QUICK! The Bureaucrats are coming!

In Defence of… Moonraker (1979)

“Although definitely not the best I have a bit of a soft spot for Moonraker, … I always loved the Rio and South American scenes .. so much so that when it came out as a kid I went on my own and watched three consecutive matinee showings of it” – Ed O’Brien, Radiohead.

 Gilbert’s third and final directorial input to the Bond franchise was the critically panned yet ambitious Moonraker.  A sprawling, costly production, Moonraker engulfed the combined EON budget of all Bond ventures between Dr. No and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  Yet not even the flamboyant use of special effects could help cover up a deeply flawed screenplay; Moore must have winced when he read the script for what must be his most comic portrayal of the secret agent alongside The Man With The Golden Gun.  Before the viewer can even contemplate his outer space antics, Bond is already wrestling a pilot for his parachute in a freefall pre-title sequence. Throw in Jaws’ role reversal and what can only be a Guinness World Record for the frequency of quirky one liners, and you have what many fans faithful to the series would call Bond’s worst outing to date.

 Yet there’s another side to Moonraker, and indeed Roger Moore’s reinvention of 007, that’s largely ignored by its fiercest critics.  The film’s charm is simple: Moonraker is a lot of fun.  Fan site MI6 members have been quoted praising its magnitude, calling it an “action-packed spectacle” and a “beautiful production”.  They also raise an important point, that unlike Moore’s previous films, Moonraker is designed to be light-hearted; it feels like the first time Broccoli and Saltzman are aware of the cliché and seek to play up to it.  Yes, it could be argued that it set a dangerous precedent for further exaggerations, but it is Moore’s equipped, sophisticated charmer that has permeated British culture, rather than Fleming’s dark brute so uncomfortably revamped in the recent form of Daniel Craig, a characterization that abandons the better qualities that Dalton brought to the role.  In its place we now find the shapeless, bland realism of the post-9/11 Jason Bourne era.

 The overall debate regarding Moonraker is a matter of preference: escapist entertainment or the real world.  It is the sole division between James Bond fans, that, I personally believe can only be bridged by an appreciation for the different perspectives each actor brings to the role.  It is in that respect, as easy to enjoy the destruction of a fantastical fascist dictatorship in space as it is to value the darker turns in the franchise; such as the shark-induced mutilation of Felix Leiter or the drive-by shooting of Teresa Bond.  If viewers can learn to open themselves to the different interpretations of a protagonist’s story, then questions as to whether Moonraker is a guilty pleasure or timeless classic become obsolete.