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Surprisingly I found that the opening-sequence model work, worked quite well with benefit of a maximum cinematic experience. Same thing with the later space shots. The Barry score at full volume makes for a huge difference.
The big-screen imagery combined with awe inspiring music, did create an atmosphere of tension. With the picture giant, overwhelming and immersive, the space scenes I found, presented a lot more convincingly than on a small-screen.
I do think the movie references the Fleming novel quite satisfactorily. Much of the novel wasn't very cinematic anyway. It involves a lot of dialogue, discussion and socializing that had to been weened out.
But both book and novel are authentically Japanese. The movie is very much on location and revels in the Japanese scenery.
Even the Garden of Death is referenced indirectly with the piranha pit and by Blofeld's volcanic self-destruct button.
The ninja training facility is lifted from the novels, as Fleming's Bond also spends time with Tiger, at a Ninja training school.
I also though the movie perfectly captured Fleming's Ama fishing village.
Eon had to flesh out the Fleming story to create a full-blown Bond film and of course recreating the actual Castle of Death was problematic. There just wasn't any satisfactory castle to be found, as we learn on the dvd extras.
In a way I think that was fortuitous, as the volcano base to this day is the gold standard in super-villain base-lairs.
btw, I couldn't review any of the early films (first seven) They would all score perfect with bonus points, in every category. I am that in awe of the 62-71 period. With the Rog era, I could just then begin to quibble, a teeny little bit.
But only post-Rog, could I really critique, and even then it would be tough.
Well, now that we're past the point when the Bond films were being released on a yearly basis, I thought it was only right. One year between films, one week between reviews; two years between films, two weeks between reviews; and so on. Only problem is, at some point we'd have to go 6 weeks between reviews so maybe I should rethink this plan...
Actually, it's just the crush of professional obligations. I'll be out of town over certain weekends this summer; the coming weekend is the first among them. I'll be back as soon as I can!
*Flint Spy Movie Syndrome
But how did she have time to have her crew install the WOOD plank that traps Bonds arms (so conveniently)? I can imagine SPECTRE's workshop was up all night working on it. Oh I'm sorry all SPECTRE planes come equipped with these.
More: Why does a helicopter try and shoot Kissy while she is swimming back to the mainland or does SPECTRE just randomly kill everyone who is in the area.
Kill innocent tourist for taking photo on Ning Po? I wonder how many other tourist they have killed in recent months.
I've had that one for many years, my favorite of all the old Japanese monster movies! Mie is in my other favorite "King Kong vs Godzilla" and later as Madame Piranha in "King Kong Escapes". Akiki and Mie both appeared as sisters in a Japanese spy film, "International Secret Police: Key of Keys", which would be later turned into an overdubbed spoof by Woody Allen called "What's Up, Tiger Lily". If you like those movies, you had to also remember "Ultra Man" when we were kids.
We could come up with lots of these kinds of plot holes in many Bond films, just like people have recently been killing SF and QOS about. No one mentions the scene in FRWL where Bond starts to tell a story to Tania about once when he and M were in Tokyo, yet in YOLT Bond tells Henderson he's never been to Japan. Sometimes you just have to stop thinking and nitpicking, have some fun with the whole spectacle that YOLT is, and draw your own conclusions. Why, for example, couldn't Brandt and Osato have had the wood plank installed long before in case they decided to use it for such a situation? Because it isn't explained doesn't mean they did a rush job to have it installed.
SPECTRE was also consistent in trying to eliminate anyone who was sniffing around Osato, the Ning-Po, Kissy's island and more specifically the volcano. Any thing to do with the operation in general. They went after Bond in Little Nelly (a great action scene but going after Bond this way he confirmed there was something going on down there, this is why SPECTRE wasn't quite as smart as they thought they were and why they and Blofeld eventually went down- and yet people want these brain surgeons back out of some sort of nostalgia), they had the poison gas tunnel and cameras/guns inside the crater, I was not surprised that they went after Kissy swimming away from the volcano at night with the countdown underway. And the Ning Po tourist death shows SPECTRE's level of paranoia even before all of that.
Your earlier points were better and less explainable, but with gems like DAD and MR out there, YOLT is positively a wildly entertaining film even with all it's faults, meaning Dahl's lazy writing. And most influential in spawning copycat entries in TSWLM and TND, not to mention Dr.Evil. I could see it between 11-15 overall in the canon, not a top 10 by any means but preferable to quite a few others that followed.
People do all the time around here, where have you been lately? :))
You and I are much alike in our appreciation for the Japanese people. I studied aikido and while I probably can't use tae kwon do as effectively as I once could due to advancing age, aikido certainly makes up as knowledge of anatomy and gravity do the work for you.
I once had a Japanese girlfriend myself so I can relate, I've loved Asian women since I first laid eyes on Mie Hama at age 7. Hopefully I'll have another or two down the road. Korean girls are wilder though ;)
Bond's immersion into the Ama village is clearly drawn from the Fleming book. He turns Japanese so he can blend-in better. It's a half-assed cover in both book and film, but at least it was an effort, to avoid brazenly introducing a big white western ape into the fishing village.
In the book Tiger enlists a conspiracy of silence, and quietly slips Bond into the village, minus the turning Japanese and wedding nonsense. In the film, they have some fun with Bond's cover.
In the movie, the killing of Aki was a failed attempt on Bond. Blofeld's men had infiltrated the Ninja group, presumably because they keep tabs on Tiger, which they also did in the book. And like the book, they identified Bond at the very least, as an outside subversive element, even if they didn't know he was actually Bond, and twice tried to kill him.
