007: Misión espacial

After "The spy who loved me" Bond producers wanted to do "For your eyes only". But the massive "Star Wars" success made them change their mind -sending 007 to space.

"Moonraker" (1979) is maybe too fanciful and slapstick, with too many special effects, stunts and gadgets. The film goes too far away also from the previous movie ("The spy"), which was perfect.

But "Moonraker" is very well done, from a technical point of view it's a masterpiece. It's surprising to see how everything was made with accuracy -for movies, in 1978-79, there were neither computers nor CGI effects.

The film is really funny and entertaining, with beautiful sceneries and sets. Venice, France, California, Brazil and Guatemala are the fantastic locations. Scenes in the space are only in the last 30 minutes of the movie -so it's not true that the film is entirely set in the space, as some detractors say.

The film contains also homages to "The magnificent seven", "Close encounters of the third kind" and "2001" -discover them! 7,5/10

Much like Tomorrow Never Dies, this is a great Bond that somehow copped a lot of criticism.

The plot unfolds evenly and with a good dose of intrigue. The main villain, Drax, admittedly is intent on carrying out another "end of the world" plot, but he is more dark, disturbing and cunning than most villains. Superbly acted and the Noah's Ark style plan had a degree of disturbing intelligence, compared with the usual nuclear missile / bomb / satellite plans in other Bonds.

Roger Moore was fantastic. Well settled into the role, he is cheeky, womanising, humorous, yet tough and sharp. The one liners were fun, the girls were both sexy and not one-dimension, though Lois Chiles was a bit wooden.

Once in space, too many were quick to think "oh god, it's Bond meets Star Wars" , when it was nothing of the sort. Although the effects look dated, the space battle was good for its time and the enthralling climax extended right to the final minutes of the movie, and fantastically signed off with a bit of great double entendre.

One you can watch over again and doesn't date as badly as other Bonds from the same time. Sure it had its corny moments, especially with Jaws, but who said Bond can't be a bit of cheesy fun at times!

Of all the Bond films, MOONRAKER is, imo, the most visually striking of the entire series. It looks like it cost a billion bucks to make. The sets by Ken Adams are amazing (he should have won an Oscar for them). The locations are stunning. The fx are well made and still hold up today. The women are above average gorgeous (they all look like supermodels before supermodels were in). All of this beautifully filmed by cinematographer Jean Tournier. I love watching MOONRAKER just because it's so damn gorgeous to look at. I don't know how many times I saw it at the movies when it came out just to appreciate the beauty of it all. Unfortunately, we are talking about a James Bond film and of course there has to be the usual formulaic stuff seen in every other James Bond film.

Basically, MOONRAKER is a remake of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. I always preferred MOONRAKER over the schintzy SPY WHO LOVED ME, which was made just before this one. Lewis Gilbert directed those three Bond films and MOONRAKER is his crowning achievement. Personally speaking, Gilbert is a bad director. His films are always bloated and sorta soulless and yet still gorgeous. Aside from his Bond films, he rarely made an impression with his other films. In fact, he's the one who directed THE ADVENTURERS, which is a good looking film but it's really, really awful. I'm glad Gilbert stopped making Bond films. He was always too laid back for action films like this.

There ARE a lot of memorable scenes in MOONRAKER: the entire intro is now a classic and much better than the one in SWLM. Corinne being chased by dogs. The simulator scene. Bond fighting with Chang in Venice. My favorite scene is when Bond and Goodhead are stuck below a shuttle's rockets and are about to be burned alive. A near perfect action moment there. The climax in space is fun if improbable. I love the scene when they have to destroy those globes as they re-enter the atmosphere. Really suspenseful. But as good as those scenes are individually they almost don't register as a whole because the story and direction are so lackadaisical, so relax. It's like everyone was on vacation. There's absolutely no grit to this film. It's really sleek and smooth but nearly bite-less. The whole story seems to be just a preamble to the action set in space.

What really stands out about MOONRAKER are the many long moments with no dialogue. I'd say about 50 to 60% of the film has no dialogue. Just music and sound effects. It's almost a silent film. Moore didn't have a lot of dialogue to remember and this was an easy film to dub.

The story is as easy as connect-the-dots: The British owned Moonraker 5 disappears in mid-air and 007 is sent to California to investigate its disappearance. At the Moonraker plant in California (France really) Bond find blueprints of vials which leads him to Venice, where the vials are fabricated. And from Venice Bond goes to Brazil where the vials, filled with deadly nerve gas, are shipped to the underground layout of Drax (boringly played by the usually reliable Michael Lonsdale. Love the name "Drax" though). Oh and we learn that Drax wants to create a new race of super humans by killing everyone on earth by dropping those nerve gas filled globes from space while Drax and his super humans reside in Drax's space station. I actually like that part of the story and some of the grandeur of it (Drax wanting to be God) is actually achieved with the striking visuals and the amazingly lush score by the brilliant John Barry. Unfortunately, again, this is a James Bond film and thought provoking ideas are set aside for formulaic action.

I wish this wasn't a James Bond film. Take away all the Bond elements, the stupid humor, flesh out the screenplay and this would be a spectacular kick ass science fiction film.

Anyway, back to James Bond.

