(This is a revised version of a Persona
Paper post.)
(Spoilers)
An American spacecraft is in orbit and one
of the astronauts goes out on a spacewalk. But then some bigger, unidentified
spacecraft flies up. The front of it opens up and it swallows the smaller
spacecraft, with the guy on the spacewalk getting cut off and drifting off to
die. The Americans blame the Russians, but the British point out the craft
landed somewhere near Japan.
Meanwhile, Bond is in Hong Kong where he
is shot and “killed.” He is then buried at sea, but his body is picked up by
divers and taken to a submarine where we find out that Bond had just faked his
death to confuse his enemies. M is on the submarine and gives him his orders to
go to Tokyo and make contact with their local agent Henderson. Bond is picked
up by Aki and taken to Henderson. Henderson starts to tell Bond about who he
thinks is behind this, when he’s killed.
Bond follows the killer and kills him. He
then sees the getaway driver. Fortunately, the killer was wearing a mask, so
Bond changes clothes, puts on the mask, and pretends to be injured.
The getaway driver takes him to the office
of Mr. Osato of Osato Chemicals. He kills the driver and breaks into a safe and
takes some documents.
Bond leaves the building and is picked up
by Aki who takes him to Tanaka, the head of the Japanese secret service. They
discover a photo of a ship in the documents, along with the message that the
tourist who took the photo was killed for security.
Bond poses as a chemical buyer, and goes
to meet Mr. Osato and his assistant/pilot/assassin Helga. Mr. Osato isn’t
fooled, and orders Helga to kill Bond. Some guys try to shoot him down on the
street, but Aki saves him.
Aki takes Bond to the dock where the ship
is – discovering it is shipping rocket fuel – and they are attacked by the
dockworkers. Aki gets away, but Bond is captured. He wakes up tied to a chair
and being questioned by Helga. He tries to bribe her, and she seems okay with
it, even sleeping with him. But the next day, she locks him into a small plane,
bails out, and hopes he’ll die in the crash. But he manages to save himself.
Q shows up with a small, autogyro and Bond
flies it around the island where the ship unloaded its cargo under cover of
dark. There are some volcanoes, but Bond doesn’t see anything. Still, he’s
attacked by some helicopters and shoots them all down.
At some point in all this, a Russian
spacecraft is captured, and the Russians blame the Americans. The Americans
deny everything, and state that if anything happens to their next space
mission, they will consider it an act of war by Russia and launch nukes.
Osato and Helga meet with Blofeld, the
head of SPECTRE. He is disappointed in their failure to kill Bond, and dumps
Helga into his piranha pool.
Tanaka has a small ninja army, and Bond
wants to go to the island and find the base. But first, Tanaka has to train
Bond as a ninja, and then make him look Japanese. Aki is there, but an
assassination attempt on Bond misses and she dies.
The reason they need to make Bond look
Japanese is that while the other ninjas will go to the island and hide, Bond
will have to go to the fishing village there as the new husband of one of
Tanaka’s agents on the island, Kissy. They go exploring and find that the lake
inside the volcano isn’t real, but a metal roof hiding an underground base. Kissy
goes back to lead Tanaka and the ninja’s there, while Bond goes in.
Bond finds the captured astronaut and
cosmonauts and frees them. They then help him into a spacesuit and he tries to
sneak onboard their rocket. But he doesn’t act like an astronaut, and Blofeld
notices him and has him brought in. The rocket launches with SPECTRE astronauts
instead heading for the American spacecraft. Apparently, the plan was for
Blofeld to start a war between America and Russia for some other country.
Tanaka attacks and they are being killed
but Bond opens the roof and there’s a big gun/ninja battle. Blofeld kills Osato
and later goes to kill Bond but is stopped when Tanaka hits his hand with a
star. Bond fights through the confusion to the control room and activates the
SPECTRE spacecraft’s self-destruct before it can get to the American one.
Blofeld activates the base’s self-destruct, and everyone else escapes the base
and is rescued by submarine.
#
This movie was confusing to watch because
I’ve seen other Bond movies. For example, when the divers picked up Bond’s body
after his funeral, I thought they’d take him to some sunken ship that was a
secret base, but instead they just took him to a submarine. The sunken ship
hidden base is from The Man with the
Golden Gun. When we meet Henderson, I recognized him as a Bond villain. So
I was confused when he was killed. Turns out the actor, Charles Grey, would
play Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever.
Also, when Bond is training to be a ninja, I remembered a scene of Bond being surrounded
by girls and having to fight at some martial arts camp. He bows to his
opponent, then kicks him in the balls and returns to the girls. I was waiting
for that to happened, but I believe that is also from The Man with the Golden Gun. I’m sure if you really dug into
things, you’d find more similarities.
Anyway, this movie has a few problems. For
example, the bad guys have about fourteen opportunities to kill Bond, but they
never take them. For example, Helga has him tied to a chair and is threatening
him with a knife. Instead of just slicing his throat, she cuts him loose, lets
him cut off her dress, have sex, and then decides to trap him into a crashing
airplane while she bails out. You know, a standard way to kill someone. And then Blofeld captures Bond and instead of
just killing him, lets him hang around in the control center. Bond kills a
guard so he could open the roof, but they still don’t shoot him. Blofeld then
takes Bond and Osato to “escape.” They stop at one point, and Blofeld kills
Osato. He takes Bond through a door, and then decides that’s the place to kill
Bond, instead of the six other chances he had.
But probably the bigger issue – when
watching it from today – is making Sean Connery look Japanese. Which, looking
at it from the story, makes no sense. For some reason Bond couldn’t just get on
the island with the ninja army, and he would stand out in this small, fishing
village. But I didn’t catch any mention of the people from the secret volcano
base going to the village and maybe getting tipped off by a stranger. Another point
that doesn’t really fit anywhere, but nobody in this little village noticed
these giant rockets launching and landing only a few miles inland? But why did
Bond have to go to the village? Oh, that’s right. He needed to hook up with
Kissy.
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