Scuba Dive

The Bond movie Thunderball was on late night TV yesterday.  It’s got all the makings of a great Bond film: bad guys, women, nuclear warheads, women, extortion, women, and best of all lots of scuba diving.  The flick is from 1965, when diving was much rarer and inaccessible than it is today, making the scuba scenes even more important to the success of the movie.  But even today the movie industry uses scuba diving as a way to add action and skimpy bathing suits to spice up the screen.  A few examples:

Sean Connery, Thunderball – 1960’s James Bond heads to The Bahamas to recover two nuclear warheads.  This film is chock full of kitschy scuba diving content including archaic dive gear and shots of sharks that were probably somebody’s pet.  If you want to live out your Bond fantasies, you can still dive the Thunderball wreck in the Bahamas.

Hank Azaria, Along Came Polly - This movie was awful, except for a entertaining guest appearance by Hank Azaria as Claude, the smarmy French scuba diving teacher (you can shut it off after his scene is over.)   If you have ever dove in a French-influenced place such as French Polynesia you can relate to the speedo-wearing, galoise-smoking, soap-deficient French divemasters out there who pray to the God Cousteau before they go to bed each night.

Jessica Alba, Into the Blue – Lots of diving, lots of skimpy bathing suits.  Scuba sex still sells.

Owen Wilson & Bill Murray, Life Aquatic – This is an odd movie: either you love it or you hate it (we here at scuba-dive.org love it’s quirky, offbeat style.)  It’s underwater-themed plot enables plenty of diving scenes and sea life shots.  Wilson and Murray aren’t exactly sx symbols with scuba gear, but they hold their own.

Woody Harleson, After The Sunset – Jewel theft, the Bahamas, and lots of diving.  What more could you want?  Brings new meaning to Paradise Island.

Pierce Brosnan, Tomorrow Never Dies– 1990’s James Bond throws on the scuba gear yet again.  This time the plot, surprising, includes: bad guys, women, nuclear warheads, women, and extortion.  This gear is much more high-tech then last time, and is used more to compliment the plot rather than carry it along.  To her credit Michelle Yeoh, the headstrong female lead, doesn’t just flop around helplessly in her gear. Rather, she makes diving look easy.

CubaGooding Jr, Men of Honor– Gooding plays Carl Brashear, the first African American US Navy Diver.  The movie is intense, but you get enough insight into the origins of dive gear to really appreciate the gear you use now, no matter how many times your mask floods.

Sponge Bob, Square Pants – Don’t hate us for throwing this in.  He lives under the Pacific Ocean in the town of “Bikini Bottom” for clam’s sake.  He has to use scuba gear at some point.  Did you know this is the most watched cable television show right now?  Think of all of the kids (and, sadly adults) that think starfish talk.