Moonraker (film)

Moonraker (1979) is the eleventh spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film, directed by Lewis Gilbert, co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale and Richard Kiel. In the film, Bond is sent to investigate the mysterious theft of a space shuttle, leading him to Hugo Drax, billionaire owner of the shuttle-manufacturing firm. Along with space scientist Holly Goodhead, who later is identified as a CIA agent also investigating Drax, Bond follows the trail of clues from California to Venice, Italy, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Amazon rain forest, and finally into outer space in a bid to prevent a genocidal plot to wipe out the world and re-create human existence with a master race.

Moonraker was intended by its creator Ian Fleming to be turned into a film even before he completed the novel in 1954, as he based the novel on a manuscript he had written even earlier than this. The producers of the James Bond film series had originally intended to release Moonraker in 1973 with Roger Moore making his debut as Bond, but the film was put on hold and finally released in 1979 to coincide with the science fiction genre which had become extremely popular during this period with films such as Star Wars (1977).

Derek Meddings, a long-time contributor to the James Bond series, received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects nomination for the special effects used in the film and its space scenes.

Moonraker, despite receiving negative reviews from the popular critics of the time, was the highest grossing film of the series until the Pierce Brosnan Bond film Goldeneye. It collected a total of $210,300,000 world wide surpassing the earlier Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Moonraker was also noted for its high production cost for a Bond film because it being almost double the budget of the preceding Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

Plot

A Drax Industries Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked in mid-air, causing the incineration of the carrier Boeing 747. Bond is recalled from South Africa to investigate. En route in a small jet, Bond is attacked by the pilot and crew, and on overpowering two of the crew, is pushed out of the plane by henchman Jaws. He survives by stealing a parachute from the pilot in mid-air, whilst Jaws lands conveniently on a circus tent. Bond reports to MI6 headquarters in London, and is briefed by M and Q about the hijacking. It is agreed that the investigation should begin at the Drax Industries shuttle complex in southern California.

At Drax Industries, Bond is coldly greeted by the owner of the company Hugo Drax and henchman Chang at his chateau. Bond later meets an astronaut at the complex, Dr. Holly Goodhead, and is placed in a centrifuge chamber to experience enchanced gravitational force. However, the controls are taken over by Chang whilst Goodhead is absent and he makes an early attempt to kill Bond by over-running it over double the recommended limit of 7Gs. Surviving, but unsteady from the experience, Bond is later inadvertently aided by Drax's personal pilot, Corinne Dufour, as he sneaks into Drax's study and finds blueprints for a glass vial made in Venice by a company called Venini Glass. The next morning, during a shooting session in the grounds of Drax's chateau, Dufour is fired by Drax and then killed by two Dobermans, a death which is symbolized by the church bells in Venice as the film then moves on there.

Bond arrives at a glass museum in Venice and he again encounters Goodhead. Later, he is chased through the canals by Drax's henchmen but his gondola, with the ability to transform into a hovercraft, allows him to escape across the Piazza San Marco in a comic fashion. That night, Bond returns to the glass factory and breaks into a high-tech laboratory whereby on accidentally poisoning the scientists there, he learns that the vials are to hold a nerve gas fatal only to humans. After leaving, Chang, in Kendo gear, ambushes Bond in the glass museum, resulting in the smashing of a high number of vases and whole cases of items on display. It ends with Chang's death as he falls through the glass clock window onto the piano in the square from the attic. During the fight, Bond's sees a number of crates suggesting that Drax is moving his operation to Rio de Janeiro. Later, Bond breaks into Goodhead's hotel room, where he notices a flame-throwing perfume bottle, poisoned darts and a radio transmitter issued by the Central Intelligence Agency. He concludes that Goodhead is a CIA agent spying on Drax. They promise to work together, but quickly dispense with the truce. Bond has saved one of the vials he found earlier, as the only evidence of the now empty laboratory, giving it to M for analysis, who permits him to go to Rio de Janeiro.