I really like Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead. She's my favorite Bond girl ever. Beautiful and sophisticated but tough. She's no bimbo. I remember a lot of my friends in school didn't like her because they thought she was too tough for a babe. I guess Holly Goodhead was Girl Power before Girl Power was in. For me, Chiles epitomizes everything chic and sexy about the late 1970s. She's unforgettable in that black jumpsuit. But the Holly Goodhead role is a really badly written one. She's almost an afterthought to the whole story. They basically needed a character to fly the space shuttle and Bond into space (something 007 obviously couldn't do) and Goodhead was basically that: just a pilot. Then there's Corinne Clery who is truly gorgeous but sadly, again, her role is minimal. Then there's the not so beautiful Jaws. Jaws was so popular in SPY WHO LOVED ME they brought him back here. I don't mind this but they turned him into a good guy and he even falls in love with a ditsy girl. This part of MOONRAKER is *really* bad. Someone should completely edit that storyline out of the movie and its rating would go up exponentially. And like in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, the musical in-jokes were needlessly distracting.

These bad aspects about MOONRAKER are almost negligible though because the film is such a visual (and aural) feast. Whether it's one of the best or worst of the series, I really don't care. I can positively state though that this is THE best looking Bond film ever, with an actually cool science fiction story somewhere in it. I give MOONRAKER 10 stars for the look of it all but 5 stars for the laid back and sometimes silly direction. So an average of 7 stars.

Moonraker is directed by Lewis Gilbert and adapted to screenplay by Christopher Wood from the novel written by Ian Fleming. It stars Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel and Corinne Dufour. Music is scored by John Barry and cinematography by Jean Tournier.

Bond 11 and 007 is tasked with finding out what happened to the Moonraker space shuttle that mysteriously disappeared up in space. His investigation takes him to the billionaire builder of the craft, Hugo Drax, where Bond discovers a fiendish plot to start a new world of perfect human beings.

At the end of The Spy Who Loved Me we were told that James Bond would return in For Your Eyes Only, but the gargantuan success of Star Wars and a rekindling of all things sci-fi led Albert Broccoli to send 007 out into space! Armed with a $30 million budget and using only the core base plotting of Fleming's novel, the makers crafted what many feel is the runt of the James Bond litter. The money "is" up there on the screen, it's excess overdrive, outlandish from start to finish and actually is very very entertaining. The problem is that in James Bond terms it barely feels like a Bond movie, it actually could be any bloke propelling the story, this is a guy reliant on gadgets and not his brain or brawn, quipping away purely for the sake of a cheap laugh. Ultimately it's a cash in, both in terms of the sci-fi boom hitting the late 70s and of the James Bond name.

If judged away from the Bond universe on its own popcorn terms, film is a blast, literally. As a whole it's a bit choppy, but many of the parts desperately trying to make up a cohesive blockbuster are great entertainment. Mid air scrap for a parachute, a cable car sequence brilliantly realised, centrifuge chamber peril, boat chase, laser fight and much space age malarkey, the film is chocked full of crowd pleasing moments. In fact it's often mistaken as being a film set in space, when in fact the action doesn't move up there until the last half hour, the previous hour and a half is spread out over France, Italy, Brazil, USA, Gutemala and of course England. The score and the title song, however, are very much Bond. With Barry and Bassey back respectively, film is filled with appropriate atmospheric space strains and a hauntingly emotive theme song.

Charaterisations are a mixed bag. Lonsdale's Hugo Drax is one of the better Bond villains, dignified, well educated and wallowing in a life of luxury, he's perfectly understated in Lonsdale's hands and in fact steals every scene he shares with Moore's Bond. Holly Goodhead (Chiles) is a bold Bond girl with many skills, she's a scientist and an astronaut, attractive and decently played by Chiles, if a touch unmemorable in the Bond girl universe. Kiel is back as Jaws, with the makers choosing to make him some love sick puppy dog, where once was a unique villain, now is cypher for slapstick and a crappy flip-flop of plotting, while the "love interest" for Jaws, Dolly (Blanche Ravalec), is cringe worthy. Sadly this would be the last appearance of Bernard Lee as M, but he leaves a favourable mark, as does Desomond Llewelyn as Q, but once again Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) is all too brief, the flirt and banter she used to share with Bond now seems long gone.

With a committed Bond fan base trudging through the turnstiles to see the latest instalment, the sci-fi fans intrigued by the themes of the story, and the general blockbuster loving crowd, Moonraker made a colossal $203 million at the worldwide box office. Making it the highest grossing Bond film so far, a record that would stick until Brosnan's debut in 1995. While critical notices were not as bad as some would have you believe, the critics clearly judging it on non Bond terms. Broccoli took notice of the fans, though, who were upset by the lack of respect to the serious side of Bond. He promised things would be different for Bond 12. 7/10

My Take: The comedy is occasionally off, but the special effects and action sequences are terrific.

Why do some viewers think this entry in the series is by far the weakest of Bond. I beg to differ, I actually think this is one of the better Bonds with Roger Moore. Despite its occasional decline to over-silliness (even for Bond standards), I actually find it more entertaining than Roger Moore's early entry "The Man with the Golden Gun".

The plot, which is more like a variation of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (only a little sillier), involves the theft of the Moonraker space shuttles. 007 is sent to Drax Industries, the manufacturers or these shuttles. He soon discovers that the owner, Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) uses this rockets to fulfill his dastardly plans to create another civilization.

One of the main reasons that critics mistreat this Bond entry is because it doesn't go with the trend of the other Bonds. MOONRAKER tries to be more faithful to the then-popular trend of science fiction movies (after the enduring success of such classic as STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS). Another would be its occasion to go beyond the level of silliness and not knowing when to stop. A humorous moment where Bond drives a gondola with wheels is OK, but it's other scenes like Jaws (Richard Kiel) finding a girlfriend are just too silly. More extreme silliness ensues (there are moments of true high-camp standards here), but as long as the sharp wit, the panache and style made famous by many other Bond films are there, there's no real harm in trying something else to go along with it.

Rating: ***1/2 out of 5.