Bond Perfection: Moonraker
Roger Moore’s 1979 movie has it all. Space and missing space shuttles; Spielberg Close Encounters of the Third Kind references; Star Wars lasers; an opposing female agent, (this time from the CIA); a really excellent villain in Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) and the return of Jaws (Richard Kiel). Plus some sumptuous locations (Venice, Rio Carnival, which feels very like the Day of the Dead processions in Spectre, the Amazon) and a villainous mega base with everyone in coloured space suits. It’s perfection, as well as linking to some serious underlying points and recent global history, and the author’s recent wartime activities.
In addition, there is a groovy soundtrack and all the comedy Bond tropes — double-take pigeon; a convertible vehicle — this time a gondola becomes a hovercraft, moving swiftly from Venetian canals to cafe scattered piazzas; as on the beach in The Spy Who Loved Me, a man stares in bafflement at his bottle of wine; a waiter joins in by pouring a beverage over his customers in distraction; there’s a confused dog looking on; probably pointing children and the whole works. Thankfully, Bond doesn’t chuck any passing children into the canals nor is there any kind of Swanee whistle moment. But piling on the gags really works here and adds to the fun. There’s a dissected romantic gondola trip. for example.
Despite a move back to cringeworthy names that are more of a pornstar name or a suggestion, than a real person, Lois Chiles’ Dr Holly Goodhead is terrific. Again, she’s smart, has status and position, and turns out to be working for the CIA. There’s a nice riff as she and Bond play with and against each other as spies, each regarding each other as a pleasant distraction, maybe even a perk of the job. On the other hand, neither is giving anything away! Whilst not as strongly or as dynamically written as Barbara Bach’s Triple X in The Spy Who Loved Me, she’s still able to hold her own as qualified scientist and trained astronaut, double-cross Bond and fight back when needed. More of an ally than the shrieking Bond girls of the earlier Moore Bonds. I guess also the names are meant to be a throw back to noire-ish pulp fiction detective novels of the ’50s and ’60s and suggest the same sexy, dangerous thrills ’n’ spills.
In a homage to Spielberg and George Lucas and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of our Moonraker space shuttles in missing, having been space-napped in midair! Their owner, Drax Industries, is very concerned and drafts in Bond to find out what’s going on. This leads to a thrilling fight on a plane with Jaws, Bond ripping off an assailant’s parachute in mid-air and the first of many comedy moments, as Jaws falls head first in a circus tent.
Reminding us that Kung-Fu is still a thing, Hugo Drax has a sidekick Chang (Toshiro Suga), who sadly says little, and utters spectacular grunts and guttural screams, whilst trying to dispatch Drax’s unwanted people. Drax himself, like Karl Stromberg, makes a spectacular villain. Once more, he’s really well-written, we get a sense of who he is from his lavish living space and propensity for feeding his dogs raw bloody meat on an ancient carpet, what he’s about and why he wants to take over the world in some way. Like Stromberg feeding his assistant to sharks as in-house entertainment, Drax dismisses his assistant and won’t let her take the buggy back. Instead she’s hunted through the grounds of his Versailles style chateau by his dogs — and ripped to pieces. He’s taking the Versailles manorial rights to extremes!
Not only does Drax want to rule the world. This time — Space too! Though this should give us pause for thought, as he’s thinking about living space, an orbiting version of Lebensraum and the nerve gas is a version of the ethnic cleansing practiced by the Nazis through their hideous murder camps and extermination units.
Having sweet talked Drax’s PA Corinne Dufour (Corinne Cléry) into showing him the blueprints for a Venetian made glass vial (in a safe hidden by an ornate ormolu clock topper), Bond unfortunately creates the evidence for her demise. Encountering Dr Goodhead in a test lab, Chang secretly (and gleefully) puts Bond in a spin in an uncomfortable scene as Moore is exposed to ridiculous amounts of G-Force. Thankfully Bond has a gadget to deal with all of this and staggers off of the test a whiter shade of pale. (Corinne Cléry is wonderful for the short time she’s on screen).
We also get a scenic moment as Bond follows Dr Holly around Venice, before being attacked and trashing a historic glass museum with gusto. Hannay-like, it ends with his assailant being spectacularly lobbed through a delicate glass clock face, disturbing the cultured dining experience below! Similarly, Bond can’t be in a gondola without being fired at, peppering elegant bridges with shot — and making a smart escape hovering across St Mark’s Square. (And Bond will return — to destroy more of historic Venice in Casino Royale).
