The 007 Files: Moonraker

1979’s Moonraker opens with an exciting scene of Bond and Jaws (the henchman returning from The Spy Who Loved Me) battling it out after jumping from an airplane.

The theme song is Shirley Bassey’s third of the franchise. It’s a good one, though not quite to the level of her previous two, “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds Are Forever”.

Ken Adam, the franchise’s renowned production designer, does an absolutely terrific job with the sets here. He’s the star of this movie, as far as I’m concerned.

There’s the pretty cool sight of James Bond hang gliding over a waterfall. And Rio De Janiero looks beautiful in the few minutes we spend there.

There are the positive aspects of Moonraker and maybe I should just leave it that, except for the pesky fact that just about everything else in the film sucks. I love the James Bond franchise, in case you haven’t figured that out. And I don’t want to write this post, but I have to be honest so here goes:

Moonraker is a travesty on a number of levels. Interestingly, the film was not supposed to be the 007 movie being released in 1979. At the end of its predecessor, The Spy Who Loved Me, we were told: “James Bond Will Return in For Your Eyes Only.” That’s what filmgoers saw in the end credits of Spy in the summer of 1977. Want to know something else audiences saw in the summer of 1977? A little film called Star Wars. 

And that, my friends, prompted Bond producers to change their minds and quickly make Moonraker the next 007 adventure. After the release of Star Wars (and also Close Encounters of the Third Kind) in 1977, science fiction was the most popular thing around… along with disco and Burt Reynolds.

So not only did MGM go with the Ian Fleming novel with sci-fi elements, they decided to open up the bank for Moonraker. Its predecessor, Spy Who Loved Me, had been the biggest budgeted 007 so far at $14 million. The budget for Moonraker would be set at $34 million. No question that the huge financial success of Spy contributed to the budget raise, but the producers knew Bond + space likely = $.

And they were right. Moonraker grossed over $200 million dollars worldwide, making it the biggest Bond so far financially. It made $70M in the U.S., placing it 10th for that year domestically. The fact is, science fiction was so trendy at that time that combining 007 with it was a winning combo, at least financially.

I suppose I’ll touch on the plot… briefly. Space shuttles get stolen. The man behind it is the manufacturer of the shuttles, Hugo Drax. He has a plan to use those shuttles to repopulate the Earth in space with only beautiful people he takes with him. This, of course, involves wiping out the planet and creating that master race in space. It’s a far-fetched and silly plot, even by Bond standards.

Speaking of the villain Drax, he’s the worst Bond baddie we’ve seen so far. Played by Michael Lonsdale with no real energy, the guy’s really just a bore. The less said the better because you’re going to forget his character anyway.

Then, we’re mistreated to one of the worst Bond girls so far. She does have a memorable name, Holly Goodhead. That’s the only memorable thing about her character or Lois Chiles’ listless performance as her.

Oh, it gets worse. Bond in spaghetti Western gear. Jaws, a solid character in Spy Who Loved Me, getting way overused. He even turns good guy in the end because he falls in love with a girl and realizes Drax will probably kill him. Lame.

All that said, what I disliked most about Moonraker is the final half hour when Bond and Goodhead are shot out of Earth in a shuttle and engage in a space war, complete with laser guns. Darth Vader does not enter the movie to fight them, but he might as well. The final battle scenes show the filmmakers really desperate to capture George Lucas-type magic on the screen. And they don’t.

This is supposed to be a James Bond movie. I can handle the Roger Moore entries becoming much more comical and silly (it happened first with Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever, by the way). What I had a hard time accepting is the Bond franchise completely capitulating to another franchise. In the last act of Moonraker, we don’t feel like we’re watching a 007 movie. We feel like we’re watching a bad Star Wars rip-off. One with great sets, of course (to give another Ken Adam shout-out). But, still bad.

We saw glimpses of this in Roger Moore’s first two features, with the influence of blaxpoitation in Live and Let Die and kung fu in The Man With the Golden Gun. Not to this extent, though. Moore’s third 007 movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, is terrific. It’s one of the greatest Bonds and I suspect it’ll register highly (very highly) on my favorite 007 flicks when I release my list after this blog series is complete. So, the fact that this was the follow-up adds to the letdown. Even the director of Spy, Lewis Gilbert, directed this too!

Moonraker, besides obviously trying (and succeeding) to cash in on Star Wars craze, makes references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These joking references remind us that those were great sci-fi movies. Moonraker is neither a good sci-fi or James Bond movie. The joke is clearly on us.

Here are the facts:

Film: Moonraker

U.S. Release Date: June 29, 1979

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Screenplay: Christopher Wood

Bond: Roger Moore

Main Bond Villain: Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale)

Main Bond Girl: Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles)

Theme Song: “Moonraker” – performed by Shirley Bassey

Budget: $34 million

Worldwide Box Office: $210.3 million

***On a somber note, actor Bernard Lee who portrayed the character of M in the first eleven Bond pictures, from Dr. No to Moonraker, passed away in early 1981 at age 73. Moonraker would mark Lee’s final appearance in the series.

My James Bond blog series will return in “The 007 Files: For Your Eyes Only”