Why Moonraker Doesn’t Suck – Part Четыре (Bond Character Traits)

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Why Moonraker Doesn’t Suck – Part Dri (Bond Movie Traits)

                Remember when I said that I was splitting this Moonraker  business into three parts? Well, I lied. I just have so much material to work with that we are going to have to make it four posts now. I hope you can handle it. This post will be about the customary traits of the Bond movies, and the next post will be traits of the Bond character. These are the various little details that show up all throughout the franchise (pre Daniel Craig at least). For standard movie characteristics, I have familiar scenes, stunts, gadgets, and henchman.

Familiar Scenes

There are many scenes that appear in a similar form in many of the Bond movies. First is introducing Bond with an action scene. This helps to establish that James lives a life of constant danger and excitement. He is always foiling attempts at his life and just generally being a stud. Random make outs are also generally involved. Moonraker fits the pattern with Bond smooching a lady in a plane before she pulls a gun on him. She and the pilot don parachutes and shoot the plane controls (instead of Bond obviously), intending to leave James in the crashing plane. This then leads to the skydiving action scene and is the first outrageously designed assassination attempt in the movie (I will discuss these more later).

The first action scene is then followed by the ubiquitous musical title sequence (typically featuring nudey silhouettes). Moonraker feature a theme song by Shirley Bassey (her third in the franchise), and the title sequence is said to have cost more than the entire budget of Dr. No.

Seducing a women in the villain’s employ to gather information is a much used weapon in the Bond arsenal. This time around he finds himself a nice French girl who can fly a helicopter, but who never learned to read (at least not lists of what not to do on a first date?). James “turns her” to his side and then pulls a nice trick where he reads her eyes to find Drax’s safe. He the shows off some of his gadgets (not his genitals, she already saw those, and yes I will use this joke multiple times), showing her his x-ray cigarette case for cracking the safe, and an adorably small 007 camera for photographing the files. Unfortunately, the women who sleep with a Bond have a habit of ending up dead, and this one is no exception, with the poor woman getting killed by attack dogs (I guess this is a lesson in the importance of loyalty?).

I liked her, but I guess no girl can resist a bad boy

Later on, Bond gets his final showdown with the villain Drax. These can happen in at least two ways; Bond finishes the villain as his plans collapse around him, or he turns the tides in one last assassination attempt. This movie combines those options. Drax pulls a laser pistol on Bond in an attempt at revenge as his space station breaks apart, but James shoots him with a cyanide dart and launches him into space, because you always have to kill the villain in the most extreme way possible.

The climax scene is more typical of all action movies and not just to Bond movies, but it is still worth mentioning. Globes of nerve toxin are falling toward the Earth and their is only one man to stop them (also a women). The auto targeting on the laser malfunctions as James is trying to shoot the last globe, so he has to switch to manual controls. Goodnight is basically dead sticking the space shuttle and tries to hold it steady as they skip on the atmosphere (which is probably a lot harder than using the laser, but whatever). Bond blasts the globe like a champion, just before it enters the atmosphere, and saves the day once again.

Intense red glow compliments of friction with the atmosphere

My favorite repeated scene has to be Bond's celebratory sexy times with his leading lady, which inevitably gets interrupted by the guys back at MI6, eager to congratulate him. Moonraker pulls off this scene better than any other movie in my opinion, with some zero G hanky panky, which is show live to the Queen and the Whitehouse. What really makes the scene though is a line from Q as he is observing some technical readouts, oblivious to what is on the screen behind him, and delivers a deadpan “I believe he is attempting reentry, sir”, which is my favorite line ever.

I also want to throw the James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only in here since that line ends the credits of many Bond movies and I always liked it (it wasn’t always accurate though, because For Your Eyes Only was named at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me as well).

