It continues to be amazing watching these early James Bond movies because you see all of the spy movie tropes in action before they became tropes. In fact, these are the movies that inspired the use of these tropes.
Thunderball is the next Bond movie and it featured a villain with an eye patch, Largo Number Two (Adolfo Celi). Eye patches always lead to evil villains.
James Bond (Sean Connery) returns to do battle with the criminal organization S.P.E.C.T.R.E., who has stolen nuclear warheads and is blackmailing England and the U.S. for money or they will detonate them.
Some have referred to Thunderball as the under water movie as much of the action takes place under water. In fact, it received an Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects for the amazing water scenes. At the time, this was groundbreaking work.
Sean Connery continued to grow into the role of Bond, but you could begin to see the age start to show on 007.
Largo was anything but a well developed villain. He was simply a one-note villain with an eye patch. He is a step down from Auric Goldfinger from the franchise’s previous installment.
Thunderball may not have been as great as Goldfinger, or even the other two films prior to it, but it was fun and had some epic James Bond action. The underwater third act action was unlike anything I had seen before.