Shaken, Not Stirred takes a (brief) look at the James Bond canon from Eon Productions. Twice a month, Chris and Jon share their impressions of each film, both on its own terms and in terms of the cultural landscape as well as the genre it helped to create, not to mention its intersection in the Cinema Dual hosts’ lives.
FROM THE (LETTER)BOX(D): …AND “TWICE” IS THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE! 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.
WHAT CHRIS THOUGHT: Man, do I have conflicted feelings about You Only Live Twice. On the one hand, I think the film has so much of what other films would replicate and spoof that this more than the others feels like the Bond Template™ writ large. Some of that I think you have to hand to Lewis Gilbert, who will come back later to handle a few of the Roger Moore entries. When he has the luxury of using locations, he uses them well, and there are a couple sweet camera movements that give the film a little more life in the moments where we’re not getting bombarded with silly setpieces.
Now let’s get to the giant peach in the room. Only loosely based on the Fleming novel, the screenplay was written by Roald Dahl. Yeah, the guy who wrote such delightful children stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach also wrote James Bond doing Yellow Face. He also graces us with this tasty bon mot, courtesy of Connery’s first appearance on screen:
“Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?”
“You think we better, huh?”
“No, just different. Like Peking Duck is different from Russian Caviar, but I love them both.”
“Darling, I give you very best duck.”
WHAT JON THOUGHT: Stop me if you have heard this story before. A secret agent has to stop a supervillain from world domination in a mission that comes to a climax in a volcano lair with an army of ninjas. Whether intentionally as homages or parodies, or just unintentionally as ripoffs, the plot of You Only Live Twice has been referenced so often that going back to the original robs the film of some of its spectacle. The film also suffers in comparison to its immediate predecessor. I don’t know how Chris is going to land on the subject, but I contend that the climactic underwater showdown at the end of Thunderball is superior to this movie’s more elaborate volcano showdown. For distracting special effects, instead of the jetpack sequence, we get three separate space capsule robberies. We even get yet another movie that ends with Bond and his romantic interest adrift on a raft at sea.
I also struggle with the role that Spectre plays in this movie. By this point in the franchise, Spectre has publicly revealed their existence by trying to extort major world powers. The beginning of this movie spends an arguably inordinate amount of time faking Bond’s death so that he can stay under Spectre’s radar and pursue his next mission discreetly. The film treats the reveal that Spectre is behind the plot (along with finally revealing Blofeld’s face) as a huge revelation, when in reality it should have been obvious. Screenwriter Roald Dahl was said to have used a similar type of plot to Dr No, as he felt Fleming’s original novel lacked any plot. On its own, it functions, but in the context of the larger franchise, it does not.
ANYTHING ELSE, CHRIS? I could talk about how utterly wasted the reveal of Donald Pleasance as Blofeld is, and how mewling of a villain he would turn out to be. I could talk about that, but has anyone else noticed that almost every single James Bond film ends with him having sex on or near the water? About halfway through You Only Live Twice my brother mentioned he noticed it. We spent the rest of the movie eagerly trying to suss out the likelihood of this happening again (spoiler: it does), which absolutely helped get past often awkward every attempt at portraying Japanese culture. If nothing else, if you mention ninjas, Chekov’s Ninja states you must use your ninjas.
Alas, what little ninja action we get is a far cry from the insanity from our last series.
ANYTHING ELSE, JON? One of the hallmarks of the Bond franchise is the globe trotting nature of his adventures. And up until this point, other than the unfortunate Roma incident in From Russia With Love, nothing about Bond’s presence in other cultures has rubbed me particularly wrong. There are small segments of the Japanese shot film that are perfectly fine. As the franchise becomes increasingly more cartoonish and less tethered to reality however, I do wonder how often the depictions of those cultures will similarly suffer. Your preference for ninjas in a Bond film might plausibly be a matter of taste, but Bond being offered “sexiful” and doting Japanese women based on some noxious stereotypes is not. The film’s biggest sin, one I knew of going into this movie, and that my streamer was kind enough to remind me of in advance of the movie starting, is of course putting Bond in yellowface for spy reasons. It’s quite bad.
Is there anything to like in this movie then? Dragging a grumpy Desmond Llewelyn for a day of shooting out to random countries has yet to get old. The helicopter attack sequence leading up to the volcano lair is great. While arguably excessive and unnecessary, I do like how they actually send Bond’s body to the bottom of the ocean when faking his death. I also enjoy the absurdity of M and Moneypenny’s offices being relocated to the submarine that picks up Bond for plot expediting reasons. If the space capsule robberies are cheesy to look at, the first one actually involves stranding an astronaut in space to die, which I thought was pretty rugged.
THE FINAL WORD(S): For Jon, You Only Live Twice brings in a few pieces of iconic Bond imagery, but otherwise doesn’t really live up to its predecessors. For Chris there’s some joy to be had, but the cringe makes it feel weird. Still, he liked the introduction of the future tropes.
NEXT TIME: FAR UP! FAR OUT! FAR MORE! JAMES BOND 007 IS BACK AND…ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE!
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