YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE was the first film in the series which diverged significantly from the novel. Up to this point, the Bond films had been relatively faithful, in terms of plot at least, to the novels on which they were based. However, with the audience’s expectation that each film would be bigger and more spectacular than the last, it was clear that if YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE was to be adapted for the screen, major changes would have to be made to the story.
Most of the book is fairly low-key. Bond, having bungled his previous two missions, is sent on a diplomatic assignment to Japan in an attempt to acquire for the British a major source of Russian intelligence from the Japanese Secret Service. In return for this, he is asked by M’s Japanese counterpart, Tiger Tanaka, to kill Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, a Swiss botanist who has set up a “castle of death” which contains a garden filled with many species of deadly plants and animals. This castle has become a magnet for suicides and a major embarrassment to the Japanese government. Bond discovers Dr. Shatterhand is really his arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and integrates himself into a Japanese fishing village from where he will launch his assault on the castle. A large part of the book is taken up with a travelogue of Bond and Tiger’s journey through Japan and Bond’s time in the fishing village, as he comes to terms with Japanese culture. Blofeld’s evil scheme is not intended to cause widespread havoc as in THUNDERBALL and ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. It is more of an evil retirement project, where he can simply hole himself up in his castle and “collect death,” as Tiger puts it.
The film’s broader scope is apparent from the opening shots in space, where an American space capsule is eaten by an unidentified craft. Although the book’s Japanese setting remains, most of the plot is entirely different. Bond’s task is to find out where the mystery spacecraft landed and who is behind it. After investigating a Japanese chemical company he follows the trail to an island with a small fishing village. Parts of the book are used here, as Bond trains as a ninja and ‘marries’ a girl in the village, ostensibly so he can disguise himself to avoid detection and investigate further. He discovers Blofeld’s lair inside a hollowed-out volcano from where he has been launching his predatory rockets, capturing both American and Russian spaceships, in an attempt to start a war between the US and the Soviet Union.
By this point the Bond film formula had been fairly well established, and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE ticks all the boxes. It has the gadgets, girls, action scenes and terrible jokes the audience had come to expect. The volcano set cost more than the entire production budget of DR. NO and is still the most spectacular villain’s lair in the series to date, and probably the most parodied. There are plenty of fights and action scenes – Bond getting ‘killed’ at the start, the fight at Osato, the car chase, the fight on the docks, the plane crash, the Little Nellie sequence, the fight at the ninja school and the giant pitched battle at the end between Tiger’s ninjas and the Spectre goons. The downside to this is that the film’s plot is not as cohesive as in the book, or, indeed, earlier entries in the film series. Many parts seem to be dictated by whatever set pieces the producers wanted to include, the worst example of this being the plane crash sequence. It doesn’t make sense on any level, in terms of Brandt’s motivation or plot requirements, and it’s not as if the film actually needed another action sequence, especially with the superior helicopter battle occurring not long after.
Other plot elements seem to be unnecessary hangovers from the novel. Bond’s Japanese disguise, the clearest example of this, is something that works much better on the page than on screen. Not only is it ridiculously unconvincing, it is also superfluous to the plot – the disguise is not necessary for him to infiltrate Blofeld’s lair and there are no parts of the film where he has to pass himself off as a Japanese (although this is probably for the better, as disbelief can only be suspended so far. Having the bad guy launch rockets out of a hollowed-out volcano is one thing, but to have someone actually mistake Sean Connery for an Oriental would be venturing too far into the realm of fantasy). It is hardly surprising that it is abandoned without explanation, but you wonder why it was included in the first place. I enjoy the whole Ama village sequence in the film; although to work properly it needed to be longer. In plotting terms it is not strictly necessary but it is one of the elements which give the film its unique feel. I guess one reason for the inclusion of these bits in the film is because the main plot differs so much from the novel the filmmakers felt they had to retain as much as possible in order to be faithful to Fleming.
Both the novel and film of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE rank among my favourites in their respective formats. Both are excellent examples of where the series was at the time. Fleming’s writing developed considerably over the ten years since CASINO ROYALE and the book is a great showcase of this. The film arrived at the height of the hype surrounding the series and combines the expected cinematic spectacle with a smart screenplay and excellent direction, things that are largely missing from THUNDERBALL.
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