Funny thing with YOLT. Sometimes i really like it. Sometimes not so much.
Pros:
.The locations, cinematography, and score are all top class.
.Without it, there might not be any Austin Powers.
.Donald Pleasence is iconic.
.Tiger Tanaka.
.Bond's "death".
.Beautiful theme song.
.Ken Adam's sets. The Volcano set is spectacular.
.Little Nellie.
.Aki and Kissy are gorgeous.
.Aki's death is disturbing.
.The first act, up until the bath scene, is perfect for me.
.The movie is just HUGE. Everything about it is epic.
Cons:
.Compared to the previous films, the writing isn't too special.
.Connery is still good but past his prime.
.The turning Japanese scenario could've been done better.
.The scenes between Bond and Kissy on the island i usually skip.
.The writing and dubbing of Kissy.
.The special effects are pretty dated. Not a big problem.
Note:
.Me and my 8 year old cousin watched about 9 Bonds last summer. He made me watch this one with him twice )
Cons:
.Compared to the previous films, the writing isn't too special.
As much as I like the movie, that is my main issue with YOLT, it's such a departure that could've lowered the series' level. I wish they had done Diamonds in 67 (or any other Fleming novel) so that they could do Her Majesty's with Twice being the follow up. Well, at least we got a proper OHMSS.
My Bond marathon continues... I just saw this film the other day and... oh boy. I have quite a fair bit to say.
Pro's:
* First appearance of Blofeld on-screen played superbly by Donald Pleasance
* Aki was a fantastic Bond girl
* Tiger Tanaka was a memorable Bond ally, first since Kerim Bey in From Russia With Love
* The first half of the film has quite a bit of action and memorable moments
Con's:
* The dying plot in the pre-credits. Why did the secret service feel that this was even necessary? Did they KNOW that James was going to be a target for SPECTRE, having defeated them three times already? Or was it just a coincidence? M's statement does not answer this question
* Poor writing in comparison to ALL previous Bond films
* Sean Connery's performance is nothing like, and again I say this, ALL previous Bond films. He came across as bored and un-interested and it clearly shows
* Kissy's performance and portrayal in the film
* Lack of memorability from the film as a whole, it's just Home Brand spread on a piece of bread
* The entire volcano sequence and segment is boring in my opinion
* Like TB, this film does not 'really' acknowledge Bond's past with SPECTRE (even though #1 knew the death of Bond was a hoax)
* The score of the movie
Overall... Compared with the prior films with SPECTRE, Connery's earlier performances and even GF, this film just does not hold up as memorable or worthwhile. It is a dud, pretty much like DAF and most of the Pierce Brosnan era (my opinion). I was actually happy that they hired a new actor to do the next film. Their only mistake was asking the original actor to return for what was it? $2 million USD?
I see what you mean. That wasn't as big an issue for me as it was some others, but it definitely took away the suspense where it was needed. The entire film just feels like a huge step down in quality from everything seen previously, and that MI6 really don't have much involvement.
* The dying plot in the pre-credits. Why did the secret service feel that this was even necessary? Did they KNOW that James was going to be a target for SPECTRE, having defeated them three times already? Or was it just a coincidence? M's statement does not answer this question (I like the symbolic nature of that scene , death and re-birth)
* Poor writing in comparison to ALL previous Bond films (decent in itself though)
* Sean Connery's performance is nothing like, and again I say this, ALL previous Bond films. He came across as bored and un-interested and it clearly shows (he did okay)
* Kissy's performance and portrayal in the film (much preferred Aki)
* The entire volcano sequence and segment is boring in my opinion (that's the best part of the whole movie if you ask me...what if it was possible to have such a base in a volcano...couldn't happen but cool notion)
* The score of the movie (wonderful if you ask me)
Connery paid 1.1 mill for DAF....I find GF kinda overrated and this is much more fun than Brosnans although GE is better
I'd say that they've had a car that was fixed on the magnet when the helicopter lifts it up.
The dumping may have been done with a kind of movable bolt. The fake magnet was large enough to hide 2 cows inside, so there could have been a lot of tec hidden there
President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
It certainly was real, the KV-107 had a lift capability of 7 tons , very easy to lift a car on the cargo hook with a dummy magnet , release is easy , I have seen it done from Lynx ,Wessex etc at airshows in the past before H&S kicked in, hook operated by the loadmaster.
I listened to the YOLT commentary recently. I believe they mentioned that it was real.
