James Bond 007 - Never Say Never Again: 40th Anniversary EON Cut

This edit came out at a good time as I am doing another watch-through of the entire 007 film series. I watched the original "Never Say Never Again" and then this fan edit the next day. I preferred the fan edit and it will become my go-to version of "NSNA." The music, as others have mentioned, is the biggest and most welcome change. The opening scene of the movie is especially improved by removing the annoying song that did not go with the action at all. Kudos to the editor for creating an original opening title sequence that all of the EON Bond films have. We were lucky to get Sean Connery in one final performance as his most famous character and we are lucky that fan editors care enough to revisit a 40-year-old film and make it even better. Recommended.

Hey! ‘A View To A Kill’! Yeah! I’m talking to you! Budge up one slot will ya and make room for the new guy because Never Say Never Again: Eon Cut just took your place as 14th in the line of official Bond movie canon.

After I watched this edit, if you will, picture a guy sprawled out on the floor like Sheldon Cooper at the end of ‘The Closure Alternative’; season 6 episode 21 of The Big Bang Theory. Those of us suffering with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can now lovingly scan our chronologically ordered shelf arrangement of Bond DVD titles without triggering paroxysms of involuntary tics each time our index finger passes over the spine of our cellophane wrapped, mint condition, original copy of NSNA. World of James Bond’s EON morphing masterpiece will sooth your brow and comfort you as you witness order being restored to the Bond galaxy.

Par excellence!

There were so few things I had issues with, I will just get the negatives out of the way first: Yes, the faces are a bit too red in some scenes, but definitely not all. In fact overall the saturated look is great IMO. Only in a few scenes does the saturation make the faces too red. Another very minor thing-- in the opening pre-title scene, I think there needs to be a slightly longer freeze frame of Bond before the credits sequence. (This is one area where I did prefer the Propellerheads with Shirley Bassey song choice from a previous fanedit.) All that is minor, and you can see from my rating that I loved this edit. My biggest quibble is the music during Bond and Domino's dance. It is the one spot where I felt like it was just wrong. I thought I remembered it being a tango, like in Scent of a Woman. But whatever it was, in this it felt like a movie score when it needed to feel like live music being played in the room where they are dancing. Nothing else really stuck out in a negative way. This is a much MUCH better swan song for Connery's 007 than Diamonds Are Forever. This edit easily feels more like official EON Bond than Diamonds too. In fact when watching it to review, it is easy to forget this is not an edit of an "official" Bond movie, because everything about it feels right at home beside all the others. Highly recommended!

I've always liked "Never Say Never Again", but this version makes it significantly better than the original with improved pacing and multiple elements that evoke the EON Bond movies, most notably an excellent rescore with John Barry music. This is about as close as possible to a definitive version of the movie, in my opinion.

The one drawback is that the visual quality isn't very good. The small file size size is partly to blame for this, as it is far too low of a bitrate for 1080p to look good, especially for a movie that was shot on film. However, the colors also don't look right, with the most notable problem being that the characters' faces are oversaturated in red.

Overall, I still recommend this edit despite the visual issues, as the editing and rescoring are excellent enough to make it worthwhile.

The best rescored edit I've seen/heard. Fantastic music choices that feel they were made just for this. I also love the pacing of this version. It feels far more energised than the plodding original. The new titles and removing of the original credits was also a highlight for me.