SPOILERS- Parts of NTTD taken from Fleming's YOLT novel
Barbel
ScotlandPosts: 37,866Chief of Staff
Several ideas in NTTD are taken from Ian Fleming’s “You Only Live Twice”. To paraphrase Fleming, once might be happenstance, twice may be coincidence, but this many is clearly deliberate action. With thanks to Charmed & Dangerous, here’s a list of some of those. Perhaps members can add others they’ve spotted- I hope to spot more myself on repeated viewings.
Perhaps most importantly, Bond having a child he is/was unaware of. In the novel, Kissy Suzuki is pregnant when she and Bond part ways. This is unknown to Bond, just as Madeleine’s pregnancy was when they part at the start of the film.
The Garden Of Death aka Poison Garden, situated on a remote island near Japan. This is not only straight from the novel, it’s integral to its plot.
Similarly, Bond’s death (or apparent death) on or near there.
Bond saying “Die, Blofeld, die!” as he strangles his greatest enemy.
At Bond’s wake in NTTD, M quotes “I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time” as an epitaph. This Jack London quote is in Bond’s obituary in the novel, although there it’s quoted by Mary Goodnight who of course is not in NTTD.
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I hope to spot more with repeated viewings too, but that's a great start.
Its also interesting that Fleming ended his SPECTRE cycle with YOLT - and NTTD effectively does the same with the DC story arc.
The Craig era character arch is Fleming's character arch, from CR to YOLT-novel. Just perfect. Kudos to Craig-Broccoli-Wilson.
And to Purvis & Wade? At least some of this is from them.
Well, let's say I think they did a good job adapting Ian Fleming, following orders from Broccoli-Wilson-Craig.
I must say, that I was very much underwhelmed with their interpretation of the Garden of Death.
I expected to see much more, in my mind it‘s a deadly jungle full of flowers, plants and animals and not a concrete pit filled with some deadly fluid and an occasional flower.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Indeed, Fleming's description is more haunting and would have made for great visuals.
OK, I'll try and think of a few more similarities between Fleming's You Only Live Twice and No Time to Die:
Both missions begin with Bond 'in decline'; in NTTD he is retired and in YOLT he is considered to have 'lost his edge' as an agent;
Both missions involve Bond having his 007 number taken away for most of the mission;
In YOLT Bond knocks Irma Bunt unconscious only for the henchman to die later on. Primo suffers a similar fate in NTTD.
"The spectre of defeat..."
YOLT has a beautiful ending paragraph, very emotionally satisfying. This movie has, well, an ordinary and rather British full stop.
Does anyone know why they renamed The Garden Of Death to The Poison Garden? I mean, I like the poison garden just fine, but I don't know why they just didn't use the original name?
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
NTTD utilises the elements of Fleming's 'You Only Live Twice' as listed but the two texts offer widely different experiences, even given their contexts in different centuries and media. NTTD is mainly dark and dour, whereas at the heart of 'You Only Live Twice' is a travelogue, an exercise in journalistic fascination, albeit book-ended by material at the beginning about Bond's post-OHMSS accidie and, at the end, by a change of gear to the St. George-and-the-Dragon fable of Bond's vengeance against Blofeld. The YOLT movie charms by picking up tonally on a joie de vivre in the travelogue sections central to the novel, whereas NTTD lacks that quality, preferring the darker themes instead.
@Higgins I agree with your point about the Garden of Death and how you visualise it. To my mind, the NTTD version is probably not much closer to that vision than Hai Fat's garden of grotesques at night in TMWTGG (where Nick Nack imitates a statue wielding a spear).
@Jarvio I hadn't noticed they renamed it; odd that; like they didn't want to acknowledge where the inspiration stemmed from. It was very poorly realised. Not much better than Blofeld's indoor garden in the actual adaptation. Mind, at least that had piranhas.
Maybe they didn't want to use the proper name for the fear of linking it to the controversial topic of suicide, that's the only reason I can think of anyway.
I know I'm in the minority but I would have loved for it to be the film's title.
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
Your not. The title's terrible. Whatever happened to the much mooted Shatterhand? Somewhere along the line, I feel the producers may have wanted to follow Fleming and utilise facets of YOLT, but they bottled it. Maybe that's also a reason Danny Boyle jumped ship.
I have been trying to get used to the title ever since it was announced. I was so dissapointed when the title was announced because it is such a bland title with no character. It is basically identical to Die Another Day. If DAD had a different title, Icarus or something, then NTTD would have sat better with me. But because it's so samey to past titles, it dissapointed me because I wanted something a bit more creative for a DC title.
Ever since the title was announced though, I was hoping that in some way, the title at least related to the film in a unique way. It doesn't unfortunately. Except for the fact that bond dies, but that's an idea I hate in and of itself.
I suppose you could relate the title to the Japanese Noh mask, but that is a bit of a stretch really.
It's frustrating because other than that, I really like this film.
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
That isn’t the reason Danny Boyle ‘jumped ship’ 👀
Sorry that wasn't clear. I should have written "another reason." Has he ever spoken on the record for his reasons to leave the director's chair? I thought it was all rumour, although now sadly a likely truth.
I mouthed the words to the Jack London quote with a tear in my eye as M was saying it. My wife looked at me with total shock.
The Craig Era Bond films often sought out elements of the books to draw inspiration from because the original movies veered wildly from both plot and theme from it's source material. Non-fans would never likely see connections like the homages to OHMSS in both SPECTRE and NTTD, for instance, or the subtle callbacks to YOLT especially because it references things that were in the books but not any of the movies.
