Bond Night returns to blast off with Moonraker! Zip up your space suit and join us for double-taking pigeons, Mad Libs style plotting, and Nazis in space. This one is astroNOT to be missed!
By Michael O’Connor // Welcome back to Bond Night! This month, we’re rocking and rocketing with Director Lewis Gilbert’s Moonraker (1979), the film that finally did the impossible: launch 007 into outer space! We’ll orbit around some history and once we’ve given that topic the gravity it deserves, we’ll float on to discussing how to throw the perfect Moonraker screening party for you and your friends, complete with white pizzas and Moonwalk cocktails. So zip up your space suit and watch out for double-taking pigeons. It’s time to blast off with Bond Night!
HISTORY
After the enormous success of The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was convinced that for James Bond, even the sky wasn’t the limit. So in “adapting” the last remaining Ian Fleming novel, he took the title literally… and had his script writers ignore everything else between the two covers. After the shocking success of Star Wars, Hollywood was tripping over itself to bring science fiction and space-based storytelling to the silver screen, and Broccoli figured there would never be a better time to send James Bond to outer space.
To help him in this endeavor, he brought back Director Lewis Gilbert, who had helmed the blockbuster hit Spy, as well as You Only Live Twice, the first 007 film to flirt with the idea of James Bond in space. You may recall that in that film, Sean Connery actually suits up as an astronaut and is about to board a SPECTRE spacecraft when Blofeld recognizes him and has him detained.
While this would be Gilbert’s final Bond film, it would be something of a last hurrah for him and several other alumni of the franchise. Both Ken Adam, the production designer who created all of the most memorable sets of the franchise including the Fort Knox set in Goldfinger and the submarine set in Spy, and Bernard Lee, the man who played Bond’s crotchety boss M for eleven consecutive films, would lend their talents for the final time with Moonraker.
Fortunately, both men went out strong in this film. Adam designed some of the most impressive sets of his career, most notably Hugo Drax’s space station, a three-story set that still holds the world record for the largest number of zero gravity wires in one scene.
And as for Bernard Lee, his gruff but lovable M gets a little more to do than usual; it’s especially touching that his last shared scene with Roger Moore’s Bond in Venice allows him to reveal a slightly warmer, affectionate side of his character. Sadly, Lee would pass away in early 1981 from cancer just months before he was scheduled to film scenes for the next Bond adventure, For Your Eyes Only.
While certain members of the Bond crew were winding down their involvement, others were just getting started. The incredible stunt team was growing with each new installment and getting increasingly more outrageous scenes to tackle. In the last film, the highlight was skiing off a mountain and parachuting to safety. In this film, it was a skydiving battle between James Bond and Jaws.
And that’s honestly only the start of the insane stunts in this film. Whether it’s a brawl atop two cable cars, a Venice boat chase through the canals, or a zero-G laser gun fight both in and outside of a space station, this Bond film pushed the boundaries of Bond action like never before.
All of that hard work added up to big bucks at the box office, and it’s impossible to overstate just how massive this film was for the franchise. Not only did Moonraker make three-and-a-half times more money in the domestic market than The Man with the Golden Gun had grossed just five years earlier in 1974, but its $70 million domestic and $210 worldwide grosses wouldn’t be topped by another James Bond film for 16 years! The film that would finally beat it? None other than 1995’s GoldenEye.
Of course, we all know that financial popularity is no indication of quality, but before delving into the merits and mistakes of Moonraker, let’s orbit around the dinner table and see what’s cooking.
DINE
“What cuisine can you possibly pair with a film called Moonraker?” my friends wanted to know. “Are we going to eat astronaut food?”
Thankfully, no. While James Bond does go to space in Moonraker, he actually spends the majority of the film in earthly locations, most memorably in Venice, Italy. The idea of Italian cuisine and lunar imagery naturally made the white pizza an appealing option for this Bond Night screening party.
While some would scoff at the idea of a pizza without tomato sauce, there are numerous excellent white pies available at high-end pizzerias. The absence of the acidic, sweet sauce allows other less common ingredients to really shine, including various kinds of cheeses, vegetables, meats, herbs and even seafood.
