"No, I'm sure he's dead! ...fine, I won't touch him."
My Year of Bonds, Vol. 5: You Only Live Twice
July 13, 2010
The first thing I'll say is this: You Only Live Twice is better than Thunderball. But as you may know, I find that an extremely low bar to clear.
The film starts in space, which is probably ill-advised for a film set in 1967. A United States capsule orbiting the earth is "devoured" by a mysterious spaceship, and the whole sequence looks about as terrible as you might expect. Did it look better at the time? Probably. Do I care? Not really. Oh, and a supposed American says, "Hello, Hoo-ston?" Come on, guys. Try a little harder. Anyway, the US assumes that the Soviets are behind the ship-napping. We go to Bond, "hard at work" in Hong Kong - and he is immediately assassinated. No, you guys, he totally is. Chinese gangsters run in and shoot him. Totally dead. You'd think MI-6 could have come up with a better idea for faking his death. Why even have gangsters run in and shoot him when there were no witnesses? This can only be because the film is trying to trick us... even though it's the main character of the film, we're six minutes in, and it's called You Only Live Twice. But I'm sure the rest of this thing is Felix Leiter tracking down the killers and Moneypenny sobbing.
"No, I'm sure he's dead! ...fine, I won't touch him."
Then comes the title sequence, which starts a trend within the film by having a questionable attitude toward Asians and Asian culture. Next we sit through Bond's "funeral," which culminates with his body being dumped at sea, and divers retrieving it (in yet another excruciating underwater shot, the producers apparently having learned nothing from Thunderball). Turns out - shock! - Bond isn't dead. The whole charade, as we learn from M, was to get SPECTRE to stop focusing on Bond. Amazingly, a Bond movie actually acknowledges that Bond is too visible of an agent and develops a plot at least partially around dealing with this fact! Of course, this is the fifth Bond movie and I'm guessing they don't reuse this plot device in spite of Bond continuing to be the least secret secret agent imaginable... but let's give credit where credit is due.
Bond arrives in Tokyo and immediately ends up at some sort of sumo wrestling facility. Japan, everyone! He meets a female contact, Aki, who takes him to the house of Mr. Henderson, who is supposed to have some information, but Henderson quickly ends up dead (his first mistake: living in a house with paper walls). Bond chases the assassin, who is conveniently wearing a face mask which allows Bond to take his place in the getaway car. The car returns to the headquarters of the Osato Corporation, where Bond fights with the getaway driver, steals some information from a safe, and ends up meeting up with his Japanese counterpart, Tiger Tanaka, after another scene which takes pains to try and confuse you as to who's "good" or not.
The next day Bond goes to a meeting at Osato, because he wasn't just there or anything. Osato knows that something is up and orders Bond killed, which his henchmen plan to do by driving up slowly behind him in the driveway of the company and shooting him with an enormous gun. Well, this would not be in any way suspicious! Aki shows up in the nick of time and a car chase ensues. How do Bond and Aki get away? Aki calls Tiger, who sends - wait for it - a helicopter carrying a giant magnet, which picks up the car containing Osato's henchmen and drops it into the ocean. Obviously. (My favorite part? Aki says to Tiger, "Arrange usual reception, please." So the old helicopter-magnet-disposes-of-car-full-of-gunmen thing is a tried and true method, apparently.)
"I'll have the usual."
Bond and Aki stroll onto the docks where Osato's ship is loading. Not surprisingly, they are confronted by a slew of weapon-toting henchmen. I think this scene is supposed to pay small homage to kung-fu films, although most of the ones that come to mind were made later than 1967 - but why else are two dozen henchmen with sticks showing up to fight this one guy? And where did they all come from, anyway? Whatever. Bond gets away, but then gets knocked out from behind while attempting to stroll away casually. Things get kind of stupid here. Rather than just killing Bond immediately, Osato ties him up and puts him aboard the ship. Osato's secretary, Miss Brandt (a white woman, for whatever reason), acts like she's going to torture Bond for information, then has sex with him instead after he offers her a deal to escape in exchange for money. After sex, they're suddenly flying away in a plane (wha?), which Miss Brandt parachutes out of after trapping Bond inside. Naturally, Bond manages to get free in just enough time to safely crash-land the plane (which blows up as soon as he reaches a safe distance from it).
