# The James Bond Film Festival. Part 11: Moonraker **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 17, 2003, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850 "2003-08-17T23:56:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2003, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/1 "2003-08-17T23:56:02Z")
[The James Bond Film Festival. Part 1: Dr. No](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=194271) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 2: From Russia with Love](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=195426) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 3: Goldfinger](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=197003) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 4: Thunderball](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=198872) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 5: You Only Live Twice](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=200355) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 6: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=201997) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 7: Diamonds are Forever](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=202333) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 8: Live and Let Die](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=203474) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 9: The Man with the Golden Gun](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=203688) [The James Bond Film Festival. Part 10: The Spy Who Loved Me](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=205080) _Moonraker_. Oh, how much better it would have been if they had stuck to the book! In actuality, _Die Another Day_ follows the story better than _Moonraker_. In the book, Hugo Drax is an ex-Nazi who passes as a refugee at the end of World War Two. He makes a fortune in the mining industry and funds the Moonraker Project to aid his “adopted” country’s defense. Moonraker is a new nuclear missile in Britain’s arsenal. Drax intends to avenge his _Führer_ by making the test flight of the Moonraker public and by diverting its path to London. But _Moonraker_ the movie is nothing like this. The plot is actually more like the previous film _The Spy Who Loved Me_. In this episode Drax (Michael Lonsdale) plans to kill the world’s population, saving himself and “genetically superior” specimens of the human race by taking refuge in a space station. Rather like the premise of _The Spy Who Loved Me_, where Stromberg plans to kill off the world’s population and save himself and selected individuals who will populate an undersea city. The film starts out poorly with the theft of a Space Shuttle from the back of its 747 transport. The shuttle fires up (destroying the airplane) and goes to where ever it’s going (which we find out later is Brazil). But where does it get its fuel? It’s just wrong. Bond (Roger Moore), meanwhile, is aboard a turboprop aircraft putting moves on the flight attendant. She pulls a gun on him and the bad guy comes out of the cockpit wearing a parachute. The bad guy shoots the instrument panel, which we are supposed to believe will make the airplane crash. A fight ensues and the bad guy goes out the door. Bond is booted out as well. The parachute fight is pretty well done. Two men fighting over one parachute. Not bad. Naturally Bond wins the prize. But Jaws (Richard Kiel) is close behind. He tries to bite Bond in the ankle, but Bond pulls the ripcord to escape. (Why didn’t he do that earlier, so he could avoid Jaws’s jaws altogether?) Jaws pulls his own ripcord, but his 'chute fails. After falling thousands of feet, Jaws’s life is saved when he hits a circus tent. :rolleyes: It was kind of funny watching him flap, though. Bond flies to California to meet Drax, progenitor of the Moonraker shuttle project. This was interesting because I lived in the Antelope Valley. Drax Industries was protrayed by Lockheed Plant 42 in Palmdale. The transition to Drax’s opulent castle was decently done, although they seemed to forget that they were supposed to be in a desert. It is here that Bond meets Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), a CIA agent posing as a NASA scientist who has been seconded to Drax Industries. For no good reason, Drax orders Bond to be killed. Bond is only supposed to be finding out as much as he can about the shuttle. At this point it’s not at all clear that Drax is a suspect. After the first attempt on Bond’s life – in a centrifuge – fails, Bond is still posing as a “guest”. He gets Corinne DuFour (Corinne Clery) to tell him where Drax’s safe is, gets the plans he’s after, and is invited to a pheasant shoot. So Drax is going to have Bond shot at the pheasant shoot, eh? How original. Bond shoots the sniper instead. Too cute. And speaking of cute: At the end of the hunt the guy with the horn blows _Also Sprach Zarathustra_ (the theme from _2001: A Space Oddysey_). Later on, an electronic lock plays the theme from _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ when the correct sequence of numbers is pressed. Too, too cute. The musical keypad is in Venice, where Bond is tracking down the clues he found in Drax’s safe. Naturally, he must be killed. Drax’s henchman Cha (or “Chang” – Toshirô Suga) tries to take him out in a glassworks museum. “Huh huh. They’re breaking glass, Beavis.” Oh yeah, that appeals to the sophisticated American audience. “Huh huh. They just broke that 500-year-old bowl. Huh huh.” :rolleyes: There comes a point where Cha gains the upper hand, sending Bond backward into a display case. Cha pounces to finish him off. Oh, wait a minute. No, Cha runs off instead. Bond catches him and kills him. But before all of that happens… This is the film with the famous – or infamous, depending on how you look at it – gondola hovercraft. There was no reason to have this thing in the film, other than so that people can say “Hey look. It’s a gondola hovercraft.” It is during this scene that we see the running gag of the Man Who Thinks He’s Drunk Too Much (Victor Tourjansky). We also get to see a pigeon do a triple-take. Anyway, Bond has found a powerful nerve agent. He takes M (Bernard Lee) and Sir Frederick Gray, Minister of Defense (Geoffrey Keen) to see the lab, only to find Drax in an opulent room with no lab to be found. What an embarassment to MI-6! Bond gives the nerve agent to M, suggesting that he have Q (Desmond Llewelyn) check it out. M suggests that Bond take a holiday (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and Bond is off to Rio. There he meets an agent by the name of Manuella (Emily Bolton) whose purpose, it seems, is to be menaced by Jaws. Really, Bond could have found Drax’s warehouse without her help. He’s James Bond! Bond is watching Drax’s cargo planes take off from the Rio airport. Goodhead is doing the same thing. They get on the aerial gondola which is stopped by The Strength of Jaws. Or is it? Oddly, it seems that when it suits the plot the conveyance can be controled by the operator below. Jaws gets on top of the opposite gondola and the operator puts the gondolas next to each other. There is supposed to be an exciting battle hundreds of feet in the air. I found it to be rather ho-hum. Bond locks Jaws inside of a gondola, and while Jaws tears his way out Bond and Goodhead use a chain to slide down the cable. The gondola operator sends Jaws after them. Somehow the car gains on them. I don’t know how a cable car works, but it seems to me that if Bond is sliding down the same cable the gondola is on, then it would not be possible for the car to catch up to him. At the bottom Bond and Goodhead drop free while Jaws crashes into the building. Having been trapped under a large pulley, Jaws muscles his way out. He’s helped out by a petite blonde in pigtails and glasses (“Dolly”, played by Blanche Ravalec – who I found very cute) and it’s love at first sight. Bond and Goodhead, meanwhile, have been captured by fake ambulance attendants. There is a lovely bit of product placement as they speed by a Seiko billboard. (And yes, Bond wears a digital Seiko instead of the traditional Rolex Submariner.) Bond escapes but Goodhead doesn’t. After finding out where Drax’s secret shuttle base is, Bond takes a boat down one of the rivers. He is chased in other boats by Jaws & Co. Exciting? Eh, we’ve seen it before. It’s really not all that different from the boat chase in _From Russia With Love_ or _Live and Let Die_ or _The Man with the Golden Gun_. Besides, there’s a boat chase earlier in the film, in Venice. Bond makes his escape from the abyss (there’s a waterfall in front of him) by using a hang glider that Q had thoughtfully provided in the boat. Off to Drax’s hide out… … Where Bond battles a rather unconvincing python. He’s captured by Jaws – who has miraculously survived his own plummet over the falls – and Drax puts him with Goodhead directly beneath the hind end of an up-bound shuttle. (This is actually one thing that was in the book.) They escape and take the last shuttle to Drax’s invisible-to-radar space station. They disable the radar jammer and are soon captured by Jaws, who has come aboard with his new girlfriend. But the cavalry is on its way! Yes, the USA has sent up a shuttle packed with space-soldiers who do battle with the minions of Drax. An epic battle? Well, it was _supposed_ to be. But it was too reminiscent of the battle at the end of _Thunderball_ – and not done nearly as well. Drax wants to shove Bond and Goodhead out the airlock, but Bond asks Drax if Drax will exterminate anyone who doesn’t fit Drax’s ideal of a perfect human specimen. Stupidly, Drax says “Certainly.” Oops. Bad thing to say when the giant freak Jaws and his scrawny, nearsighted girlfriend are within earshot. Jaws helps Bond and Goodhead escape as the space station collapses around them. They make it to the last shuttle to Earth, but it’s stuck. Jaws and Dolly are content to drink champagne and end their lives together, but they see Bond and Goodhead and free them. They survive to be picked up later in their bit of