After arriving in Rio de Janeiro, Bond is followed by his Brazilian contact Manuela, who he soon sleeps with. He learns that Chang has been replaced by Jaws. Bond meets with Goodhead at the top of the Sugar Loaf, but while on the cable car, they are attacked by Jaws, who has a fellow henchmen running the cars in the command centre. After Jaws' cable car crashes into the control center at top speed, he is rescued by a short girl ("Dolly") from the rubble, and the two fall in love. Bond and Goodhead lying on the ground after the cable car event are captured by henchmen and sent off tied down in an ambulance. Bond however escapes.

Bond, dressed in gaucho garb, reports to M's headquarters in Brazil and learns that the toxin comes from a rare orchid indigenous to the upper catchments of the Amazon jungle. While deadly to humans, it is harmless to all other life. Bond then travels up the Amazon River looking for Drax's research facility, and soon encounters Jaws and other henchmen again in a speedboat chase. Bond escapes via a hang glider from the speedboat just as it passes into the Iguacu Falls. Bond lands in a forest and is intoxicatingly lured into an ancient Mayan pyramid by a group of beautiful women. An attempt to kill him by him falling into the center pool with a snake however is unsuccessful, as he kills the python. Captured by Jaws again, Bond is taken to Drax's adjacent control room, where he sees four Moonrakers lifting off. Drax confirms Bond's theory that he himself stole the Moonraker because another in the fleet had developed a fault during assembly. Bond is reunited with Goodhead in a blast pit underneath Drax's personal shuttle set for lift off. He and Goodhead however, escape, and strangely pose successfully as pilots on the sixth shuttle. All shuttles then dock with Drax's space station, which is invisible from Earth.

Drax plans to destroy all human life by launching 50 globes containing the toxin into the earth's atmosphere. Before launching the globes, Drax also transported several dozen young men and women (many of which Bond had encountered in the pyramid) of varying race which he regarded as genetically perfect to the space station. They would live there until Earth was safe again for human life; their descendants will be the seed for a "new master race." Bond makes a biblical reference to Noah's Ark in the manner in which Drax ordered them into the shuttles "two by two" in the process of eliminating human life and starting again. Bond persuades Jaws and Dolly to switch allegiance by getting Drax to admit that anyone not measuring up to his physical standards would be exterminated (Dolly's glasses and Jaws' metal teeth being traits that exclude them both).

Learning that a radar-jammer is responsible for hiding the space station's orbital presence from observers on Earth, 007 and Goodhead disable it. The U.S. send a platoon of Marines in a military shuttle. On arrival, a laser battle ensues in which Drax guards as well as his new master race get killed. During the battle, Bond shoots Drax with a cyanide-coated dart attached to his watch, pushes him to an airlock, and ejects him into outer space.

Victorious, the Americans leave when Bond says their mission is completed. The space station was heavily damaged in the battle and now begins to fall apart. Jaws helps Bond and Goodhead escape in Drax's space shuttle. In celebration, Jaws opens a champagne bottle and he and Dolly toast (in his only spoken line: "Well, here's to us!"). They too escape the space station as their module breaks away before the station explodes. Before the battle, Drax had been able to launch three of the globes towards Earth which Goodhead and Bond now track. Bond uses Drax's shuttle lasers to destroy them, although the automatic system was damaged meaning that it had to be done manually with precision. The two return to Earth after making love in space (prompting the memorable line from Q: "I think he's attempting re-entry Sir!").

