Following four phenomenally successful James Bond movies, star Sean Connery grew tired of the role and announced that his fifth outing as the world’s greatest super-spy would be his last. Fittingly, You Only Live Twice should also be the movie to kill James Bond! Well, almost. As per the hint in its title, not even death can keep a good Double-0 agent down.
If still another big hit for the franchise, You Only Live Twice wasn’t quite as huge a smash as its predecessor, Thunderball, had been. I’d like to say that viewers noticed and reacted negatively to the obvious signs of artistic decline in the franchise, but I’m not sure that 1967 audiences were all that bothered by some of the issues that would trouble fans like myself later on. The more likely explanation is simply that 1960s Bond-mania had finally hit its peak and started to taper off.
For my part, I’ve always felt that You Only Live Twice represents a clear downturn for Connery’s run as Agent 007, and marks the point where silliness and camp started to overtake the series. Despite that, this is certainly not the worst James Bond movie (nor even the worst Connery would make). The film has a few great set-pieces and select moments that would become iconic for the franchise. Sadly, you need to put up with a lot of other cringe-worthy material to get to them.
| Title: | You Only Live Twice |
| Year of Release: | 1967 |
| Director: | Lewis Gilbert |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | Blu-ray Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Extremely loosely based on Ian Fleming’s twelfth 007 novel, You Only Live Twice very swiftly has James Bond assassinated in an early scene, betrayed by a lover during a tryst in Hong Kong. Of course, this is just a fake-out, in which Bond stages his own death so that his enemies won’t pay so much attention to him on his next mission, or something. The explanation doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense, and the entire plot twist has almost no relevance at all to the rest of the movie, except to justify the title.
When manned space capsules disappear in orbit, the Americans blame Russia and the Russians blame America. Both countries stand poised to start a new world war. Meanwhile, the British Secret Service believes a third party is playing the other two against each other, and sends 007 to Japan to investigate a lead pertaining to the Osato Chemical and Engineering Corporation. Sure enough, the company chairman turns out to be a member of SPECTRE, the international terrorist organization behind several of Bond’s previous foes.
For some utterly nonsensical reason the movie’s script makes little effort to rationalize, Bond finds it necessary in this mission to disguise himself as a Japanese island fisherman, by wearing offensive yellowface and slanty-eye makeup and staging an elaborate wedding ceremony to adorable local agent Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama). Again, none of this serves any purpose at all to the story. Did this ever actually play well, even in 1967? I can hardly imagine…
Just as problematic is the film’s extensive and aggressive sexism. Bond beds nearly every woman he sees, whether good, bad, or neutral. His behavior can hardly even be called seduction, as a glance in their general direction is all it takes for women to throw themselves into the hero’s arms.
Beyond its faithfulness to author Ian Fleming’s egregious racism and misogyny, the movie version of You Only Live Twice bears very little resemblance to the book of the same title. The film’s screenplay, by Fleming’s friend, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl, invents most of the plot whole-cloth, including the entire space-hijacking angle, which isn’t in the novel at all. Needless to say, this isn’t among Dahl’s best work. No doubt the writer was tasked with cobbling together a patchwork of dozens of conflicting story notes from the franchise producers, who wanted to work in excuses for bigger and more elaborate action and visual effects sequences that would top previous installments.
On that front, You Only Live Twice is indeed a more intensely action- and gadget-heavy entry than those before it. The film has tons of shooting, explosions, fights, car chases, helicopter combat, and eventually a huge battle in which hundreds of machine gun-toting ninjas storm the secret SPECTRE lair hidden inside a volcano. Undercutting this ambition, the model and miniature effects for all the rocket and space stuff looks ridiculous even by the standards of the day, the overuse of rear-projection is lazy and unconvincing, and Bond’s “Little Nellie” gyrocopter is ludicrously over-armed for a contraption that looks like it would fall to pieces if you sneezed on it. Nonetheless, most of those scenes are still a lot of fun, either despite or perhaps because of how silly they get.
This is also the movie in which Bond finally meets and faces off against his previously-unseen nemesis, SPECTRE mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld, here played by Donald Pleasence wearing a gray tunic and stroking a fluffy white cat. (The character would return periodically throughout the franchise, never played by the same actor more than once.)
Believing this to be his last turn as Agent 007, Sean Connery may not seem completely checked-out just yet, but he’s clearly coasting, hoping that a little bit of charm would be enough to keep fans entertained. The actor would later renege on his word and return to the role in two more Bond films, one official and one not, that are even more sloppily thrown-together than this one.