Bond's backstory was covered in his "authorized biography" as well as bits and pieces included in the books and short stories, and much of that made up the background used in Skyfall and SPECTRE, though they invented the ret-conned foster brothers relationship between Bond and Blofeld - a relationship that I though worked better when it included the much superior end of Act 2 in SPECTRE (included in the shooting script) where Blofeld and Bond had one last game of poker - the game that their foster father loved to play with Bond which Ernst was not included in because he didn't know how to play.
The affection that Oberhauser had for Bond due to their common interests ate at Blofeld, as he was a nerdy bookworm with little interest in the outdoors or action sports. He then spent all of his free time studying the game, learning the odds - becoming a master of theory. Finally when he challenged Bond and had him almost defeated, Bond went all in using his birth father's watch as collateral and Blofeld folded - as Bond had bluffed and won everything. The kid already had psych damage from a bad childhood but this was the last turn of the screw that was needed to turn him into a sociopath. They recreated that game and at the end, Bond again put his watch in as collateral and IT BLEW UP freeing Bond and Madeline. That brain probe thing was pretty dumb in comparison.
in the book the Garden of Death only kills individuals who choose to enter it. This poison garden is going to kill the whole world, we see the map showing all the cities that will be targeted.
I think this is a suitably cinematic reinterpretation, the book version was a more intimate scale, perhaps because Blofeld had gone completely mad and couldnt see beyond his own garden walls any more. But I think its also the first legitimate End of the World type Doomsday plot CraigBond has faced, so suitable for his grand finale.
Speaking of which, M watches Blofeld babbling in his cell and remarks he's "as loony as a bag of bees" or something similar. Anybody remember the actual quote? But this Blofeld turns out to just be faking the madness.
Pretty sure it's Tanner who says "mad as a bag of bees".
yes it is
thanks for clarification.
Point is Blofeld is apparently a raving loony, like the bookBlofeld clearly was when Bond finally spotted him wandering through his Garden.
Is "mad as a bag of bees" a phrase? whats it mean? a bag of bees would be angry-mad, but loony-mad?
I've never heard the phrase "mad as a bag of bees"
Although I understand what it means, I'm not sure he draws the correct simile, bees would be mad as in ANGRY. Blofeld is mad as in CRAZY.
Personally, I loved the double tip-of-the-hat of the placement of the Garden of Death from the YOLT novel inside a set clearly inspired by the volcano base from the YOLT film. Brilliant!
we should compare and contrast Bond's fatherhood in the new film vs Fleming's YOLT
First of all, Bond never learns he is a father in Fleming's version. Kissy never tells him, and he returns to London in the next book with no memory of where he has been let alone the ideal life he has left behind. Only us readers know (in Pearson's Bond biography, Bond does know, he visits Japan every year to see his son, and is paying for his education. But that's Pearson, not Fleming)
In this new film, Bond doesn't know because he has separated from Madeleine and she hasn't told him (for reasons of her own that can be debated). But people keep saying they thought Bond was dead, so he hasn't been keeping in touch with anyone since his retirement. Her lawyers might not have had his current address.
But once Bond does find out, we get the never-to-be-expected scene of James Bond in a high speed car chase, driving a sensible family SUV with a toddler strapped in back. This bit is straight out of The Incredibles! (and if intentional a fine homage) . Right up til the end we might expect them to live out their lives as a world-saving action-loving superspy family. But that's not the way Fleming saw Bond's fatherhood.
The way Fleming tells it, the only way for Bond to escape this damned dirty business is to forget it completely through medical trauma. Then the new life he finds himself in is pure Fleming wish fulfillment, diving for pearls in a remote fishing village with a topless diving girl by his side. Its actually a lot like the life Honeychile Rider was living before she met Bond (and as the film Dr No was made the year before Fleming wrote this idealised outro, Honeychile would have been on his mind). Like Honeychile, Bond is now living a life completely outside mainstream civilization, "off the grid", and in his case blissfully unaware mainstream civilization even exists.
Actually Bond's position at the start of this new film is not so different, catching fish from his yacht and living in a beachhouse much like Fleming's Goldeneye. And unware he has fathered a child. But unfortunately he has not forgotten anything, just managed to escape it til Felix shows up uninvited.
@Loeffelholz linked us to this thoughtful review in another thread: The Spectre of Death in NO TIME TO DIE. In one part it analyses Safin's speech to Bond, while clutching Bond's child. Safin says they will both die but his legacy (the mass-exterminating virus) shall outlive him. That's some messed up idea of a legacy. Whereas it is actually Mr Licenced to Kill whose legacy is a child, as is normal and healthy for the rest of us.
So going back to how Fleming told it, Bond's amnesia is so severe he has forgotten how to make love to a lady! He doesn't even have the biologic instinct anymore. Kissy has to purchase an illustrated "pillow-book" (Japanese erotica) and feed him an aphrodisiac made from toad-sweat to teach him how to do "it" all over again. This is some ironic fate for our shagadelic hero! But the thing is, once Kissy teaches him how, the sex is for the first time preocreative rather than recreational. He literally has to be reborn as a different person to have normal procreative sex and sire an offspring!
I actually heard it as "as mad as a bag of peas"! 😀
I was wondering about that but "bees" sounds much better than "peas". I had a vision of a bag of frozen peas when Tanner said that. It's rather reminiscent of the old saying "as mad as a bag of cats." Both also sound like the saying, "as mad as a box of frogs."