For anyone interested, I'll be uploading my review on it today or tomorrow (if it my editing ever wraps up).
I'm surprised by this; most consider the score to be one of the film's assets. What is it you dislike about it?
I'd like to know the answer too. In my opinion the score to YOLT is at least one of the top 3 in the series (I'd include OHMSS and TLD in that group).
It's an incredible soundtrack. Majorly iconic music including "Capsule in Space" and a beautiful love theme too. The Wedding is a stunning piece of music. I will say that I'm not a fan of the action theme (A Drop in the Ocean) it's a bit skittish and not the nicest thing to listen to. But other than that, fits the film's beauty and scale.
Pros:
Fast paced
Multiple iconic scenes
Great fights
Little Nelly
Beautiful scenery
Tight pacing; doesn't drag like Thunderball
Neither too ground nor too over the top. The perfect midway point between FRWL and DAF.
The Ninjas
The wedding scene
Tiger
Cons:
Helga's plotline isn't written well
Killing Aki off
If the last two things didn't happen, I'd say this film would be tied with Goldfinger for the most iconic, best Bond. But as such it sits just below Goldfinger as the second best Bond film in my opinion.
N-NANI?
Connery looking down the lens in Goldfinger for half a shot made quite a stir (not shake), here but there are 4 shots of Charles Gray as Henderson looking at it after "don't ask me who's doing it either".
Was he a SPECTRE agent and was killed for helping out on a mission for England, betraying their trust?
He did say he knew more but how much more?
This one will be much easier to cons-ify than the first four, but I will need to make special effort to pros-ify.
I gotta irrational bias. The Spy Who Loved Me was the first Bondfilm I ever saw, and over the next two years I read all the books and caught all the old ones (including Casino Royale) on teevee. Somehow, You Only Live Twice was the last of the old ones I saw ... and so much of what I liked about ...Spy... turned out to have been repeated entirely from this film, yet I resented this film for both not being a proper Fleming adaptation and for doing the exact same things I already liked so much in a much later film! I know, makes no sense, and I gotta make an effort to assess this film more objectively.
PROS
- Barry and Adam at the height of their powers
- Title song delivers a Life is But a Dream type vibe, now that the Bond film has evolved into pure fantasy
- Title song is the second most covered Bond song, after "The Look of Love" if you count that one.
- First cover I ever heard was by Soft Cell back in the mid80s! but I've heard a lot of jazz covers since then
- There's even a Simpsons cover, retitled "You Only Live Once", played in a relatively recent episode when Homer has a midlife crisis.
- Finally we meet Blofeld! we never heard his name in Thunderball, so this is his big reveal, and campy as it is, its actually more dramatic than Waltz's attempt to remake this scene in SPECTRE.
- Donald Pleasance's interpretion of Blofeld gave the world inspiration for Dr Evil, and if for nothing else the world must be grateful to this film.
- Blofeld's HQ has not just a monorail, hundreds of minions, vast moving parts, and an impregnable control room, but also his own apartment!
- Surely this set is bigger than the interior of the Liparus?
- I think both the interior of the Death Star and Lando Calresian's offices in ...Empire... owe a lot to the set design of this villains HQ.
- Blofeld's apartment contains a large renaissance painting (Rembrandt?), a huge tapestry over a huger fireplace, a nice carpet and an armoir (I think thats what its called?). The fight with the otherwise forgettable Hans really showcases Blofeld's interior decorating aesthetic.
- "closse shutterss"
- Also Tanaka's headquarters, Osato's offices, even Dikko's traditional japanese rooms, lotsa Adam goodness. Dig Tanaka's video monitors!
- Osatos's hidden bar.
- The shot where Osato interviews Bond and we see Bond's reflection on Osato's desk.
-I just noticed this: the Osato corporate logo looks a teensy bit like the emblem of Kih-Oskh from Cigars of the Pharoah. Probably a coincidence, but what if it's proof of a deeper conspiracy? What if Blofeld and Rastapopolous had been working together undetected behind the scenes of both series all this time, and ... and I'm the first to notice and now I've just spilled the truth right here on the internet?!!? oh damn, now my life really is in denger, shoulda kept my mouth shut, damndamndamn...
- At some point they had to leave Fleming behind, and this film introduces a huge repetoir of tropes to be repeated in future official films, tributes and parodies. A lot of the epic scale techno thriller imagery was done here first.