So in addition to that old staple mozzarella, consider a white pie with ricotta, gorgonzola or goat cheese. In lieu of the classic basil, garlic, and oregano trifecta, you’d be pleasantly surprised by the effect of some fresh rosemary. Potatoes, scallions, bacon, chicken and shrimp are other toppings that meld beautifully with the white pie, offering savory accents and alternative flavors to complicate a pizza that could come off a little one-note without their inclusion.
And of course, the best thing about pizza is how simple it is to split up, share, and acquire. While it may not be the most elegant cuisine, let’s face it: Moonraker isn’t exactly the most elegant James Bond film either.
In fact, I’d recommend finishing off your meal with some Moon Pies for dessert. That should get everybody in the proper mentality to enjoy (or tolerate) this loony installment of the Bond franchise.
DRINK
While this month’s cuisine is decidedly blue collar, there’s no such danger with the cocktail recommendation. Any credibility I might have lost in mentioning the word “Moon Pie” is about to get restored once you mix up the classic Moonwalk cocktail and taste it for yourself.
As legend has it, the Moonwalk was conceived in 1969 at the Savoy Hotel’s American Bar in London to commemorate the Apollo 11 moon landing. And apparently, it was the first drink astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin consumed upon returning to terra firma. Chances are a few sips of this drink sent them right back to the moon and beyond!
A mix of champagne, rose water, orange liqueur and grapefruit juice, this is a tart, aromatic, effervescent drink that will be a welcome balm to your tastebuds and your digestive tract after packing your gut full of pizza. The use of champagne as a principal ingredient is especially appropriate since Roger Moore’s James Bond tended to favor sparkling wine over vodka martinis.
Although, if you can’t afford a bottle of ’69 Bollinger as Bond imbibes in this film, it is perfectly acceptable (and even advisable) to swap in your favorite domestic Brut sparkling wine. I’d personally recommend Domaine Ste. Michelle’s Brut, which can be acquired for $10-$13 a bottle and is regularly hailed as a top tier champagne substitute.
As for the rest of the ingredients, you can find rose water online or at a local middle eastern grocery store or health food market; your best bet for an orange liqueur is probably Grand Marnier, which is readily available; and as for grapefruit juice, be sure to find a brand that is actually 100% juice and not just a lot of sugar and additives.
Or better yet, squeeze it yourself before your guests arrive. A little extra effort goes a long way in crafting memorable cocktails.
Moonwalk
- 1 oz Grapefruit Juice
- 1 oz Grand Marnier
- 3 drops Rose Water
- Brut Sparkling Wine
Directions
Add the grapefruit juice, Grand Marnier and rose water into a shaker and fill with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a champagne flute. Top with sparkling wine.
INTERMISSION
Pause the film at 00:55:59 or right after Jaws passes through the airport’s metal detector and bares his teeth. Then moonwalk back to the bar to fix up another round of cocktails. Be sure to reassure your friends and guests that James Bond will, in fact, reach outer space before the film concludes.
Moonraker – VERDICT
I can’t tell you how many times my friends asked when we were going to get to “the one where James Bond goes to outer space.” This film has a reputation, and like Octopussy, it has far less to do with the film itself, and far more to do with the title and the evocative imagery that title imparts. The idea of James Bond in space is at first blush absurd and possibly even groan-inducing; but once you’ve gotten over yourself and your need for every thing to be gritty and dark and humorless, it’s also kind of awesome.
Let’s face it: outer space, laser guns, starships. All that stuff is a lot of fun. Now throw in a wisecracking super-spy with a roguish charm, a penchant for getting in over his head, and a bevy of cool gadgets at his disposal and conceptually at least you’ve got a pretty cool elevator pitch of a story.
You can tell me that Moonraker represents James Bond jumping the shark, and if we’re talking about the Daniel Craig or Timothy Dalton interpretations of the character, I might agree with you. But there’s no reason that the Roger Moore iteration of 007 couldn’t succeed in this setting and genre; in fact, I’m convinced there’s a version of this movie that could have worked.
As always in storytelling, the fault doesn’t lie in the concept but rather the execution. And unfortunately Moonraker is a bloated, incoherent mess that spends all of its energy showing off impressive stunts and set pieces and completely ignores the connective tissue needed to explain why these things are happening and why we as an audience should care.
