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 with rockets going astray. Similarly Bond's anti-heroin mission in "Live and Let Die" coincided with President Nixon's 1972 declaration of a War on Drugs, whilst "GoldenEye" played against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. For the series of Bond novels, Fleming realised that without threatening villains Bond seemed less heroic: this tradition of strong literary villain was brought across to the screen in the Eon series. The third Bond film, "Goldfinger", set a pattern for having a main villain with a loyal and dangerous henchman, a model which was followed in subsequent films. Whilst Bond scholar Glenn Yeffeth