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LOL, hey man, it's all good.
Seriously, the specific effects shots where Bond was falling with the plane to catch up to it sucked, and took away from any sense that it could be real, I'll definitely give you that.
:)) I knew you would see the humor in it. Nice pain face comeback. I try not to say that as some Brosnan fans really get bent when someone does. Overlooking the PTS and the gymnast act on the satellite dish, GE is an excellent entry and Pierce does well enough in his debut that I wanted to see him do more at that time.
Back on point since we've been discussing Spy, I've been re-reading Sir Roger's autobiography and he makes a point about Cubby and Spy that may have influenced the GE PTS to be as OTT as it came off. Noting the longer period than the usual 2 year cycle at that point, he said Cubby wanted to bring Bond back with a big bang and was as thrilled as anyone when the Union Jack jump got a standing ovation during it's premiere. After an unheard of 6 years between films, I'm thinking that he was thinking along those same lines here, give us something wildly impressive. I'm not sure if he approved what we got here or not, obviously he was in poor health that seemed to be worsening by the day and not in an active role as far as quality control.
I agree with your opinion. GE was a huge event and no doubt they were trying to wow us and prove that not only was Bond back but that he was better than ever.
I didn't find that to be so. A bit too much action as opposed to storyline, ala QOS, yes. Guilty of following the YOLT/Spy formula and not as well done, yes. But for the latter, I loved the retro yet modern feel and believe the whole idea was a tribute of sorts to Cubby.
GE is the better film, but for me Brosnan gives the best performance of his four here and it's still an entry I personally very much enjoy. It's a shame the last two went in the complete opposite direction as far as quality all the way around.
My personal problems with the sequence is that it's been filmed in such a way you cannot believe it. Getting in the plane with the clif behind Bond looks very fake. When he get's in, Bond is somehow rattling with a cilinder which I take it is supposed to be the stick. Whenever I'd dive the stick would become heavier, it wouldn't start shaking at all. Moreover I'd be hanging backwards with my feet on the dash to pull up from such a dive.
They could've made it more convincing, with another gorge (far deeper) and Bond jumping after the plane much sooner then he did. As they filmed it now, it is impossible.
This is why it hurts the movie for me, at least as far as the PTS goes. I always look at stunts in a Bond film as a traditionalist and at the phrase @Matt_Helm correctly points out- "Bond may go wildly beyond the probable but not beyond the possible" as a benchmark and point of reference. What happens here completely betrays that philosophy and it's why I am at odds with those insist the PTS is the best in the series :)) I suppose these folks can more readily suspend utter disbelief in the name of popcorn entertainment.
I was going to save this for a future GE thesis, but the proverbial cat is out of the bag here. I have to wonder if it is all a case of Barb and Mike having a new belief in this regard that differed from Cubby's?
How about the QOS parachute jump down into the sinkhole? Do you have ideas or expertise about this one from a technical view while we're on the subject of poorly enacted stunts? Anyone? It seems appropriate since we're about to revisit Moonraker and those stunts there will no doubt come up, actually that will be the first thesis I present.
^^^sarcasm
:))
Funnily enough modern day editing works against these kind of stunts. we're now all so used to getting only half a second per shot, whereas a stunt like the bungeejump in GE and the parachuting from that cliff work so well becouse we can actually clearly see what's going on. With the QoS jump we really didn't need those close-ups, they destort the feeling of time. If that gorge had been deep enough (it's hard to see if it is) they might have done it with a base jump. That would have been increadable.
I guess that's why the CR PTS still gets my vote as one of the best. Those jumps off of those cranes really take my breath away.
And does that confuse the issue of when the philosophy changed even more! Cubby was so intent on making sure the Mount Asgard parachute jump came off, that he gave Rick Sylvester all the time he possibly could for the weather conditions to be right enough for him to get up there and get it done. It shows that a stunt can be both practical and spectacular at the same time. And needn't be rushed.
It's not exactly the PTS (which was Bond killing Dryden and his contact), but there's no doubt that Sébastien Foucan and a stunt double did everything we see on screen in the Parkour chase. It was indeed incredible work. My son absolutely loves every second of it and I can see why.
So lots of things are "possible" I guess.
I enjoy difficult stunts that still seem within the realm of real life possibilities, yes, but I don't mind some being a bit far-fetched in a Bond film.
