Heavy Bondage: Moonraker

Moonraker is possibly the best novel from the initial quintet, but this extravagant, imaginatively undernourished film bears little resemblance to it ....
- The Guardian, June 1979

Moonraker
Film: 1979
Book: 1955 (3rd in chronology)

Irreverent Synopsis: A space shuttle (improbably fully fueled) is stolen right off the back of the 747 that's transporting it. Bond investigates, and comes to believe that the shuttle was stolen by the man who built it: eccentric magnate Hugo Drax. Also investigating Drax is scientist and CIA agent Holly Goodhead; when she and Bond realize they are chasing the same fish, they join forces. Drax needs the shuttle because one of his own is faulty; he has built a secret space station and he plans to bring a chosen set of perfect human specimens up there, then kill all the humans on the planet with poison gas, then inherit the Earth.

To quote Smith and Lavington in Bond Films: "Sounds a bit like The Spy Who Loved Me, doesn't it? It is. Almost everything in this film is like The Spy Who Loved Me, except not actually good."

Major Observations: Here are the high points of Moonraker: Hugo Drax, as played by Michel Lonsdale. Holly Goodhead, as played by Lois Chiles. Corinne Dufour, as played by Corinne Clery, and especially her very nasty death scene. In fact, the whole pheasant-shooting sequence, and Drax's expression when Bond picks off the sniper.

The very rough fight - so rough that the comedy is a relief rather than an annoyance - with Chang through the antique glass museum and the clockworks. The switchout of the Venetian lab and Bond's humiliation. An all-too-brief final look at Bernard Lee as M.

« "Is Bond back from that mission yet?"

The Rio carnival/alley sequence. Bond and Jaws' brief exchange of smiles before the set-to on the cable-car roof. The Amazonian boat chase, until the slapstick ending. The Moonraker launch and orbit sequence, which is handled with quiet grandeur, right through the point where we see the space station slowly emerge from darkness. After that, it gets ridiculous.

In short, while I don't think this is the worst Bond film or even in the bottom five (I believe A View To A Kill, Octopussy, and The Man With the Golden Gun all have fewer shining moments, For Your Eyes Only, Thunderball, and The Living Daylights are all slower, and Licence to Kill is in a category all its own), this is definitely a movie improved by being seen on a DVD player with a nice, large, variable-speed fast-forward button.

This would be a much worse film if it weren't for some fine performances. Lonsdale's Drax seems to be one of those great dividers; you either love it or you hate it. Most of my books seem to love it. One describes Lonsdale's approach to the part as "icy relish," and that about sums it up for me. Lonsdale reportedly took the part because there were very few roles of this type available in French cinema - sounds like he wanted to chew a bit of scenery. Drax gets most of the film's good lines, and unlike the equally nutso Stromberg, actually seems dangerous.

Dr. Goodhead is clearly not much of a scientist or a CIA agent, given that Drax has managed to build his scheme without her noticing, but she still doesn't deserve the attitude she gets from Bond. Some critics believe Bond's conduct toward women in this film is atrocious as a whole, but he is reasonably decent toward the only other two he interacts with heavily (the tragic Corinne, and the agent Manuela in Rio, whom he treats with something akin to professional respect.) It's just Goodhead he doesn't like.

"Come on, Mr. Bond. A 70-year-old can take three Gs."
"Well, the trouble is there's never a 70-year-old around when you need one."

Then again, she also slaps back at him every chance she gets, which may be part of what makes the character so charming. Her shrug and abashed twinkle as Bond exposes all her CIA-issue toiletries is perfect.

(Then again, I might just be biased because to me these are three of the most visually appealing women ever to appear in a Bond film, especially Corinne.)

The biggest problem with the film is that Bond himself isn't really present to speak of; as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang notes, he "does remarkably little other than flit from location to location, breaking into somewhere to discover a label which will tell him where to go next." Ultimately, that makes this a travelogue with some nice bits, but lacking a core.

Moonraker is all over the map in what it steals from, right down to its musical jokes on 2001, Close Encounters and The Magnificent Seven, but the real cultural influence to contend with is Star Wars, which came out in 1977 and Changed Everything. Unfortunately, grafting outer space onto Bond may have seemed like a clever idea at the time, but Bond, despite the leaps of faith, is just a wee bit too grounded in the real world for that. The idea of a US government which couldn't even get the space shuttle off the ground on schedule (it was supposed to happen the same year as the movie, but didn't actually happen until 1982) being able to summon up a fleet of "Space Marines" for gravity-free combat with "lasers" is not just science fiction, it's not particularly good science fiction.

Minor Observations: People who are the kind of people who love Bond films can spot Michel Lonsdale in The Name of the Rose and alongside Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce (Bond villain roll call!) in Ronin. People who wouldn't be caught dead at a Bond film are referred to his appearance in Chariots of Fire. Most of his other work is in French.

Reportedly, James Mason was originally considered for Drax.

It was intended, right up until the beginning of filming, that Barbara Bach would return for a cameo as Major Amasova.

"Problems, problems, problems." »

Reportedly, she was to have been seen in bed with General Gogol as his "problem."

Lois Chiles turns up briefly to spoof herself in the first Austin Powers film.

This film was, in case you cannot guess from the crew credits, filmed largely in France to save money - the first Bond film where no part was filmed at the Pinewood studios in England (but not the last).

Lewis Gilbert and Ken Adam team up here for the final time; Gilbert went on to direct a number of notable films (such as Educating Rita) after leaving his indelible mark on the Bond franchise, for better or for worse.

Kate Bush was reportedly the original choice to sing the theme song, but she declined.

The product placement in this movie crosses a line for everyone whose commentary on the film I have ever read - an all-time low.

Most commentators also single out the bluescreen in the cable-car sequence for special venom, but that doesn't bother me; I wonder sometimes why people pick on this so much when the bluescreen in Dr. No or the ski sequence in The Spy Who Loved Me are both, to me, far more intrusive.

There is no sound in space. There is no sound in space. Say it with me again: There is no sound in space. Anyone who says, "Well, yes, but you can't very well have a movie scene with that long a silence," is instructed to notice the extremely effective use of silence when the cable is cut during the space-capture at the beginning of You Only Live Twice - or the effectiveness of nothing but a little background music during the revealing of the space station earlier in this same film.

Finally, the Fleming book is down here in Minor Observations because, as the quote at the top of the page implies, the movie contains nothing from it except the name of the villain and his operation - and one throwaway joke ("I play bridge with this fellow Drax").

In the novel Moonraker, Hugo Drax is an industrialist who emerged from World War II without any memory of his past, then succeeded wildly in all his business ventures. He has arranged to build an anti-nuclear deterrent rocket system, called Moonraker - paid for entirely with his own money and donated to the nation. Bond is specially detached to the CID (Scotland Yard) to investigate a murder of a Ministry security expert at the rocket site (because MI6, like the CIA, does not have a domestic charter, something Fleming knew well even if the screenwriters sometimes don't).

M is suspicious of Drax because of one flaw in his character - he cheats at cards. The whole first section of the book is a nice bit of writing where Bond is asked informally by M to come to Blades to play bridge and expose Drax in as delicate a way as possible. The rest of the book revolves around the conundrum: Is someone trying to sabotage Moonraker? Is Drax what he seems to be? And the answer is still a very pleasantly nasty surprise, nearly fifty years later.

I mention this at such length because I believe the book's reputation has been ruined by the movie, yet of all the Fleming books I reread or re-skimmed to write these pages, this is the one that held up the best.

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