the space station that has broken free. Bond and Goodhead track down the three deadly globes that Drax managed to launch (each capable of killing 50 million people) and destroy them. They are caught _in flagrante delicto_ joining the Zero-G Club by a remote camera which broadcasts their antics to the Queen and the President. I’ve already mentioned the Seiko product placement, but there are others. Goodhead has a packet of Marlboros in her drawer (although she apparently doesn’t smoke), there’s a plug for Christian Dior, and 7-Up is prominently displayed. British Airways also gets a billboard in the show. _Moonraker_ is a muddled mess. Its pacing is slow, and its action scenes had already been done to death. There is a battle on the space station where everyone is armed with laser weapons. Much too _Star Wars_. I did like that Jaws turned out not to be such a bad guy after all, and he finally did get a line. But IMO this is one of the worst of the Bond films. ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/2 "2003-08-18T00:19:55Z")
The jaws parts were good; the rest, eh. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/3 "2003-08-18T00:22:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Johnny L.A. \* > **Oh, how much better it would have been if they had stuck to the book!** Damn right! This whole movie is cartoonish, not just Jaws. _Moonraker_ was my first Bond movie and I’m a bit surpised that it didn’t put me off the rest of the series. Even _A View to a Kill_ didn’t put me off the series. Took two substandard movies in a row (_The World Is Not Enough_ and _Die Another Day_) to do that. I didn’t even bother to go see those. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/4 "2003-08-18T00:26:27Z")
Partially filmed in France, and co-produced with a French studio. Why, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/5 "2003-08-18T00:32:37Z")
“He seems to be attempting re-entry” :rolleyes: And that was the _good_ gag. (Of course, the fact that they were so… horizontal… while making it in Z-G made me laugh more) The people in the theatre catcalled during the “flying” sequence in the free-fall battle of the opening scene. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/6 "2003-08-18T02:53:40Z")
Funny, of all Fleming’s novels this is the one I remember best, and how disappointed I was that almost nothing of the book made it into the film. Variations of the nuclear missile plot in the book, however, had already been done in the films (including the one immediatly preceding) so there was never much chance of the film being faithful to the novel. Nevertheless, it’s a ghastly, ghastly film. Dull plot, dull villain, dull Bond Girl, duff direction, childish plot and just about every technical aspect of it is beyond preposterous. Jaws, even more than in the previous film, bounces back repeatedly from things that no one could ever plausibly survive. One of the worst, if not the worst, of the series, especially since it was the most extravagantly costly Bond film to date. I won’t comment further on the actors or plot because it’s been a while since I’ve seen this one and, well, it was just so _dull_. So I’ll confine myself to a few snarky comments about the technical aspects. The opening scene of the shuttle flying off (and thereby destroying) its transport aircraft was well done, but as the OP said, where did its fuel come from? And this one: > [@](#): > > Jaws helps Bond and Goodhead escape as the space station collapses around them. Another howler. Lessee here, the space station is internally pressurized. Outside is space; pressure, uh, zero. But when everything goes up, the space station collapses? One correction: > [@](#): > > The transition to Drax’s opulent castle was decently done, although they seemed to forget that they were supposed to be in a desert. Actually, there’s an establishing shot showing that there is a lush garden surrounding the chateau, with desert beyond. Supposed to show that Drax is so rich he can afford to make the desert bloom and all that. Of course, the exteriors for that sequence were filmed on the grounds of a real chateau in in France. ---
**Author:** ![DaddyTimesTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f07891/32.png) [@DaddyTimesTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaddyTimesTwo)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/7 "2003-08-18T03:02:59Z")
My wife is always aghast at the names of the female main characters in Bond movies : “Holly Goodhead”? “Pussy Galore”? It’s just too much for her. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/8 "2003-08-18T03:04:52Z")
