For their podcast The Talk Show, John Gruber and Dan Benjamin have been watching the James Bond movies in order and discussing them on the show. Now that Netflix has added the bulk of the series to its instant watch library, I thought I’d play along. Warning! Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!

John Gruber has mentioned on The Talk Show podcast that it must have been the success of Star Wars that pushed the Bond filmmakers to make Moonraker what it is, and the Wikipedia entry for the movie bears this out. Based on some comments I’ve gotten online, this seems to be a poorly regarded entry in the series, yet it was well received by the movie-going public at the time, at least as measured by box office results. According to Wikipedia it was the highest grossing Bond film until 1995’s GoldenEye. (Sidenote: GoldenEye is my favorite Bond movie, and the first one I ever saw in a movie theater.)

I totally get the negativity towards Moonraker, and would definitely rank it amongst the poorer Bond movies, yet I don’t hate it. As I was watching it I realized it felt super familiar to me even though I hadn’t seen it in years. I have a feeling that means it was one of the ones I watched the most as a kid. Makes sense really. It has everything a boy would love: space, laser gun battles, etc. The adult version of me, however, has a different view of those things… More on that later.

So it starts off with a jumbo jet flying across the Atlantic ocean carrying a space shuttle (called Moonrakers in the film) on its back. The Moonraker is highjacked mid-flight leading to the destruction of the airplane, and 007’s mission. In the universe of the movie space shuttles are built by a man named Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale). Apparently the shuttle was flying to Britain to be on loan to the British. So… what were the British going to do with a space shuttle? This is never explained in the film.

I can’t decide what I think of Lonsdale’s Drax. He has almost no personality, but he doesn’t come across as being a scarily cold bad guy, though he certainly shows he’s capable of extremely cruel acts, not the least of which includes his plan to wipe out all of humanity. Ultimately though he has perhaps the most diabolical plan of any Bond villain ever he personally comes across as kind of boring. Wikipedia mentions that James Mason was offered the role of Drax. I would have loved to see that, as Mason is one of my all-time favorite actors. He certainly would have added more personality to Drax. However, Drax is a little too similar to Captain Nemo, who Mason did play. Still would have loved to have seen it though.

While investigating Drax, Bond meets the main Bond girl of this film, Holly Goodhead. Yes, the thirteen-year-old boy they must have hired to crank out suggestive names for Bond girls is at it again. Here’s the problem: Lois Chiles is terrible in this movie. I don’t know if she was trying to play Holly as a cool cat since we learn later in the movie that she’s a CIA agent (not to mention a trained Moonraker pilot), but she just comes across as totally wooden. She has about the same level of personality as Drax, which is to say pretty close to nil.

The only two characters who are actually interesting are Bond, played excellently as always by Roger Moore, and Jaws (Richard Kiel). This was the first movie where to me Moore started showing signs of aging, but he’s still as cool as ever.

I have a feeling that those who strongly dislike this movie probably don’t like Jaws. He definitely is played for laughs in this one, but I absolutely love him in this movie. For someone who has only one line in the film, Richard Kiel does a lot of acting. He’s so expressive with his face, like at the end when Bond gets Drax to admit that only people who meet his standards of perfection will survive in the new order. Kiel makes it clear with his expression that Jaws understands what this will mean for him and his girlfriend.

Speaking of Jaws, I think my favorite scene in the movie is when he attempts to kill Manuela, Bond’s Brazilian contact. Bond and Manuela are in Rio de Janeiro where some kind of creepy parade is happening. Bond breaks into a warehouse while Manuela waits for him in the alley. Jaws approaches wearing a super creepy giant clown head. The costume is scary, and the way Jaws walks slowly down the alley totally sells it. I even like how the scene ends with the crowd of partiers getting between Bond and Jaws. The only thing I don’t get is why Manuela didn’t scream for help when Jaws grabbed her after the first batch of partiers came by. Jaws pretends to be dancing with her and… she just goes along with it? Dumb.

