You Only Live Twice

In spite of carrying the burden of an entire generation’s fantasies of manhood, Bond is sprightly here again after moping his way through Thunderball. He’s clearly middle-aged now, but he’s not raging against the dying of the light — there’s something like acceptance and grace in his behavior. Women pass him by as often as they give in to him in You Only Live Twice, and that seems perfectly okay with him — as though he’d just as soon get some sleep.

With Bond’s arc of “middle-aged guy getting used to Japanese culture,” You Only Live Twice resembles nothing less than Lost in Translation, but with car chases and helicopter fights.  With his two bad wigs, his expanding belly and his slowly collapsing face, the middle-aged Bond is starting to feel less like a sex symbol and more like a dirty old man. It makes perfect sense that Connery would want to stop doing these movies at this point. However, it’s also worth noting that, for a moment in Act II, the narrative slows down, Bond gets married, and just for a bit, You Only Live Twice starts to take on a different dimension, something a little more character-driven, subtle and, well, something more like a “real movie.”

WHAT DOES THE BAD GUY WANT? We finally meet SPECTRE #1, Ernst Stavros Blofeld (he uses all three names, as apparently Ernst Blofeld is a common name throughout the world and he doesn’t want anyone to mix him up with Ernst Blofeld the conceptual artist, Ernst Blofeld the Prime Minister of Turkey, Ernst Blofeld the champion racecar driver or Ernst Blofeld the comedian). Blofeld’s ambition has returned — he wants nothing less than to spark a nuclear war between the US and the USSR. He’s going to accomplish this by — I’m sorry, what now?

Let me get this straight. Blofeld wants to spark a nuclear war between the US and the USSR. He’s going to do this by sending a series of rockets up into space and “kidnapping” both American and Soviet spacecraft, returning them to his secret underground lair, where the American and Soviet astronauts will be held in a detention cell, until — um — until the world is destroyed. And then SPECTRE can take over.

Um, okay. Ernst? May I call you Ernst? No? Sorry. Mr. Blofeld.

Mr. Blofeld, this plan — I — I — why? You’ve got a secret underground rocket base, and that’s a good thing. You want to take over the world, and that’s a good thing. I, I just, I have to ask you — please, take your hand away from that button please, for a moment — I have to ask you, is this the best plan? If you don’t mind, I have some suggestions.

1. Your space technology is far in advance of anything the US or the USSR currently has. Why not take up a career in aeronautics? McDonnell-Dougles and Hughes Aircraft rule the world in ways you cannot possibly imagine. You, your lesser numbers, and your cat could all be very happy in such a world, and you could get that awful scar fixed.

2. Why are you “kidnapping” the American and Soviet spacecraft? What does that do? You’re trying to start a nuclear war — start a fucking nuclear war! Are you telling me you can design, finance and build a private space program, complete with spacecraft-eating technology, but you can’t just drop a bomb on Washington? Why are you “kidnapping” spacecraft? Blow them out of the fucking sky! What, do you have a soft spot for astronauts?!

3. The “Monday Morning” question: do you know for sure that kidnapping spacecraft will lead to nuclear war? What if it does not? What happens then? Have you thought about that?

4. “Nuclear War” is a little risky — it tends to spread. Have you though about that? Let’s say you kill, oh, ten percent of the world’s population — three hundred million people or so. How do you know that you won’t be one of them? And let’s say you survive the nuclear war — how do you know that people will turn to SPECTRE to lead the post-nuclear world? What if they put two and two together and figure out that you’re actually the one who killed everybody? Do you think they’ll let you rule the world then?

Remember Auric Goldfinger? He had a plan. He’d thought it through. You, you’re a, you know what you are? You’re a movie villain. You know what a Movie Villain is? A Movie Villain is the guy who thinks the story’s over when he gets what he wants. And there’s a freeze-frame and a fade-out and it says “The End.” But in real life, Mr. Blofeld, the story goes on. You know who a Movie Villian is? George W. Bush is a Movie Villain. His “Mission Accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier was his “The End” moment. But you know what, Mr. Blofeld? The story kept going on, and now look where he is.

Don’t be a George W. Bush, Mr. Blofeld. Don’t be a Movie Villain. Think, Mr. Blofeld. You’re a super genius, you should be perfectly comfortable doing so. Please, for your own good, for the good of SPECTRE and for the world.

WHAT DOES JAMES BOND ACTUALLY DO TO SAVE THE WORLD? A good balance is struck here between detective work, heroic acts, defending himself and screwing women. The movie starts out as a real nuts-and-bolts detective story and gradually, even gracefully, builds into a surreal, gonzo, sci-fi/action spectacular.

HELPFUL ANIMALS: This Bond has a longer view of life, it seems, than his earlier selves — he knows when he needs to act alone and he knows when he needs help. Helpful animals are numerous in You Only Live Twice, and for the first time they are compelling in their own right. First there’s Tiger Tanaka, who is the head of some kind of Japanese good-guy spy team, then there are not one but two capable, comely Japanese spy-girls who Bond gets to know better, then there is a whole army of ninjas — and as soon as someone says “ninjas,” the pulse of the whole movie picks up. Ninjas! They explode out of the screen, a whole new (to Bond) cool world of flying bodies, wild stunts and anarchic possibilities. There’s a scene in Act II where Bond is shown around the Ninja Academy, and you can actually watch as Bond becomes obsolete before your eyes, standing there haplessly watching the future of action films unfold before him, looking suddenly pathetically square, in a pink shirt no less.