  

Stunts

Bond movies were always good at pushing the movie stunt envelope. Iconic stunts in other movies include the boat jump and crocodile walking in Live and Let Die, the car jump in The Man with the Golden Gun, the ski to parachute stunt in The Spy Who Love Me,  the bungee jump in Goldeneye, and the car roll in Casino Royale (I’m really impressed that Casino Royale had a record stunt and got out of the CGI hole that the later Brosnen movies had dug). Mooraker had a few notable stunts. First was the sky diving stunt at the beginning of the movie. Special low profile parachute packs were developed that could be worn inside clothing so that the stunt men could apear to be jumping without parachutes. A special camera was also developed to film the scene that was mounted to a jumpers helmet (it had to be light enough not to break his neck when the chute opened). The scene also took a total of 88 jumps to film, for two minutes of screen time, which I think is impressive. During the cable car scene the stuntman slipped off the side of the car and was filmed actually hanging from the side of the car unsupported, so you can't beat that for realism. The fight in the glass shop had the largest amount of break away sugar glass ever used in one scene, and the largest number of actors on wires ever filmed occurred during the “weightless” scene in the space station. Moonraker was none to shappy stunt wise.

  

Wires and slow-mo = free-fall

Gadgets

Gadgets; because if you establish it beforehand, it doesn’t count as deus ex machina. Bond’s go-to gadget for this movie was a wrist mounted dart launcher that could shoot armor piercing or cyanide darts. It was able to save him twice; once in the centrifuge, and again in killing Drax. Probably one of James’s more practical gadgets really. Without special introductions, we got two separate tricked out boats, his x-ray cigarette case and camera mentioned before, and a watch filled with plastic explosives (which was a little deus ex machine, but you gotta expect his watch to do something). We did not get a tricked-out car this movie (he doesn’t even drive any cars the whole movie), and no signature Walther pistol (the only gun he shoots is a shotgun that Drax gave him), but I think a ride in a space shuttle and a laser pistol are suitable replacements. As a CIA agent, Goodnight ended up with about as many gadgets as Bond. She has a hypodermic pen (that Bond steals), a diary that shoots dart (darts… all spies use them), a perfume flame thrower, and a purse radio that uses Morse Code apparently (all standard CIA equipment).

They will put a radio in anything these days

We also get the always entertaining Q’s workshop scene but this time with a twist (another repeated scene that I could have mentioned above). After James finishes pretending to be a vaquero (while listening to some Magnificent Seven music), he goes to an austere catholic monastery, and visits the local MI6 branch office. Q has all sorts of Latin American themed gadgets ready, featuring some explosive bolas, a machine gun disguised as a sleeping guy in a poncho, and a face melting laser gun. Always happy to see you Q.

Henchman

                The henchman in Moonraker really go the extra mile to be stereotypical. They are numerous and anonymous, wear some super snazzy yellow jumpsuits (often complete with silly helmets), go along with the most outrageous plans, and are masters of standing around in the background pretending to be busy. Inept guarding is also among their fortes, going by the part were Drax orders double guards on all the entrances when the marines break into the space station, but then the henchman stand with their backs to the entrances and all get taken by surprise (my theory is that there is some sinister henchman hiring-service who hires out brain-washed peons who will follow any order but lost most of their problem solving skills). We also had some eugenics subjects working for Drax, but they didn't really do anything but stand around and look good.

             

Henchman; the foundation of all evil empires

  

Product Placement

                I just had to throw this in because product placement and Bond movies are pretty inseparable. Consumer goods seen in this movie include Glastron Boats, Seiko Watches, Bollinger Champagne, Air France, Seven Up, Marlboro, Christian Dior, Canon Cameras, and British Airways. They have to pay for those elaborate title sequences somehow.

Subtle

                That does it for Bond movie characteristics. I will really try to finish this up next post (no promises though).

Why Moonraker Doesn’t Suck – Part Dos (Action Sequences)

             Now what would a Bond movie be without plent of over the top action scenes. These are the moneymakers. Literally where the action happens. I’ve picked out a few of the most action dense scenes to discuss.

