Bondathon: Moonraker

Everyone enjoys a good space adventure. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and their massive successes show this. But none have quite possibly been as big of a smash hit than 1977’s Star Wars, a movie that sparked a following that’s one of the biggest in the world, sparking spin-offs, copycats, and merchandise abound. Now, many other established franchises worried about Star Wars’ big boom into popular culture, and whether or not they’d be able to stay relevant in this new world of science fiction. No franchise took this to heart more than the James Bond series, and that’s why Moonraker happened.

The Spy Who Loved Me was such a major success for the Bond series. Things were looking up for Moore’s tenure. People were warmed up to the tone the series was taken and were ready for the next movie in the series: For Your Eyes Only. But the Bond producers were hit with something they weren’t ready for later in 1977, the aforementioned science fiction hit known as Star Wars. Audiences were hot off the film and were thirsty for more space action, and so, the producers decided to take advantage of this. They decided to make Moonraker, and For Your Eyes Only was momentarily postponed. This decision would soon bite them where it hurts.

The film starts out with the Moonraker 5 Space Shuttle, on loan from Drax industries, being transported upon a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet on the way to England. Two men sneak aboard the craft and steal it, destroying the jet with the shuttle’s rockets in the process. The film then cuts to see Bond on board a plane, engaging in some, “quality time,” with his airhostess. The woman and the plane’s pilot turn against Bond, and a fight ensues as Bond is thrown out of the plane. After doing away with the pilot, Bond then finds himself in a tussle with an old foe: Jaws.  Bond finally breaks free and is able to parachute to the ground, while Jaws rips his chute cord and falls into a circus tent (a fitting metaphor for his character in this movie…you’ll see why).

After the titles sequence, Bond is debriefed on the Moonraker’s disappearance, and makes his way to California to meet Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale). He gets a rather cold reception (and an offering of cucumber sandwiches), but is allowed to stay the night. He goes to meet Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), a NASA technician who oversees the Moonraker shuttle manufacturing and preparation. Goodhead takes him to a centrifuge chamber. Bond goes for a ride, but barely survives, due to Drax’s henchman Chang turning up the G levels to almost 12.

Bond stays the night in a room, where he meets and sleeps with Corinne Dufour (Corinne Cléry), Drax’s pilot. She allows him to access Drax’s safe, where Bond finds paperwork leading him to Venice. He leaves in the morning, just before Dufour is killed by Drax’s dogs. Bond finds his way to Venice, where he meets up with Goodhead once again, and enters the glassmaking company he saw within the paperwork. He uncovers a hidden laboratory, which is making a substance deadly to humans, but not to regular animals, as Bond discovers when a vial is dropped on the floor and kills the technicians, but not two lab rats nearby.

Bond escapes and engages Chang once more, before disposing of him within Venice and making an escape from the canals…through the use of a gondola that can drive on the sidewalk (more on this later). Bond makes his way to Rio de Janeiro to investigate Drax’s operations there. He discovers that Drax and his men are in fact clearing out of the shops, as he looks down upon Drax’s HQ there, where various cargo planes are leaving every hour. He meets Goodhead once again, engage in a fight with Jaws upon a cable car, and then escape through use of ziplining down the cable. Jaws, however, falls down the mountain on a speeding cable car, and at the bottom, he finds the love of his life (once again…more on this later).

Bond and Holly are kidnapped by two men in an ambulance. Bond manages to escape, but Holly is still trapped inside. James finds his way to an MI6 HQ in Rio, where he finds that the toxins come from a orchid within the Amazon jungles. Q equips Bond with a speedboat, and he goes to investigate the area where the orchids are known for growing, only to be caught and warded off by a team of enemy speedboats, led by Jaws himself. A chase ensues, leading the group to a waterfall. Bond makes an escape by a glider installed within Q’s boat, while Jaws and his crew to plunge over the falls. Bond lands within the jungle, and is led by one of Drax’s beautiful associates to Drax’s lair, within in a pyramid in the middle of the jungle, where Bond is taken into custody.

Bond is taken to Drax’s control room, where the latter is sitting and watching as his first few shuttles launch into space. He reveals his plan to start a new civilization upon Earth (sound familiar?), with a select number of the, “perfect,” human beings under his rule. He and his creations will reside upon a space station in the sky as the nerve gas globes take care of the humans down below. He reunites Bond with Holly and places them in a room directly below the rockets of Moonraker 5, Drax’s personal shuttle, to be incinerated when the launch commences. The pair escape through an air vent, subdue the pilots of Moonraker 6, and soon they find themselves on their way to space.

As they enter Earth’s orbit, they arrive at the space station, immediately assuming that the reason why such a giant structure has maintained out of the eye of any government is due to a radar jamming device. Holly docks the shuttle and they go on board to search for the aforementioned device, and they manage to destroy and disable it, leaving the station visible to Earth’s radar systems. Meanwhile, Jaws finds out that Drax has no plan for him or his new girlfriend, Dolly, to become part of his new world, so he turns to aid Bond. Soon, the navy arrives and intercepts the station, assisting Bond and Holly in stopping the plan from taking place. Bond shuts Drax out of an airlock, killing him immediately. As people evacuate, Bond and Holly escape in Drax’s Moonraker, equipped with a laser, and they use it to shoot down the few globes that had managed to be fired upon earth.

Yeah, Moonraker sucks. That’s the most sincere and nicest way I can put it without breaking my semi-family friendly atmosphere.  I strongly believe that this movie shouldn’t have existed, and the world would have been a better place if it didn’t exist. It’s the most desperate form of conforming I’ve ever seen.

First off, the plot is too rushed. It feels like you can blink your eye and Bond’s already in Venice or Rio. It isn’t paced well enough for what it should be, like normal Bond film. It even shows in the characters. Drax goes from seemingly acting like a generally nice person to Bond to immediately resenting him and wishing him dead. The final battle even…much too short for what it should have been.

Then there’s the cast. Roger Moore is good, yeah, we’ve gotten past that. The rest of the crew is appallingly monotone, but none more so than Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead. All of her lines that seemed like they should have been expressed with greater interest and a greater amount of passion just fall flat (none more so than her cry to James in Rio). But the fault doesn’t just lie with Chiles. Lonsdale as Drax seems like he’s trying too hard to be a dastardly villain. Corinne Clery’s Corinne Dufour is one-faced at best…mere eye candy for the viewer. It’s appalling, absolutely appalling.

But the biggest crime BY FAR is the stain it left on the credibility of the Bond films. Bond in space? WHAT A STUPID IDEA. Hell, most of the ideas that were put forth in this movie were stupid. All throughout the film there’s these little, “clever,” nods to other science fiction that makes it seem heavily unrealistic and gimmicky. And then there’s the gondola scene. Oh my god, the gondola scene. Why did there need to be a double-taking pigeon? WHY DID THERE NEED TO BE ALL THIS SLAPSTICK ABOUND. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A SERIOUS SPY FILM AND IT ENDS UP FEELING MERELY LIKE A PARODY MORE THAN ANYTHING. I HATE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH.

Okay…deep breaths. So, yeah…I don’t like Moonraker. At all. If there’s one redeeming factor, it’s the scenery when the plot has gone to space…but that’s it. I’m giving Moonraker 1 out of 5 stars, and I’m calling it quits with this one. For Your Eyes Only is next week…and I already know that it’s a far better entry than this piece of dirt.