Which is why your point is well, well taken. There should have been some major trauma with that.
I get what @4Ever is saying here and want to acknowledge that. I wish I could suspend my disbelief more easily but it just doesn't seem to be in me. I've seen so much great and physically viable stunt work done over the years that I tend to call BS very easily when something sticks out like a sore thumb as these two stunts seem to do.
One of the things I’ve most appreciated about doing this series of reviews is having the opportunity to put a structure to my own opinions regarding the Bond films. Sure, I can say “I like this one, I don’t like that one” -- but it’s been hard for me to say definitively, “I like this one just a little bit better than that one, and here’s the reason why.” I’ve long known that Moonraker is one of my least favorite films in the Bond series -- but where does it fall in comparison to, say, TMWTGG, another one the series’ lesser efforts in my opinion? Now I can say definitively. We take these minor compensations wherever we can find them…
Golden Gun, I think we can safely say, is a very camp Bond film. I set about watching Moonraker for the purpose of this review, quickly determining (with Jaws’ arm-flapping bit in the PTS) that this film was beyond camp and into the level of a cartoon…but before long, even that assessment seemed a bit premature. As I saw Michael Lonsdale, Corrine Clery, and Lois Chiles sleepwalking through their respective roles, I began to suspect that this movie’s dream-like qualities were the result of the film-makers’ intent, rather than simple incompetence on anyone’s part. From dreamlike the movie segued into a fever-dream, as Corinne Dufour was chased through the forest by Drax’s dogs…and from fever-dream into actively hallucinogenic as Bond and Jaws faced off on top of a pair of cable cars. Finally I was convinced: this is no cartoon of a Bond film; no mere fever dream of a Bond film -- this is an acid flashback of a Bond film! No wonder this script is such an obvious retread of the previous (far more successful) entry into the series, with bits of YOLT and TB forced senselessly into it at random intervals -- this isn’t your Grandfather’s James Bond film, but it just might be Jerry Garcia’s James Bond film! Let’s be honest with ourselves here: the ‘70s were a era of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. (So were the ‘60s, but there was also a fair amount of political upheaval, assassinations, and advances in civil rights for various minority populations.) James Bond has gotten plenty of sex on his various missions, and John Barry’s scores have included a wide variety of musical styles, including rock. It’s time to get some drugs into the Bond series before the ‘70s can be safely put away! I don’t know, maybe somebody dosed the popcorn at Casa Sans Earmuffs the other night -- but I came away from this recent viewing of Moonraker thinking, “Wow! Look at all the COLORS, man….”
BOND 2.5/5 Early in the film, not long after Bond first meets his female co-star, Dr. Holly Goodhead, she is conducting him on a tour of Hugo Drax’s aerospace facility. They come upon a centrifuge used for training astronauts, and she suggests (for no particular reason) “Why not try it?” “Why not?” Bond replies…and this seems to be his operating philosophy for most of the film. I don’t know, James: why NOT let a beautiful woman that you’ve just met strap you into a high-tech torture device? What could possibly go wrong with THAT idea? Roger’s Moore’s Bond has always been a bit of a clothes horse…but half-way through the movie he finds himself in a gaucho outfit for no apparent reason at all (other than “Why not?”)…and by the film’s end, he is in a space suit, shooting ray guns at satellites. To no one’s surprise, Bond’s targeting computer is useless in aiming at the final satellite, and Bond has to target the device manually. My own silent directive to Bond during my first viewing of this scene was: “Use the force, James!” The final line of dialogue anyone has in this movie is Bond’s, however, as the distinguished Dr. Goodhead asks him to take her “around the world” one more time. His inevitable response: “Why not?” So if you need to ask me why I’m rating Moore at half a Bond for this movie, I can only reply: Why not?
