TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

You Only Live Twice

Go To

The film:

  • Award Snub: Ken Adam did not get an Academy Award nomination for Best Production Design or Best Visual Effects, despite the iconic volcano lair set.
  • Awesome Music: The title theme by Nancy Sinatra (known by many of the young ones through Robbie Williams' "Millennium").
  • Broken Base: This film is very divisive. On the one hand, some love the film for introducing some of the most iconic parts of the series, such as the volcano lair, stealing spaceships, Little Nelly and Donald Pleasance as the scar faced Blofeld. However, many dislike it for Sean Connery's obviously bored performance throughout the film and the bizarre tangent where Bond becomes Japanese.
  • Complete Monster: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (SPECTRE), is an icy sociopath interested only in what profits him. Running SPECTRE with an iron fist, Blofeld facilitates terrorism around the world, and any underling who fails dies a painful, ignominious end. When he and Bond finally come face to face, Blofeld is attempting to start a nuclear war to have the Soviets and the Americans wipe one another out, allowing SPECTRE to blackmail the newest superpowers. When this fails, Blofeld undergoes plastic surgery and attempts to swindle his way into a pardon and a noble title, with brainwashed women spreading a bacteria to annihilate the world's agricultural supply. When this fails, Blofeld takes revenge by murdering Bond's new wife on their wedding day. Later having plastic surgery again, Blofeld has multiple diamonds stolen to power a satellite with an orbital laser. Blofeld calls an auction between the Soviets, Chinese and Americans: The winner will possess nuclear supremacy in the world. The losers will be wiped out by the satellite.
  • Contested Sequel: Arguably pales in comparison to the previous Sean Connery Bond films, though his next installment, Diamonds Are Forever, is generally considered much worse.
  • Fair for Its Day: Even though the film features some general Asian stereotypes, like Osato saying "Ah, so..." while chatting with Bond, the film largely averts the Yellow Peril tropes that were still widespread at the time. Bond's allies in the Japanese Secret Service are all very competent and helpful. Moreover, the named Japanese characters in the film are all played by Japanese actors rather than white actors in yellowface or by other people of East Asian descent like was the case in the previous decades in Hollywood.
  • Franchise Original Sin: A lot of the wackier elements of the franchise that have been widely ridiculed in the years since got their start here. Here, it wasn't considered much of an issue since it was the first time the franchise had done anything such on this scale, and the next film actually toned it down, but after that met with an underwhelming reception, Connery's brief comeback and then the majority of Roger Moore's era would go full-tilt on sillier elements, leading to each of the films trying to top the last with increasingly ludicrous results, at least until the Daniel Craig era went a lot more serious and realistic, in response to a combination of the lampooning of the series by Austin Powers, and the success of the gritty Jason Bourne films.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The title and its abbreviation, YOLT, became pretty amusing when the saying "You Only Live Once", abbreviated as "YOLO", became subject to Memetic Mutation in 2012, even spawning something of a Fandom Rivalry from Bond fans.
    • Bond nearly goes into outer space before being caught by Blofeld. He would have to wait till Moonraker to finally fly out there.
    • While Bond was pretending to be Japanese, Connery's then-wife Diane Cilento was doubling for Mie Hama (swimming double, to be exact), meaning that both members of the Connery marriage were pretending to be Japanese.
    • Bond getting married as part of mission. He would get married for real in the very next movie.
  • Ho Yay: Of a sort, played out more like a gay joke. Bond's password to meet his contact in Japan is "I love you", which leads to the following exchange:
    Bond: If you're Tanaka, then how do you feel about me?
    Tanaka: I... love you.
    Bond: I'm glad we've got that out of the way.
  • It Was His Sled: While Blofeld's appearance (as well as his name if you haven't read the books, as up until this movie he was only referred to as "Number One".) was The Reveal originally, most people know about him looking like a short bald guy due to the numerous parodies (even if they've never heard of this specific Bond movie)
  • Like You Would Really Do It: Did anybody actually believe that Bond was killed at the beginning of the movie?
  • Narm:
    • Blofeld has to peek around his bodyguard Hans to show his face to Bond and the audience.
    • Bond's "Japanese" disguise. Obvious Yellowface aside, he looks more like Spock.
    • The whole rooftop chase is technically a masterwork of choreography, but between the ridiculously wide shots and the downright swooning "You Only Live Twice" instrumental, it looks more like a wacky comedy about Connery escaping autograph hunters.
  • Narm Charm: Blofeld as the bald, scarred man with a white cat has been referenced and parodied so many times (and is so over-the-top anyway) it can be difficult to take him seriously nowadays. However, the reason why it's been parodied so often is precisely because it's an extremely striking portrayal (to the point his portrayal is pretty much the only one parodies have used), and the creepiness of Pleasence's performance makes it easy to see why it became iconic.
  • Newer Than They Think: Marvel Comics beat this film by just a matter of months in portraying the head of its Nebulous Evil Organization as a bald man with a duelling scar, namely Baron von Strucker.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Peter Maivia uses his wrestling talent in one of the best one-on-one fights in the series, and even makes Connery's victory seem plausible, since he co-ordinated the fight scene himself.
