Perfect for James Bond Villains

“Perfect for James Bond Villains”

I saw this luxury submarine today and it reminded me that I’d been going through some old Bond films. I saw Thunderball (1965) a few weeks ago, and then Never Say Never Again (1983) which is based upon the same Ian Fleming novel. Both star Sean Connery, but are by different production companies.

Disco Volante

Flying Saucer

Both films feature a lot of underwater action, and both feature a large yacht as the villain’s mobile HQ. In Thunderball, the yacht’s name is Disco Volante, and in Never Say Never Again, it is the Flying Saucer. Besides the fun of imagining luxury yachts as stealth UFO’s, I just plain like big yachts, even though they are also the classic example of capitalist wealth and greed.

In 1983, when I was in design school, the largest private yacht in the world was the 281’ Nabila, commissioned by Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. This is the yacht used in Never Say Never Again as the Flying Saucer. It was later bought by Donald Trump and renamed the Trump Princess.

Mic drop.

Who then sold it on to Al-Waleed bin Talal who renamed her Kingdom 5KR. It was designed by the prestigious London firm of John Bannenberg, who went on to set the avant-garde style of modern mega-yachts that continues to this day. His style was described as “Star Wars” or “space ship”.

But back to Nabila, and Khashoggi. According to muck-racking journalist Daniel Hopsicker in The CIA Double-Dip: Drugs, Fraud, & the JFK Assassination: “Khashoggi and his lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi, both of whom have long histories in past CIA operations, also used their ability to operate with impunity—their get out of jail free card—to act like the worst sort of double-dealing flimflam men, bunco artists and grifters.”

In other words, a perfect James Bond Villain.

Another Bannenberg design: Never Say Never, was used in the 2009 The Lonely Island video I’m On A Boat, which was featured on SNL and went viral on Youtube and iTunes. 

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NOTES:

‘Never Again’ is the slogan of the Jewish Defense League.

Never Say Never Again starred Kim Bassinger as Largo's girlfriend. Oddly, the movie I watched right before this was Tim Burton's Batman, where she played Viki Vale, who was both the Batman's and the Joker's girlfriend.