By Cai Ross
Just as the school holidays were about
to start, way back in the December of 1982, ITV began previewing their upcoming
festive slate. In amongst the sleigh-bell soundtracked shots of Morecambe &
Wise, Ted Rogers and Mike Yarwood et al, Richard Kiel grabbed a thick metal
cable and bit into it with his silver dentures. This little tit-bit was all any
of us kids could talk about in school the next day. ‘Did you see it? Moonraker’s
going to be on TV on Boxing Day!’
I can’t remember anything else about
that Christmas, only the desperate excitement in the run-up to watching the
biggest, best James Bond film ever made! And back then, it was both of those
things because we were, y’know, kids.
Moonraker was (and remains) the entry-level
kids’ Bond movie. Once you realise that the concept of a space shuttle full of
American marines armed with laser guns being fired into space is as
intelligence-insultingly absurd as the idea of a double-taking pigeon, the
lustre wears off rapidly.
And so it came to pass that over the
years, the most successful Bond movie yet released saw its reputation take an
almighty plummet, hovering at the bottom of most Bond popularity charts; an
overblown, camp nadir that even Cubby Broccoli recognised as ‘a bit too much’ (by
contrast, the next Bond adventure, For Your Eyes Only was a pointedly
earth-bound gadget-free caper based on the retrieval of what looked like a ZX
Spectrum keyboard).
Admitting that Moonraker was
one of your favourite Bond movies in the company of cineastes was a faux pas
akin to suggesting that the best Star Trek movie was the fifth one, or
that Robert De Niro never did it for you as an actor until he started making
those hilarious Meet The Parents movies.
The Daniel Craig years - in which Bond
was transformed from a smooth, quip-spouting, all-action Lothario into a
tortured, reluctant assassin, as bruised and broken on the inside as he is on
the surface - made the comic nonsense of Moonraker seem even more
ludicrous, unforgivably so.
Yet all of a sudden, Bond’s misbegotten
Star Wars cash-in has recently started to find voices of support piping
up in its defence. Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary could have chosen from
hundreds of thousands of other movies to launch their new Video Archives
podcast, but for episode 1, out of every movie ever made they went for Moonraker.
Of the two film-makers, Avary is the
one pleading the case for the
defence. In time-honoured tradition, he
considered it beneath his contempt when it was first released in 1979. “I was
absolutely dubious of it. I hated it.
“I’ve noticed that when I see films
that I dismissed quickly back in the day; I sometimes look at them now and I am
seeing things and appreciating things that I just wasn’t prepared for back
then.” Among those things that Avary now appreciated were Ken Adams’s beautiful
sets, John Barry’s lush score, the still-impressive special effects, Michael
Lonsdale’s cold dismissive performance, and the opening skydiving stunt, which
Avary & Tarantino both cite as one of their favourite pre-titles sequence
in the series: ‘Real people are doing this!’
Avary continued, ‘It’s a spy film, it’s
an action movie, it’s a romance, it’s a travelogue, it’s a sci-fi…it’s also a
horror film. It switches its tone constantly. It becomes whatever it needs to be
in the moment. It’s a comedy, it’s even a western at one point.’ He even
confesses to crying at the end when Jaws finally speaks.
Tarantino’s enjoyment is more
circumspect. He has little enthusiasm for Lewis Gilbert’s handling of action
scenes, especially the gondola chase. At one point he bellows, ‘Any movie that
cuts to a reaction shot of animals doing comic double-takes can never be taken
seriously under any circumstances!’
The Video Archives Moonraker reevaluation
followed on the heels of its surprise appearance in the 2021 Marvel movie Black
Widow, in which Scarlett Johansson’s superhero assassin enjoys some
much-needed downtime by watching Moonraker - a film she’s seen so often
she can recite the dialogue from memory.
Moonraker was, to Johansson’s character, what
it is to so many of us: a comfort watch (it also serves as a witty foretaste of
the rest of Black Widow; a film that ends up set aboard a colossal
airborne sky-station which our hero destroys in mid-flight).
It has also taken on an unlikely
contemporary resonance, thanks to the intergalactic antics of a new breed of
super-billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and - especially - Elon
Musk, who have recently been playing with their little rocket ships and all,
like Drax, clearly obsessed by the conquest of space.
Watching these space-fixated moguls,
all of them rich beyond the wealth of nations, seemingly sharing Drax’s casual
disdain for the trite pauper-concerns of mere earthlings, Moonraker’s
plot suddenly becomes targeted future-satire from the least-likely source.
Then again, it could just be something
far simpler. This new warmth towards Moonraker might well have stemmed
from the loss of Roger Moore, who became the first Bond to head to the great
casino in the sky in 2017. There has rarely been a more beloved actor, and the
shock of suddenly not having him around any more may have led many to
reconsider the legacy of someone we have now lost forever.
Moore’s Bond movies - built around his
unique presentation of the character - were unabashed entertainment. They were
designed at an eye-wateringly huge cost by some of the most talented and
dedicated artists in the industry for one simple, noble purpose: to give family
audiences a thrill ride and make them happy.
Produced for a then-staggering
$34million, Moonraker was released at a time of economic stagnation,
constant strikes, international unrest and unremitting gloom. No wonder
audiences rushed into cinemas to bask in its technicolor glamour, warm humour
and impossible silliness. No wonder its charms seem so suddenly appealing once
again.