YMMV / You Only Live Twice

The film:

• Award Snub: Ken Adam did not get an Academy Award nomination for Best Production Design or Best Visual Effects, despite the iconic volcano lair set.
• Awesome Music: The title theme by Nancy Sinatra (known by many of the young ones through Robbie Williams' "Millennium").
• Complete Monster: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (SPECTRE), is an icy sociopath interested only in what profits him. Running SPECTRE with an iron fist, Blofeld facilitates terrorism around the world, and any underling who fails dies a painful, ignominious end. When he and Bond finally come face to face, Blofeld is attempting to start a nuclear war to have the Soviets and the Americans wipe one another out, allowing SPECTRE to blackmail the newest superpowers. When this fails, Blofeld undergoes plastic surgery and attempts to swindle his way into a pardon and a noble title, with brainwashed women spreading a bacteria to annihilate the world's agricultural supply. When this fails, Blofeld takes revenge by murdering Bond's new wife on their wedding day. Later having plastic surgery again, Blofeld has multiple diamonds stolen to power a satellite with an orbital laser. Blofeld calls an auction between the Soviets, Chinese and Americans: The winner will possess nuclear supremacy in the world. The losers will be wiped out by the satellite.
• Fair for Its Day: Even though the film features some general Asian stereotypes, like Osato saying "Ah, so..." while chatting with Bond, the film largely averts the Yellow Peril tropes that were still widespread at the time. Bond's allies in the Japanese Secret Service are all very competent and helpful. Moreover, the named Japanese characters in the film are all played by Japanese actors rather than white actors in yellowface or by other East Asians. The latter of which is a step up for the series.
• Franchise Original Sin: Most of the wackier elements of the franchise — such as the more cartoonish villains and over-the-top sets — that have been widely ridiculed in the years since got their start here. Here, it wasn't considered much of an issue since it was the first time the franchise had done anything like this, and the next film actually toned it down, but after that met with an underwhelming reception, Connery's brief comeback and then the majority of Roger Moore's era would go full-tilt on these elements, leading to each of the films trying to top the last with increasingly ludicrous results.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The title and its abbreviation, YOLT, became pretty amusing when the saying "You Only Live Once", abbreviated as "YOLO", became subject to Memetic Mutation in 2012, even spawning something of a Fandom Rivalry from Bond fans.
  • Donald Pleasence, after playing Blofeld, would go on to play Michael Myers' Arch-Enemy in the Halloween films, Dr. Loomis. Of course, an actor with the same name as Myers' would go on to play Blofeld parody Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers franchise.
  • Bond's "Japanese" disguise making him look like Spock became funnier when Sean Connery was William Shatner's pick to play Spock's half-brother Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Because Connery was unavailable, Shatner named the planet "Sha-Ka-Ree" after him.
  • Bond nearly goes into outer space before being caught by Blofeld. He would have to wait till Moonraker to finally fly out there.
  • While Bond was pretending to be Japanese, Connery's then-wife Diane Cilento was doubling for Mie Hama^note (swimming double, to be exact)!
  • Bond getting married as part of mission.
  • Sean Connery aboard a submarine.
  • Bond marries a Japanese woman in this movie. In Highlander, the immortal Ramirez, also played by Sean Connery, reveals he was once married to a Japanese princess centuries earlier.
• Ho Yay: Of a sort, played out more like a gay joke. Bond's password to meet his contact in Japan is "I love you", which leads to the following exchange:
  Bond: If you're Tanaka, then how do you feel about me?
  Tanaka: I... love you.
  Bond: I'm glad we've got that out of the way.
• It Was His Sled: While Blofeld's appearance (as well as his name if you haven't read the books, as up until this movie he was only referred to as "Number One".) was The Reveal originally, most people know about him looking like a short bald guy due to the numerous parodies (even if they've never heard of this specific Bond movie)
• Like You Would Really Do It: Did anybody actually believe that Bond was killed at the beginning of the movie?
• Narm:
  • Blofeld has to peek around his bodyguard Hans to show his face to Bond and the audience.
  • Bond's "Japanese" disguise makes him look more like Spock.
  • The whole rooftop chase is technically a masterwork of choreography, but between the ridiculously wide shots and the downright swooning "You Only Live Twice" instrumental, it looks more like a wacky comedy about Connery escaping autograph hunters.