> [@](#): > > Actually, there’s an establishing shot showing that there is a lush garden surrounding the chateau, with desert beyond. Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Indeed there was an establishing shot showing the luch grounds. But although there would be some attenuation of the desert heat, it would still be a hundred degrees or more in the summer. (It looked like summer to me, so that’s why I’m assuming it was.) There are green areas (parks and such) in Lancaster and Palmdale; but no matter how green it is, it’s still hot. So the transition to the Chateau was done well, the “reality” of this place being in the desert didn’t play. Re: The space station collapsing. I think the “collapse” was more a function of inertia. Bond caused a rapid decelleration, which I suppose would cause problems if the station was unbalanced. What I found amazing is that even with all of the twisting and the falling bits, it held pressure until it exploded. (I’ve never seen an explosion in space, but I suspect it would look nothing like what was portrayed.) > [@](#): > > I won’t comment further on the actors or plot because it’s been a while since I’ve seen this one and, well, it was just so _dull_. Heh. That’s why I posted this thread so soon after the last one. I re-watch the films before I start the threads, and I wanted to get the pain over with. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/9 "2003-08-18T03:59:50Z")
I will stipulate to just about everything that’s been said about _Moonraker_ on this thread… …but it does have one bit I liked: where Bond is testing out his new wrist-gun and accidently shoots a dart into M’s painting of the Duke of Wellington…actually, he nails the Duke’s horse right in the ass. And Bernard Lee, as M (this was his last film) responds with a dry-as-a-martini, “Oh, _thank you_, 007!” I still use that line whenever somebody does something objectionable in my prescence. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/10 "2003-08-18T04:05:00Z")
I will stipulate to just about everything that’s been said about _Moonraker_ on this thread… …but it does have one bit I liked: where Bond is testing out his new wrist-gun and accidently shoots a dart into M’s painting of the Duke of Wellington…actually, he nails the Duke’s horse right in the ass. And Bernard Lee, as M (this was his last film) responds with a dry-as-a-martini, “Oh, _thank you_, 007!” I still use that line whenever somebody does something objectionable in my prescence. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/11 "2003-08-18T04:05:00Z")
I will stipulate to just about everything that’s been said about _Moonraker_ on this thread… …but it does have one bit I liked: where Bond is testing out his new wrist-gun and accidently shoots a dart into M’s painting of the Duke of Wellington…actually, he nails the Duke’s horse right in the ass. And Bernard Lee, as M (this was his last film) responds with a dry-as-a-martini, “Oh, _thank you_, 007!” I still use that line whenever somebody does something objectionable in my prescence. ---
**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/12 "2003-08-18T04:19:13Z")
I don’t have anything the length of the previous posters to add…I just wanted to say that I’ve been patiently awaiting the arrival of the _Moonraker_ thread for the sole reason to state loudly: **MOONRAKER IS MY FAVOURITE BOND MOVIE!** Got a problem with that? ---
**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/13 "2003-08-18T04:24:47Z")
I don’t have anything the length of the previous posters to add…I just wanted to say that I’ve been patiently awaiting the arrival of the _Moonraker_ thread for the sole reason to state loudly: **MOONRAKER IS MY FAVOURITE BOND MOVIE!** Got a problem with that? ---
**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/14 "2003-08-18T04:49:30Z")
I don’t have anything the length of the previous posters to add…I just wanted to say that I’ve been patiently awaiting the arrival of the _Moonraker_ thread for the sole reason to state loudly: **MOONRAKER IS MY FAVOURITE BOND MOVIE!** Got a problem with that? ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/15 "2003-08-18T05:03:02Z")
Actually, the only part I didn’t like was the lasers in space. It seemed so fat fetched, and looked stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Xadium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ed655f/32.png) [@Dr\_Xadium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Xadium)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/16 "2003-08-18T06:01:27Z")
I liked parts of Moonraker as well… and like the previous posters, when I finally got round to reading the original Fleming novel I was amazed at the changes… But I can’t help it… I like Jaws. No matter how over the top he is. There’s a reason fans clamored to have him back after his last appearance. Jaws has that special charisma, that charming metallic crocodile grin… that virtually indesructable endoskeleton that protects him everywhere (and one of my favourite scenes is when James Bond goes for the low blow and finds out it really is _everywhere_) And yes, the space scenes were daft… ponderous, embarassing things trying to recreate the spectacle of Star Wars and barely managing to equal _Buck Rogers_ (1979 ver.) Although I have to think having a crew of bald men with huge mustaches running about the place (as was in the book) might be even more painful a scene… ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/17 "2003-08-18T11:16:18Z")