Connery’s planned exit or not, You Only Live Twice was in no way ever meant to be the end of the James Bond franchise. The producers had already taken steps to replace the actor, and the end credits here proudly boast that, “JAMES BOND WILL BE BACK IN ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE.”
On its own merits, You Only Live Twice is a scattershot affair, but ultimately has enough positive qualities to remain enjoyable. Regardless, watching it again serves as a reminder that not all of Sean Connery’s Bond films were classics.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Although MGM released the first four James Bond films (as well as a few later entries) onto Blu-ray in 2008, You Only Live Twice didn’t hit the format until the Bond 50 box set in 2012. The film makes its 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray debut as part of the Sean Connery 6-Film Collection, available in either an expensive Limited Edition SteelBook box set or a basic keepcase. Both sets include the movies only on 4K physical disc or Digital Copy codes (which currently redeem with older video masters). No standard Blu-ray discs are provided.
The 2012 Blu-ray for this movie had pretty uneven video quality. While the 4K remaster is generally an improvement, some problems still remain. I’m left to assume that some or many of them may be endemic to the photography, or at least to the current condition of the film elements. Despite cinematography by the great Freddie Young (Lawrence of Arabia), You Only Live Twice is held back by a significant number of opticals, dupes, and other process shots that degrade picture quality. Additionally, even though the remaster is said to be based on a new 4K scan of the Original Camera Negative, in some scenes it’s obvious that shots had to be spliced in from lesser sources.
The 2.35:1 image has moments of impressive sharpness and detail, but is soft on the whole – especially during the opening titles. Some viewers may be surprised that it looks softer than the old Blu-ray, but that prior 1080p video master had been heavily manipulated by firm Lowry Digital to artificially enhance sharpness. This version dials that back. However, I wouldn’t say it has no digital manipulation. Like some of the other titles in this box set, parts of the movie have strange textures that make me suspect grain management or other processing has been applied.
At the time, I was very critical of the 2012 Blu-ray’s recurring problem with what looked like edge enhancement artifacts. I would’ve thought that a new scan of the camera negative should clear that up, yet even in 4K, many scenes have noticeable edge halos. This is very prominent during Bond’s time aboard the submarine around 12 minutes into the movie. I’m left to wonder now if those might actually be some optical artifact embedded onto the film. I don’t have a clear answer for that.
In its favor, the 4K transfer has richer and more stable colors than the Blu-ray, as well as better balanced contrast. The Blu-ray looks over-bright in comparison, and has color shifts that veer from sometimes too blue to sometimes too red. The 4K Ultra HD looks more even and natural. HDR grading is mostly subtle, but the neon lights in Tokyo are pleasingly vibrant.
Despite my wavering on the choice of sound format with Thunderball, I went back to watching You Only Live Twice in its original mono sound mix (encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 format). I find the Dolby Atmos remixes for these Bond films too aggressively filtered and rolled-off. I’ve also learned that some of them are missing pieces of dialogue and sound effects from the original tracks.
In this case, the mono sounds a little thin, and has basically no bass or dynamic range at all. On the other hand, dialogue is clear, sound effects are crisp, and the mix isn’t plagued by the huge volume swings that have always been an issue on Thunderball.
I sampled the Atmos, and for what it’s worth, dynamic range is still weak there. The Nancy Sinatra theme song sounds pretty good (whether it’s been remastered from an original stereo recording or was just processed into fake multichannel, I don’t know). The Little Nellie scene and the big action climax also make fun use of the surround and overhead speakers. Unlike, say, Dr. No through Goldfinger, I’m not going to totally write off the Atmos here. I can understand some viewers preferring it over the mono. Each version has its strengths and weaknesses.
Bonus features are all recycled from prior DVD and Blu-ray releases. These include an audio commentary, a handful of featurettes and documentaries, plus some trailers, TV spots, and radio ads. I don’t mean to sound dismissive, but longtime Bond fans have likely seen or listened to most of these by now.
Related
- You Only Live Twice
- Other James Bond Movies
- James Bond Books
- James Bond Parody
- Roald Dahl (screenwriter)
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.
The Video File Blog 
Yep a lot of cringe-worthy stuff in this one. This was pretty meh for me. I first saw it during a TNT marathon in college and did like it then, but its treatment of women and of Japanese culture is just atrocious. I really rolled my eyes when Bond actually uttered the words “Wise man say….”
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