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TND I have very, very little affection for. It’s a bottom 3 for me. On the surface it’s a perfectly competent Bond movie. It’s well crafted and all that, but I just find it so, so bland. I can’t even really put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s yet another reheated YOLT style plot, or Brosnan’s vague portrayal of Bond, or the sort of colorless photography. Only the Dr Kaufman scene comes alive with the sort of bizarre, exotic menace that really feels Fleming-esque. I’ll take TWINE’s sloppiness over this in a heartbeat.
As far as TND as whole, I love the first half and am always very frustrated with the second half. GE and the first half of TND are great (for the most part) but then starting with the second half and following with TWINE and DAD, the Brosnan era takes a dive and never recovers for me . I do hope GE finishes in the top 10.
TND also is a good example of how good stunts can be sans gadgets. The HALO jump for instance is far more exciting than the BMW chase.
Kudos also for the mass media angle. I'd say it's a relevant subject even today. I really like Wai Lin too.
However, it's a bit of a colourless box-ticker at times too. With definitely too much action in the second half as well. In the end, I think it's good without being a masterpiece.
They also wanted to bring Wai Lin back in Die Another Day.
In the tournament thread, it ended up as no 17, which is where I also have it.
Frankly, so am I.
I would be very surprised if anything but MR turns up tomorrow. Maybe QOS, but I suspect QOS might do pretty okay here. I guess there haven't been any huge surprises so far in terms of the general sentiments of the board.
Personally, I think very highly, unusually highly, of about half the films listed so far. Just goes to show how varied all our tastes really are and how even the lowest ranking Bonds to some are among the highest ranking for others.
I'd have been terribly upset if either Natalya or Kara had returned, been shallow enough to marry an absolute nutcase, and got killed off. They both deserve better than that!
STARRING
Sean Connery as James Bond 007
WITH
Mie Hama, Donald Pleasence, Akiko Wakabayashi & Tetsuro Tamba
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
MUSIC BY John Barry
DIRECTED BY Lewis Gilbert
YOLT's highest finished was 7th on one occasion, while it also ended up 8th, 9th and 10th on two occasions each. It also turned up in 9 more top 15's.
Even though it only ended up three times in the higher bottom 5 (its worst placement was 23rd), YOLT's low ranking might be explained because it never made it into anyone's top 5 and it had no less than 17 rankings between 11 and 20.
A typical middle-of-the-road choice for many, it appears.
In total, YOLT collected 117 points.
It has fantastic sections in it (pts, meeting Henderson, fight scene, Kobe Docks sequence, climax!) and it is spectacular, but the whole turning Japanese thing really turns me off and i dont like the Little Nellie set piece, its a bit of a drag until that brilliantly staged finale! But am not that surprised at this position but can imagine a lot will be!
I’m really quite shocked to see this so low.
That poster is one of my favourites of the entire series. Bond defying the law of gravity had me perplexed since I was a boy.
Indeed. I don't think Lewis Gilbert really cracked it until MR, and I'm delighted to see that film beat this one. I rank YOLT slightly higher than its position here, but on some faux-objective level, I think it might be the worst in the series.
Roald Dahl, brilliant as he was, simply could not fill the shoes of Ian Fleming or Richard Maibaum, I believe even by his own admission. His script doesn't make any sense (fake death in private, Blofeld revealing himself by stealing from both sides and shooting missiles from his base, Helga's killing method). Lewis Gilbert didn't seem to have any interesting ideas about how to shoot on Ken Adam's spectacular sets, and despite making a film more ridiculous than Goldfinger, he's not willing or able to convey that we're all in on the joke, which was a significant factor in the success of that earlier film. As a result, the aura of stupidity is a bit stronger with this one than it had to be.
But John Barry and Ken Adam are firing on all cylinders, clearly, and much of the cast is quite strong as well.
It's one of the silliest films of the series but the setting and production elements add much. The music is astonishingly good, as we all know. I will always enjoy it when it's on telly, but I rarely go out of my way to watch it on my own time.
I have it ranked eighth, but I had to use my 2019 ranking since I haven't had a proper marathon since, so it's liable to move a spot or two with my next one. I love it a lot.
When I had my last a couple years ago, so much changed, but it was over a decade since my previous. Maybe I shouldn t wait that long this time. Maybe I should do another one soon and see what happens then.
I was doing them once a year for a while there, with some slight, varied changes, so I figured waiting 2-3 might yield even more diverse results. I'm hoping to do another one before NTTD is out.
Some of the “hate” on YOLT can – no doubt – be attributed to what IMO is Connery’s weakness performance as Bond. That said, I still think he is ok.
One of my criticisms of YOLT (and one that still have BTW), is that I find the characters of Tiger, Aki and Kissy (yes, even her!) to be – in some ways – more interesting than Bond here. And author Steven Jay Rubin has made exactly this point over the years. In fact, when I first saw YOLT (and long before my Bond fandom had really developed), I wanted to see a movie centering on the adventures of Tiger and his ninja forces and agents! (*)
That said, even at that time I found the volcano lair, Blofeld’s reveal, “Little Nllie”, and the kidnapping of U.S. and Soviet spacecraft to be captivating, and my appreciation of these elements has only increased over time. If I am completely truthful however, technically TB is a better film, yet I find YOLT to be better paced and often works as my “go-to” film for the Connery era. And when you add in one of John Barry’s best scores and Nancy Sinatra’s title song vocals…..you have a film that is a feast.
YOLT’s only real competition for being an epic on this scale are TSWLM and MR, and in my personal rankings TSWLM gets the slight node only because of Moore’s performance. As for MR…..It’s been said that the plot of YOLT is far-fetched (and it is – believe me!!!), and that the film borders on becoming a self-parody. But while MR crosses that line (frequently), YOLT goes up to the line but doesn’t quite cross it. It knows when to pull back from the eye rolling outlandishness of some aspects of MR.
** OK. Maybe my 16-year-old self wanted to see more of Mie Hama in a bikini – a wish that was fulfilled a couple of years ago when I saw the Japanese spy spoof “Iron Finger.” But these days, I find Akiko Wakabayashi more fascinating.
I’ll just add this page to my bookmarks ....
My favourite aspects are the music, the cinematography, the sets, the allies Tiger & Henderson, the Toyota, Karin Dor, an excellent beginning and a stellar finale.
It's the middle part, with the 'turning Japanese' as a lowpoint, that drags it down for me.