Moonraker

First a quick note; I have no idea why those strange lines are appearing between paragraphs but I’d rather publish this on the blog even if I have to put up with them, but all the same I’m sorry about them.

 

Anyway Ian Fleming’s Moonraker is a fantastic novel where a psychotic Nazi called Hugo Von Der Drache poses as Hugo Drax, a wealthy businessman developing Britain’s first nuclear missile.  Over the course of the book Bond comes to realise that Drax plans to use the missile to destroy London.  In the end though, Bond saves the day, but not for the Dutch.  When the nuke explodes in the middle of the North sea, they get radioactively flooded.

 

Anyway flash forward twenty-four years or so and the eleventh Bond film comes out under the same title.  Hugo Drax has gone from being German to French and is employing O after she’s decided being Sir Stephen’s slave isn’t for her.  Unsurprisingly that turns out to be a bad decision and she ends up being killed by Dobermans after falling for Bond’s charms.

 

Not that this seems to bother Bond much as he jets about from Italy, (where he travels around Venice in an inflatable amphibious Gondola), to Brazil (where young women are happy to spend time alone with much older men) trying to find out why someone stole a shuttle from the back of an RAF Boeing.  After killing a Chinese bloke he ends up fighting his old mate Jaws, who sadly is treated as a comic villain rather than the terrifying figure he is in The Spy Who Loved Me.  Finally after a bit of messing about over Brazil with a cable car and some evil paramedics, Bond and his American bird, Goodhead, who naturally works for the CIA end up in Space.

 

At this point the film loses any credibility as it goes full Star Wars meets 2001 style, complete with astronauts firing lasers at each other and a flying wheel space station.  Drax decides he’s the Messiah with an Aryan Noah’s Ark.  Everyone who isn’t white, blond and perfect is going to be sterilised.

 

This ends when Bond teams up with Jaws, in a way Quint never could, and they take down Drax together, the Frenchman ending up in space going where no Frenchman has ever gone before (sorry but I couldn’t resist that one).

 

Ultimately this is easily the worst of the Bond films, taking the cockiness and escapist absurdity of the Moore era beyond the absurd to something that is trying to be something it never should be, namely a spy and science fiction film.  Still The Spy Who Loved Me had an underwater city and two thermonuclear explosions in it.  No wonder then that For Your Eyes Only is a much more low tech, and grittier affair. 

 

Watch Moonraker if you’re in the mood for some crap that is good for background noise, or if you’re watching all twenty-three Bonds in order.  Otherwise go out and buy the book.  It’s miles better and so I’m going to give Moonraker a meagre minus one out of five. 

 

On a more personal note, last year I spent a night in Stratford Upon Avon at the wonderful Moonraker House, a bed and breakfast run by Ruth and Morris Ohaka.  Bond themed, it makes for a fantastic place to sleep and the Full English is wonderful