Cast

• Roger Moore as James Bond: An MI6 agent assigned to look into the theft of a shuttle from the "Moonraker" space programme.
• Michael Lonsdale as Sir Hugo Drax: An industrialist who plans to poison all humans on earth and establish a civilization in space.
• Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead: A CIA agent who joins Bond and flies with him to Drax's space station.
• Toshiro Suga as Chang: Drax's bodyguard, skilled at martial arts.
• Richard Kiel as Jaws: A henchman, afflicted by giantism and has a set of stainless steel teeth, whom Drax hires as a replacement for Chang. He helps Bond defeat Drax after learning that hormonally abnormal humans would be killed by the latter.
• Corinne Clery as Corinne Dufour: Drax's personal pilot. She is killed by Drax's doberman pinschers after she inadvertently aides Bond.
• Bernard Lee as M: The strict head of MI6.
• Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny: M's secretary.
• Desmond Llewelyn as Q: MI6's "quartermaster" who supplies Bond with multi-purpose vehicles and gadgets useful for the latter's mission.
• Geoffrey Keen as Fredrick Gray: The British Minister of Defence
• Walter Gotell as General Gogol: The head of the KGB
• Emily Bolton as Manuela: Bond's local contact in Rio.
• Blanche Ravalec as Dolly: Jaws's Girlfriend

Production

The end credits for the previous Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, said, "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only"; however, the producers chose Moonraker as the basis for the next film,^[2] following the box office success of the 1977 space-themed film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. For Your Eyes Only was subsequently delayed and ended up following Moonraker in 1981.^[3]

Script

Ian Fleming had originally intended the novel, published in 1954, to be made into a film even before he began writing it and was based on an original manuscript of a screenplay which had been on his mind for years.^[4] In 1955, the film rights to Moonraker were initially sold to John Payne of the Rank Organisation for £10,000 (£&0000000000188775.000000188,775 present value), paying a $1000 a month option for nine months. Payne was the first person interested in making the novels into a film series, but later rejected the idea based on the fact it wouldn't be possible for him to obtain the rights to the entire 007 series. In spring 1959, due to on-going difficulties, Fleming eventually bought back the rights for his novels, shortly before selling them to Harry Saltzman^[5]

However, as with several previous Bond films, the story from Fleming's novel is almost entirely dispensed with, and little more than the name of Hugo Drax was used in film, in favour of a film more in keeping with the era of science fiction. The 2002 Bond film Die Another Day makes further use of some ideas and character names from the novel. Tom Mankiewicz had written a full screenplay of Moonraker that was eventually partly discarded. According to Mankiewicz footage shot at Drax's lairs was considerably more detailed than the edited result in the final version. The crew had shot a scene with Drax meeting his co-financiers in his jungle lair and they used the same chamber room below the space shuttle launch pad that Bond and Goodhead eventually escape from. This scene was shot but later cut out.^[6] Another scene involving Bond and Goodhead in a meditation room aboard Drax's space station, was shot but never used in the final film. However, press stills were released of the scene which featured on Topps trading cards in 1979 as was a theatrical trailer which featured Bond punching Jaws in the face aboard the space station, neither of which featured in the complete film.^[6] Some scenes from Mankiewicz's script were later used in subsequent films, including the Acrostar Jet sequence used in the pre-credit sequence for Octopussy, and the Eiffel Tower scene in A View to a Kill.

In March 2004, an Internet hoax stated rumours about a lost 1956 version of Moonraker by Orson Welles, and a James Bond web site repeated it on April Fool's Day in 2004 as a hoax. Supposedly, this recently discovered lost film was 40 minutes of raw footage with Dirk Bogarde as Bond, Welles as Drax, and Peter Lorre as Drax's henchman.^[7] A film poster was created displaying the actors and the title of the film.

Novelization

The screenplay of Moonraker differed so much from Ian Fleming's novel that EON Productions and Glidrose Publications authorised the film's screenwriter, Christopher Wood to write his second novelization based upon the film. It was named James Bond and Moonraker to avoid confusion with Fleming's original novel Moonraker. It was released in 1979, in the aftermath of the films release.^[8] Unlike Wood's first novelization, James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which showed a significant difference to the actual film, in James Bond and Moonraker, Wood writes a virtually direct novelization of the screenplay.^[8] The only noticeable differences between the novelization and the screenplay for Moonraker is that there is no mention of Dolly, Jaws' girlfriend, and his characterization stays true to Wood's description as being a mute. In addition, at the conclusion of the Venetian canal chase sequence, Bond's gondola does not sprout a flotation device and ascend to St. Mark's square as it does in the film.

