You Only Live Twice (film) declined the offer to direct, but accepted after producer Albert R. Broccoli called him saying: "You can't give up this job. It's the largest audience in the world." Peter R. Hunt, who edited the first five Bond films, believed that Gilbert had been contracted by the producers for other work but they found they had to use him. Gilbert, producers Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, production designer Ken Adam and director of photography Freddie Young then went to Japan, spending three weeks searching for locations. SPECTRE's shore fortress headquarters was changed to an extinct volcano after the team learned that the
You Only Live Twice (film) Only Live Twice" as the fourth best "Bond" film, and "Entertainment Weekly" as the second best, considering that it "pushes the series to the outer edge of coolness". But Norman Wilner of MSN chose it as the fifth worst, criticising the plot, action scenes and little screentime for Blofeld. Literary critic Paul Simpson called the film one of the most colourful of the series and credited the prefecture of Kagoshima for adding "a good flavour" of Japanese influence on the film, but he panned the depiction of Blofeld as a "let-down", "small, bald and a whooping scar." Simon Winder said