When you last read this I began the countdown of all 22 EON Bond films. We covered such stinkers as Die Another Day and A View to a Kill. Well this time we still have some stinkers(in my opinion) that account for the bottom half of the series. Once again this is just personal preference because I know a lot of you may not like where I have these films ranked. Without much further ado let’s recap #22 and #21.
22.Die Another Day
21.A View to a Kill
That said, let’s resume at #20.
20.
The poster already semi-concerns me. Firstly, why are all the girls scantily dressed? I guess Drax needs something to look at while he’s in space. I imagine it gets boring starring into emptiness and he needs some eye candy. Secondly, why is Bond and Drax standing on the ground while everyone else is floating?
I guess they needed a poster to show that it was in space. I mean the title “Moonraker” and the trailer isn’t enough to re-enforce it. Drax looks like he’s trying to do the robot but failing at it horribly while pointing at Jaws. Then there is the ships in the background which has astronauts coming out which makes me wonder just how the hell are they getting in and does Drax space lair have that much of a run way for them? Its just bad all around.
This is a case of pissing on source material. You can tell they were getting desperate for something big at this point even though the last film was well-received and well off financially. Space was popular in the 70’s so they figure, “Let’s send Bond to space.” This is just another bad idea from EON. Roger Moore is Bond, of course and at this point he’s the “Roger Moore Bond” with quips, sex appeal, and his subtle deliveries.
He’s fine but he’s certainly done better Bond films than this. Michael Lonsdale plays Hugo Drax. The Hugo Drax in this story is similar to Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me…except replace “water” with “space” for his plans of destroying the world and creating a colony of select people at a location. No seriously that’s the only difference I see aside from a few minor details. Jaws comes back again and I find his character here to be inferior than the one there.
They made him too cartoony and over the top and that kills him for me. His face turn in the end was alright and its happy to see he found a good ending for himself. Lois Childs plays Holly Goodhead(great choice of a name guys) and its again a case of Bond working with a female agent of another country. Could this be anymore inspired by the previous film? Her character isn’t too bad but I’ve seen better Bond girls.
M:It is believed that Drax plans to genocide the world and start a new one with a select few in space.
Bond:Didn’t I just do this in the last movie?
M:No that was water.
Bond:This series is just as repetitive as the writer of this article’s jokes.
The action scenes are not too bad when they aren’t being ruined by cartoony things like Jaws surviving a 10000 foot(or however it was) drop and I did like the space lair that Drax had. In a sense it reminded me a bit of Dr. No on terms of set design. Location wise it was nice seeing Southern California in this movie and Brazil was a nice fresh breath of air. The title song, “Moonraker” by Shirley Bassey is her last one in her series and also the worst of her three. Although its still better than half the songs heard in this series.
I think they were better off adopting the Novel story in the end because the space theme is just silly and they could’ve just easily changed the Novel’s 1950’s technology for the standards of 1979. Although the effects are nice and its pretty epic, I just wish they hadn’t gone too far off the bounds of realism. Otherwise nothing is really memorable about this movie except for how well shot it is.
19.
Just what the hell is up with the posters? Ya know I do miss the old Hollywood days of creativity in the posters but this one is just silly and off. Firstly, if she is Octopussy by all rights she has 8 legs not 8 arms but I guess that would just make her seemed deformed and mislead viewers. Although anyone coming into this movie with the mindset that Octopussy has in fact 8 arms will sadly be disappointed. I know it turned me off immediately and it will turn off the Octopus arm fetish crowd.
I also find the side image on the upper left corner of what appears to be Bond throwing the henchmen, Gobinda off the plain while shaking his fist angrily to be humerus. I just envision Bond getting out of the plane, dragging out Gobinda, throwing him off, and shaking his fist yelling, “And stay out!” The bottom right corner has an exploding plane with what appears to be a giant amazon woman beating up on a man and a giant man kicking the giant and giving the smaller one a potential noggie. Meanwhile theirs a plane exploding and another woman presumably jumping out of the plane and attack the man with her crotch. Meanwhile a small space pod I guess leftover from Moonraker containing Bond is being chased by a missile.
James Bond seeing all of this and being encompassed by an Octopussy is completely unfazed. Then again he could just be being Roger Moore and being nonchalant and English about everything. Then again when you consider the Roger Moore Bond has seen a man turned into a balloon and unexploded, a man with 3 nipples, a spy who loved him, a space lair, Jaws surviving a thousand foot fall, and M shape shift, this whole thing must seem like a normal day to him. I never understood what made them think that looked good. Most would probably mis-interpret the poster for a Sci-Fi film about amazon women with 8 arms in space.
This was the 6th film in the Roger Moore series and where I started to think he was over the hill. Moore is fine in this movie, but you’re left wondering how many he could really do after this. This film also features the “triangle of evil” format established back in the Connery days for the villains with no central antagonist but rather 3 villains that compliment each other. The primary antagonist is Kamal Khan, he is suave but rather dull to me. I just really can’t say much on him other than that he’s bland.
The secondary antagonist is General Orlov, who is in allegiance with Kamal Khan. They have a plot to nuke Western Europe together. I actually find General Orlov to be just there. I actually think the movie would have been better had it separated the two for different stories. Together they just don’t work since its an sociopathic Soviet general working with an Afghan prince thats a smuggler.
The henchman of the “triangle” is Gobinda played by Kabir Bedi. He’s pretty intimidating and a break from the Red Grant type ones we’re used to seeing of generic blonde muscular men. He could kill Roger Moore if he wanted to. The Bond girl is the titular Octopussy played by Maud Adams. Repeat casting is something this series is hell for and this is one of those cases. Maud did a better job in The Man with the Golden Gun as Andrea.
Octopussy:Haven’t I seen you before?
Bond:I don’t believe you have, but you remind me of a woman I once knew.
I will say I liked the casting of an older woman as Moore’s love interest. This is mainly because at this point of the Moore series he was getting too old for the younger girls. Maud Adams works because its believable that she’d fall for Roger Moore and that its not as creepy as say him and Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only. The action in this movie plays out more like an Indiana Jones film rather than a James Bond one which shows where the inspiration for this came from. Although I’ll give it credit, the sequences where Khan is trying to kill Bond make for great action as does the ending sequence.
The locations of Germany (East and West) and India are fine and work for the context of the film. The title song, “All Time High” by Rita Coolidge is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard in a Bond film. I think its the worst title song from the Moore series which is hard since I like practically all the Moore themes except this one. It seems more like a song suited for an epic love story not a James Bond film. Perhaps it was meant for Romancing the Stone, which came a year later.
What can I really say about this? I just don’t like this movie. It drags at places and I wasn’t fond of the villains. I think that the whole smugglers deal works for a Bond film but only if done slightly differently. General Orlov I felt could’ve been saved for another movie and that him and Khan are an odd couple. It’s an iffy movie, some like it, some don’t. I just happen to not like it.
Stay tuned this Sunday for Part 3 with a chance I may review something else sometime between then.