After the release of the novel, Glidrose Productions chose not to commission novelizations of the next few Bond films; the next film to be novelized would be License to Kill ten years later in 1989, owing to it not having been based on an original Fleming novel.^[9]

Casting

The role of the villain, Hugo Drax, was originally offered to James Mason.^[10] However well-established French actor Michael Lonsdale was cast as the billionaire Drax, partly due to his fluency in English, and Corinne Clery for the part of Corinne Dufour, given that the film was produced in France. American actress Lois Chiles had originally been offered the role of Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), but had turned down the part when she decided to take temporary retirement. Chiles was cast as Holly Goodhead by chance, when she was given the seat next to Lewis Gilbert on a flight and he believed she would be ideal for the role as the CIA scientist. ^[2] Drax's henchman Chang, played by Japanese aikido instructor Toshiro Suga, was recommended for the role by executive producer Michael G. Wilson, who was one of his pupils.^[2] In Moonraker, Wilson also continued a tradition in the Bond films he started in the film Goldfinger where he has a small cameo role. He appears twice in the film, first as a tourist outside the Venini Glass shop and museum in Venice, then at the end of the film as a technician in Drax's control room.

The Jaws character, played by Richard Kiel makes a return, although in Moonraker the role is played more for comedic effect than in The Spy Who Loved Me. 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.^[2]

Diminutive French actress Blanche Ravalec, who had recently begun her career with minor roles in French films such as Michel Lang's Holiday Hotel (1978) and Claude Sautet's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film nominee, A Simple Story (1978), was cast as the bespectacled Dolly, the girlfriend of Jaws. Originally, the producers were dubious about whether the audience would accept the height difference between them, and only made their decision once they were informed by Richard Kiel that his real-life wife was of the same height.^[10]Lois Maxwell's 22 year old daughter, Melinda Maxwell, was also cast as one of the "perfect" human specimens from Drax's master race.^[4]

Filming and effects

Production began on August 14, 1978. Main shooting was switched from the usual 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios to France, due to high taxation in England at the time. Only the cable car interiors and space battle exteriors were filmed at Pinewood. The massive sets of Moonraker designed by Ken Adam were the largest ever constructed in France and required more than 222,000 man-hours to construct (roughly 1000 hours by each of the crew on average).^[2] They were shot at three of France's largest film studios in Boulogne, Epinay and Billancourt.^[4] 220 technicians used 100 tonnes of metal, two tonnes of nails and 10,000 feet of wood to build the three-story space station set at Eponay Studios.^[4] The elaborate space set for Moonraker holds the world record for having the largest number of zero gravity wires in one scene.^[2] The Venetian glass museum and fight between Bond and Chang was shot at Boulogne Studios in a building which had once been a World War II Luftwaffe aircraft factory during Germany's occupation of France.^[4] The scene in the Venice glass museum and warehouse holds the record for the largest amount of break-away sugar glass used in a single scene.^[2]

The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte was used for Drax's chateau in the film. An extensive aerial view of the site was witnessed by helicopter in the early stages of the film by Bond and Dufour arriving.

Drax's mansion, set in California, was actually filmed at the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, about 55 kilometres (34 mi) southeast of Paris, for the exteriors and Grand Salon. The remaining interiors, including some of the scenes with Corinne Defour and the drawing room, were filmed at the Château de Guermantes.^[2]

Much of the film was shot in the cities of London, Paris, Venice, Palmdale and Rio de Janeiro. The production team had considered India and Nepal as a location in the film but on arriving there to investigate they found it inconceivable to write it into the script, particularly with time restrictions to do so.^[2] They decided on Rio de Janeiro relatively early on, which Cubby Broccoli had visited on vacation, and a team was sent to the city in early 1978 to capture initial footage from the Mardi Gras festival which featured in the film.^[2]

Stuntman Richard Graydon slipped and narrowly avoided falling to his death during the filming of the cable car sequence at Sugarloaf Mountain.