As I write this we sit near the end of the space shuttle era, so it was a little surreal to watch this movie which features the orbiter so prominently, particularly since this movie was released almost two years before the first shuttle launch.

So let’s talk about the ending. Drax has a huge orbiting space station from which he plans to exterminate human life on Earth so that he can repopulate it with pretty people. The pretty people are ferried to the station via several Moonraker shuttles. Bond and Holly are aboard one of them. They figure out that Drax has a radar jamming device on the station, and they have to destroy it so that Earth can mount an assault on the station. They succeed in destroying the jammer, and in what seems like five minutes the U.S. has launched their own Moonraker loaded with assault troops with laser guns. Drax attempts to shoot down the shuttle. When he’s unsuccessful he sends his men out in space suits with laser guns to attack the shuttle. Meanwhile the shuttle opens its cargo bay to release its assault troops with laser guns and a massive laser gun battle ensues that any boy will love.

Here’s the problem with this whole thing: It’s dumb. First of all, the U.S. doesn’t know the station is there because Bond didn’t know and therefore can’t tell them. Radar just detected the station after Bond and Goodhead destroyed the jamming device. So they don’t know what it is, just that it’s there. So they send in a bunch of armed troops? And how are they able to launch so quickly? It takes a lot of time to prepare a space shuttle. I guess the short answer is that in movies space shuttles always launch quickly. Besides, it’s 1979 and the general public doesn’t know how a space shuttle works. Even so, it’s really dumb.

It would have been way better had the assault shuttle not even been in the movie. Bond and Goodhead could somehow rig the station for self destruct and escape in one of the Moonrakers to shoot down the poison pods. That would have been a better ending.

Also, what’s up with the lasers? Earlier in the movie we see one of Q’s guys test-firing it, which would suggest it’s something cooked up by the MI6 Q Branch. However, both the American and Drax astronauts are armed with them at the end which would suggest that maybe Drax’s company built them along with the Moonrakers and maybe the Americans bought some from him? I guess? This is never explained in the movie. “Now pay attention, 007!”

Wikipedia’s entry on the movie has some fascinating background information, such as how they pulled off the parachute scenes at the beginning of the movie. They also have this interesting nugget about Jaws:

Jaws was intended to be a villain against Bond to the bitter end, but director Lewis Gilbert stated on the DVD documentary that he received so much fan mail from small children saying “Why can’t Jaws be a goodie not a baddie”, that as a result he was persuaded to make Jaws gradually become Bond’s ally at the end of the film.

I love Jaws’ one speaking moment, though the way he and his girlfriend got away was lame. They help Bond and Goodhead get unstuck from the station, staying behind in part of the station that breaks away and floats off. Clearly they wanted to let the audience know that they’re alright, so Bond has a stupid line where he says something like, “Don’t worry, it’s only a hundred miles to Earth.” So… are there parachutes on this part of the station? Will it automatically re-enter the atmosphere and land on its own? These things are not explained, though I think there was a throw-away line later about Jaws landing safely.

I really liked the theme song for this one, sung by Shirley Bassey. It sounds amazing, though lyrically it makes no sense. From the song:

Just like the moonraker goes in search of his dream of gold,

I search for love, for someone to have and hold…

Why even use the word “moonraker” in the song since it’s clear from the context in the song that it has nothing to do with space shuttles. Aah, forget it.

Gruber has talked several times during the Bond commentary on The Talk Show about the fabulous set design work of production designer Ken Adam, who did set designs for some of the previous Bond movies as well as Dr. Strangelove. The sets are amazing in Moonraker, and not just the space station set. There’s the beautiful home that Drax lives in, and the room where Bond and M encounter Drax. Those two may have been existing structures, but I have to think Adam at least was responsible for picking them. The Aztec temple set where Drax’s Earth-based command center is was amazing. Of course I couldn’t help thinking back to the hours I spent playing GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 as a teenager in which the Aztec temple set is faithfully reproduced. Definitely got a bit nostalgic during those scenes…

Poor James Bond film, but not without it’s charms. Certainly better to me than Live And Let Die. Faint praise I guess, but there you go!

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