James Bond "You Only Live Twice" on Epix, looks amazing..*

Really?
Connery looks bored out his mind for much of it.

 

I saw the movie when I was about 12, and it's a perfect movie for 12-years-olds. Even in 1967, I rolled my eyes at a lot of it -- particularly the scenes where characters are watching the action on Sony TVs, and I asked "where the hell are the cameras shooting this?" -- but you know... it's a fun movie that I think you can buy into as a bit of self-satire.

The underground volcano set is completely ridiculous, as is the plot in general. I also laugh as to how Blofeld looks completely different in every film. Master of disguise? Heavy plastic surgery? Recasting? You tell me.

 

No, these were state-of-the-art action movies of the day and they were deadly serious about it.

On the satrical side there was "Our Man Flint":

 

Oh, Flint was over-the-top crazy satire, but I think there were definitely silly moments in You Only Live Twice as well. I wouldn't call this a "deadly serious" movie by any means. I don't think any of the Moore movies fall into that category, and in fact I wouldn't say they got back to the mood of (say) From Russia with Love until the Timothy Dalton movies. Those were serious. The Pierce Brosnan movies were generally fairly serious. And the Daniel Craig movies are deadly serious, to the point that there's not a lot of fun in them. All just my opinion -- speaking as a guy who read all the Fleming novels several times and saw every Bond film as they came out, when they were new in theaters.

 

I saw them all as they appeared also (up to Live & Let Die).
There was always a dash of humour in the Connery films but I don't see auto-derision. The Roger Moore movies marked a change of course and they became more of a send-up with each movie (I'm not a fan of the Moore period). I preferred Dalton to the rather bland Brosnan and Craig was perfect as a hard-nosed, bulldozer of a Bond. It'll be interesting to see where they go after him.

 

"the world is coming to an end and he's buying cold cream."

 

I would argue that On Her Majesty's Secret Service was pretty close to the mood of From Russia With Love.

It was Diamonds are Forever where the real self-parody style started and pretty much stayed that way until Dalton.

 

The first traces of silliness were manisfesting themselves here. Connery looks embarrassed riding the helipod or whatever it is. Don't forget your safety helmet! No one could have pulled that off and looked cool, but I can see why he was rapidly wanting to get out of the franchise after that. Though it's too bad he didn't stick around for the relatively sober OHMSS.

 

Yeah, I'd agree -- OHMSS was mostly serious, though there was the main title where Lazenby turns to the camera and says, "this never happened to the other fella."

From Diamonds Are Forever on, the films started becoming half outrageous comedy/half action-adventure films. I think they started reeling it in by the early 1980s, but there were some awful films in there.

 

I liked that. It's like they said "yes, we know, not Connery. Now relax and enjoy the film; you just saw the best pre-titles bit in the series, and what's next is pretty good too".

 

Yeah, this much of a wink to the audience didn't bother me at all. It's a fun film when it needs to be fun, and the ending is as deadly serious as any Bond film ever was. Reportedly, director Peter Hunt really fought hard to keep the OHMSS ending the same as the book, with Bond's new wife killed by Blofeld in a drive-by shooting. Theater owners complained about the downer ending and also about the 2:20 running time, which was really, really long. I can remember seeing this at the theater and how the audience reaction was really subdued and kind of in a little bit of shock, because this was such an atypical Bond film.

BTW, there's a 90-minute documentary about George Lazenby that just premiered on streaming video a month or two, Becoming Bond. He tells a pretty good tale of a lot of the stuff he went through, and also admits his regrets in screwing up his career as a Hollywood actor through arrogance and bad advice.

 

She had her kicks!

 

I'll take Nancy's struggling over Sheryl Crow's 'strangling/constricted' rendition of "Tomorrow Never Dies".

 

Same for me, I was like 10. The part where Bond is ready to blow up the space craft while watching the Sony monitor is a real head scratcher. The kind of movie you are not meant to think about too much. The fight scene on the roof top is my favorite part of the film.

Actually in the books Blofeld does change his "look" from OHMSS to YOLT, so in some sense he was a master of disguise.

I wish they wold make this movie more like the book where Blofeld (and Ms. Bunt) are posing as botanists held up in a Japanese castle of death. Of course in the books, this happens after OHMSS. In the film series it is pretty awkward that Blofeld does not immediately recognize Bond after having just met in the previous film. (Oh yea, its a different actor, that explains it.)