The first big action scene is a sky diving scene, naturally. Basically, Bond is pushed out of plane without a parachute (by our good buddy Jaws), so he has to wrestle the chute off of the henchman who jumped out of the plane before him. It starts out with Bond chasing the anonymous mustachioed henchman through the air, tackling him, and then stealing his parachute and kicking him away (after which he has the courtesy to acknowledge that he has been beaten and bothers Bond no more). Jaws re-enters the scene to finish what he started, and now Jaws is chasing Bond in a nice reversal. Just as Jaws catches up and is about to take a chomp out of Bond’s leg, James deploys his parachute and escapes. Jaws’ s rip cord breaks off in his hand, but luckily the circus is in town so he is available for future assassination attempts.

Somewhere over Southern California

            Next up, during a tour of an astronaut training facility, Bond is offered a chance to ride in the centrifuge (standard part of the tour). As soon as the ride begins, all of the (relatively) responsible people are called out of the room and Drax’s pet henchman Chang (who apparently just got back from Judo practice and didn’t have time to change) takes over the controls. Tension builds as he slowly cranks up the G’s. With the safety button disconnected, Bond struggles both to stop the machine and keep consciousness. As the G’s pass 13 (“most people pass out at seven”) Bond remembers his wrist launcher gadget, and shoots the controls to stop the centrifuge. Goodhead rushed in to pull a haggard Bond out of the machine, and he doesn’t even get back at her for saying  that ^S70 year olds can take 3 G’s^S (a 50 year olds can 13!).

Will his face ever recover?

The first of our two boat chases takes place in the canals of Venice. Bond flees from some machine gun toting goons in a speed boat using nothing but his wits, his uncanny ability not to get shot, and a souped-up motor-gondola. I vote for this being the most ridiculous scene in the movie, with such antics as two people making out so hard that they don’t notice their gondola being split in half, a pigeon double take, and Bond escaping by turning his gondola into a hover crafts and cruising around the Piazza San Marco. A classic scene to say the least.

Hovercrafts are always cool

            Later Bond is strolling around Venice after some breaking and entering. All of a sudden, Chang is back and he just came from Kendo practice (the guy has a full schedule and it doesn’t include changing clothes). Chang attacks Bond with a practice sword (couldn’t get a real sword I guess?), but Bond absconds to the nearby glass shop (who didn’t see that coming).  Bond finds a convenient rapier and proceeds to establish the superiority of European swordsmanship (assuming the Asian dude’s sword is made of wood), and also destroying everything in the glass shop (Bond does try to spare one piece, but the henchman just has no respect for hand-blown glass). Disarmed, Chang flees into a clock tower, jumps out of hiding and tries to choke Bond with a chain, and gets thrown out of the St. Mark’s clock face into a piano for his troubles. Bond honors his worthy adversary with the touching eulogy “Play it again Sam” (it works better if you assume his full name was Sam Chang).

Way to bring a stick to a sword fight

            One trans-Atlantic flight later (on the Concord naturally) and Bond is running into Goodhead in Rio de Janeiro. Specifically on Sugar Loaf Mountain. They decend in the cable car (thankfully empty of annoying tourists) while talking shop about the spy biz, and are completely unsurprised when Jaws manhandles the the machinery (he bites through a cable!) and the car comes to a sudden halt. They immediately Die Hard out of the top of the car and James want to zip line down the cable on a chain (I would low ball that distance as being at least 1500 feet horizontal).  To save them the trouble, Jaws overhands his way along the cable to the other car, and pudgy accomplice henchman runs the cars out to meet in the middle. Bond and Goodnight are able to overpower Jaws, and push him into the car, locking the hatch (lock only to be used for emergencies, such as 7’2”, metal toothed assassins), and Bond gets his wish of ziplining away. The henchman who was sent on this mission for his tech savvy and not his physique, starts up the cable cars again in an attempt to ram the zip liners. Team spy drop from the cable in the nick of time and execute a flawless tuck and roll on the ground. Suck-henchman completely fails to stop the cable car and it crashes through the building, killing him instantly. Jaws is pulled from the wreckage by Dolly, and Hollywoods greatest couple is born. Bond and Goodnight are then captured by more henchman who are disguised as incredibly on the ball paramedics (interupting some choice make outs). Bond escapes after a truly superb tantem guard-seduction, but Goodnight is left behind (nobody is really worried about it though).