So... is there going to be a Bond movie that doesn't turn on one side or the other being stupid? Wouldn't it be much more interesting to have a plot that didn't require something insanely dumb to happen just to keep moving? Osato is perfectly happy to gun Bond down in his company's driveway, and yet when he has Bond unconscious on the dock, he doesn't just kill him! I guess you could argue that he wants information now, seeing that Bond (or "Mr. Fisher" as he's going by) is a more persistent spy than perhaps he thought, but this still doesn't explain why his best idea for disposing of Bond is having Miss Brandt take him up in a plane and then jump out. (Fittingly, perhaps the best parody of this type of plot device - aside from in the first Austin Powers when Seth Green's Scott Evil asks his father why he doesn't just kill Austin right away - is in the episode of The Simpsons named after this film, "You Only Move Twice," when super-villain Hank Scorpio has "James Bont" trapped in a laser device reminiscent of Goldfinger's, only for Bont to get away... at which point Homer tackles him, and several guards with guns quickly take care of Bont for good.) And yes, yes, I know - there's no movie if Bond is just killed so easily. But would it be too much to ask for Bond not to be constantly blundering into simple traps? Is he a super-spy, or a dim-witted weapons expert with sex appeal?
Anyway. Q brings out a miniature helicopter at Bond's request, although Bond makes the request before the need for it is clear (this time it's Bond, not Q, who has read the script ahead of time, apparently). Bond uses it to do recon over a target island, which he nearly writes off as a wash before being chased by four other helicopters. Bond destroys them, of course; meanwhile, the Russians are preparing a spacecraft launch. It goes off without a hitch! And then, gee, the unidentified spacecraft appears again. It still looks stupid.
OM NOM NOM NOM.
It's revealed at this point that the volcanic crater Bond saw in the chopper actually hides a huge underground lair, where the unidentified spacecraft is landing. We subsequently learn that Osato is running it. But who's that sitting behind Osato, incongruously petting a cat? Why, it's... SPECTRE Number One! He himself is subsequently revealed to be working at the expense of a foreign government (presumably China based on the actors hired to portray their representatives; I guess since their plan with Goldfinger failed, the Chinese opted to move on to a bigger fish) that wants war to break out between the Americans and Soviets. Number One then summons Osato and Brandt, and notes that the gun Osato spotted on "Fisher" is a Walther PPK, which only one man they know of uses: James Bond. Osato and Brandt stammer that Bond is dead - "It was in all the papers!" Brandt protests. This is, of course, hilarious since we see one such paper at the beginning of the film and it includes a photo of Bond - so shouldn't Brandt and/or Osato have recognized him? (Also, why is the death of a secret agent front page news, anyway?) This is also yet another example of Bond being a lousy secret agent - hey, why not carry a gun that no one else uses? How many ways can you think of to give yourself away? Anyway, Number One asks if they killed Bond, and both start blaming each other for failing to do it (returning to my earlier point). Number One dunks Brandt in the piranha tank, then yells at Osato, "Kill Bond! Now!"
Bond meets Tiger and Aki at some other location, with a huge pagoda-like structure in the background. Then Bond asks if Tiger has commandos to bring on the mission. Tiger says he has even better - ninjas! Hey, did you know this movie is set in Japan?
HEY EVERYONE THIS MOVIE IS SET IN JAPAAAAAN!!!
Tiger then tells Bond that in order to blend in on the island, he must "become a Japanese" (oh, no) and also "take a wife." Bond goes through a ridiculous "Japanification" process that basically involves a stupid-looking wig and a little eye manipulation (great). Then Aki is killed during an attempt on Bond's life, adding to the list of women who have become collateral damage in Bond's wake. Bond takes his wife - shockingly, she is easily the best-looking of the women involved - and they head off to "integrate" in the fishing village on the island. But then the Americans move up their next rocket launch, and Bond and his "wife" (Kissy Suzuki - of course that's her name) head out to search the island. Kissy is forced to go clambering over miles of rocks in a skimpy bikini - and when they find the crater they're looking for, she immediately has to turn around and go back to bring reinforcements!