- Dahl actually knew Fleming, worked with him in real life secret service days, so is, in theory, a good choice to write the first all-new adventure. And he would rewrite more Fleming within the year for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and in that case I think improved upon the source material.
- Beautiful scenery of Japanese landscapes, historic buildings, and also futuristic modern architecture consistent with the Adam aesthetic.
The travelogue content, which made up half of Fleming's book, is one element that does more or less get faithfully adapted.
- Bond uses the plastic surgery knife/torture implement to cut Helga's bra straps
- Aki's another crazy woman driver: Fleming would have approved.
CONS
- Throws out almost all the Fleming.
- Sets precedent for all those 70s films, that they think they can just throw out whole books worth of Fleming.
- Tells the story out of sequence, meaning the cliffhanger ending of the next film would never get resolved.
- Fleming's book was the resolution of the saga, and the first chapter and most of the later chapters include some of the most important elements in Fleming's saga. Dahl, in choosing what to toss out and what to keep, tossed out almost everything that was actually important in Fleming's book.
- Even to this day, we are begging EON to please include some of these important scenes in Bond25, despite knowing what a hash they made of authentic Fleming content in Bond24.
- What they have given us is more scifi than any of the previous films, and looks more like contemporary parodies of the spy genre such as In Like Flint, than the actual previous Bond films. In fact, even though this film plays it mostly straight, it is more similar to the "funny" version of Casino Royale, and a better parody of the genre than Feldman's attempt at parody.
- For the most special effects heavy film so far, some of the effects sit unfavourably on the scale between Harryhausen and Ed Wood. The edits in the helicopter fight, the space hijackings, and the volcano explosion look like joke special effects as seen on SCTV.
- Aki and Kissy should have just been one character. All we gain by having two sexy Japanese secret agent characters is Aki's death scene, which is very well done but irrelavent to the plot.
- They threw out almost eveything about Kissy Suzuki that made her such a key character in Fleming's saga. And cast the weaker actress who could barely speak English.
- Connery looks really bad once dressed as a Japanese. Where'd those droopy jowls suddenly come from? He has no business scoffing at women who look like "pigs"
- Blofeld loses his cat before he gets on the monorail. Does he get another cat before the next adventure, or did he go back to look for Fluffy?
- The travelogue content maybe true to Fleming but some of it really drags, especially the ninja school and the wedding
- What if Nancy's father sang the title song? Now I've thought about it I want to hear it. Frank had a smoother tone and bigger range than Nancy.
Question: for those of you that saw this film beforeThe Spy Who Loved Me, how did you feel about all it's new postFleming content, and the fact that ...Spy... repeated so much of it? Do you therefor like ...Twice... better than I do, and see ...Spy... as the pointless remake?
Dicuss.
Question: for those of you that saw this film beforeThe Spy Who Loved Me, how did you feel about all it's new postFleming content, and the fact that ...Spy... repeated so much of it? Do you therefor like ...Twice... better than I do, and see ...Spy... as the pointless remake?
Dicuss.
I knew what to expect going in. I'd read the book, and the film's outer space content had been well publicised so I knew it wasn't going to be a faithful adaptation. I was grateful for the Fleming material we did get. Watching it on the big screen (which I highly recommend to those who haven't) was very impressive, most of all of course being the reveal of the volcano set, and John Barry's wonderful score makes it all the more enjoyable. The weaknesses become apparent on repeated viewings, but that's only to be expected.
Much the same with TSWLM. Obviously it was well known that it wouldn't be the book, and the tone of the film helped to conceal the similarities with YOLT. Only helped, they're there for all to see. I didn't think it was pointless. To me, it was just an example of Bond plot #2, as TND would be many years later.
Bond plot #1- Someone is smuggling a precious item (gold, diamonds, Fabergé eggs, microchips). Bond is sent to investigate, and finds that the villain's real scheme is much more dangerous. He will meet and link up with a beautiful (naturally) woman associated with the villain.
Bond plot #2- Someone is trying to cause war between two world powers by interfering with major hardware (spaceships, submarines, warships). Bond is sent to investigate and teams up with a beautiful (naturally) female agent from another country.
Blofeld's HQ has not just a monorail, hundreds of minions, vast moving parts, and an impregnable control room, but also his own apartment!
What, you expected him to commute from his home to the office?
I agree that the volcano set, from the grand to the smallest details, is the best in the series and arguably the best in all of film.
