Taglines: Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond.
You Only Live Twice movie synopsis. Orbiting over the Earth is Jupiter 16, a US space capsule manned by two astronauts. As they maintain radio contact with bases in Hawaii and Houston, one of the astronauts ventures outside to make routine repairs, when radar picks up another spacecraft closing fast. Radio contact is lost and the spacecraft opens up and swallows Jupiter 16, in the process severing the other astronaut’s lifeline and leaving him to die in space.
In Hong Kong, James Bond is enjoying a romantic encounter with a Chinese woman. She leaves the bed a pushes a button that levers it into the wall. Two men burst into the room with machine guns and spray the bed. When the police arrive, the woman has disappeared and Bond is found dead.
A contentious meeting between US and Russian diplomats follows, brokered by a member of Britain’s foreign service. The US believes the pirate spacecraft is Russian in origin, having tracked the ship in orbit before it ventured into the atmosphere; the US is to launch another capsule in three weeks and will regard interference with the ship as an act of war, and will launch a military attack on Russia should the capsule come under attack itself. Great Britain, however, believes the unidentified ship landed in the Sea of Japan based on information from a tracking station in Singapore, and that a British official in Hong Kong is following this lead.
MI6’s best agent, James Bond, is ordered to investigate. His assassination in Hong Kong was a ruse to trick his enemies into believing he was dead so he can continue his mission undetected. He is ordered to Japan to meet with members of Japan’s SIS. One, a beautiful woman named Aki, takes him to the home of Dikko Henderson, a British intelligence official living in Japan who has discovered information about the rogue spacecraft.
Henderson theorizes that a third power is using Osato Chemicals, a vast multinational corporation, to launch spacecraft from Japan to attack US and Russian spacecrafts and trigger war between the two superpowers. However, Henderson is stabbed to death before he can reveal more. James subdues Henderson’s killer, then takes his place and infiltrates Osato Chemicals to find more information. He battles with a large bodyguard and defeats him before he finds a safe containing paperwork and a film negative that he takes before being pursued by security guards.
You Only Live Twice is a 1967 spy film and the fifth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. You Only Live Twice is the first Bond film to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, who later directed the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me and the 1979 film Moonraker, both starring Roger Moore. The film’s screenplay was written by Roald Dahl, and loosely based on Ian Fleming’s 1964 novel of the same name. It is the first James 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.
In the film, Bond is dispatched to Japan after American and Soviet manned spacecraft disappear mysteriously in orbit. With each nation blaming the other amidst the Cold War, Bond travels secretly to a remote Japanese island to find the perpetrators and comes face to face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. The film reveals the appearance of Blofeld, who was previously a partially unseen character. SPECTRE is working for the government of an unnamed Asian power, implied to be the People’s Republic of China, to provoke war between the superpowers.
During the filming in Japan, it was announced that Sean Connery would retire from the role of Bond, but after a hiatus, he returned in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever and later 1983’s non-Eon Bond film Never Say Never Again. You Only Live Twice was a great success, receiving positive reviews and grossing over $111 million in worldwide box office.
You Only Live Twice (1967)
Directed by: Lewis Gilbert
Starring: Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Tetsuro Tamba, Mie Hama, Teru Shimada, Karin Dor, Donald Pleasence, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Tsai Chin, Charles Gray, Michael Chow
Screenplay by: Roald Dahl
Production Design by: Ken Adam
Cinematography by: Freddie Young
Film Editing by: Peter R. Hunt
Set Decoration by: David Ffolkes
Art Direction by: Harry Pottle
Music by: John Barry
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: June 13, 1967 (United Kingdom and United States)
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