You Only Live Twice

I used to play badminton with a man who claimed that a shot from this film - a helicopter-mounted track of Connery running across the rooftops of Kobe docks whilst fighting off a string of Japanese henchmen - was the definitive Bond moment of the 1960s. It says something that the least ridiculous part of that is that I once used to play badminton.

It's total nonsense of course but then that's not entirely inappropriate when considering You Only Live Twice. It's a series of disconnected and preposterous set pieces that seem to have been thrown together with the deliberate intention of breaking the Bond formula, but which only succeeds in  reinforcing the idea in the audience's mind that this is what a Bond film is. It's as if the producers have taken Connery's decision to leave the series as an apocalyptic calamity, like the Fall of Rome or something, and are just running around screaming: "Volcanos! Ninjas! The Space Race! Gyrocopters! Kill James Bond! Marry James Bond! Make him Japanese! DROP A CAR IN THE SEA FOR NO GOOD REASON!!!"

To be fair to them, they did have to manufacture their own narrative for the first time. The film is completely unrecognisable compared with its source novel. Partly it's because the book's story would make an even more ridiculous movie than we have already, and partly it's because Roald Dahl - with no scriptwriting experience, but a personal friend of Fleming - was given six weeks to come up with a script. The producers stipulated he had to stick to 'the girl formula' that appeared in Thunderball (early ally woman, bad woman, main woman), but that apart from that, he could write what he liked. Dahl also mentioned that the director, Lewis Gilbert, was happy to shoot the script exactly as it was written (unlike most directors, apparently). Dahl seems to have been praising Gilbert for respecting him as a writer, but I can't help but think that perhaps some additional scrutiny from the director might have helped. So, we have a lead actor who couldn't care less, producers who fear the sky is falling on their heads, an untried writer, and a director who's slapping the words on screen like wallpaper. Throw in the fact that the first edit ran to three hours and it begins to sound like perhaps the film we ended up with could have been a lot worse.

There is a sense of hysteria about it all. It's evident in, for example, the manic hyperbole of the promotional material. M even tells Bond "This is the Big One, 007," as if the imminent adventure was a prize marlin or something. The intention is to whip us into a frenzy of anticipation - but sadly everything about the film feels merely bloated and ridiculous.

Yes, Bond films do need to be larger than life. This isn't John le Carré. But the fantasy only works if it feels plausible, if the resulting silliness is (like the plots of Goldfinger or Thunderball) an eventuality that is only many logical if unexpected steps removed from the world we recognise. It is also depends on us believing in the man in the middle of it. The fantastic and grotesque are supposed to be what makes Bond shrug off his ennui and come alive. But of course, here Bond couldn't care less and is happy to let the whole mad circus dance around him.

Connery is poor in this. Dull and unconvincing. There's no real sense of the intense, cat-like man we saw in FRWL, and just two years on from Thunderball, he's looking distinctly flabby. (You can say what you like about the superannuated Moore of AVTAK, but Bond has never been in worse shape than he is here in Japan.) He'd clearly rather be somewhere else entirely and this shows in every scene: the eyes are dead, devoid of sparkle.

Not much else sparkles either. Tiger Tanaka is no Kerim Bey. Helga Brandt is certainly no Fiona Volpe. M, Moneypenny and Q all good give value in their usual cameos but that should hardly be the highpoint of the first hour. Donald Pleasance makes for a rather ungainly, bullish Blofeld, lacking the cultivation of No, or Goldfinger. But having said that, is there a good Blofeld? I'll come back to that one day.

But for now, let's just run through what is good about YOLT - it'll be quicker.

The space sequences are, I think, astonishingly good. It's not quite 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the effects, the model shots, the curvature of the Earth are all brilliantly done and, when combined with John Barry's excellent music, the overall quality of these scenes is very high.

Lost amongst the confusion of the Tokyo section is a great, if meaningless, fight between Bond and a henchman in Osato's office - it's fast, violent and well choreographed and I'd never really noticed it before.

And Little Nellie is good too. I was all geared up to pour scorn on the little gyrocopter, but the dog-fight is nicely done, excellently shot and choppily edited to maximum effect, really showing off the gyro's supposed manoeuvrability. 