He just man-jumps it

Boat chase numero dos (I’m American and assume everyone south of our border speaks Spanish) takes place on the Amazon River. After the failure last time the bad guys of Drax Industries are bringing their A-game, with three boats, three henchman per boat, boat mounted mortars, and Jaws on a boat for good measure. Too bad for them that James upped the ante as well with a boat packing all the special spy options. James’s boat has mines, torpedoes, a bulletproof screen, and a hang-glider. James gets every pennies worth (which is saying a lot for how overpriced options generally are), using the mines to blow up one boat, the torpedo for the second, and escaping with the hang-glider as his boat crashes over the wildly misplace Iguaza Falls. Jaws unfailingly breaks the steering wheel off his boat and drives over the falls (the man is a wrecking machine).

The third set of mines always get 'em

This next sequence is probably my favorite action scene in all of Bond-dom. I mean, it’s a friggin’ space laser battle! A squad of gung-ho space marines battle a group of space suited Drax flunkies, in friggin’ space, with friggin’ lasers. It’s like the Thunderball speargun fight, but on crack. A scene with soldiers in EVA suits shooting each other with jet pack mounted laser guns basically stimulates all of my stupendous receptors. It is an intense battle with people being launched screaming into space left and right (in space people can hear you scream). The marines manage to break into the space station and with their completely unrestrained laser fire, manage to completely destroy the delicate structure. Set destruction abounds, and all the Draxites are killed.

Space Marines must be the secret sixth military branch

            Every one of those scenes is totally fantastic, and they all reek of Bondness. From the iconic settings to the questionable technology, these are the kind of action sequences that make Bond movies great. Stay tuned for more classic Bond antics next post. 

Why Moonraker Doesn’t Suck – Part One (Characters)

                Moonraker is considered by many to be the worst of the Bond movies. In my opinion, this it not true. In fact, it my just may be the best Bond movie of them all (here is my worst). Now I don’t think it is the best movie (which I think is this one), I think it is the best “Bond Movie”.  The thing about Bond movies is that they are not free-standing movies. They build on each other, and have their own established themes, style, and I am willing to go so far as mythology. Moonraker fits into the "Bond Movie" mold perfectly, and that is why I say it could be the best Bond movie. The main Bondness attributes I will be talking about are archetypal characters, over the top action sequences, and general Bondisms. This post got away from me a little bit so I have split each topic into its own post. First I want to talk about the characters. CONTAINS SPOILERS

                Roger Moore is my favorite Bond acter. This is because he opitimizes “Cavalier Bond,” who happens to be my favorite Bond (other Bonds include “Tough Guy Bond,” “Suave Bond,” “Sexy Bond,” “Edgy Bond,” and Timothy Dalton). None of the other actors remain so non-chalant in extremely rediculously dangerous situations (the extremely describes the rediculously, just to be clear), or produce deadpan pun delivery like Moore could. He is the Bond that I want to be. Personally, I don’t value skills like punching people, or seducing women nearly as much as I value the ability to be a sarcastic smart ass. Just a matter of taste I guess. Moore seems to gets a lot of flak about being old (he is three years older than Connery), but I must say he does relatively well for his age (51 while Moonraker was shot), and he just proves that Bond can still kick ass in his autumn years.

