Bond Films: You Only Live Twice

You Only Live Twice gets some bad comments on the internet, mostly owing to the bad prosthetics to support a completely superfluous subplot wherein Bon must disguise himself as a Japanese man, learn to be a ninja, and get married. You could watch the movie for the details, but I would not recommend it. For the most part, You Only Live Twice is like a third world knockoff of what a Bond film should be.

The basic plot of You Only Live Twice is: Bond's death is faked in order to shake the trail of his many enemies, notably SPECTRE. At the same time, a mysterious spacecraft appears and captures American and Soviet space capsules, landing near the Sea of Japan. After conducting a little industrial espionage, some autogyro piloting, and bedding no fewer than three woman (two of whom die), Bond discovers the secret volcano lair where the spacecraft are being taken to, and finally confronts Blofelt, the head of Spectre, directly. Ninjas attack, piranhas are fed, Blofeld escapes, and Bond once again finds himself floating at sea with a hottie.

There are a lot of things wrong with this movie, each worthy of its own rant. There are sudden, completely unnecessary plot twists. There are entire sections of plot that make no sense. There's an extra layer of disbelief to suspend for SPECTRE's rocket program, and also with the secret ninja program that Bond aces no more than a week or two. Bond films push the envelope of reality regularly, but they at least seem believable and follow their own logic. You Only Live Twice is like the plot of a James Bond coloring book: take a bunch of interesting ideas and put them one after another. It's uneven and lumpy and scribbled over by a five-year-old.

On the other hand, there are some interesting elements. The theme song, sung by Nancy Sinatra, is pretty much perfectly matched to the kind of man Bond is; it may as well be a theme song for Mad Men's Don Draper. The screenplay was written by Roald Dahl; that's right, the man who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory also wrote a Bond film. In some ways, that fact makes the movie make sense.

You Only Live Twice is, I'm sorry, Don't See. In the context of Bond films, I suppose that means "put it off", and not "never", but really, if you've seen any spy movie of the past fifty years, you've seen the good parts of this one (ninjas, secret volcano base, villain with cat). Hell, if you've seen a week's worth of Inspector Gadget, you've seen the good parts of this film. So, don't bother. Skip it. Keep your fond memories of the past three or four films and move ahead.