James Bond in film of the funding for the Bond films, fell into financial difficulties following the box office failure of "Heaven's Gate" (1980), bringing uncertainty to the future of the funding. The situation was resolved in May 1981, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired United Artists. Following "For Your Eyes Only", Roger Moore had expressed a desire to stop playing James Bond. His original contract had been for three films, a requirement fulfilled with "The Spy Who Loved Me". Subsequent films had been negotiated on a film-by-film basis. The producers engaged in a semi-public quest for the next actor to play Bond, which would be for
Motifs in the James Bond film series bomb in the vault, while Alec Trevelyan tied an unconscious Bond to a helicopter that was programmed to fire its own missiles at itself. Francisco Scaramanga gave Bond lunch and then proposed a duel in his "fun room", while Hugo Drax trapped Bond beneath the exhaust of a rocket to burn to death. This convention within the Bond canon has been lampooned in spoof films, including the "Austin Powers" series. The climax of most Bond films is the final confrontation with the villain and his henchmen, sometimes an entire army of cohorts, often in his hard-to-reach lair. The villain's retreat