• Narm Charm: Blofeld as the bald, scarred man with a white cat has been referenced and parodied so many times (and is so over-the-top anyway) it can be difficult to take him seriously nowadays. However, the reason why it's been parodied so often is precisely because it's an extremely striking portrayal, and the creepiness of Pleasence's performance makes it easy to see why it became iconic.
• Once Original, Now Overdone: This was the one of the first, if not the first, time a villain used a secret volcano lair. It's a concept that has been used (and parodied) so often that modern viewers might find it trite.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Peter Maivia uses his wrestling talent in one of the best one-on-one fights in the series, and even makes Connery's victory seem plausible, since he co-ordinated the fight scene himself.
  • Donald Pleasence only has a few minutes of screentime, yet he manages to be one of the most memorable villains in any Bond film.
  • Charles Gray's endearingly likeable cameo as Mr. Henderson.
• Protection from Editors: Roald Dahl was given 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.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • As Charles Gray would go on to play Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, it can be pretty jarring to see him as a One-Scene Wonder here if the viewer has seen the later film first.
  • The Giant Mook Bond fights in Osato Industries has gained this since it has become more widely known that it's Peter Maivia, famous wrestler and grandad of Dwayne Johnson.
  • One of the police officers who find James Bond's supposed corpse in the opening sequence is none other than Anthony Ainley, aka the Master.^note He is facing away from camera during his most prominent moment, but his voice is unmistakable It makes one wonder if there is an even greater-scope villain behind SPECTRE's unnamed foreign power.
    • It gets better, in the promotional documentary made for this film called “007 Goes to Japan”^note Found in the special features of the movie’s Blu-Ray release, Moneypenny’s never-before-seen assistant in the new scenes supposedly set during the events of the movie is played by a very young Kate O'Mara, AKA The Rani!
  • A policeman is played by Brian Wilde, who would later be best known for playing Mr. Barrowclough in Porridge and Foggy Dewhirst in Last of the Summer Wine.
  • A Russian spacecraft communicator is played by Richard Marner, who would later be best known for playing Colonel von Strohm in 'Allo 'Allo!.
• Signature Scene: Bond meeting Blofeld, with his face revealed for the first time.
• So Okay, It's Average: While nobody really disputes Ken Adam's absolutely magnificent sets or Donald Pleasence's Blofeld, a growing number of reviewers in recent years have come to find the script not a whole lot more coherent than the book, and Sean Connery just barely hiding his utter boredom with the 007 role (which would soon blossom into his sitting out On Her Majesty's Secret Service no matter how much money execs threw at him).
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The majority of the budget was funnelled into the admittedly impressive volcano set, meaning that the rocket model effects ended up being rather short-changed.
  • Relating to the volcano, while the actual set is quite impressive, the optical compositing effects used for establishing shots of the volcano are very obvious, especially on the Blu-Ray edition. Similar compositing issues plague some shots in the film's outer-space Cold Open, while other shots in the same sequence qualify as Visual Effects of Awesome.
  • Bond goes undercover as a Japanese peasant. Sean Connery in pancake makeup is one of the series' more embarrassing moments.
  • While flying around the volcano, right after a prolonged shot of the gyrocopter's shadow, we are then treated to a close-up of Bond with an invisible right arm.
  • The same shot of what is obviously a toy helicopter exploding is re-used four times in the aerial fight sequence, and very obviously cropped down during two of those instances.
• Stock Footage Failure: The Russian space launch uses stock footage of an American Gemini launch, down to the palm trees in the foreground.
• Values Dissonance:
  • "In Japan, men come first, women come second." Which can come across as either sexist or Orientalist to some today, depending on whether the original viewers were supposed to agree with it or not.
  • Sean Connery "passing" for Japanese in Yellowface is really not one of the series' most timeless moments.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The SPECTRE Volcano Lair. The set was five stories tall, had a working monorail and helipad, a massive armature to move the Bird 1 rocket, and cost more than Dr. No in its entirety.

The novel:

• It Was His Sled: Dr. Shatterhand is Blofeld.

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