WOMEN 2/5 Half a point each for Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead and Corinne Cleary as Corinne Dufors, one full point for Emily Bolton as Manuela. Both Chiles and Cleary are beautiful in a plastic, department-store mannequin sort of way, and each brings an mannequin-like quality to her role. Goodhead is supposedly both a scientist and a CIA agent, and I suppose as a scientist she can be forgiven for never showing a hint of passion in any line of dialogue she delivers -- but why she seems to distrust Bond throughout most of the film is a question never answered. If she’s a CIA agent, doesn’t she know that Bond has worked with the CIA to save Western Civilization any number of times? Why is she even talking about working with Bond as a form of détente? It’s not as if Britain and the USA haven’t been the closest of allies since that little misunderstanding back in 1812! Dufors makes some really poor choices as an employee of Drax Aerospace -- sleeping with the enemy (that is to say, Bond) is bad enough, but helping him find Drax’s safe is really not likely to get her a very positive recommendation after her termination! Seriously, the scene of Dufors fleeing from Drax’s dogs is one of the most alarming scenes in this movie -- even more so than the sight of Jaws in love! Manuela, Bond’s assistant in Rio, is probably the most interesting woman in the movie -- too bad the scriptwriters pretty much forget about her half-way through the film! As it is, her main function in this plotline is to help Bond kill a few hours in Rio without doing the samba. I’m also willing to give Drax’s various “girls” (seen at different points of the movie in different locations throughout the world, and then together collectively as his female astronauts) one full point as an ensemble -- but then I’ll have to delete that same point for Blanche Ravelec as Dolly. If there is one single element that ruins this film in my mind, it is the subplot of Jaws in love. More on this point below…
VILLAINS 2/5 Michael Lonsdale as Drax gets a fair number of humorous lines…but his delivery is deadpan to a fault. We don’t really know much about Drax other than that he is a zillionaire with interests in aerospace and shipping. What is his nationality, for example? He’s not English; he tells us that, but otherwise he’s a cipher…one who stole his master plan from the cipher in the last movie. Seriously, folks, if you’re going to give us back-to-back mass murderers who intent to reshape humanity to their own designs, could you at least give us SOME indication of why they’ve decided on this as their career goal? Toshiro Shuga as Chang really seems like he belongs in another film as well. YOLT, certainly, or perhaps MWTGG. But why is he HERE? Well…why not? Oh, okay. But if you can get Jaws, well…. Finally, here’s the elephant in the room, or perhaps the landshark in the hallway: Jaws. In the previous film he was played perfectly: not quite superhuman (until the very end of the movie, by which time the audience had already bought into his existence) occasionally humorous but primarily menacing. A perfect henchman. Here, he’s a buffoon in nearly every scene. While he’s something of a Tasmanian Devil to Bond’s Bugs Bunny in TSWLM, Taz is a pretty frightening critter. In Moonraker, Jaws is more of a Wile E. Coyote, ineffectual and doomed to constantly being lured off that cliff, only to look at the audience with chagrin in his face an instant before he falls to the canyon floor. But whatever happens to him, you can be sure that he’s still going to show up in the next scene ready to throw down again. And as I have previously noted in an earlier posting, for Jaws to fall in love is for him to be totally neutered, drained of whatever sense of menace he may have still possessed despite his constant inability to kill Bond. When their paired cable cars are approaching each other, Bond tells Goodhead, “That’s Jaws. He kills people,” and as a one-dimensional menace Jaws works. When he clinks champagne glasses with Dolly in the doomed space station and speaks his first lines in the series, “Well --here’s to us!” it is his last hurrah. After this, Jaws is useless to the Bond series. He may help Bond & Goodhead escape the space station, but we won’t even be shown his (and Dolly’s) means of survival, we will only be told that it happens off camera. He’s just that unimportant any more.
HUMOR 2.5/5 The humor is more omnipresent in this movie than in any other Bond film, but little of it is genuinely funny. It’s all the absurd Bondola and Jaws grimacing as his cable car hurtles to a crushing impact with a wall, only to be rescued by his new-found lady love. For every one-liner that works, such as Q’s observation that Bond is “attempting re-entry” there are three that don’t, such as Bond stating that Drax’s serpent had “developed a crush” on him. We won’t even get into the double-taking pigeon…but I am beginning to appreciate the position of that recurring character who double-takes in film after film regarding the bottle he’s been drinking from. I can’t give this category a high ranking simply because the humor in this film is so juvenile and inappropriate. I can’t give this category a 0 or a 1 because humor (even poorly-done humor) is one of its largest constituent parts. I’ll just have to score it down the middle with a 2.5. Why? Why not!