Question: for those of you that saw this film beforeThe Spy Who Loved Me, how did you feel about all it's new postFleming content, and the fact that ...Spy... repeated so much of it? Do you therefor like ...Twice... better than I do, and see ...Spy... as the pointless remake?
Dicuss.
Believe it or not, I have never thought of them as similar films at all. I saw Spy first, so maybe that's why. I recognize there are plenty of common elements, but you could say that about a lot of Bond films. To me, the films that are almost identical (at least in terms of plot structure) are Spy and Moonraker.
Comments
Bet you feel the same way about Christmas also!!
{[]
"Better make that two."
Pros:
.The locations, cinematography, and score are all top class.
.Without it, there might not be any Austin Powers.
.Donald Pleasence is iconic.
.Tiger Tanaka.
.Bond's "death".
.Beautiful theme song.
.Ken Adam's sets. The Volcano set is spectacular.
.Little Nellie.
.Aki and Kissy are gorgeous.
.Aki's death is disturbing.
.The first act, up until the bath scene, is perfect for me.
.The movie is just HUGE. Everything about it is epic.
Cons:
.Compared to the previous films, the writing isn't too special.
.Connery is still good but past his prime.
.The turning Japanese scenario could've been done better.
.The scenes between Bond and Kissy on the island i usually skip.
.The writing and dubbing of Kissy.
.The special effects are pretty dated. Not a big problem.
Note:
.Me and my 8 year old cousin watched about 9 Bonds last summer. He made me watch this one with him twice
8/10 -{
Pro's:
* First appearance of Blofeld on-screen played superbly by Donald Pleasance
* Aki was a fantastic Bond girl
* Tiger Tanaka was a memorable Bond ally, first since Kerim Bey in From Russia With Love
* The first half of the film has quite a bit of action and memorable moments
Con's:
* The dying plot in the pre-credits. Why did the secret service feel that this was even necessary? Did they KNOW that James was going to be a target for SPECTRE, having defeated them three times already? Or was it just a coincidence? M's statement does not answer this question
* Poor writing in comparison to ALL previous Bond films
* Sean Connery's performance is nothing like, and again I say this, ALL previous Bond films. He came across as bored and un-interested and it clearly shows
* Kissy's performance and portrayal in the film
* Lack of memorability from the film as a whole, it's just Home Brand spread on a piece of bread
* The entire volcano sequence and segment is boring in my opinion
* Like TB, this film does not 'really' acknowledge Bond's past with SPECTRE (even though #1 knew the death of Bond was a hoax)
* The score of the movie
Overall... Compared with the prior films with SPECTRE, Connery's earlier performances and even GF, this film just does not hold up as memorable or worthwhile. It is a dud, pretty much like DAF and most of the Pierce Brosnan era (my opinion). I was actually happy that they hired a new actor to do the next film. Their only mistake was asking the original actor to return for what was it? $2 million USD?
YOLT gets a 5/10.
1. Dalton 2. Moore 3. Connery 4. Lazenby 5. Craig 6. Brosnan
TSWLM is almost like the 2nd go for Gilbert (I mean the plot is similar, just on sea) - it's a much tighter, better made film.
"Better make that two."
1. Dalton 2. Moore 3. Connery 4. Lazenby 5. Craig 6. Brosnan
I'm surprised by this; most consider the score to be one of the film's assets. What is it you dislike about it?
YOLT 50 today.....I guess we should be toasting in sake and not vodka martini for this
First Bond I ever saw back in '88 (same yr as Osato died , too)
* The dying plot in the pre-credits. Why did the secret service feel that this was even necessary? Did they KNOW that James was going to be a target for SPECTRE, having defeated them three times already? Or was it just a coincidence? M's statement does not answer this question (I like the symbolic nature of that scene , death and re-birth)
* Poor writing in comparison to ALL previous Bond films (decent in itself though)
* Sean Connery's performance is nothing like, and again I say this, ALL previous Bond films. He came across as bored and un-interested and it clearly shows (he did okay)
* Kissy's performance and portrayal in the film (much preferred Aki)
* The entire volcano sequence and segment is boring in my opinion (that's the best part of the whole movie if you ask me...what if it was possible to have such a base in a volcano...couldn't happen but cool notion)
* The score of the movie (wonderful if you ask me)
Connery paid 1.1 mill for DAF....I find GF kinda overrated and this is much more fun than Brosnans although GE is better
The dumping may have been done with a kind of movable bolt. The fake magnet was large enough to hide 2 cows inside, so there could have been a lot of tec hidden there
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
It certainly was real, the KV-107 had a lift capability of 7 tons , very easy to lift a car on the cargo hook with a dummy magnet , release is easy , I have seen it done from Lynx ,Wessex etc at airshows in the past before H&S kicked in, hook operated by the loadmaster.