At the Rio de Janeiro location, many months later, Roger Moore arrived several days later than scheduled for shooting due to recurrent health problems and an attack of kidney stones he received in France.^[2] After arriving in Rio, he was immediately whisked off the plane and went straight to hair and makeup, before reboarding the plane, to film the sequence with him arriving as James Bond in the film. Sugarloaf Mountain was a prominent location in the film, and during filming of the cable car sequence in which Bond and Goodhead are attacked by Jaws during mid-air transportation high above Rio, stuntman Richard Graydon slipped and narrowly avoided falling to his death.^[2] For the scene in which Jaws bites into the steel tramway cable with his teeth, the cable was actually made of liquorice, although Richard Kiel was still required to use his steel dentures.^[4]

Iguazu Falls was a natural location depicted in the film, although as stated by Q in the film, the falls were intended to be located somewhere in the upper catchment of the Amazon rather than where the falls are actually located in the south. The second unit had originally planned on sending an actual boat over the falls.^[2] However on attempting to release it, the boat became firmly embedded on rocks near the edge. Despite a dangerous attempt by helicopter and rope ladder to retrieve it, the plan had to be abandoned, forcing the second unit to use a miniature at Pinewood instead.^[2] The exterior of Drax's pyramid headquarters in the Amazon rain forest near the falls was actually filmed at the Tikal Mayan ruins in Guatemala.^[4] The interior of the pyramid, however, was designed by Ken Adam at Pinewood studio in which he purposefully used a shiny coating to make the walls look plastic and false.^[2] All of the space center scenes were shot at the Vehicle Assembly Building of Kennedy Space Center, Florida although some of the earlier scenes of the Moonraker assembly plant were filmed on location at the Rockwell International manufacturing facilities in Palmdale, California.

The early scene involving Bond and Jaws in which Bond is pushed out of the aircraft without a parachute took weeks of planning and preparation. The skydiving sequence was coordinated by Don Calvedt under the supervision of second unit director John Glen.^[2] Stuntman Jake Lombard was hired to double for Bond, who would later pose as Moore's double in films such as Octopussy and for Necros in The Living Daylights. B. J. Worth, who played the stunt double of Jaws, would also later become a consistent member of the stunt team for aerial sequences throughout the 1980s, into Timothy Dalton's films such as The Living Daylights.^[2] Members of the U.S. championship skydiving team aided the stunt team with the planning and the team's master rigger designed a one-inch thick parachute pack that could be concealed beneath the suit to give the impression of the missing parachute.^[2] When the stunt men opened their parachutes at the end of every shoot, custom-sewn velcro costume seams would separate to allow the hidden parachutes to open.^[4] The skydiver cinematographer used a lightweight Panavision camera, bought from an old pawn shop in Paris, which he had adapted, and attached to his helmet to shoot the entire sequence.^[2] The scene took a total of 88 skydives by the stuntmen to complete it.^[2]

For the scene involving the opening of the musical electronic laboratory door lock in Venice, producer Albert R. Broccoli requested special permission from director Steven Spielberg to use the five-note leitmotif from his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). In 1985, Broccoli would return the favor by fulfilling Spielberg's request to use the James Bond theme music for a scene in his film, The Goonies (1985).