ACTION 2.5/5 For this film, action is humor and humor is action; the score of one is the score for both. One never knows when a moment of danger is going to be replaced by one of humor. Bond’s boat approaches the waterfall and Bond unveils a hang-glider to escape; Jaws’ craft follows Bond’s boat over the falls and his expression is that of Wile E. Coyote as he plummets to what should be his death… but we all know that it won’t. If you can’t take the action of a Bond film seriously, then what is the point of watching (or making) the film? Questionable physics is one thing, but even a cartoon has an internal logic that sustains it for its audience. The only logic this film obeys is it’s own eternal response: why not? Bond lands his glider in the middle of the Amazon rain forest…only to be greeted by a beautiful blonde wearing a skimpy outfit, who gestures for him to follow. Why? Why not! She leads him to a group of beautiful women all wearing skimpy outfits….because they’re all about to take off on a rocket ship and destroy most of humanity. Huh? What??? WHY! You know why…because this is Jerry Garcia’s James Bond film and that’s the way we DO things around these parts. But before they can get on the rocket ship, Bond falls into the water and is attacked by a giant snake. He then kills the snake WITH A GADGET THAT WE LAST SAW IN DR. GOODHEAD’S LITTLE BAG OF TRICKS, STANDARD CIA ISSUE! Why is it suddenly in Bond’s hands? Especially when he could have just used the wrist-gun that we know he’s been wearing through the whole movie! If you have to ask, you haven’t been reading this review…or maybe you’ve been eating too much of our special brand of popcorn…
SADISM 4/5 If somebody’s willing to wipe out humanity, I suppose we can forgive them for setting their dogs on Miss Dufour, or pretending that they’re English gentlemen on an afternoon’s fox hunt. We might even forgive them for their attempted theft of the Star Wars genre, or the Frankensteinian experimentation involved in trying to graft a space opera onto an espionage thriller, especially one with a cartoon heart. Some might claim that the greatest sadism in this movie is the making and marketing of it, but I think that assessment misses the target just slightly. I believe the continued broken tango that the Bond series weaves during the ’70s between camp and serious, veering in this case into cartoonish and/or hallucinatory, is the real act of sadism involved here -- but there’s also a significant dose of masochism involved for the folks at Eon Productions. They just aren’t sure WHAT kind of film they’re trying to make with Moonraker -- and I believe that throughout this movie, they’re punishing themselves for their own indecision.
MUSIC 4/5 John Barry does another splendid job here, with a theme song that floats along weightlessly, invoking a sense of flight that nicely reflects the movie’s title. I’m not sure that Shirley Bassey was the best choice for vocalist, as her usually bombastic delivery is not at all appropriate to this song, and she’s left without the most potent weapon in her arsenal of effects. I could have done without the brief reference to the theme from “The Magnificent Seven,” but as audio missteps go, we’re nowhere near the slide whistle in TMWTGG. The disco version of the Moonraker theme as our end credits roll is also a less than ideal way to end the movie…but by this time, many of us were just happy to see the movie end.
LOCATIONS 4/5 Beautiful scenery everywhere, from Drax’s estate (supposedly in California, actually in France) to Venice to Rio,to the Amazon rainforest and into…space…where everything came apart. Seriously, Ken Adams’ space city is breathtaking. The visuals of this movie go a long way towards obscuring its other weaknesses. I only wish Adams hadn’t needed to design a space city to begin with. Bond really doesn’t belong in space, and the final portion of the movie is just interminable because the film-makers decided to go there…
GADGETS 3/5 Bond’s wrist-gun is nice if unexciting, quite believable and useful in several places throughout the film. His Q-issued boat (equipped with mines and various other weapons, plus a hang-glider) is also very cool and would probably have become more popular among Bond fandom if it hadn’t been lost amid the clutter. Then there’s the explosive charge in Bond’s wrist watch, which we hadn’t been introduced to before Bond pulls it out and uses it to escape death by rocket exhaust. Logic? We left that behind a couple of continents ago! But of course, this movie’s big gadget is the Moonraker itself -- several of them actually, as well as the space city, and all the surrounding accoutrements involved. If I were scoring this category solely on how pretty all the hardware is, the movie would get a 50/50 and we could all go home. But I’m still trying to insist on logic, particularly the logic of how all this hardware is used, and once we go into space the whole movie goes kaboom. Let’s try this: within minutes after Bond and Goodhead shut off the space station’s radar-jamming device, the US military has a squadron of space marines up in orbit to take on Drax’s minions. After that it’s all pretty rote: the space station is destroyed, Bond & Goodhead barely escape, the world is saved, etc. But tell me: I thought that any kind of space launch took a significant amount of time to plan, plus a few hours’ worth of flight to actually get your vehicle INTO ORBIT. Bond & Goodhead must have been fighting off Drax’s minions -- with Jaws’ help, of course -- for an awful long time before the space marines arrived!
