Moonraker was the eleventh James Bond movie and was released in 1979. When the Moonraker shuttle gets hijacked in mid-flight, M16 sends James Bond (Roger Moore) to investigate. Moonraker was directed by Lewis Gilbert (You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me)and the script was written by Christopher Wood. Everything from the Ian Fleming novel was scrapped except for the villain Hugo Drax. Moonraker was made to cash in on the science fiction craze that was going on at the time. Films like Star Wars were very prohibitable at the time, so there was no doubt that James Bond would be in his own space adventure. For the producers and crew, the sky was no longer the limit for James Bond.
The plot for Moonraker is very similiar to The Spy Who Loved Me. The only difference between the two is the outer space environments. The pre-titles scene is excellent. When Bond is pushed out of an airplane with no parachute and freefalls to steal one from the pilot, while being chased by Jaws is great fun. The song by Shirley Bassey is haunting yet romantic. This would be her final song for a Bond film.
The villains are a mixed bag. I liked Michael Lonsdale as Drax. He is more of an intellectual villain than a physical opponent for Bond. Jaws returns for Moonraker, but is completely wasted. He is not very menacing as he was in Spy and comes off as acting like Wiley Coyote. The scene where he meets his girlfriend is one of the worst moments in a Bond film.
The main Bond girl in Moonraker is Dr. Holly Goodhead played by Lois Chiles (The Great Gatsby, Death on the Nile). She is a decent Bond girl but not as memorable as some of the other female leads were. She is a CIA agent that works with Bond to foil Drax's plan of creating a master race.
High points of Moonraker are the Ken Adam sets and Derek Meddings visual effects. Meddings was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on this film. Moonraker grossed $210,308,099 worldwide, making it the highest grossed film of the Bond series until Goldeneye.
I give Moonraker 3 stars out of 5.
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