The way I read that ending is that Bond’s folly was in assuming Blofeld was dead, not in his not foreseeing him coming back for revenge.
But without a body they must have assumed he is somewhere. I would believe that they did not suspect Blofeld‘s chuzpe, coming back for revenge while in hiding.
Fair point.
Although, having the chuzpe to build a base in a volcano and blackmailing the superpowers with a hijack scheme of space capsules should have told them something.
Well, in the film, Blofeld is shown hanging by his neck from a tree branch. It wouldn’t be a stretch for Bond to think he was dead.
And leave the body hanging?
On reflection, the deeper issue for me is maybe how out-of character, how naïve the dream marriage for somebody like Bond seems. Compared to his usual workday including rockets shot at his car, gunmen on every street corner and sharks in his bathtub. Would he not take precautions, use the DB5? Or in the book become suspicious about the Maserati idling along?
Perhaps it’s unfair to deny Bond the human desire for a pursuit of happiness, no matter how tough and weirdly heroic his life seems to be. At the time Fleming immediately decided that Bond’s love must go down the drain; so that’s what has to happen, by hook or by crook. But I really struggle to see this finale working with, for example, Connery - even though Aki was poisoned right by his side. And it still feels an oddly naïve thing to do for Bond, this going for happily ever after as if he had changed the genre of his adventure for the last five minutes of OHMSS.
That was my initial point but as SAF pointed out, somebody would have gone back to find a body or not find a body, which is true.
Although I do have to admit that in all these years I had always thought Bond thought he was dead and just left him.
That’s the problem. Bond may think Blofeld is finished - but SIS should insist on confirmation, either by Swiss authorities or by having someone from the embassy observe the post mortem. This is a guy who just held the world to ransom, acting from a Swiss base and under assumed alias with help and/or support by various important people, corrupt or otherwise involved in the scheme. One would expect the intelligence community starts asking questions when that branch doesn’t show a Blofeld ripe for picking.
Edit: @Arbogast777 beat me to it.
And that’s a fair assumption to make. That would make it a plot hole, but one that doesn’t detract from the overall story, I think.
It was definitely a plot point that they left hanging.
Sorry
Actually I’m not sorry that was kinda funny
It’s not a plot hole. It’s just Bond being an idiot. Do keep in mind real MI6 agents have left confidential files on buses.
No, no, you don’t understand:
Bond just has to set his priorities at that moment. Of course, it was much more important to get the St. Bernard’s dog to get the right wine than to capture Blofeld. Everyone understands that!!
Bond needs to save himself as well, the bobsled was already loose and ends up in collision, had he not left, he would’ve been dead, for sure.
And there’s no other way to return back to the Bobsled track, it’s shown in the film how deep the Bobsled slide track where Bond literally had to jump down to get to the Bobsled, he just successfully escaped because the bobsled was about to crash, and it’s going high enough on the ground.
But getting back in the Bobsled track would’ve been difficult, I think the only good thing that Bond could do is to ask MI6 to check Blofeld’s whereabouts and if he really survived that tree hang, but again, we’ve seen Xenia Onatopp died in the same fashion, so why not assume the same for her?
I actually think Xenia is alive, because if Blofeld survived the tree hang, then we could assume the same for Xenia, right?
And I think, it’s a bad implication of this film not being followed up, because Blofeld’s vague fate was meant to be ended in the revenge sequel, I think all of our questions would’ve been likely to get answered by the supposed sequel to this film.
I could counterpart this by asking this, how did Blofeld knew the wedding would be at Draco’s estate? Blofeld and Irma Bunt shouldn’t know the location, because they have no clues that could possibly lead them there.
Neither that Draco and Blofeld himself met, Irma Bunt was not even in the base, so how did Blofeld and Bunt knew? I guess there are survived SPECTRE agents who told them? But it’s impossible, Draco and his team aren’t using the symbol of their organization, neither their helicopters had the symbol of the Union Corse, they’re just wearing White Jackets, unknown of their affiliations.
And Draco didn’t stayed that long enough in the base, and he’s not present in the shootouts between his men and the SPECTRE agents, so how? I doubt few SPECTRE have recognized him, so how come did Blofeld and Irma Bunt knew that the wedding was going to be at Draco’s estate?
I guess, we could say that this such a bad implication, because all of these things, I guess was supposedly made to be explained in the sequel, Diamonds Are Forever, I think it’s meant to be explained there of what happened.
Heck, that wedding drive off scene was meant to be at the PTS of Diamonds Are Forever had it been happened that it’s a revenge sequel.
The wedding announcement in the newspaper which, like mine, includes the names of the bride and groom, names of parents, and times and location of the ceremony, would have provided a large clue…
That’s less of a hurdle in my view. Draco tells Bond how Blofeld poached two of his own men. One assumes Blofeld is not just aware that Draco is Tracy’s father, but also that it’s Union Corse who attacks Piz Gloria. I would at least if I happened to have their leader’s daughter kidnapped.
As to the site of the wedding, Blofeld probably just keeps tabs on the SIS top brass. Since they are all present it’s not a big mystery how he knew about time and place.
And also… it just a movie. We’re not supposed asking all these questions about a fun action spy movie from the sixties.
Absolutely. It’s a bit of inconsequential, harmless fun, deriving part of its entertainment value from the very fact we don’t get to ask such questions during the show itself. Sleight of hand, tempo and chutzpah make us leap across the holes - and that’s as it should be. Fleming would be amused to see his creation set in scene so successfully.
It’s always funny when we accept the absurdest improbalities in Bond movies, and the next moment, we start a discussion about how in the world it could have happened that Blofeld found out about time and place of Bond’s wedding.
As I’ve always said, when each movie starts with the gun barrel sequence, which asks you to believe the unseen assassin is somehow bleeding inside his gun, that’s a good sign that what follows shouldn’t be held to much scrutiny