Number in Countdown: 22

Title: Moonraker

Year: 1979

Synopsis: The United States is delivering a Moonraker shuttle to England (for some reason) and it is hijacked mid-flight by some baddies.

After escaping an ordeal parachutes and Jaws, Bond returns to MI6 to learn the Moonraker shuttle has gone missing. His meeting with M leads him California, where Drax Industries, the company who constructed the Moonraker shuttle, is located. It is here where Bond meets with Hugo Drax, leader of the corporation, in his massive palace. In addition to Hugo, we are introduced to the super-babe Corinne Dufour, Drax’s personal pilot, Chang, Drax’s henchman, and Drax’s meat-hungry dogs. While on his tour of the facility, Bond also meets Dr. (Holly) Goodhead, an astronaut on loan from NASA.

From the get go, Drax hates Bond and tells Chang to “make sure some harm comes to him.” Chang nearly kills Bond in some sort of flight simulator, G-Force thing, but luckily, he survives. After his trip in the G-Force thing, Bond returns to his room and has some fun with Corinne Dufour, but not before learning that there was some secret shit going on at Drax Industries that has since been moved to an unknown location. With the help of a robed Corinne, he finds a safe and the secret documents within. He takes pictures of all the documents and puts them back. Little do they know that Chang was watching the entire time! Ahhh shiii-!

The next day, Bond leaves Drax Industries (but not before almost getting killed…again). Drax speaks with Corinne, and knowing of her betrayal, sends his asshole dogs to chase her down in the woods and eat her, I guess. *sadface*

Drax’s secret documents have led Bond to Venice, where he checks out some glass-makin’ place. Who should Bond find while sneakin’ around. . .but Holly Goodhead. They talk and flirt a bit and she leaves. Bond then goes for a nice Gondola ride, but is soon under attack by gunmen on a boat. Bond reaches the city and turns his Gondola into a car.

After driving the stupidest vehicle in the history of mankind, he arrives at some lab where some guys are making some vials of stuff. When they go out the room for a sec, Bond messes with their stuff, taking one of the vials. Before he can do much research, the scientist return. Unfortunately, they knock over one of the carelessly-placed-by-Bond-during-his-exit vials, breaking it open and releasing some sort of gas, causing them to suffocate and die (or something).

After leaving, Chang tries to kill him with a kendo stick, but Bond evades because he’s awesome. The fight eventually ends with Chang landing on and going through a piano. Just like anyone would do after throwing a guy though a piano, Bond sneaks into Dr. Goodhead’s hotel room. She is there to meet him, and this is where Bond figures out her true identity as a CIA agent. Then they get it on.

Drax immediately finds a replacement for Chang: None other than The Spy Who Loved Me’s Jaws, who follows Bond to Rio de Janiero but fails to kill him during a parade. Holly Goodhead finds Bond while he’s doing some investigating up Sugaloaf mountain and they decide to team up. Jaws tries to kill them on their way down a cable car, but they escape and Jaws car crashes. Jaws is then rescued by the busty new character Dolly and they fall in love at first sight. (whaaa?)

Bond learns from MI6 that vial’s toxin comes from some flower in the Amazon, so Bond goes there to look for Drax’s research facility. He is lured to a secret base by some babe and is almost killed by a big-ass snake. After killing the snake, Bond is pulled out of the water by Jaws and brought before Drax. As we learn, extended exposure to the flower’s pollen caused sterility, which wiped out the entire Amazon civilization. Drax has taken it a step further so that he can harness the seeds to cause death.

All of Drax’s Moonraker shuttles shoot into space, and Bond and Dr. Goodhead (who was captured) sneak aboard one of them. Now the movie goes into space to Drax’s massive space station. After a bunch of floating around and shit, everyone assembles for a speech given by Drax.

In classic Bondian style, Drax spouts off his entire plan, which is to release his death-virus to the world, killing everyone, and then later send a selected group of individuals back down to Earth as a master race to restart life on Earth. Bond, not much one to like the world threatened, fucks up the process. A shuttle full of good guys arrives and they dock on Drax’s station, which causes it (and outer space) to erupt into a laser shooting spree.

In the fighting, Bond sends Hugo Drax into the vacuum of space (hey, “he had to fly”). The ensuing battle leads to the destruction of station and the escape of Bond, Goodhead, a newly redeemed Jaws, and his girlfriend Dolly. Bond and Goodhead make short work of Drax’s death-virus shit heading toward Earth and destroy them. Then they get it on, zero gravity style. Cue disco theme song.