> [@](#): > > Although I have to think having a crew of bald men with huge mustaches running about the place (as was in the book)… I had forgotten about that! **Trigonal Planar** : What makes this your favourite Bond film? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/18 "2003-08-18T11:57:34Z")
Egad! The worst of the Eon productions/ Broccolli and Saltzman Bond movies. By far. Christopher Wood continues the downward slide of Bond into utter puerility. Jaws was bad enough, but his Pippi Longstocking girlfriend takes the cake! The gratuitous plugging was never worse than during the car chase past all the billboards. The space station scenes were utterly ludicrous!. The motorized gondola was awful, and Jaws’ survival of his parachuteless plunge places this on a level of believability with a Road Runner cartoon. Good things: The opening “fight-over-the-parachute” stunt was _really_ well done, and in the best Bond tradition. Nicely conceived and executed, except for Jaws’ aforementioned invulnerable plunge. The special effects shots of the _launching_ of the Moonraker were great! When this movie was made, the shuttle hadn’t gone up yet, and the FX work was believable, a far cry from the archival footage used in ear;ier films (like the Gimini Titan launch passed off as a Russian spacecraft in You Only Live Twice. Or the awful re-entry shots from the same film) The shuttle in this film doesn’t tilt back “on its back” during liftoff like the real shuttle, but that’s because most movie-viewing public didn’t know how the real shuttle would behave on launch, so they opted to make it look good. Michael Lonsdale, who had played Commisair Lebel in Fred Zinneman’s **Day of the Jackal** , was back in a major American release. I like him, and he’s a different image of a Bond villain. I can’t help but think that they chose him simply because of his name – in the novel, Fleming described Hugo Drax as “a Lonsdale sort of character”. To this day, I have no idea what he meant by that. The ending was clearly inspired by that of **Star Wars** , and not the book. See my essay on this in Teemings #3: [http://www.teemings.com/issue03/force.html](http://www.teemings.com/issue03/force.html) For the second time, screenwriter Wood turned out a novelization to tie-in to the movie. As with The Spy Who Loved Me, they didn’t re-release Fleming’s novel. To be truthful, the title of the novelization wasn’t “Moonraker”, but “James Bond and Moonraker”, although I doubt if anyone would confuse the two. And I have to admit that, much as I dislike Wood’s screenplays, his novelizations are much better than I expected. An interesting read, if you can find it anymore. Fleming’s is a lot better, though. Fleming’s novel ius also available on audiotape, both abridged and unabridged. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/19 "2003-08-18T12:14:40Z")
Good post, \*_Cal_. > [@](#): > > The motorized gondola was awful, and Jaws’ survival of his parachuteless plunge places this on a level of believability with a Road Runner cartoon. > > Good things: The opening “fight-over-the-parachute” stunt was _really_ well done, and in the best Bond tradition. Nicely conceived and executed, except for Jaws’ aforementioned invulnerable plunge. The motorized gondola reminded me of _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_. I agree that the pre-title parachute fight was excellent. But Jaws flapping his arms and then surviving by hitting the tend _did_ smack of Wile E. Coyote. (Still, people have been known to survive falls from great heights. I wonder exactly how farfetched surviving by landing on a circus tent is?) > [@](#): > > Jaws was bad enough, but his Pippi Longstocking girlfriend takes the cake! I really did think she was cute. And she had a nice bod under that coverall. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850/20 "2003-08-18T14:39:48Z")
I don’t consider _Moonraker_ the same way as the other Bond films; to me it seems more like a parody of a Bond film instead of something that was supposed to be serious. I have two problems with the film otherwise. First, it is more-or-less the same plot as _The Spy Who Loved Me_. (“Yeah, but this time it’s a _space station_, not an underwater base, and they’re stealing _space shuttles_, not submarines!”) Of course, _You Only Live Twice_ did the same thing too. But the thing that bothers me the most is when Corinne DuFour gets killed. First, I think that it ranks as one of the nastiest Bond deaths. (Getting torn to pieces by dogs? Yick. And this happens to one of the _good_ guys. (well, gals.)) But what is worse is Bond’s apparent indifference to her fate. He sees her arrive as he leaves but doesn’t react or show any interest in what happened to her later. What… he lost all interest in her once he slept with her? Overall, for me it’s the most disturbing event in the entire Bond franchise. And it’s such a silly, ludicrous movie otherwise. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-james-bond-film-festival-part-11-moonraker/195850.md?page=2)