Music

Main article: Moonraker (soundtrack)

The soundtrack of Moonraker was composed by John Barry and recorded in Paris, again, as with production, marking a turning point away from the English location at CTS Studios in London. The score also marked a turning point in John Barry's output, abandoning the Kentonesque brass of his earlier Bond scores and instead scoring the film with slow, rich string passages - a trend which Barry would continue in the 1980s with scores such as Out of Africa and Somewhere in Time.^[11] For Moonraker, Barry uses for the first time since Diamonds Are Forever (1971) a piece of music called "007" (on track 7), the secondary Bond theme composed by Barry which was introduced in From Russia with Love over the end credits. Barry also made use of classical music passages in the film. For the scene where Bond visits Drax in his chateau, Drax plays Frédéric Chopin's Prelude no. 15 in D-flat major (op. 28), "Raindrop") on his grand piano.^[12] Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka by Johann Strauss II was featured during the hovercraft scene on the Piazza San Marco in Venice,^[12] and Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Overture" was used for the scenes in Brazil in which Jaws meets Dolly following his accident.^[12] Other passages pay homage to earlier films including Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (op. 30),^[12] associated with 2001: A Space Odyssey) with the hunting horn playing its distinctive first three notes, Elmer Bernstein's theme from The Magnificent Seven when Bond appears on horseback in gaucho clothing at Mi6 headquarters in Brazil, and the alien-contacting theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the key-code for a security door as mentioned previously.^[12]

Johnny Mathis had begun recording the theme with John Barry but abandoned the project.

Moonraker was the third of the three Bond films for which the theme song was performed by Shirley Bassey. Kate Bush and Frank Sinatra were both considered for the vocals, before Johnny Mathis was approached and offered the opportunity. However Mathis, despite having started recording with Barry, was unable to complete the project, leaving producers to offer the song to Bassey within just weeks of the release date.^[13] Bassey made the recordings with very short notice and as a result, she never regarded the song 'as her own' as she had never had the chance to perform it or promote it first.^[13] The film uses two versions of the title theme song, a ballad version heard over the main titles, and a disco version. Confusingly, the United Artists single release labelled the tracks on the 7" single as "Moonraker (Main Title)" for the version used to close the film and "Moonraker (End Title)" for the track that opened the film.^[12] The song made little impact on the charts, reaching 159, partly attributed to Bassey's failure to promote the single, given the last-minute decision to quickly record it to meet the schedule.^[14]

Finally in 2005, Bassey sang the song for the first time outside James Bond on stage as part of a medley of her three Bond title songs.^[13] An instrumental strings version of the title theme was used in 2007 tourism commercials for the Dominican Republic.

Release

Country	Date of release
UK	Premiere: 26 June 1979
USA	29 June
Netherlands	12 July
South Africa	18 July
Australia	26 July
Hong Kong	1 August
Denmark	13 August
Finland	17 August
Norway	17 August
Sweden	18 August
Kenya	27 August
Austria	31 August
West Germany	31 August
Spain	9 September
Italy	27 September
France	10 October
Japan	8 December
Philippines	11 December

Moonraker was released on June 26, 1979, in the United Kingdom and was released three days later in the United States, grossing $70,308,099 in the UK. It opened in 788 theaters, grossing a total of $210,308,099 worldwide.^[15] In mainland Europe the most common month of release was in August of 1979, opening in the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden between the 13 and 18 August. Moonraker was released in Kenya on 27 August 1979. Given that the film was produced in France and involved some notable French actors, the French premiere for the film was relatively late, released there on 10 October 1979.

DVD release

Moonraker was released with a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on the MGM Special Edition in 2000, but it was re-released in 2003 as an Ultimate Edition with enhanced footage. The 42 minute documentary Inside Moonraker on the special effects and stuntwork was carried over from the original release, as was the 18 minute The Men Behind the Mayhem featuring director Lewis Gilbert, executive and associate producers Michael G. Wilson and William P. Cartlidge and writer Christopher Wood, relating memories of the production. The Ultimate Edition comes with several commentaries, one which features Roger Moore, which had been recently recorded for the release. ^[16]

The second disc of the Ultimate Edition DVD opens with at an 11 minute footage of set designer Ken Adam's productions, including home interviews with him and an exploration of Eon Productions locations and sets. ^[16] Other features include Michael G. Wilson introducing interviews with the members of the cast and crew and an archive 12 minute feature, 007 in Rio, which covers the production team in Rio de Janeiro but takes a more general analysis of behind the scenes in the overall film. ^[16]There is also brief storyboard coverage including four short storyboard sequences and test footage, which includes coverage of the circus landing, the cable car scene and the skydiving scene.

