Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre to the extreme and perhaps to excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
By John J. Joex
Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 Stars
The James Bond franchise had already rolled out ten films by the time that Moonraker hit the screens in 1979, but this one represented a significant course change as the spy/espionage elements so prevalent in the earlier films took a backseat to Science Fiction in this outing. The move made sense considering the direction of the movie industry at that point; Star Wars had made Science Fiction a hot property two years earlier and Bond had always flirted with sci fi. But now the franchise dove headlong into it with a film that took the iconic spy into outer space.
The rather convoluted plot for the film involves our trusted spy hero investigating the theft of a space shuttle. This leads him across the globe and eventually brings him face to face with the nefarious Hugo Drax whose company manufactures the shuttles and who is actually responsible for stealing his own spacecraft. Drax needs the ships to transport the army of “perfect humans’ he has amassed to a space station in orbit around Earth. Once there, he plans on launching bombs containing a deadly toxin back to the planet, wiping out the population. Once cleansed, he and his “master race” will repopulate the planet. However, Bond, with the assistance of his very attractive CIA accomplice Dr. Holly Goodhead, plans to stop Drax from unleashing his evil plot.
The Bond film that preceded Moonraker, The Spy Who Loved Me, promised For Your Eyes Only as the next title in the franchise during its closing credits. However, Star Wars set Hollywood on a course change when it drew massive audiences into the theaters in 1977, and the Bond producers decided to drag out this Ian Fleming novel as the next in the series to fit in with the trendy sci fi bent that the movie industry had adopted. Of course the final film had very little in relation to what Fleming had written (a common trait for Bond films) and basically strove for a James Bond meets Star Wars approach. That in itself is not necessarily a bad move, as I have already mentioned that the franchise had never shied away from Science Fiction (and it previously traveled into space with 1967’s You Only Live Twice) and the core plot did not drift too far from typical Bond territory (mad genius intent on ruling the world and all). What derailed this movie, though, were the excesses that it wallowed in.
Many Bond fans felt like Roger Moore represented a step down from the penultimate actor to portray the character, Sean Connery. And they also believed that the preceding three movies with Moore in the role had strayed from the quality of the early films and had flirted with self-parody. Much to their dismay, Moonraker took the franchise even further in that direction and practically on the verge of farce. The movie added much more in the way of comedic and self-mocking elements and it took the gadgets and gizmos that had become a staple of the series into the realm of the absurd. On top of that, it launches Bond into outer space as little more than a blatant attempt to contrive an excuse to deliver a Star Wars style space battle above the Earth.
All of that said, the movie does not completely fail if you can accept it as nothing more than a fun romp and a passable popcorn movie. Its humor works more often than not even though it flies dangerously close to slapstick at times. And I personally enjoyed Derek Meddings outer space special effects, though more modern-day audiences, weaned on CGI over-exposure, may find them quaint and a bit cheesy. To enjoy this movie, you basically have to shut down the brain and look at it as a parody of the spy/espionage genre. The franchise would see better days after this film, eventually heading in a much grittier direction, but Moonraker represented a diversion of sorts into a Star Wars-inspired bloatfest that drew the ire of many Bond fans even if it did make a mint at the Box Office.
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