Having found some nerve gas in a Drax Venetian lab, and dispatched it perhaps to Q-branch for analysis, Bond zips to Rio, where he meets another female agent, Manuela (Emily Bolton), and the perils of the Carnival. The action keeps coming thick and fast — loitering in an alley, his companion almost becomes the heroine-victim in a 1970s vampire movie. She’s picked up and almost Jaws-ed, until saved at the last moment by some dancing revellers — and Bond’s return. There’s then a tense fight on top of a cable car, involving Dr Holly, Jaws and Bond — resulting in Jaws crashing to the ground and being rescued from the debris by Dolly (Blanche Ravalec). (Who doesn’t have braces — why do I and everyone else imagine that she does?) She sweetly and kindly rescues Jaws, and romance blossoms…Whilst played for comic effect, she’s a lovely inclusion to the Bond woman world, being both kind, compassion and a conscience of the movie. With just a thoughtful look and a smile, she can later get Jaws thinking differently, saving rather than destroying lives — even working for the good of his enemy.
Bond then travels to the Amazon to locate the source of the toxin found in the vial of nerve gas. Dr Holly has been captured by Drax — but Bond remains free. He eventually gets captured — and he and Dr Holly are imprisoned under the launch pad of two imminently leaving Moonraker shuttles. Bizarrely, a host of glamourous and amorous couples aren’t wearing the delightful yellow/orange space suits, but Rudi Gernreich/Yves St Laurent-style fashions. Turns out Drax is abandoning Planet Earth to start a new Earth in a secret space station, literally re-populating it with a new superhuman race. Whilst this Nazi ‘master race’ genetic aim doesn’t really come through in the film, it obviously harks back to Fleming’s and his readers’ very recent World War Two and Nazi battling pasts. Intriguingly this all comes round again, more fully, in No Time To Die with its nano-bots and global viruses ‘correcting’ and eliminating genetic/ethnic ‘mutations’.
Equally intriguingly, a Bond woman gets to drive — or in this case, pilot a space rocket/shuttle. Usually, even if it is the Bond woman’s own vehicle, Bond always drives. I can only think of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, where much is made of Tracey’s getaway driving abilities, as an exception. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond mocked Anya’s fight with a van and her plan to reverse into Jaws and some collapsible scaffolding/building materials. Here he respects Dr Holly as she skillfully pilots the shuttle to the secret space base, and they work together to jam the radar so that the base can be seen from Earth. All of this results in an out of this world battle in space as Marines are floated in and float across the heavens to invade the base. Yes, there is still a base invasion denouement, but this time there are lasers. It’s a riff on Star Wars light sabres! and Bond and Dr Holly running around zapping people on the space station feels very Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo evading Stormtroopers and Darth Vader. Maybe even a bit Star Trek, boldly going where no Bond has gone before! A lovely moment is when the artificial gravity fails and everyone starts floating around. It’s like a reverse of the careful stylised effects created in 2001 to the Blue Danube Waltz.
Dramatically, the base explodes and disintegrates, with Drax ejected into space and oblivion. Jaws and Dolly are inexplicably on board and seem to be trapped. There has been a nice moral dilemma moment, when Drax urges Jaws to destroy Bond, and it’s implied that Jaws figures out that the new master race has no room for a couple like Jaws and Dolly. The ethics are bit hidden under all the fast paced action, jokes and investigative plotting, but this is really deep and thought-provoking stuff. How, we’re left to wonder, is Drax selecting who’s in — and who’s out? If we think back to the couples we saw: as in the Aryan policy of the Nazis, there’s a definite type — young, ‘healthy’, tall, slim, strong. We’ve already seen the kind of women Drax admires as he’s frequently accompanied by two stylish women when afternoon tea-ing or huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’, and other country pursuits. Dolly and Jaws may share some of these characteristics, but not all. However, they have other qualities which are admirable, and which Drax hasn’t even begun to consider. Dolly gives Jaws a look, leading to him helping to free Bond and Dr Holly’s escape pod. Somehow, despite all the collapsing, exploding debris they are safe, in love…and will be rescued soon, rather than dying due to lack of oxygen. Reminding us that all people are worthwhile and how destructive any kind of selection/genetic social engineering is.
Be that as it may, we’re probably less aware of the deeper subtext — being more focused on the explosions, bits of the space base coming apart — and a very cheeky Bond ending.