You Only Live Twice [1967]

I am by no means a connoisseur of James Bond movies, but I've seen a few in my day. I know the earlier ones are more silly while the later ones are more serious. I know that while the movies never had great representation of women, they definitely start bad and get better. I've heard that depictions of racial groups could be really cringe at best and outright racist at worst. This movie has all those bad qualities, while also just being kind of odd in harder to define ways. There are some unique [derogatory] editing moments, a plot that only starts to make sense later, the origins of many an Austin Powers joke, and on top of all that, the script is written by Roald Dahl. You'd hardly guess considering the lack of traumatized children.

The film starts with an unidentified spaceship eating another spaceship and crashing to Earth. The Americans think it's the Russians. The British don't give a fuck. Apparently it landed in the sea of Japan so it's off to Japan. But first, James Bond fakes his death in the most convoluted and unreal way that involves a sea burial. Hence the title of the film: YOLT.

The first 40 minutes of the movie are kind of random and not too weird outside of a scene where a mini-helicopter is constructed with quick cuts and then there's a heli fight that feels like the film's equivalent of pod racing. Bond meets with a bunch of people in quirky offices and pretends to be someone else, easily now as everyone thinks he's dead, and sleeps with some women who will eventually all get killed. After he finds his Japanese hook-up though, we get women in bikinis doing rubdowns, the reveal of ninjas, the goal of turning James Bond Japanese (he just looks like a different white guy), marrying him off to a Japanese agent who spends most of the movie in a white bikini after she's out of her kimono, and hiding him in a remote fishing village. The location of the village means he sees helicopters flying into a volcano and goes to investigate.

It turns out that the evil spaceship was launched by Spectre, the head of which is the character Dr. Evil was based off of, stroking cat and all. This man has a lair in a volcano with a shitty monorail and a flesh-eating piranha pit. This movie is not serious, and outside of wanting to start a war between the US and Russia, the motivations are unclear.

Bond escapes the lair and solves the mystery. At least the cat is okay.

Spoon Rating: 5