And there's the small matter of HUNDREDS of NINJAS attacking a LAIR hidden inside a VOLCANO. This is is the one thing everybody remembers about YOLT and rightly so. I've been praising Ken Adam and his set design throughout these films, but the inside of the volcano lair is unsurpassed. It's gargantuan, cost more to build than DRNO's total budget and is amazing. The conceit of it is brilliant - a false caldera lake hides a vast subterranean base complete with monorails (at least two), helipad, rocket launch pad, luxury apartments and piranha pool -  but the execution is something else. Obvious model shots of, say, a helicopter landing turn out to be done for real, with tiny people in the distant background. I've literally no idea how they did the space capsule landing - again, it must be a model shot - but who knows? Either way, it's genius.

So obviously you drop hundreds of ninjas through the roof and have a MASSIVE battle. It doesn't matter that it's silly, ridiculous, or utterly the most over-the-top thing in any Bond film (remind me of this when I watch Moonraker): it is GLORIOUS. I showed this to my eight year old and as the shadowy figures approached the crater he felt compelled to speak. "Wait," he said. "Those guys are ALL ninjas?" I nodded. "Whoa," he breathed, "this is going to be COOL." And you just can't argue with that.

Starting out in DRNO as a rather dull (and cheap) tropical murder mystery, the series has changed incredibly during these five films. For example, all trace of British insecurity is long gone by YOLT in which (thanks to Bond) the UK is able to neatly side-step a SPECTRE-manufactured World War III that the USA and USSR seem too stupid to be able to avoid themselves. 007's world is now one where Britain, and British espionage is revered and feared and, although it is tacitly admitted that the US has the money and the hardware, the implication is that they wouldn't know what to do with it unless James Bond was on hand to save the day. The fame of Bond is now part of his character, as is his omniscience: he's become the world-famous know-it-all who so readily lends himself to pastiche. This would matter less if it wasn't for the fact that Connery consistently plays 007 without any sense of vulnerability whatsoever. There's the very rare grimace of doubt that fleetingly creases his features in the earlier films, but in YOLT, the most disconcerted he gets is when he can only find Siamese vodka in a drinks cabinet. He can be charming, yes. He is undoubtedly a highly attractive man. But he's emotionally inert, with only the occasional angry or sadistic flourish instead of actual character traits.

If it's to maintain any long term interest, the series is going to have to take some risks and show us what's underneath the glib veneer. It's time to rip open the black tie armour and show us the man's beaten, broken heart. Yes, it's time for Casino Royale! Well, one day...

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: Lovely space-murder opening, some geopolitical scene-setting and then somebody pretends to machine gun 007 in a Hong Kong brothel. It's functional and the whizz-bang pizazz of Goldfinger seems to be a one-off so far. We'll have to wait for TSWLM before the 'set-piece' PCS becomes a staple, believe it or not.

Theme: This is one of Barry's best scores and it's a great theme song too. Maurice Binder has read the script so it's naked Japanese women and lots of hot throbbing lava oozing everywhere. 

Deaths: 80. That's a record so far. There can't be any ninjas left in Japan after all that. 

Memorable Deaths: The astronaut who gets his lifeline severed. And there are two piranha-related fatalities.  

Licence to Kill: 13 - assuming that the security guard whom Bond shoots in the stomach outside Osato Industries would receive medical attention and survive.

Exploding Helicopters: 4! Excellent helicopter exploderising from Little Nellie. Mind you, as a percentage of the total number of helicopters in YOLT, this is not high. They are everywhere in countless numbers.

Shags: 3. I'd have counted the Chinese woman from the PCS but Bond tells Moneypenny he'd have needed another five minutes to find out if he liked her, so obviously that's a no.