Things I like:

While watching Moonraker again for this little review, I couldn’t help but notice that Moonraker, structurally, is a sound Bond movie. It has a good, sophisticated villain, a mysterious evil plot, beautiful locations, great puns, suspenseful editing, and stunning women, and I can appreciate Moonraker on that level. And I meant beautiful locations. Look at this still from Rio de Janiero:

Drax’s plan isn’t all that bad. I like how he harnessed the pollen from a flower to instill death. There’s something, I don’t know, poetic about it, but maybe just because I like nature and stuff.

I really like Bond’s opening sequence, in which he gets pushed out of a plane without a parachute, Jaws falling after him. I mean, just check it out:

Another thing I like is the lighting of this forest. I mean, have you ever seen a dog mauling so romantic before?

Hugo Drax’s Amazon Forest base is also pretty cool:

Oh yea, and I like these space female costumes:

But as we all know, this is my least favorite Bond, so let’s find out why.

Things I don’t like:

For all the good things Moonraker has that could make it a classic, it has like five stupid things. The film starts out interesting enough, but then you get him driving a Gondola car to stupid music, bird doing a double-take and all. Yes, a BIRD doing a double-take. Like, what? The film finds its focus, but then will do something stupid again. Once you get the feeling Moonraker is getting back on the right track, it dashes your hopes (like, Jaws falling in love with Dolly) You forgive the movie, for a while.

Eventually the stupid outweighs the cool, and by the time they’re in space, you don’t care anymore, which is unfortunate, because by now you’re not even listening to Drax’s cool plan or enjoying the ensuing fight. Even Richard Maibaum, season Bond screenwriter (but did not write Moonraker) said “With Moonraker, we went too far in the outlandish. The audience did not believe any more and Roger spoofed too much.”

In addition to the ridiculousness, Bond is ALWAYS joking in this one. I mean, I know Roger Moore is the jokier Bond, but he jokes so much that he doesn’t even seem to be taking ANYTHING seriously, and if he’s not taking anything seriously, how are we expected to?

All this makes me wonder that if 1) you cut out all the REALLY stupid stuff and 2) if Drax’s base wasn’t in space, would Moonraker be better? And at that, a lot better? Even if we didn’t cut out all the stupid crap and Drax’s base was on Earth, would it be better? I just can’t stop thinking about the outer space bullshit.

It’s obvious that the Bond team wanted to cash in on the success of Star Wars (which was released two years earlier), especially since they told everyone the next movie was going to be For Your Eyes Only, which they made after this mess of a movie. In addition to trying too hard to fit the taste of the day, Jaws returned from the last film for absolutely no reason, and, since he was a role-model to children by now, turned into a good guy. Like…seriously?

The Song:

As far I understand it, Johnny Mathis (my mother’s all-time favorite singer, btw) was supposed to record the theme for “Moonraker,” but dropped out at last second because was like “this movie is not wonderful, wonderful” and probably wanted nothing to do with it. Scrambling for a new song, John Barry, Hal David, and Shirley Bassey teamed up for this turd. The song just seems to wander around for three minutes and then end. Where other Bond songs might have an intense finale with a long final note (or something), this one just. . .ends. . . Not even the funky disco version at the end credits could save it.

Another reason the song doesn’t work is that it’s a sadder song, which does fit with this being the spoofiest, silliest Bond movie ever. Not to mention it’s a total fart to have right after the thrilling skydiving scene I shared above. It’s definitely not the worst Bond theme (we’ll get to those later), but it still sucks.

Favorite scene: The best scene from this movie has to be the skydiving sequence. Overall, the movie is crapola, but we can’t deny this scene is an achievement in irresponsible film-making.  Nowadays, this would all be done with CGI and bluescreen, and look fake as hell because of it. It took something like eighty-eight jumps to film the entire sequence, but the hard work paid off and they created one of the coolest scenes in the entire series.

Favorite line: Q’s classic quip, “I think he’s attempting re-entry, sir.”

Extra tidbit: During the Gondola scene, there is a man sitting at a table, looking incredulously at Bond, drinking wine. The same guy appeared previously in The Spy Who Loved Me and then later For Your Eyes Only, always witnessing a ludicrous Bond action, wondering if his wine was responsible.

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