SUPPORTING CAST 2.5/5 Bernard Lee is particularly good in his final appearance as M, defying Sir Frederick Greene’s instructions to pull Bond off the case. Q is his usual droll self, and Moneypenny has her moment to shine as well. We even get a brief appearance from Walter Gotell as General Gogol.
TOTAL AND RECOLLECTIONS 29/50 So I suppose I do prefer this film to TMWTGG, but only just barely. I appreciate that Eon Productions was trying to do something different with this entry in the series -- I just wish they had tried for a little more coherence in the plot line, and a little bit more animation from their lead villain and leading lady. I might have enjoyed this one a bit more if they had only tried not to copy themselves so blatantly this go-round….perhaps by coming up with a plot that didn’t involve a maniacal zillionaire trying to exterminate most of humanity and replacing it with his own hand-picked master race. Again. At least this time around, we got a sense of Drax’s plans for post-annihilation humanity, which is more than we got from Stromberg. Still, TSWLM was ultimately a more satisfying movie than MR. Maybe for their next film, Eon might consider using a little more of the original material left behind by Ian Fleming, rather than just grabbing another title and tossing out The Creator’s sense of adventure, grounded in (but not constrained by) reality. Hey -- why not?
THE END of this review
But BeatlesSansEarmuffs will return next week
To review FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
One of our fellow originals was a hilarious fellow from Arizona who went by the handle of Kerim. This reminded me so much of him and his special brand of humor. Sadly, very sadly, he disappeared around the time of Skyfall while we were on review hiatus after covering LTK, and we all fear the worst has happened because he loved doing his reviews and also felt he was in a special place with his fellow originals. He would have appreciated this as much as anyone. I just know it.
I recall Stromberg mentioning a new and beautiful world under the sea. Who exactly was going to be there with him is never made too clear, so we are left to assume that much like Drax's master race, his loyal employees would receive safe haven. Someone has to be there to cater to his every whim and change his Depends, right? Or did he plan to hire a "nurse shark" for that?
Before I go off to start thinking about which MR thesis I will start off with next week, somehow or other, I must say that I still prefer a tougher Moore, the magnificent Christopher Lee, Britt in a bikini, Hi Fat cussing out someone in Chinese (or was that Thai?), and the comedic genius that is Clifton James to this film. Why you ask? The answer should be obvious- why not? =))
We are equally thrilled to have you here too :)
There have been several. And they all had one thing in common: they either landed in a recently-plowed field or in bushes. In both cases the material landed upon has some absorbing capabillities. I'll asure you that anyone who ever landed on solid rock or water with a less-then-full opened chute had a 100% chance of dying. Water you say? Yes, water is, with speeds of over 100km/h even harder then rock, due to it's surface tension.
Why?
Why not?
(@chrisisall: Yes, I AM joking! Read the review again. Jeez, when you have to explain a joke...)
In QOS, Bond and Camille land in a soft, silty type of substrate consistent with that of a river bed. I'm still not buying too hard into all of it. But then, if we can believe Jaws goes straight through a big circus tent and brings the whole thing down with him...why not :))
After Corinne's horrible death, which seemed like it belonged in a totally different kind of movie (horror or slasher film), the robot murmurings of Drax (whose lines were sometimes funny but he was the coldest and flattest of fish delivering them), Jaws as a substitute Wiley Coyote (how right you are), and the godawful Bondola ... I should left the theatre at that point, ingested some lovely hallucinogenics or at least some weed, and gone back to view it thus refreshed and in the right frame of mind to possibly enjoy the entire mess that is Moonraker. Alas, I didn't.
Anyway, thanks again and now I can view Moonraker once in a long while in a better frame of mind. Especially as I repeat your spot on mantra, "Why not?" ;) Even so, I hope MR remains truly the only one of its kind in the Bond realm.
If only that were true. After all, we still have another acid trip kind of Bond to come in DAD :))