Reception

Derek Meddings, a long contributor to the James Bond series, received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects nomination for the special effects used in the film and the space scenes. However, although the film was widely praised for its special effects and advancement in technology and production sets, the film is often considered by critics and an element of James Bond fans as one of the lesser films in the James Bond series, largely due to the extent of the plot which takes James Bond into space, some of ploys used in the film for comedic effect, and its extended dialogue. Reviews have generally been balanced between criticising the far-fetched nature of the plot, and comments that have reflected that they enjoyed the film for this very reason. Nick Hilditch of the BBC sums up a common critical response to the film; "For many Moonraker is the worst Bond film, not least because the adventure culminates in a massive laser battle above the planet. Besides this farther-than-far-fetched effort to capitalise on the late '70s taste for science fiction, such inanities as Bond driving round St Mark's Square in a gondola-turned-hovercraft don't help much either. Frivolous, yes, but never dull." ^[17] Other critics continued to illustrate their disapproval for the attempts at comedy in film, with some critics mocking Jaw's "flapping his wings" and circus landing site during the skydive sequence and others describing the comedic aspects of the film as cheesy. Critic Nicholas Sylvain said of the film "Moonraker seems to have more than its share of little flaws and annoyances which begin right from the opening pre-credit sequence. The sheer idiocy (and impossibility) of having a fully-fueled shuttle on the back of the Boeing during the trans-Atlantic crossing should be evident, and later in the film, the whole Jaws-falls-in-love and becomes a "good guy" routine leaves me rather cold, and provides far too much cheesy comedy moments, as does the gondola driving through the square scene. ^[18]

In his review of Moonraker in 1979, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert whilst clearly expressing his approval of the advanced special effects and Ken Adam's extravagant production sets, he criticised the pace in which the locations of the film evolved, remarking that, "it's so jammed with faraway places and science fiction special effects that Bond has to move at a trot just to make it into all the scenes". ^[19]Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com said of the film; "Most rational observers agree that Moonraker is without a doubt the most absurd James Bond movie, definitely of the Roger Moore era and possibly of all time". ^[20] However whilst he criticised the extravagance of the plot and action sequences he believed that this added to the enjoyment of the film, and particularly approved of the remark "I think he's attempting re-entry!" by Q during Bond and Goodhead's orbiting of the earth which he described as "featuring what might be the best double entendre ever". ^[20]

However, other reviews of Moonraker have expressed that the film is one of Moore's stronger films as James Bond. James Berardinelli of Reelviews.net for instance remarked that, "the solid special effects, well-executed action sequences, and a strict reliance upon the 'Bond Formula' keep this film among Moore's better entries."^[21] Despite criticism about the far-fetched nature of the plot, websites such as Rotten Tomatoes have awarded the film a 62% "fresh" rating.

Aside from being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, the film, given its unusual attention to the science fiction genre than the average James Bond film, received attention from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films and was nominated for several Saturn Awards in 1980. The nominees were for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Special Effects, and Best Supporting Actor (Richard Kiel). The DVD of the film was later nominated in 2004 for the Golden Satellite Award Best Classic DVD Release. Moonraker won the Golden Screen Award in Germany in 1980.

The exaggerated nature of the plot and space station sequence has seen the film parodied on numerous occasions. Of note is the Austin Powers spoof film The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) which whilst a parody of other James Bond films, pays reference to Moonraker by Dr. Evil's lair in space. The scene in which Drax is shot by the cyanide dart and ousted into space is parodied by Power's ejection of Dr. Evil's clone Mini-Me into outer space in the same way.

References

External links

• Moonraker at the Internet Movie Database
• Moonraker at Allmovie
• Moonraker at Rotten Tomatoes
• Moonraker at Box Office Mojo
• MGM's official site for Moonraker