For anyone interested, I'll be uploading my review on it today or tomorrow (if it my editing ever wraps up).
I'd like to know the answer too. In my opinion the score to YOLT is at least one of the top 3 in the series (I'd include OHMSS and TLD in that group).
Right now I'm listening to a killer surf rock version of YOLT by Deadbolt. It's on a compilation CD called Secret Agent S.O.U.N.D.S.
And on a related note, Man or Astroman plays a smoking rendition of the Goldfinger theme on that same CD.
Highly recommended.
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
It's an incredible soundtrack. Majorly iconic music including "Capsule in Space" and a beautiful love theme too. The Wedding is a stunning piece of music. I will say that I'm not a fan of the action theme (A Drop in the Ocean) it's a bit skittish and not the nicest thing to listen to. But other than that, fits the film's beauty and scale.
"Better make that two."
Fast paced
Multiple iconic scenes
Great fights
Little Nelly
Beautiful scenery
Tight pacing; doesn't drag like Thunderball
Neither too ground nor too over the top. The perfect midway point between FRWL and DAF.
The Ninjas
The wedding scene
Tiger
Cons:
Helga's plotline isn't written well
Killing Aki off
If the last two things didn't happen, I'd say this film would be tied with Goldfinger for the most iconic, best Bond. But as such it sits just below Goldfinger as the second best Bond film in my opinion.
Connery looking down the lens in Goldfinger for half a shot made quite a stir (not shake), here but there are 4 shots of Charles Gray as Henderson looking at it after "don't ask me who's doing it either".
Was he a SPECTRE agent and was killed for helping out on a mission for England, betraying their trust?
He did say he knew more but how much more?
I gotta irrational bias. The Spy Who Loved Me was the first Bondfilm I ever saw, and over the next two years I read all the books and caught all the old ones (including Casino Royale) on teevee. Somehow, You Only Live Twice was the last of the old ones I saw ... and so much of what I liked about ...Spy... turned out to have been repeated entirely from this film, yet I resented this film for both not being a proper Fleming adaptation and for doing the exact same things I already liked so much in a much later film! I know, makes no sense, and I gotta make an effort to assess this film more objectively.
_______________________________________________________________
PROS
- Barry and Adam at the height of their powers
- Title song delivers a Life is But a Dream type vibe, now that the Bond film has evolved into pure fantasy
- Title song is the second most covered Bond song, after "The Look of Love" if you count that one.
- First cover I ever heard was by Soft Cell back in the mid80s! but I've heard a lot of jazz covers since then
- There's even a Simpsons cover, retitled "You Only Live Once", played in a relatively recent episode when Homer has a midlife crisis.
- Finally we meet Blofeld! we never heard his name in Thunderball, so this is his big reveal, and campy as it is, its actually more dramatic than Waltz's attempt to remake this scene in SPECTRE.
- Donald Pleasance's interpretion of Blofeld gave the world inspiration for Dr Evil, and if for nothing else the world must be grateful to this film.
- Blofeld's HQ has not just a monorail, hundreds of minions, vast moving parts, and an impregnable control room, but also his own apartment!
- Surely this set is bigger than the interior of the Liparus?
- I think both the interior of the Death Star and Lando Calresian's offices in ...Empire... owe a lot to the set design of this villains HQ.
- Blofeld's apartment contains a large renaissance painting (Rembrandt?), a huge tapestry over a huger fireplace, a nice carpet and an armoir (I think thats what its called?). The fight with the otherwise forgettable Hans really showcases Blofeld's interior decorating aesthetic.
- "closse shutterss"
- Also Tanaka's headquarters, Osato's offices, even Dikko's traditional japanese rooms, lotsa Adam goodness. Dig Tanaka's video monitors!
- Osatos's hidden bar.
- The shot where Osato interviews Bond and we see Bond's reflection on Osato's desk.
-I just noticed this: the Osato corporate logo looks a teensy bit like the emblem of Kih-Oskh from Cigars of the Pharoah.
