It’s like The Spy Who Loved Me, only in outer space and with Bond teaming up with an American spy hottie. This was the 007 franchise’s answer to Star Wars (if that’s conceivable). The end credits of The Spy Who Loved Me promised us the next outing would be For Your Eyes Only, but Star Wars came out, and since space adventure was on every cinemagoers mind, they took Ian Fleming’s novella Moonraker and put it on the big screen.
It’s goofy! It’s tacky! It’s Bond in Space! I think by this point in Roger Moore’s stint as Bond I had resigned myself to the fact that he wasn’t going to pull an about face and be cool like Sean Connery. Being a NASA nerd, I enjoyed the whole outer space bit, even if it was ridiculously cheesy by 70’s standards, let alone today.
It’s fun if you let it be fun, but Moonraker falls more under the banner of ‘guilty pleasure’ than anything else. It’s a Bond film I know I shouldn’t have liked, but did anyway. Compared to the series origins, Moonraker is absolutely terrible, but it’s more enjoyable than most of Moore’s films to this point. My eyes still roll when I think of two of the characters- Dr. Holly Goodhead and Jaws. Yeah, that’s right, Goodhead. Having a woman named Pussy Galore was funny for innuendo’s sake in Goldfinger, but the string of lousy names has outstayed its welcome for me. Holly Goodhead is the last straw, hopefully.
Jaws, on the other hand, is one of the few minor characters to appear more than once in the series. He was the highlighted henchmen over the main bad guy in The Spy Who Loved Me, and he returns in Moonraker for this new bad guy. How he got there, I don’t know, but Jaws has steel jaws and can bite through metal and stuff, so I guess he was popular enough to be brought back. I think he’s hokey, but that’s just my natural reaction to a guy with steel teeth.
The theme song is even forgettable in this film. All flash and no substance, but fun all the same.
Slow and steady seems to be the pace with Roger Moore’s improvement as James Bond. This marks his third appearance in a Bond film (the 10th in the series) and would be Moore’s point of no return. After The Spy Who Loved Me, Moore would portray Bond as arrogant in his desirability, essentially forcing himself upon women because he knew they subconsciously wanted his pretty-boy man juices, even if they didn’t know it yet and however hard they would resist.
The story has a more serious tone, with Soviet and American subs going missing along with their payload of nuclear missiles (reminiscent of You Only Live Twice). So Bond goes in search of a man claiming to be selling a high tech submarine locating system, where he ultimately teams up with a Soviet spy. Turns out the lovely spy was married to a Soviet agent that Bond killed, and she has sworn to kill 007 once they retrieve the subs. The plot takes a dive as it turns out the villain is another run of the mill “take over the world” type, who thinks he can create a more perfect humanity in an underwater environment.
Some goofy gadgets (a submarine car?) and an over-the-top final battle sequence lighten up the film a bit too much and in the end, 007 warms the cold Siberian heart of his Soviet side kick and they do it in a life raft, only to be discovered by both of their governments in said life raft. Moral of the story- James Bond can bring peace to the world and love to lonely Russian women.
It’s like The Spy Who Loved Me, only in outer space and with Bond teaming up with an American spy hottie. This was the 007 franchise’s answer to Star Wars (if that’s conceivable). The end credits of The Spy Who Loved Me promised us the next outing would be For Your Eyes Only, but Star Wars came out, and since space adventure was on every cinemagoers mind, they took Ian Fleming’s novella Moonraker and put it on the big screen.
