That's No Moonraker: You Only Live Twice

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Date

June 20th, 2020

Summary

Alex and Pete are stirred, not shaken, by the 5th James Bond film.

Duration

1:17:34

Notes

Film

• 5th movie based on the 12th book (11th full-length novel).
  • The novel takes place after a later film: events of the book are based on plot points from the previous novel.
  • This book is the first to come out after Dr. No was in theaters.
  • Last book published in Fleming's lifetime (ironic). He wrote it to be more like Sean Connery's Bond.
  • Final part of the "Blofeld trilogy".
    • They thought about filming the Blofeld trilogy in order and doing "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" next but didn't feel like going to the mountains to film.
• The screenplay.
  • They tried to work with stuff from the novel but then threw it all out and had Ian Fleming's friend Roald Dahl write the screenplay.
    • This was his first produced screenplay.
    • He stripped it down to only four or five plot points from the book and pinned them to the skeleton of the plot from Dr. No, borrowing its plot arc.
    • He was instructed by the producers that he couldn't change the "girl formula" (see below).
• First film in the franchise where we actually see anybody in space.
• Directed by Lewis Gilbert, who we will see again directing The Spy who Loved Me. and Moonraker. All space stuff.
• The newspaper is clearly fake and is just some paper pasted over a real newspaper.
• Nikki van der Zyl is back voicing Kissy Suzuki.
• Aki (played by Akiko Wakabayashi).
  • Also was a mystical princess in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster.
  • She was originally cast in the role that Mie Hams (Kkissy Suzuki) and ended up taking, but they switched her at the last minute because the Hama had trouble learning her lines in English.

Podcast

• The film is very different from the book (shout out to Andy Robinson).
• The "girl formula": there must be three women for Bond to "seduce".

1. An ally, who gets killed.
2. An enemy who gets killed.
3. The main "Bond girl".

• During filming in Japan, Sean Connery announced his retirement from the role of James Bond.
  • "Somehow, James Bond has returned" (referenced: The Rise of Skywalker).
  • This is the third time they tried to trick you into thinking James Bond is dead. "The death of Spock" in Star Trek 2 mentioned (again).
• Remastering the special effects, like they did with "Star Trek: TOS".
  • Re-shooting the scenes of Jerry's father on Seinfeld once they changed actors.
• Racial sensitivity of this movie: it's better than we would expect.
  • Exception is James Bond in obvious yellow face.
    

The opening theme

• They say the name of the movie (both in the song and in the actual movie) so it counts.
• They wrote the song specifically for the movie and got Julie Rogers to record it.
• They weren't happy with it and brought in Lorraine Chandler to re-record.
• That version was lost in a vault until the 90s when it was rediscovered.
• John Barry was friends with people at Atlantic Records who would just signed Aretha Franklin, they were going to get her to do it.
• But Cubby Broccoli was friends with Frank Sinatra and said he'd ask him.
• He didn't want to but suggested his daughter could do it.
• She had a really tough time with it, and the final version was a hack job of 25 different takes put together.

Other notes

• Pan still life cover.
• Comparison between James Bond fans and Star Wars fans (there is some overlap there).
• Things we'd like to see: a movie that actually was based on the book.
• Who is the main Bond girl of this movie?
• The organizational structure at SPECTRE.
• In the book James Bond gets some time out from being 007 and is 7777.
• Mentioned: Revenge of the Nerds.
• Noticeable lack of gadgets in this movie.
  • Odd because it was criticized at the time for focusing too much on the gadgets.
• Bond shoots a random guy instead of killing Blofeld.
• Most of Bond's success is complete luck, not necessarily skill.

Meta Notes

• In Skyfall, Bond is "killed" but is back to life by the end of the opening credits.
• Pete does eventually end up reading (at least a few) of the novels.
• The scene where the villain's car is dropped into the bay was filmed on location in Tokyo Bay, so presumably the filmmakers would have needed to retrieve the car once they were done filming.

Quotes

• Alex: (as Sean Connery) "trying to 'shhynergize ' it".
• Alex: No's Ark.
• Pete: the competent one always gets killed.

Star Wars names

Star Wars pun names for You Only Live Twice
Alex	Name 1 Name 2 Name 3
Pete	Name 1 Name 2 Name 3

Link (Patreon supporters only)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/thats-no-you-38427304

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