The conventional wisdom on James Bond history is that the Roger Moore era distinguished itself from the Sean Connery era by being far more tongue in cheek. The Moore films were more willing to laugh at themselves and delighted in skirting the line of self-parody without totally crossing over. All of that is true, but it’s not the most important difference between the two actors’ oeuvres. What really defines the changes between the Connery era and the Moore era is that Connery’s films created and shaped the zeitgeist, while Moore’s films merely chased and reacted to it.
Nowhere is this more true than the 11th Bond film, 1979’s Moonraker, which is either the best Bond movie or the worst Bond movie—with very little middle ground—depending on what you want and expect a Bond movie to be.
Listen to the latest Filmotomy Podcast on the Film year of 1979
Looking back at the Connery films as a whole (and the lone George Lazenby film, 1969’s excellent On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), it’s apparent that they’re not really in conversation with anything beyond themselves, and the loose idea of ‘60s coolness. There’s no evidence that these films were being shaped in any way by the larger film world. The Connery films were, essentially, peak cinema-as-tastemaker.
But in the 1970s, the Moore films were in a constant race to reflect audience tastes that had already been developed elsewhere. This new habit of trying to tailor the Bond movies to the popular cinema of the moment began right out of the gate. Moore’s maiden voyage with the franchise, 1973’s Live and Let Die, was an attempt to insert James Bond into a Blaxploitation movie. The plot of the film involved Black America (and voodoo, and crocodiles), the villains were African American (certainly a first for the franchise), and a few action set-pieces in the film placed Bond up against American urban decay.
Live and Let Die was a hit, and it proved the franchise could still commercially thrive without Connery (a conclusion that Lazenby’s attempt with the character left seriously in doubt). So the rest of the ‘70s followed the same formula—throw James Bond into the midst of a blatant rehash of whatever movie had been a massive hit with audiences two years earlier.
More from 1979 in Film: Ridley Scott’s Alien
Moore’s second Bond outing, 1975’s The Man With the Golden Gun, took Bond to Asia and dropped him into the midst of the Kung Fu genre that had become a global phenomenon in the wake of 1973’s Bruce Lee star vehicle, Enter the Dragon.
Moore’s third Bond film, 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, was an egregious attempt to ride the coattails of 1975’s Jaws; Bond was pitted against a villain who killed people with sharks at his secret ocean base, and there was even a henchman named Jaws who bit his victims to death with metal teeth. (I promise I’m not making this up.)
At the end of The Spy Who Loved Me, just before the credits started rolling, words on the screen tell us that James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only. But the plan changed after Star Wars became the most successful film of all time. For Your Eyes Only could wait, because James Bond suddenly had an urgent appointment to get his ass into space. So in 1979—a year littered with movies hoping to ride the Star Wars coattails (Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture were two of the others)—he did just that.
Moonraker opens with a space shuttle being stolen in midair, and ends with Bond having zero-gravity coitus aboard that shuttle with the immortally named Dr. Holly Goodhead. Inbetween, Bond falls out of a plane without a parachute, endures a sabotaged space-flight simulation in California, survives an encounter at a nerve-gas laboratory in Venice, outraces a runaway cable car in Rio, kills an anaconda with a pen in the jungles of the Amazon, leads a squadron of American astronauts into an epic (I guess) laser fight aboard a secret space station, and thwarts the attempt of an unhinged egomaniacal billionaire to kill all life on Earth while keeping his hand-picked master race sheltered away in space. Whew!
More from 1979 in Film: Blake Edwards’10
Where do we even start with all of that? Moonraker is a wild ride, and it covers more exotic locations (and certainly more travel mileage) than any other Bond film. It has one of the franchise’s best stunts (the opening sky-dive fight), one of the best villains (Hugo Drax), the most impressive production design and special effects, and is easily the most over-the-top and bonkers entry in the series. When I watched all of the Bond films over and over again as a kid, Moonraker was my favorite and nothing else was even close.
But watching Moonraker as an adult—and especially watching it with someone who hadn’t seen it before—is a pretty unforgiving exercise. It has both moments and extended sequences that are so bad you find yourself sheepishly looking around to see if anyone is judging you merely for not turning it off. And each time I did so, I found my girlfriend next to me, giving me the face that unambiguously says, “When I dump you, tonight will be one of the reasons.” She finally gave up and went to bed about two thirds of the way through, and I’m both mercifully relieved and also slightly devastated that she’ll probably live her entire life without seeing the climactic laser shootout in space.
Sadly, vague (or outright) embarrassment at one’s childhood obsessions isn’t the only unsettling thing about watching Moonraker as an adult in 2019. Also present are cringeworthy reminders of our current political moment. It’s become cliche over the last few years to say that Trump acts like a Bond villain, and that’s easy enough to agree with purely on its face. But good lord, when you go back and watch one of those Bond villains, the comparisons get pretty scary, pretty quickly.
Watch the Best 50 Films of 1979 Video
Toward the end of Moonraker, when Hugo Drax is aboard his space station giving his speech about the master race he’s cultivated—which I’m sure had many fine people, on both sides—at one point Drax calls his minions “the ultimate dynasty which I alone have created.” And I nearly threw up in my mouth as I recalled Trump’s 2016 RNC speech when he said, “No one knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” Here’s a blanket statement that I feel completely comfortable with: No one who isn’t either an aspiring evil dictator or the lead singer of the ‘90s band Live has ever used the couplet “I alone.” (Also, you just know that Trump came up with his absurd “space force” idea after catching the end of Moonraker on TNT one night while he was flipping channels following Hannity.)
Though Moonraker got surprisingly favorable reviews at the time, its campy excess gave way to a very grounded followup in 1981, when For Your Eyes Only finally appeared. Rather than copying any other recent blockbusters, For Your Eyes Only seemed primarily interested in just not being anything like Moonraker. And the Bond franchise was never again as beholden to the popular cinema of the time the way it was in the ‘70s. In subsequent decades, only 1989’s Licence to Kill was obviously trying to cash in on the flavor of the moment, but its ugly attempt at turning Bond into a merciless, vengeance-obsessed killing machine (in the vein of the Schwarzenegger/Stallone/Willis/Gibson movies of the era) backfired so badly that it sent the franchise into its longest stretch of dormancy.
It’s difficult to know how to watch those old Bond films today. Their style is hopelessly dated and their sexual politics are reprehensibly dated, even as their villains have, paradoxically, gotten so much closer to reality that they seem depressingly prescient. Nowhere are these things truer than in Moonraker, which is why it’s both the apex and the nadir of the franchise. It’s the most perfect example of what Bond movies were. Whether or not that’s a compliment is up to you.