    • Donald Pleasence only has a few minutes of screentime, yet he manages to be one of the most memorable villains in any Bond film.
    • Charles Gray's endearingly likeable cameo as Mr. Henderson.
  • Protection from Editors: Roald Dahl was given free rein on his script, except for the character of Bond and "the girl formula", involving three women for Bond to seduce: an ally and a henchwoman who both get killed, and the main Bond Girl.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
    • As Charles Gray would go on to play Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, it can be pretty jarring to see him as a One-Scene Wonder here if the viewer has seen the later film first.
    • The Giant Mook Bond fights in Osato Industries has gained this since it has become more widely known that it's Peter Maivia, famous wrestler and grandad of Dwayne Johnson.
    • One of the police officers who find James Bond's supposed corpse in the opening sequence is none other than Anthony Ainley, aka the Master.note  It makes one wonder if there is an even greater-scope villain behind SPECTRE's unnamed foreign power.
      • It gets better, in the promotional documentary made for this film called "007 Goes to Japan"note , Moneypenny’s never-before-seen assistant in the new scenes supposedly set during the events of the movie is played by a very young Kate O'Mara, AKA The Rani!
    • An uncredited control room technician is played by Andy Ho, who would later be best known for playing Ah Syn in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.
    • A policeman is played by Brian Wilde, who would later be best known for playing Mr. Barrowclough in Porridge and Foggy Dewhirst in Last of the Summer Wine.
    • A Russian spacecraft communicator is played by Richard Marner, who would later be best known for playing Colonel von Strohm in 'Allo 'Allo!.
    • An uncredited Chinese VIP is played by Robert Lee, who would later be best known for playing Taro Nagazumi in Mind Your Language.
  • "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: This was the one of the first, if not the first, time a villain used a secret volcano lair. It's a concept that has been used (and parodied) so often that modern viewers might find it trite.
  • Signature Scene: Bond meeting Blofeld, with his face revealed for the first time.
  • So Okay, It's Average: While nobody really disputes Ken Adam's absolutely magnificent sets or Donald Pleasence's Blofeld, a growing number of reviewers in recent years have come to find the script not a whole lot more coherent than the book, and Sean Connery just barely hiding his utter boredom with the 007 role (which would soon blossom into his sitting out On Her Majesty's Secret Service no matter how much money execs threw at him, and looking even more bored in his one-off return to the role for Eon, Diamonds Are Forever).
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • The majority of the budget was funnelled into the admittedly impressive volcano set, meaning that the rocket model effects ended up being rather short-changed.
    • Relating to the volcano, while the actual set is quite impressive, the optical compositing effects used for establishing shots of the volcano are very obvious, especially on the Blu-Ray edition. Similar compositing issues plague some shots in the film's outer-space Cold Open, while other shots in the same sequence qualify as Visual Effects of Awesome.
    • Look closely at the smoke as the SPECTRE rocket lands inside the volcano, and you'll see not only the cable that's lowering it down but the large crane hook it's on as well.
    • Bond goes undercover as a Japanese peasant. Sean Connery in pancake makeup is one of the series' more embarrassing moments.
    • While flying around the volcano, right after a prolonged shot of the gyrocopter's shadow, we are then treated to a close-up of Bond with an invisible right arm.
    • The same shot of what is obviously a toy helicopter exploding is re-used four times in the aerial fight sequence, and very obviously cropped down during two of those instances.
  • Stock Footage Failure: The Russian space launch uses stock footage of an American Gemini launch, down to the palm trees in the foreground.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Aki dies halfway through the movie, and is replaced with Replacement Scrappy Kissy.
    • Donald Pleasance's version of Blofeld only appears in this film and is never seen again, despite being the most famous and arguably best portrayal of Blofeld.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • "In Japan, men come first, women come second." Which can come across as either sexist or Orientalist to some today, depending on whether the original viewers were supposed to agree with it or not.
    • Sean Connery "passing" for Japanese in Yellowface is really not one of the series' most timeless moments.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The SPECTRE Volcano Lair. The set was five stories tall, had a working monorail and helipad, a massive armature to move the Bird 1 rocket, and cost more than Dr. No in its entirety.
  • What Happened to the Mouse??:
    • A very strange example with Bond's Japanese disguise. Bond's makeup and styled hair just sort of disappear when he enters the volcano with no real explanation.
    • Blofeld's cat jumps off his lap when he is about to shoot Bond, but in the next shot the cat is suddenly gone with no explanation and is never seen again. We see Blofeld with a white act in the next film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service but it's unclear as to whether it's the same cat.

The novel:

  • Fanfic Fuel: James Bond having a half-Japanese son. An adult version of the character appears in the short story Blast From The Past.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Dr. Shatterhand has a house surrounded by so many poisonous plants that people go there to commit suicide. A Japanese forest associated with suicide? It's reminiscent of Aokigahara forest.
  • It Was His Sled: Dr. Shatterhand is Blofeld.

Top