Adapted from Ian Fleming’s novel by the author’s friend and first-time screenwriter Roald Dahl, You Only Live Twice was intended as Sean Connery’s fifth and final outing as the gentleman spy. The film sees Bond collaborate with the Japanese secret service and brings him face to face with arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld (here played by Donald Pleasence) for the first time.
Its gorgeous Japanese locations, eclectic international cast (including Japanese studio Toho starlets Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama) and outlandish set pieces – notably the “Little Nellie” gyrocopter dogfight, ninja training school and climactic battle in Spectre’s volcano lair – ensure the film remains one of Bond’s most iconic outings.
Also, it is here we learn of Bond’s “First in Oriental Languages from Cambridge” that the character would subsequently never put into practice.
The Man With the Golden Gun (1973)
This film was originally planned to follow immediately after You Only Live Twice, but in fact Bond didn’t return to Asia until four films later, with Roger Moore now in the role.
Acknowledging the global energy crisis, Bond is on the trail of a stolen “Solex Agitator”, which takes him to Lebanon, Macau, Hong Kong and Thailand, crossing paths with Christopher Lee’s eponymous assassin, Francisco Scaramanga.
While in Hong Kong, Bond visits The Peninsula hotel and the Bottoms Up club, while his superior, M (Bernard Lee), converts the shipwrecked RMS Queen Elizabeth into a field office. In Thailand, the action moves from the klongs of Bangkok to the island of Ko Tapu, which has since adopted the name “James Bond Island”.
The film also looks to capitalise on the popularity of martial arts in the wake of Enter the Dragon , with a number of kung-fu-inspired fight sequences. However, the film is best remembered for Lee’s commanding performance as the triple-nippled killer with the elaborately configured weapon.
Octopussy (1983)
George MacDonald Fraser, best-remembered for penning the historical Flashman novels, composed the first draft for Octopussy, perhaps the goofiest of all Bond adventures. The plot revolves around the nuclear disarmament of western Europe, but unfolds largely in India.
Bond (Moore, in his sixth and penultimate outing) tracks down an exiled Afghan prince (Louis Jourdan) in his reclusive Rajasthan palace, suspected of smuggling Fabergé eggs and other Soviet jewellery into the West via his extravagant circus troupe.
The film was widely criticised for its too comedic tone; Bond dresses up as a gorilla and a clown, uses a crocodile-shaped submersible, and tells a tiger to “Sit!”.
However, the elaborate action sequences and intoxicating Udaipur locations go a long way to redeeming it. Add to the rickshaw chases and sword-swallowing a wonderfully over-the-top Steven Berkoff, Indian tennis star Vijay Amritraj, and returning Bond girl Maud Adams as the film’s cephalopod-loving femme fatale, and the high-camp allure of Octopussy is impossible to resist.
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli originally hoped to set this 1997 adventure during the Hong Kong handover, until scheduling forced them to scrap the idea. Instead, Jonathan Pryce’s Murdoch-like media baron orchestrates an international incident between China and Britain in the South China Sea to assist a military coup and secure exclusive broadcasting rights for mainland China.
The ridiculous script includes a barrage of eye-rolling news-related puns, but the set pieces are top drawer. This is thanks in large part to the involvement of action star Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin, a Chinese secret service operative who teams up with Bond (Pierce Brosnan).
Particularly impressive is an acrobatic motorcycle chase through the backstreets of Saigon (actually filmed in Thailand), during which the pair are handcuffed together.
Skyfall (2012)
During Daniel Craig’s 15-year (and counting) tenure as 007, Bond has only been to Asia once. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the series, Skyfall sees a battered and beaten Bond travel to Shanghai – after an opening chase through Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar – to retrieve a stolen list of secret agents’ identities.
Thanks to director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins, Skyfall emerged as the most visually arresting Bond film to date, with the neon-drenched fist fight atop a Shanghai skyscraper perhaps its most dazzling sequence.
Bond later travels to a luxurious lantern-lit Macau casino teeming with monitor lizards, the likes of which, unfortunately, can only be found at Pinewood Studios, before journeying on to the notorious Hashima “Battleship” Island – itself also a reconstruction, albeit on an islet off the coast of Macau.
Die Another Day (2002)?
This article would be remiss without an honourable mention to the spectacular opening of the otherwise execrable Die Another Day. Unfortunately the North Korean setting of the sequence was actually filmed in Hawaii and Cornwall in England.
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