A NOTE ON Q: for the first (and I’m afraid, only) time, imho, the relationship between Bond and Q is exactly right. Q’s not showing up and foisting his toys on Bond as Bond stands there looking bored; Bond needs something specific (a gadget-laden helicopter), demands it from Q, and is professional and even bossy with him when Q delivers. I can’t tell you how much more I enjoy this version of Bond’s relationship with Q. Q is always, for some reason, this stern father figure (or perhaps uncle-figure), this stick-up-his-arse fuddy-duddy who’s always giving Bond toys but forbidding him to play with them, and it makes no sense. As I discussed earlier regarding From Russia With Love, spy toys aren’t created in a vacuum, they are invented because agents need them. When Q shows up and piles a bunch of crap on Bond, Bond is then obligated to use that crap, whether he wants to or not, and the narrative always shows the burden of that expectation — oh, we can’t go home yet, we haven’t used the exploding talcum powder. It’s so much more logical and satisfying that Bond would encounter a situation, requisition the items he needs to navigate the situation, then deal with Q as an equal instead of as a whining, wrist-slapping authority figure.

HOW COOL IS THE BAD GUY? For the first two acts of You Only Live Twice, Blofeld is still “that guy with the cat in his lap.” There are so many shots of the cat while Blofeld is talking that I began to suspect that the cat is actually SPECTRE #1, a feline criminal genius and a ventriloquist to boot. Come to think of it, when I consider the flaws in Blofeld’s plan, perhaps I’m not giving him enough credit. It’s an awe-inspiring plan, for a cat.

Once he shows up, Donald Pleasance does not disappoint as Blofeld. His scar is icky, he pulls off the SPECTRE uniform, he’s clearly insane: 1 point for appearance. 1 point for the piranha tank. 10 points for the jaw-dropping, Ken Adam-designed volcano stronghold. Even with his childishly retarded plan, Blofeld is a bad guy second only at this point to Goldfinger.

QUESTION: Bond is sent to Japan to find this volcano stronghold. He is put in touch with Tiger Tanaka, who is a great deal of help. There is some kind of bullshit ticking clock installed in Act II that requires Bond to be fully trained as a ninja, and married, and convincing as a Japanese man (yeah, right) before he can go blow shit up. Here’s the question: why does James Bond have to do this? Any one of the ninjas we see training looks already qualified enough to handle the task, why wait for Bond to become Japanese?

DON’T BOTHER ME WITH YOUR TECHNICAL MUMBO-JUMBO: During the stupefying climax of You Only Live Twice, Bond is required to blow up the spacecraft-gobbling rocketship before it gobbles up another spacecraft. How will he do it? Well, as it happens, Blofeld has thoughtfully devised a remote-control self-destruct mechanism for just that purpose. What is the name of this mechanism? “The Exploder Button.” With tech-heavy jargon like that, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Blofeld also owns a laser called a “Bright-Light Thing.”

FAVORITE MOMENT: There’s another moment in the climax, before Bond gets to the Exploder Button, he and Blofeld and a million bad guys are standing around in Blofeld’s control center when an explosion goes off. All the humans are fine, but Blofeld’s normally cool-as-a-cucumber cat, quite naturally, freaks out like you wouldn’t believe. Blofeld must forcefully restrain the cat, its eyes bulging in abject fear, to keep it from leaping, terrified, from his arms. This little bit of business is notable to me because, if the actor playing Blofeld is holding onto the cat that hard in this take, that means there was at least one take earlier where the actor was not able to restrain the cat from leaping, terrified, from his arms. That means that the production staff knew that the cat was in dire straits during this shot, and did nothing about it, except for advising the actor to hold on tighter. Now, You Only Live Twice is a gargantuan production, and even the most brilliant production manager can’t think of everything, but Sweet Hopping Jesus, the actor’s back is already turned to the camera, give him a fucking prop cat.

NOTES: It’s hard not to think about the career of Ken Adam during this movie, because he clearly owns the picture. In fact, a darker plan than even Blofeld’s starts to form in my mind — all this is happening because of Ken Adam. I mean, face it, he’s the one element that all these different people share. He designs enormous volcano strongholds for SPECTRE, and he designs the offices of the Japanese industrialist working for Blofeld, and he designs the private train of Tiger Tanaka, and he designs the opera-house-sized makeup room for Bond’s Japanese transformation, and he designs the Russian space center! He’s everywhere, every room has the same tilted ceilings, the same hard, bold lines, the same creamy, mid-sixties palette, the same invisible, recessed lighting — what kind of security clearance does this guy have? Didn’t anyone notice — hey! SPECTRE’S volcano stronghold looks just like the Russian space center! (and Dr. No’s underground lair, and Goldfinger’s house in Kentucky, and SPECTRE’s boardroom) All of this unpleasantness could have been easily avoided if they had just sent Bond after Ken Adam! When you consider that Adam also designed the War Room in Dr. Strangelove, it’s a wonder the world ever made it out of the 60s alive — the man was obviously a dangerous double-agent, contracting for both sides! Blofeld’s plan even starts to take on a cold kind of logic when you remove Blofeld and insert Ken Adam: Ha ha! The Americans and Russians will blow each other up, and then they will hire ME to rebuild everything — I’M THE ONLY CONTRACTOR THEY KNOW! HA HA HA HA HA!