You Only Live Twice is a 1967 spy film and the sixth film in the James Bond series, and the fifth film in the series if the non-Eon Productions Casino Royale (1967 film) is excluded. The film's screenplay was written by Roald Dahl, and was loosely based on Ian Fleming's 1964 novel You Only Live Twice. It is the first of three Bond films to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, and is the first Bond film to discard most of Fleming's plot, using only a few characters and locations from the book as the background for an entirely new story.

You Only Live Twice stars Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, who is dispatched to Japan after American and Soviet spacecraft vanish mysteriously, each nation blaming the other amidst the Cold War. Bond travels to a remote island to find the perpetrators, and comes face-to-face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, an organisation that is working for the government of an unnamed Asian power, implied to be China, to provoke war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although the character Blofeld played a role in previous films, You Only Live Twice is the first film to show his face.

During the filming in Japan, it was announced that Sean Connery would leave the role of Bond, but after one film's absence, he returned in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever and later in 1983's non-Eon Bond film Never Say Never Again. You Only Live Twice received positive reviews and grossed over $111 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) in worldwide box office. However, it was the first Bond film to see a decline in box-office revenue, primarily owing to the oversaturation of the spy film genre from Bond imitators, including a competing Bond film, Casino Royale, from Columbia Pictures (1967). The series continued with On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, the first official Bond film without Connery in the lead role.

Plot American NASA spacecraft Jupiter 16 is hijacked from orbit by an unidentified spaceship. The United States suspects the Soviet Union, but the British suspect Japanese involvement since the spacecraft landed in the Sea of Japan. To investigate, MI6 operative James Bond is sent to Tokyo, after faking his own death in Hong Kong and being buried at sea from .

While attending a sumo tournament, Bond is approached by Japanese secret service agent Aki. She takes him to meet local MI6 operative Dikko Henderson who claims to have critical evidence about the spacecraft, but a hitman kills him before he can elaborate. Bond kills the assailant, taking his clothing as a disguise, and is driven in the getaway car to Osato Chemicals. Once there, he subdues the driver and breaks into the office safe of the company's president, Mr. Osato. After obtaining secret documents, Bond is pursued by security and rescued by Aki, who flees to a secluded subway station. Bond chases her, but falls through a trap door leading to the office of the head of the Japanese secret service, Tiger Tanaka. The documents include a photograph of the cargo ship Ning-Po, with a microdot message saying the tourist who took the photo was killed as a security precaution.

Bond, masquerading as a potential buyer, returns to Osato Chemicals. He briefly meets with Osato, who orders his secretary, Helga Brandt, to kill him; both are SPECTRE agents. Once outside, assassins open fire on Bond before Aki rescues him. They drive to Kobe, where Ning-Po is docked. They learn that the ship was delivering elements for rocket fuel. After being discovered, Bond eludes the henchmen while Aki escapes. He is captured and awakens in Brandt's cabin on Ning-Po. Brandt interrogates before seducing him then flies him to Tokyo the next day, but en route she sets off a flare inside the plane, seals him in his seat, and bails out. Bond manages to land the plane and flees before it explodes.

Bond discovers where Ning-Po unloaded. He flies over the area in an armed autogyro created by Q. Near a volcano, Bond is attacked by and destroys four helicopters, confirming his suspicions of a nearby base. A Soviet spacecraft is captured in orbit by another unidentified craft, heightening tensions with the United States. The mysterious spaceship lands in a base hidden inside the volcano, operated by Ernst Stavro Blofeld of SPECTRE, who has been hired by an unnamed great power to start a Soviet-American war. Blofeld summons Osato and Brandt to his quarters for not having killed Bond; Osato blames Brandt, and Blofeld drops her into a pool filled with piranhas.

In Kyoto, Bond prepares to conduct a closer investigation of the island by training with Tanaka's ninjas and donning a Japanese disguise, which will include a staged marriage to an Ama diver, performed by an agent known on the island. While still in Kyoto, Aki is killed when she is poisoned in her sleep by a SPECTRE agent targeting Bond, who is asleep next to her.

Bond is introduced to Tanaka's student, Kissy Suzuki, who will perform the role of his wife. Acting on a lead, the pair reconnoitre a cave booby-trapped with phosgene gas, which leads to the volcano with the secret rocket base. Bond slips inside while Kissy goes to alert Tanaka. He locates and frees the captured American and Soviet astronauts and, with their help, steals a space suit to infiltrate the SPECTRE spacecraft, Bird One. However, Blofeld spots and detains him while Bird One is launched. He is taken into the control room, where he meets Blofeld.

