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.
What Is It?
James Bond investigates the theft of a space shuttle, and 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 assembled 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.
Cast: Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel, Corinne Cléry
Crew: Lewis Gilbert (Director), Christopher Wood (Screenplay), Albert R. Broccoli (Producer), Derek Meddings (SFX), John Barry (Music)
Original Release: June 29, 1979
What Were Its Excesses?
This Bond film continued the trend of the Roger Moore era veering the franchise into excess and self-parody, and it is pretty obvious that it was calculated to play off the popularity of Star Wars, which had turned into a box office phenomenon two years earlier.
A Closer Look:
The James Bond franchise had already rolled out ten films by the time 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 sci-fi a hot property two years earlier, and Bond had always flirted pretty closely with the genre. But now the franchise dove headlong into it with a film that took the iconic spy into outer space.
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 theaters in 1977, and the Bond producers decided to swap out this Ian Fleming novel as the next entry in the series to fit in with the trendy sci fi direction 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 all 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 sci-fi (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 prior actor to portray the character, Sean Connery. 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, practically verging on farce at times.
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 (i.e., the gondola chase scene). On top of that, it launched Bond into outer space as a blatant attempt to contrive an excuse to deliver a big-sfx 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. I personally enjoyed Derek Meddings’ special effects, though more modern-day audiences, weaned on CGI overexposure, may find the practical sfx a bit cheesy. To enjoy this movie, you basically have to shut down your 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.
Should It Be Rebooted?
The Bond franchise shifted away from self-parody starting with the next film, the previous promised For Your Eyes Only. And in the 21st Century, it adopted a more realistic and gritty approach when Daniel Craig came onboard as Bond, with very little in the way of sci-fi elements and a heavier focus on espionage and political intrigue. Craig has since stepped down from the role, and producers of the franchise are currently searching for a new Bond (perhaps Idris Elba?), so it is unclear what direction the films will take going forward. If they do decide to revisit some of the earlier stories, Moonraker would be a good one, though the book itself was very different from the movie. Still, it would make for a decent spy-fi film, and a reboot could work if they leaned less into the self-parody and more into the espionage and sci fi elements.
Interesting Facts:
In true blockbuster style, Moonraker was made on a budget of $34 million, which was almost as much as the first eight Bond films combined (not adjusting for inflation). But it turned out to be a good investment, as the film earned $210 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing Bond movie up to that point.
This was not the first attempt to make a movie based on Moonraker, as Bond producer Harry Saltzman contacted Gerry Anderson in the late ’60s about adapting the book. Anderson was known for his Supermarionation work at that time with shows like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and he saw this as a good opportunity to transition away from that to working with live actors. Anderson put together an 84-page treatment that more closely followed the book, but his version never went forward. You can read more about that at Cult-SciFi.com.
Where Can You Watch It?
The movie is widely available on DVD and Blu-ray, and you can also purchase it VOD. It is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