Bond, Master of Disguise

                Our villain is Hugo Drax. He is super rich (as in can privately launch multiple space shuttles rich), French, belittles the English, an excellent shotgun marksman, has a beard, plays the piano, has a butler named Cavendish, and hangs out with silent and sexy women who have elaborate titles (including Countess Lubinski, Lady Victoria Devon, Mademoiselle Daladier, and Signorina del Mateo, my DVD subtitles and IMDB don’t agree on all of the spelling). His secret layers (note the plural) include a space shuttle launching facility deep in the Amazon rain forest (and others in various exotic locales throughout the world), and a stealth space station (that has active radar jamming that behaves like passive radar stealth, somehow). His evil plan involves killing all the humans on Earth with special human targeted nerve gas, and then repopulating the Earth with his own hand-picked “super race,” and establishing an “ultimate dynasty". He does lack any distinguishing physical disfigurements, but other than that he has being a Bond villain on lock down (you can’t have Sean Bean quality in every film).

Drax introduces James to the Mademoiselle and Signorina

Our Bond Girl is the punnily named Dr. Holly Goodhead (an unspecified doctorate from Vassar). She is your classic smart and sexy mix, with some action skills thrown in. She is on loan to the Drax Corporation from NASA, and also happens to work for the CIA. She goes through the established arc of being frosty towards Bond and rejecting his advances (she is in no way impressed by his random trivial facts or common knowledge about space shuttles), but slowly warms to his charms. She and Bond do the deed early in the film after she becomes uncontrollably aroused as James goes through her hotel room triggering all her gadgets (actual spy gadgets, not a euphemism). Later she helps Bond steal a space shuttle and foil Drax’s evil scheme (using her impressive NASA knowledge such as being able to read the posted directions in the space station, and knowing the code to the laser cannon). Never have British-American relations looked so good, in space suits.

Definitely the smartest person in this film

“His name’s Jaws, he kills people.” What more do you really need to say about the iconic assassin, played by 7’ 2” Richard Kiel. Quite possibly the greatest supporting Bond movie character of all time (with the possible exception of Odd Job). The man is indestructible, survived accidents in this movie alone include sky diving without a parachute (he lands on a circus tent), crashing a cable car through a concrete building, crashing a boat over a water fall, and a space station breaking up with him inside. He can standing long jump at least 20 feet (the world record is 11.4 feet), looks good in suspenders, and apparently has a metallic crotch. This movie even features some Jaws character development, which scores it a lot of points. He falls in love with the petite blonde women Dolly, and when she is threatened for not meeting Drax's standards of physical perfection, Jaws joins up with Bond and helps to save the day. He also delivers the only line of his two film appearances with “Well, here’s to us” as he drinks some champagne with Dolly in the exploding space station. Jaws then has to save Bond and Goodhead's lives once again as he undocks their space shuttle with his incredible ability to break stuff. Then his portion of the space station get launched into space in a shot that is strikingly familiar to the shot of Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter hurtling into space (Moonraker came out two years after Star Wars, and may have tried to cash in on the hype. I would include a link there, but you can’t find Star Wars clips on YouTube). Don’t worry though, because Jaws and Dolly get saved by the Americans, who were just joy riding in their shuttle anyway, so it wasn't too much trouble.

The most bad ass person in this film

The sexiest person in this film

I also want to throw in a mention of Manuela. She works for the Rio branch of MI6 and shows up to give Bond some intel. She also gives him a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, and some sex (they had to kill five hours, and James doesn’t Samba). Later, while accompanying Bond on a scouting mission, Jaws tries to give her the old neck bite, and she is instantly stricken mute and doesn’t resist at all or cry for help (I guess she isn’t really a field agent?). Some rowdy partiers save the day so it all turns out okay, and we got to see some Jaws in a sinister clown suit. Manuela teaches us that spies who just gather intelligence but stay out of the action are still valuable to the team (but only as long as their sexy maybe?)

Those people were probably to drunk to help anyway

Tune in next time for ACTION!