Unlike The Spy Who Loved Me, there’s no grounded core of a story here. That film introduced a love story with an intriguing hook: a British spy and Russian spy forced to work together fall in love, until she discovers that he killed her former lover while on assignment… and threatens to seek revenge at the conclusion of their mission.
But Moonraker eschews any such cleverness, tension or emotion for a series of disconnected gag scenes that may work in and of themselves but don’t actually adhere into a satisfying whole. This film feels more like a clip show of random Bond moments than a coherent narrative and probably features the laziest screenplay of the entire franchise. Plot elements just don’t make any sense, and there doesn’t appear to be any real effort in the storytelling or direction to see that they do.
As my friends pointed out to me, the entire set-up for the film is non-sensical. Bond baddie Hugo Drax hijacks his own space shuttle off the top of an airplane in mid-flight for questionable reasons. Then as soon as James Bond shows up to investigate the theft, Drax orders his manservant to “see that some harm comes to him.” It’s not like Bond was on to him or poking holes in his gang’s alibis; he just immediately wants Bond killed without any real justification.
The effect of such gaps in logic is to make Drax, our lead antagonist, look foolish, unprepared, and reactionary. And that’s a shame, because Drax actor Michael Lonsdale imbues the character with an understated, humorless malevolence that contrasts brilliantly to Moore’s tongue-in-cheek silliness and wit. His evil Nazi-ish plot is suitably creepy as well, killing off everybody on Earth while his master race of physical specimens are safe aboard his space station banging out a new generation of übermenschen. But by and large, the script hamstrings and abandons him at every turn.
And then of course, there’s the Double-Take Pigeon.
My friends were besides themselves. “Did that… was that…? Did we just see a pigeon perform a double take?”
It’s true. It happened. A franchise that once gave us Sean Connery executing an unarmed man, firing extra shots into the back of his recently expired corpse, had just presented to us one of the worst gags in all of film history.
The Double-Take Pigeon may be the worst offense in this film, but it’s joined by plenty of other WTF moments, whether it’s Bond shooting one of Drax’s snipers out of a tree only for Drax to just let him walk away scot-free, or 007 suddenly and for no discernible reason going full cowboy wearing a poncho and sombrero and riding a horse while Elmer Bernstein’s iconic Magnificent Seven score plays. 
Even poor Jaws isn’t immune to the cringe-fest; he may have been a bit cartoonish at times in Spy, but here the iron-jawed thug is figuratively toothless as a villain, especially after randomly falling in love with a Pippi Longstocking clone in between coyote and roadrunner bouts with Moore’s Bond.
But honestly, the worst thing about this film isn’t any single corny joke or campy, tongue-in-cheek gag or even head-scratching plot hole, it’s that as a viewer you get the impression that no one, especially the filmmakers, is taking this movie seriously.
RANK
I’ll say one good thing about turkeys like Diamonds Are Forever, You Only Live Twice, and The Man with the Golden Gun; they may have sucked, but at least they weren’t Moonraker. There are enough elements here that could have been assembled into something memorable: the villain’s sinister plot and space station base, Michael Lonsdale’s Drax, Ken Adam’s incredible set design, Bernard Lee’s final performance as M, and yes, Roger Moore’s James Bond. But they are upended and undercut by a script, a director and a producer who show no respect or regard for the audience’s intelligence. Instead of a legitimate 007 film, Moonraker is a Mad Libs of footage strung together with seemingly little care, consideration or thought.
Imagine a version of this film that actually worked. It might have been… well, out of this world.
- Goldfinger
- From Russia With Love
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
- The Spy Who Loved Me
- Live and Let Die
- Dr. No
- Thunderball
- Diamonds Are Forever
- You Only Live Twice
- The Man with the Golden Gun
- Moonraker
Bond Night Will Return with For Your Eyes Only…
click for all previous Bond Night installments
Bond Night is a tradition started by myself, a bonafide Bondian, and friends whose exposure to the James Bond film franchise was limited. One film a month is paired with a region-appropriate cuisine and cocktail, and spirited discourse about each film’s merits and shortcomings. The goal of this column is to translate that experience here, walking newbies and Bond-experts alike through fifty years of the British superspy’s cinematic history (from Dr. No through today) and declassifying all the secret intel necessary for you to host your own Bond Night with friends and family.