings or pull Pinder had with the Governor. Granted Bahamas was still a British colony at the time of filming and the Governor was appointed by the Queen. But given that it's the night of the Junkanoo having the whole island lose power seems to put many island residents at risk.

    What's your theory on how Pinder got the head of the country to cut the power to the whole island?

    Also do you think Bond was going to attempt to rescue Paula from Palmyra or was he going in on the assumption she was already dead?
  • TroyTroy
    edited August 30 Posts: 378
    Presumably, power cuts may not had been uncommon in the 1960s, so it would have been seen as an inconvenience, rather than the crisis that the modern world would experience

    As per the Mayor in Jaws, the Governor would probably have been reluctant to disrupt the Junkanoo. However, as the Governor was a Foreign Office employee and that MI6 is an Arms Length Body of the Foreign Office, the required pressure would simple to arrange, given that nuclear weapons were missing, then an inconvenience would have been acceptable


    Regarding Bond’s motivation, he was certainly on a rescue mission. Why else would he go? It wasn’t a planned raid, so a random revenge operation to irritate Largo would be unprofessional as it would be an indulgent risk to the overall mission
  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,870
    Troy wrote: »
    Presumably, power cuts may not had been uncommon in the 1960s, so it would have been seen as an inconvenience, rather than the crisis that the modern world would experience

    As per the Mayor in Jaws, the Governor would probably have been reluctant to disrupt the Junkanoo. However, as the Governor was a Foreign Office employee and that MI6 is an Arms Length Body of the Foreign Office, the required pressure would simple to arrange, given that nuclear weapons were missing, then an inconvenience would have been acceptable


    Regarding Bond’s motivation, he was certainly on a rescue mission. Why else would he go? It wasn’t a planned raid, so a random revenge operation to irritate Largo would be unprofessional as it would be an indulgent risk to the overall mission

    this.
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 6,085
    All right, lets move forward to YOLT.

    I think this is a case of lazy scriptwriting on Dahl's part, but who knows maybe someone has a theory to explain this one away.

    As Bond and Kissy are fishing they spot the cave and move in, after about a few seconds Bond calls out that there is gas in the cave and him and Kissy dive for the water. Once on shore they trace the likely path of the cave and figure it must be leading up to the volcano. They decide to hike up the outside even though this would take hours.

    Fast forward to the end, the volcano lair is blowing up and Bond and the ninjas are needing to escape. They all take the same gas filled cave as before with no ill effects of the deadly gas.

    What's your theory on the poisonous gas cave in YOLT?

    Just how does this cave turn from deadly death trap, to an escape route to safety?

    If it was lazy script writing by Dahl how would you fix this error in logic?
  • 007HallY007HallY
    edited September 2 Posts: 5,860
    SPECTRE blew most of their money on the big volcano lair, the space shark thing, as well as elaborate piranha ponds (and some gourmet cat food which cost an unholy amount), so consequently the budget for the cave trap had to be cut down. Unfortunately there was only a certain amount of poison gas and it could only be used a limited amount of times.

    This flaw was incidentally brought up by the SPECTRE accountant with suggestions to manage their finances, but he was promptly dropped into the piranha pond for his insubordination.
  • MalloryMallory
    Posts: 2,341
    They all hold their breath whilst escaping.
  • royale65royale65 Caustic misanthrope reporting for duty.
    Posts: 4,433
    The explosion, and the high temperatures, caused the gases to go inert? Chlorine gas wasn't it? How does chlorine handle high temperatures? 🤔
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,899
    royale65 wrote: »
    The explosion, and the high temperatures, caused the gases to go inert? Chlorine gas wasn't it? How does chlorine handle high temperatures? 🤔

    Chlorine holds up well under high temperatures, at least until you reach the kind of extremes that would turn the cave into a furnace. By now, I’d say the gas has dissipated. I doubt SPECTRE would keep a constant supply of chlorine flowing in here.
  • royale65royale65 Caustic misanthrope reporting for duty.
    Posts: 4,433
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    royale65 wrote: »
    The explosion, and the high temperatures, caused the gases to go inert? Chlorine gas wasn't it? How does chlorine handle high temperatures? 🤔

    Chlorine holds up well under high temperatures, at least until you reach the kind of extremes that would turn the cave into a furnace. By now, I’d say the gas has dissipated. I doubt SPECTRE would keep a constant supply of chlorine flowing in here.

    Dearest Dimitri, does your talent know no bounds? Both a physicist and chemist.
  • Last_Rat_StandingLast_Rat_Standing Long Neck Ice Cold Beer Never Broke My Heart
    Posts: 4,787
    Perhaps something like a camera or detection tool monitored by someone within the volcano base. Once the invasion happened it was no longer being monitored?
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,899
    royale65 wrote: »
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    royale65 wrote: »
    The explosion, and the high temperatures, caused the gases to go inert? Chlorine gas wasn't it? How does chlorine handle high temperatures? 🤔

    Chlorine holds up well under high temperatures, at least until you reach the kind of extremes that would turn the cave into a furnace. By now, I’d say the gas has dissipated. I doubt SPECTRE would keep a constant supply of chlorine flowing in here.

    Dearest Dimitri, does your talent know no bounds? Both a physicist and chemist.
    I'm Batman.
    Last_Rat_Standing wrote: »
    Perhaps something like a camera or detection tool monitored by someone within the volcano base. Once the invasion happened it was no longer being monitored?

    Sounds plausible indeed.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 14,703
    Venting. Of the gas. From the cave.
  • BT3366BT3366
    Posts: 1,982
    All the movies in this series have multiple examples of this type of thing. For me, YOLT is the series leader of instances where you have WTF moments you're just supposed to go with.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,899
    BT3366 wrote: »
    All the movies in this series have multiple examples of this type of thing. For me, YOLT is the series leader of instances where you have WTF moments you're just supposed to go with.

    The biggest WTF moment for me is Bond and Aki embracing each other like old lovers, when they hadn't met for much longer than a handful of minutes. But these instances are part of the film's charm. It's a silly adventure, but a work of beauty nevertheless.
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