In the book, Bond and Tiger also tangle with Blofeld's men as they travel towards the eventual infiltration of the castle.
The attack on Little Nellie went bad obviously, otherwise Bond was supposed to go down in Flames. Such is Blofeld. A vicious killer. He likes to take out enemies and potential threats, rather than lurk in the weeds and hope not to be discovered.
Re Bond attempting to enter the rocket, I think we are asked to believe that he was planning some sort of sabotage before take-off.
btw,I also think SF holds together, again thinly, but that's all we can reasonably expect from these films. They are escapist fantasy, loosely held together by plot.
I'd like to think, well at least hope, these people are newer fans for the most part. The more established bunch I feel have long learned to deal with this and thus tend to look more at the overall presentation. And while I enjoyed CR a great deal in accepting that we were supposed to go on Bond's journey as a rookie 00, not to mention being mostly faithful to Fleming, and can deal with QOS because of how it managed to wrap the loose ends of CR in the end, I find SF to be much closer to the typical kind of Bond characterization we've gotten used to, with a proper support cast and the usual amenities. All I feel we now need to complete it all is the GB in the beginning, the Bond girl in the end, and maybe some more ambitious and original stuntwork that wowed me like it did in the 60's and 70's.
Now, Gong Li is another matter entirely and as she speaks some English, she'd get the thrust of it :-c
All I can say for my two cents is that most films contain some plotholes but I agree that YOLT and SF manage to hold it together. The biggest offender for plotholes and just crumble like stale bread is DAF.
It just falls apart and nobody on the production team (from producers, to director to the flaming editor) seemed to care.
Yeah, people get on Sean's arse about not reading Fleming's novel before DAF's filming began, but why should it matter anyway? The script-writers and filmmakers obviously didn't care about staying true to Fleming or even OHMSS in any way, shape or form, so why should Sean care? If I was him I would have been just as angry and unsatisfied about the whole situation. At least he got to donate his paycheck to charity. That is the only good thing to come out of that train wreck...
On the MI6 homepage article he says that he only read three: TB, LALD and FRWL.
TB because he though that was going to be the first Bond film. LALD maybe because he thought that it might be the second Bond film, being the 2nd Bond book, but I don't know, he doesn't expound. And FRWL presumably because he was told that it would be the 2nd Bond film. That's a good guess I think.
As for DAF and supposed plotholes, there is nothing in the film that I can't explain. Everything does actually hold-up.Having seen it about a 100 times does help.
Even GF can be fully explained. In fact I think I've managed to solve every supposed plot hole in any Bond movie over the years, mainly by comparing notes with other Bond fans on these boards.
In DAF, if Blofeld tells Bond (as Saxby) to assassinate Whyte how does Saxby end up taking a shot at Whyte?
I was on the set for a lot of the filming of DAF and appear in the film but I still find it hard to sit through.
I would have loved to been on any of the Bond sets. Even just as the janitor or pencil sharpener lackey.
OMG I forgot about the nitpic about Saxby showing up to kill Whyte...
Another gapping hole is the fact that the death of Plenty O'Toole is never explained. we know that due to some editing and key scenes being cut, her demise left a gapping hole. They should have just cut the whole scene of her body being shown in the pool.
Like I said, no one seemed to care about the holes and mess they were making with DAF...maybe Connery's salary cut into the budget and they could not afford decent re writes and edits.
anyway, it was this film where the quality and polish seemed to go by the wayside.
The Saxby thing was really an odd oversight. Kinda like the Bulgar taxi thing in FRWL but at least they fixed that.
The reality of DAF for me is that they presented camp with a bloated Connery who clearly spent a lot of time grazing at the Vegas buffet table and having a good time, rather than giving us a proper followup for OHMSS. It's almost like Cubby and Harry (and probably UA as well) wanted to pretend at the time that OHMSS and Lazenby never existed. It's a popcorn type of film that has some redeeming qualities IF you can forget about OHMSS and roll along with it, but it's more a film like a Helm or Flint that you can't take too seriously or proclaim as one of the series' greats without raising a lot of eyebrows.
I'd love to hear how @Timmer explains how Saxby knew to kill Whyte when he never got the call.
There's no question that it's certainly more enjoyable as a stand-alone film. Not only is it a poor follow up to OHMSS but it makes for a disappointing viewing after watching any of the previous Connery films as well!
I apologize if this question was already brought up in this thread but how do you feel about the theory that DAF is the true sequel to YOLT?
It was the first Bond movie I saw that left me feeling so unsatisfied.
I had some issues with TB but even that was a larger than life polished film but DAF?
The stunt men did not seem to fall as realistically as other films, the FX during the assault on the oil rig looked so cheap. Blofeld, Bond's greatest enemy was killed in a silly and ambiguous manner.
The corney dialogue, stupid humor, campiness...all came up to equal = bullshytt.
I've always supported this idea. The Blofeld of those two films is one and the same; wears the same clothes too. You can see the face procedure in the PTS going from masks of Pleasence to Gray.
The On Her Majesty's Secret Service Blofeld is killed off in the For Your Eyes Only opening.
They could have saved Blofeld be for a later film....but which one? Perhaps TSWLM ???
Maybe it was better to close the Blofeld/ SPECTRE arch with DAF.
I felt exactly the same way after the expectations had been set so high with OHMSS.