Probably a coincidence, but what if it's proof of a deeper conspiracy? What if Blofeld and Rastapopolous had been working together undetected behind the scenes of both series all this time, and ... and I'm the first to notice and now I've just spilled the truth right here on the internet?!!? oh damn, now my life really is in denger, shoulda kept my mouth shut, damndamndamn...
- At some point they had to leave Fleming behind, and this film introduces a huge repetoir of tropes to be repeated in future official films, tributes and parodies. A lot of the epic scale techno thriller imagery was done here first.
- Dahl actually knew Fleming, worked with him in real life secret service days, so is, in theory, a good choice to write the first all-new adventure. And he would rewrite more Fleming within the year for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and in that case I think improved upon the source material.
- Beautiful scenery of Japanese landscapes, historic buildings, and also futuristic modern architecture consistent with the Adam aesthetic.
The travelogue content, which made up half of Fleming's book, is one element that does more or less get faithfully adapted.
- Bond uses the plastic surgery knife/torture implement to cut Helga's bra straps
- Aki's another crazy woman driver: Fleming would have approved.
CONS
- Throws out almost all the Fleming.
- Sets precedent for all those 70s films, that they think they can just throw out whole books worth of Fleming.
- Tells the story out of sequence, meaning the cliffhanger ending of the next film would never get resolved.
- Fleming's book was the resolution of the saga, and the first chapter and most of the later chapters include some of the most important elements in Fleming's saga. Dahl, in choosing what to toss out and what to keep, tossed out almost everything that was actually important in Fleming's book.
- Even to this day, we are begging EON to please include some of these important scenes in Bond25, despite knowing what a hash they made of authentic Fleming content in Bond24.
- What they have given us is more scifi than any of the previous films, and looks more like contemporary parodies of the spy genre such as In Like Flint, than the actual previous Bond films. In fact, even though this film plays it mostly straight, it is more similar to the "funny" version of Casino Royale, and a better parody of the genre than Feldman's attempt at parody.
- For the most special effects heavy film so far, some of the effects sit unfavourably on the scale between Harryhausen and Ed Wood. The edits in the helicopter fight, the space hijackings, and the volcano explosion look like joke special effects as seen on SCTV.
- Aki and Kissy should have just been one character. All we gain by having two sexy Japanese secret agent characters is Aki's death scene, which is very well done but irrelavent to the plot.
- They threw out almost eveything about Kissy Suzuki that made her such a key character in Fleming's saga. And cast the weaker actress who could barely speak English.
- Connery looks really bad once dressed as a Japanese. Where'd those droopy jowls suddenly come from? He has no business scoffing at women who look like "pigs"
- Blofeld loses his cat before he gets on the monorail. Does he get another cat before the next adventure, or did he go back to look for Fluffy?
- The travelogue content maybe true to Fleming but some of it really drags, especially the ninja school and the wedding
- What if Nancy's father sang the title song? Now I've thought about it I want to hear it. Frank had a smoother tone and bigger range than Nancy.
_______________________________________________________________
Question: for those of you that saw this film before The Spy Who Loved Me, how did you feel about all it's new postFleming content, and the fact that ...Spy... repeated so much of it? Do you therefor like ...Twice... better than I do, and see ...Spy... as the pointless remake?
Dicuss.
I knew what to expect going in. I'd read the book, and the film's outer space content had been well publicised so I knew it wasn't going to be a faithful adaptation. I was grateful for the Fleming material we did get. Watching it on the big screen (which I highly recommend to those who haven't) was very impressive, most of all of course being the reveal of the volcano set, and John Barry's wonderful score makes it all the more enjoyable. The weaknesses become apparent on repeated viewings, but that's only to be expected.
Much the same with TSWLM. Obviously it was well known that it wouldn't be the book, and the tone of the film helped to conceal the similarities with YOLT. Only helped, they're there for all to see. I didn't think it was pointless. To me, it was just an example of Bond plot #2, as TND would be many years later.
Bond plot #2- Someone is trying to cause war between two world powers by interfering with major hardware (spaceships, submarines, warships). Bond is sent to investigate and teams up with a beautiful (naturally) female agent from another country.
I agree that the volcano set, from the grand to the smallest details, is the best in the series and arguably the best in all of film. Believe it or not, I have never thought of them as similar films at all. I saw Spy first, so maybe that's why. I recognize there are plenty of common elements, but you could say that about a lot of Bond films. To me, the films that are almost identical (at least in terms of plot structure) are Spy and Moonraker.