James Bond filmography that Connery "looks weary and bored ... he is overweight, slow-moving, and doesn't seem to be trying to create a credible character". Despite that, Benson considers that Connery "still radiates more screen presence than Roger Moore or George Lazenby". On the other hand, Pauline Kael said "Connery's James Bond is less lecherous than before and less foppish—and he's better this way". In the early 1980s producer Jack Schwartzman moved ahead with a non-Eon Bond film, following the controversy over the 1961 novel "Thunderball" and the subsequent long legal battle; the result was "Never Say Never Again". Connery accepted an offer
O.K. Connery "flair and skill with which the Bond films are made. The script is labored, the direction slow and the acting is barely adequate." In Phil Hardy's book "Science Fiction" (1984), a review noted that "though it's stylishly mounted, the result is a routine Italian spy romp." In an interview in 1996, Lois Maxwell said that Sean Connery, when he learned that she would join the cast, got very angry and started screaming: "You have betrayed me!" and he forgave her when she saved Neil from a fool at the press conference. As a "James Bond rip-off", reaction to the film