Bird One closes in on an American space capsule, and U.S. forces prepare to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Tanaka's ninjas approach the base's entrance, but are detected and fired upon. Bond distracts Blofeld and lets in the ninjas. Blofeld kills Osato for his failure to eliminate Bond and prepares to execute him as well, but is stopped by Tanaka and flees. Bond fights his way back to the control room, kills Blofeld's bodyguard Hans, and activates Bird One self-destruct before it reaches the American capsule. As the Americans stand down their forces, Blofeld activates the base's self-destruct system and escapes. Bond, Kissy, Tanaka, and the surviving ninjas leave before the eruption destroys the base, and are picked up by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the British Secret Service.

Cast

Sean Connery as James Bond, an MI6 agent

Akiko Wakabayashi as Aki, an agent with the Japanese secret service who assists Bond Tetsurō Tamba as Tiger Tanaka, head of Japanese secret service (voice dubbed by Robert Rietty). Mie Hama as Kissy Suzuki, an ama girl agent who marries Bond as an undercover ploy; she is never referred to by name (voice dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl (uncredited)) Teru Shimada as Mr. Osato, a Japanese industrialist secretly affiliated to SPECTRE Karin Dor as Helga Brandt/No. 11, a SPECTRE assassin

Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary Desmond Llewelyn as Q, head of MI6 technical department Charles Gray as Dikko Henderson, British contact living in Japan. Gray would later play Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, also opposite Sean Connery. Bernard Lee as M, the head of MI6

Donald Pleasence as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the megalomaniacal head of the terrorist syndicate known as SPECTRE

Production

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the intended next film after Thunderball (1965), but the producers decided to adapt You Only Live Twice instead because OHMSS would require searching for high and snowy locations. Lewis Gilbert originally declined the offer to direct, but accepted after producer Albert R. Broccoli called him saying: "You can't give up this job. It's the largest audience in the world." Peter R. Hunt, who edited the first five Bond films, recalled that the producers had contracts with several directors, and Gilbert was simply assigned to the film. Ted Moore, the director of photography on the first four films, was unavailable because he was filming A Man for All Seasons and was replaced by Freddie Young.

Gilbert, Young, producers Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and production designer Ken Adam then went to Japan, spending three weeks searching for locations. SPECTRE's shore fortress headquarters was changed to an extinct volcano after the team learned that the Japanese do not build castles by the sea. The group was due to return to the UK on a BOAC Boeing 707 flight (BOAC Flight 911) on 5 March 1966, but cancelled after being told they had a chance to watch a ninja demonstration. That flight crashed 25 minutes after takeoff, killing all on board. In Tokyo, the crew also found Hunt, who decided to go on holiday after having his request to direct declined. Hunt was invited to direct the second unit for You Only Live Twice and accepted the job.

Unlike most James Bond films, which usually feature various locations around the world, almost the entire film is set in one country, and several minutes are devoted to an elaborate Japanese wedding. This is in keeping with Fleming's original novel, which also devoted a number of pages to the discussion of Japanese culture. Toho Studios provided soundstages, personnel, and the female Japanese stars to the producers.Kalat, David, A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series. McFarland & Company, 2007. p. 89

Writing

The first draft was written by Sydney Boehm based closely on the original novel. The producers had Harold Jack Bloom come to Japan with them to write a screenplay. His work was ultimately rejected, but since several of his ideas were used in the final script, he was given the credit of "Additional Story Material". Among these elements were the opening with Bond's fake death and burial at sea, and the ninja attack.Soter, Tom. Roald Dahl . Starlog, August 1991. Retrieved 15 February 2011. As the screenwriter of the previous Bond films, Richard Maibaum, was unavailable, Roald Dahl (a close friend of Ian Fleming) was chosen to write the adaptation, despite having no prior experience writing a screenplay except for the uncompleted The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling.

Dahl said that the original novel was "Fleming's worst book, with no plot in it which would even make a movie", and compared it to a travelogue, stating that he had to create a new plot though "I could retain only four or five of the original story's ideas." On creating the plot, Dahl said he "did not know what the hell Bond was going to do" despite having to deliver the first draft in six weeks, and decided to do a basic plot similar to Dr. No. He was inspired by the story of a missing nuclear-armed U.S. Air Force bomber over Spain and by the Soviet Union and the United States' recent first spacewalks from Voskhod 2 and Gemini 4. Dahl was given a free rein on his script, except for the character of Bond and "the girl formula", involving three women for Bond to seduce – an ally and a henchwoman who both get killed, and the main Bond girl. While the third involved a character from the book, Kissy Suzuki, Dahl had to create Aki and Helga Brandt to fulfil the rest.

Gilbert was mostly collaborative with Dahl's work, as the writer declared: "He not only helped in script conferences, but had some good ideas and then left you alone, and when you produced the finished thing, he shot it. Other directors have such an ego that they want to rewrite it and put their own dialogue in, and it's usually disastrous. What I admired so much about Lewis Gilbert was that he just took the screenplay and shot it. That's the way to direct: You either trust your writer or you don't."

Casting