Crimes Against Women: Hmm, well Bond seems to be going all Pinkerton on us when his Japanese nuptials take place. Later on it's revealed that he gave a false name to the priest, but let's face it, like this Bond would have counted it as a real wedding anyway. He's happy to demand his conjugal rights from his co-worker but doesn't rape her when she declines so that's a step in the right direction. Kissy, the Japanese secret agent in question, has "a face like a pig" according to her boss. Tough Annual Review there. Otherwise Bond doesn't so much force himself upon the women of Japan as wait for them to meekly offer to bathe him. And the two agents, Aki and Kissy, get the best treatment of any Bond women to date - they're shown to be efficient operatives, capable of (gasp!) resisting Bond until the mission is accomplished.

Casual Racism: Well, James Bond is given plastic surgery to make him look Japanese. It's pretty crass. I'm not an expert on Sixties Japan but I reckon it is possible that it was a country with both ultra-modern cities and strong cultural traditions as shown here.

Out of Time: Bond pilots Little Nellie with a cine camera stuck to his helmet.

Fashion Disasters: Flabby Sean in ninja pyjamas. Or in spats. Or dressed as a fisherman. Or as a construction worker. But Sean does get away with the Royal Navy uniform (even the hat!), so well done him. Other Bonds won't (See TND). Why does Blofeld wear that horrible beige suit? It's not a Nehru jacket though, let's nix that one straight away.

Eh?: Basically, everything but.. How can China afford to pay SPECTRE to mount its own space programme? In fact, it's a space programme with reusable capsules that swallow other capsules, based inside a dormant volcano - could they have spent any more money? Why does SPECTRE bother to capture the US and USSR craft? They don't need them. Surely it would be cheaper and easier to infiltrate the American and Soviet space programmes and sabotage the missions? >> When they launch their final mission, they paint CCCP on their own SPECTRE ship - is this the crucial evidence the Americans need? How're they going to see it? >> The Japanese security service apparently employs a helicopter with a magnet to execute enemies of the state by picking up their car and dropping them in the sea. >> How do the RAF, or whoever, know to drop the life rafts for the swimming ninjas? Don't tell me ninjas show up on radar. 

Worst Line: "Is my little girl hot and ready?" (Bond is, thankfully, referring to Little Nellie). 007 declares that saki should be correctly served at a temperature of 98.4°F. What a bore. Tiger points out that Bond's masseuse is "very sexiful". But there's all sorts of dire macho innuendo in that bath scene which is worse. Ernst Stavro Blofeld holds up a picture of a Walther PPK: "Only one man we know uses this kind of gun!" Which is just unbelievably stupid. 

Best Line: Oh dear, very poor showing here. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel, but Blofeld's shrugged non-apology "Extortion is my business," is as good as it gets.

Worst Bond Moment: Dressed up as a Japanese fisherman? Flummoxed by culture shock during a Sumo bout? Mouthing off about his 'first' from 'Cambridge' in 'Oriental Languages'? (I'm dubious, can you tell?) The whole movie?

Best Bond Moment: Do you know what? It's probably the shot where he's running across the roof of Kobe docks fighting all the sailors. But that doesn't make it the defining Bond moment of the '60s, okay? 

Overall: Too much, but with flashes of genius behind the scenes. We'll be here again, with Moonraker and DAD: costly, extravagant messes that go too far but allow the series to go back to basics: OHMSS, FYEO and Casino Royale. Having said that, I'm looking at this through jaded eyes. As a kid, this was AMAZING and the ninja/volcano lair battle surely is the greatest Bond climax ever. Either way, for good or ill, this is the movie Bond cutting free of the baggage of the novels and letting rip. The next obstacle will be to prove the series can survive without Sean 'SEAN CONNERY IS JAMES BOND' Connery.

James Bond Will Return: Well, of course, he doesn't return. This is the last James Bond film because Sean 'SEAN CONNERY IS JAMES BOND' Connery isn't coming back. No, not in Never Say Never Again. Not even, I might argue, in DAF. But it does say, on screen: "James Bond will be back On Her Majesty's Secret Service" so I guess they have some other chap lined up. Good luck to him.

Bonus Fact!: Goldfinger is the only one of the six Connery films where he doesn't wind up in a boat at the end, and even then he's on a tiny little island. For Moore it's true four times out of seven, five if you count the Space Shuttle as a ship. But of all the other Bonds, it's only Lazenby who finishes up inside any form of transportation, and that's a car.