You Only Live Twice (1967)
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
A mysterious spacecraft captures Russian and American space capsules and brings the two superpowers to the brink of war. James Bond investigates the case in Japan and comes face to face with his archenemy Blofeld.
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What critics compared You Only Live Twice to
For the Bond fan, the film is simply a litany of fantastic references worked in (though the Garden of Death from Flemming’s You Only Live Twice novel is completely wasted).
That’s incredible in the context of Bond, even if the idea of a child is not a new one in series lore; in non-canonical book form, 007 has a child with Kissy Suzuki from You Only Live Twice, a story heavily referenced in No Time to Die ’s conclusion.
No , and by Donald Pleasence's Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice .
That’s how you got 007 facing off against Blofeld in “You Only Live Twice” and then the two meeting for the first time in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” two years hence.
The setting, and the chem-lab ickiness, are very “You Only Live Twice,” but what’s so good about Malek’s performance is the obscene way that he inserts his presence into the drama of Bond, Madeleine, and Madeline’s young daughter, Mathilde.
Cary Joji Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre,” “Beasts of No Nation”) leans into that history, giving us a Bond adventure with a hint of “You Only Live Twice,” a whiff of “Moonraker,” bits of a couple of others and a heaping helping of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” perhaps the most underrated film of the lot.
And the band Beulah Belle's open-chord guitar cover of the theme from "You Only Live Twice" is a clue to what's really going on.
“You Only Live Twice,” the James Bond/Nancy Sinatra hit, is not only well performed (by an unknown singer), but has a purposeful meaning for its inclusion.
Ignore one “Knocked Up” sequence, try not to notice how much of what we see is handled in cute montages, smile at the sensitive pop tunes (a cover of the Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” is key), try to recall one exchange as funny as this one between the affluent brother and his sister.
The script gives him a full spectrum to play, from a "physical wreck" that recalls the literary Bond of Fleming's You Only Live Twice, to the cocky, self-assured 007 fans have been waiting for since 2006.
While not as powerful as those characters/performances (and how could he be) morphs the suave villain with physical grotesque of the more iconic Bond villains (‘Red Grant’ [Robert Shaw – From Russia with Love] & ‘Blofeld’ [Donald Pleasance – You Only Live Twice].
Bond could fight Blofeld in You Only Live Twice and then two years later they meet again for the first time in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service .
OMG! That's Ernst Starvo Blofeld's white kitty cat from "You Only Live Twice"!
There’s a health clinic atop a Swiss mountain like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ; a romantic interlude and ferocious fistfight on a train like From Russia with Love ; an incredibly well-designed but highly impractical supervillain lair like You Only Live Twice or The Spy Who Loved Me .
The things include an Aston Martin with an ejector seat, as in “Goldfinger”; a boat emerging from MI6 headquarters onto the Thames, as in “The World Is Not Enough”; and a lunatic’s lair inside a crater, as in “You Only Live Twice.”
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It helps that Wolfie loses his powers and shows a human side, that he makes like James Bond in You Only Live Twice, and that he makes out with the lovely Mariko (Tao Okamoto).
Imagine that Sean Connery’s James Bond, in his 1967 Japanese jaunt You Only Live Twice, had to confront mutants and ninjas (no turtles) and you have a hint of director James Mangold’s mostly sober travelogue with a few zippy action scenes.
He nearly succeeds, at least insofar as replanting the character in a plot that falls closely into the tradition of such endangered gaijin thrillers as House of Bamboo, The Yakuza and even the Bond-in-Japan You Only Live Twice.
It’s You Only Live Twice without the Nancy Sinatra song—Hugh could have killed that.
Furthermore, I consider Daniel Craig to be the most effective and appealing of the six actors who have played 007, and that includes even Sean Connery, from his (and the franchise’s) debut in 1962 with Dr. No, through From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and, after a one-picture hiatus, Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
For one thing, it's easier to recognize the source material being satirized: He's sending up Spectre's Ernst Blofeld, 007's mortal enemy in several Bond pictures; particularly the Blofeld wearing a gray Nehru suit and cradling a white cat in You Only Live Twice.
The villainous Dr. Evil is modeled upon You Only Live Twice's version of Blofeld (played in that movie by Donald Pleasance).
Director Doug Liman and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth could have borrowed a name from any number of James Bond films — You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die, Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day — to describe its hero’s curse and gift.
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One gets some comfort in seeing that the way you turn a European actor Japanese is exactly the way it was done 50 years ago in You Only Live Twice, when Sean Connery was brilliantly disguised as an Asian to outwit SPECTRE.
That didn’t work when Sean Connery tried it, in “You Only Live Twice,” and it sure as hell doesn’t work here, inching beyond embarrassment into insult.