Just two Japanese dudes, hanging out, being Japanese.
Bond gets inside the underground lair and finds the kidnapped astronauts. The four of them beat up some guards and take their uniforms, and then Bond attempts to take the place of one of SPECTRE's astronauts, giving himself away by carrying his oxygen pack wrong. (Couldn't have picked one of the three actual astronauts for this mission? They're certainly adept at beating up henchmen.) Number One - now revealed as Ernst Stavro Blofeld - lets Bond watch as he launches his rocket (now conveniently decorated with a Russian logo) in hopes of starting World War Three.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair!"
Tanaka's commandos show up, though many are gunned down in the crater. Blofeld announces his intention to kill Bond shortly, then foolishly does not consider the fact that Bond might be carrying cigarette-based rocket grenades. Bond causes a distraction for just long enough to allow Tanaka's men to get inside, where they begin to take care of SPECTRE's henchmen. Blofeld acts like he's going to shoot Bond, then shoots Osato instead - and then he leads Bond through a door into the main room, where he THEN prepares to shoot Bond... except he does so right in front of Tiger, who hits his arm with a throwing star. Why did he wait? What purpose did it serve OTHER than allowing Bond to live? It's just so ridiculous. Maybe Blofeld, like many supervillains, is attempting world domination as a way of dealing with his obsessive-compulsive disorder. "No! I have to shoot him in that room, not this one! Just trust me! Afterwards, I will pet my cat's head exactly 37 times..."
Bond breaks for the control room to stop the rocket, but first must contend with Hans, Blofeld's burly assistant. As usual when fighting a henchman twice his size, Bond appears to be getting his butt kicked until he gets a brief upper hand - here, tossing Hans into the piranha tank. Then he runs into the control room and presses the self-destruct button for SPECTRE's rocket with just seconds to spare. But there's no time for celebration, as Blofeld triggers a self-destruct on the whole facility that causes the otherwise-dormant volcano to suddenly erupt. Questionable physics and geology in this movie. Some air force or other drops a bunch of life rafts for the fleeing commandos, and Bond and Kissy get their own, which they prepare to christen when the British submarine with M and Moneypenny inside appears beneath their raft. Total cockblock. And... that's it!
Okay, this bugged me all movie and they did it at least three different times, so I
had to mention it here: a scene where a character watches something happening on a TV
screen that could not possibly have been captured on a camera. Bond somehow watches
the helicopter-magnet operation unfold on a TV screen in Aki's car (already questionable)
that shows shots of the helicopter only possible if another craft were following it just
to take video of it, and above, Blofeld somehow watches his rocket soar through space on a
monitor in the control room. Where in the HELL was this camera located?
As I said at the start: this sure was better than Thunderball. I'm not sure how good that makes it, however. The action sequences are better, but it helps that none of them take place underwater. The plot is vastly improved, but it's still kind of slow - the stuff with Osato is basically a dead end, since the only information that ends up being useful is the photo of his ship, which Bond gets in his first visit to the building. The film tries to position Aki as a "serious" love interest (she bristles at Tanaka's suggestion that Bond and Brandt may have had sex, the first time in the films - if memory serves - that one Bond girl was jealous of another) and then kills her needlessly, apparently needing an excuse to get a bikini-clad Mie Hama onscreen. The attitude of the film toward the Japanese is... questionable. It's certainly not racist, but the treatment of the culture just seemed a little... patronizing, perhaps. Between the sumo wrestling, the tea ceremony and the ninja academy, this was like "James Bond presents Japan's Greatest Hits." And the less said about the "transformation" of Bond into a Japanese man, the better. (It's worth noting that within about ten minutes of his "transformation," Bond looks pretty much exactly the same as always.)
There was probably less outright stupidity in this movie - certainly compared to From Russia with Love - but there was still plenty. I'm expecting that in the more recent films, Bond's escapes aren't so heavily based on contrivances... but I wonder how long it's going to take before I get to a film that lacks at least one. You may only live twice, but Bond would have to have a lot more lives if only his adversaries weren't so dumb.