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Agreed, @j_w_pepper. It's all part of the playful unreality of the Bonds.
Bond is sent to show Drax that the British are taking it seriously. There is no reason to harm him. What would have Bond discovered that would have put him on the case? The only reason he goes digging into the safe is because of Chang trying to take him out at the Centrifuge.
Drax should have kept offering cucumber sandwiches, letting Bond wander around the facility and sent him on his way.
I take your point of course about the seeming irrationality of Drax's decision to try to kill Bond off the bat but feeding Bond sandwiches wouldn't make for a very exciting scene in a Bond film. And of course with the centrifuge and shooting attempts they meant to kill Bond in a manner that would still be passed off as accidental as opposed to deliberate and premeditated actions. And of course they meant to kill him in order to stop him finding out anything untoward. As this is a Bond film, Bond of course survives these attempts on his life.
The centrifuge fair enough, but I don't know any pheasants that shoot back. If Bond was found shot then I don't think anyone would have thought it was an accident
I know you were being facetious about the pheasants but I was thinking more of Bond being shot by a stray bullet. Shooting accidents do unfortunately happen. It is of course much less easily explained away than the centrifuge malfunctioning but there is still an element of plausible deniability Drax would no doubt still try to rely on when questions were asked. How effective that would be at placating the British Secret Service is another matter...
Yeah I quite like how, in Bondland, if there's ever a company involved in a bad thing going down then Bond instantly assumes the boss of the company is behind it. It'd be quite fun to have a Bond film where there's a big company and it turns out that someone working in a regional senior level is behind some evildoing and the CEO knows nothing about it, but Bond spends the first 15 mins of the film trying to beat him at a tense game of tennis, seducing his wife and and breaking into his office anyway, only to eventually find out that he's innocent :D
Please don't get me wrong I enjoy Moonraker. I do get frustrated with it's somewhat lazy construction. It is a copy of a copy and it shows in the plot and it's problematic holes.
Why even harm Bond? There is no need to do so, except that the plot requires him to do so. It would have been better for them to think of different reasons for Bond to investigate Drax.
Sure, but it's like asking why the exercising ladies in front of the chateau look up to Bond's arriving helicopter with aroused passion as if his manly sexiness extends outside of moving vehicles! :) At this point in the history of the films, ladies simply kissed James Bond and baddies tried to kill him instantly, and neither needed any further explanation than simply 'he's James Bond' :D
You're absolutely right that the story makes no sense, and I can't defend it!
Possibly the most egregious moment for me is that when Bond produces the vial in Venice and shows it to M after they'd burst in on Drax in gas masks, M says "So there was a laboratory" as if Bond had been lying to him about it! Why would he lie? Bond isn't a naughty schoolboy, he's his most trusted and deadly professional assassin!
According to the novelization, it was Holly who pointed out that Moonraker 5 was Drax's shuttle, and that it had a laser in it. I suppose that, as a CIA agent, she kept her eyes and ears open while she was a captive in the Amazon base, and gathered that piece of information which was later proven useful.
Yes within the series this is where they really made the Bond agent a celebrity of some renown. Which contradicts what the character is supposed to be about. Moore leaned into this and embraced the silliness of it all. I hadn't thought of the women and their longing looks up at the helicopter. LOL!
Is the novelization worth reading?
Depends. It, like James Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me does a good job of emulating Fleming and you feel like Wood knows what makes up the literary James Bond. However, while The Spy Who Loved Me goes as big (or maybe slightly bigger) as stories like Dr. No, Thunderball and OHMSS, Moonraker goes bigger and thus loses a lot of credibility in novel form as everything is taken seriously. So I suppose if you dislike Moonraker for it being a joke then the novelisation improves on that (no Dolly, no Jaws in PTS etc.) But at the same time it's quite serious so there's none of the Roger Moore feel that might make some love the film.
As a literary enjoyer it was something I had to tick off (especially from the library) but if it takes loads of effort than there's not much in it that expands on the film.
Well, if it works for birds I suppose it's worth a try. ;)
He does a breaststroke motion, doesn't actually flap like Jaws does. He also moves his arms like "airplane flaps" but I interpreted that as angling his arms downward like those wing flaps.
Either way, even if Jaws appeared and flapped like a bird, Christopher Wood would take it completely seriously and inject no humour in that scenario.
I figured the line "Well, my dear fellow, your reputation precedes you" meant that he had figured this was not a simple case of an apology or goodwill from the UK government, and so thought to get rid of him before he found anything incriminating. Afterall, we have 007 on site, not some Civil Servant lackey or politician. Best kill him now. Might even get a nice souvenir of a Super Duper Super Secret MI6 camera with 007's own branding on it :D
I suppose this can be bluffed in a very unsatisfactory way with "off screen Bond/Holly did this, found that" etc, but for me, Why did Drax's Moonraker have lasers on it is the more baffling question. The plan was to go up, kill everyone, come back down again. Why create a military Moonraker? If one has lasers, why not make all the Moonrakers armed except the ones built to go out on loan?
Why was Dolly allowed on board the space station?
Why was Jaws? He was only hired for the pre-Master Race time on earth and wouldn't be required after.
Why did Corinne Dufour stop, remove her shoes, then put on knee high socks and trainers once the dogs had been set on her?
Why did the Moonrakers that showed up on Bond/Goodheads radar suddenly just vanish when docked with the space station? If they had radar jamming of their own, why wasn't it always on?
The answer for me is, "well, its Moonraker". And for it's many, many, many, faults - I can forgive it a teensy bit with Q's 'attempting re-entry' line. The film as a whole will always be one of the weaker ones, but a good double entendre can still put a smile on my face.
Ah yes, you're quite right. I knew it was something rather ridiculous!
Well, I happen to love if not absolutely adore MR. I'm just worried that the novelization would be too different from the movie for my taste.
It's still worth reading in my opinion. Although it's been many years since I last read it in full it removes the most silly moments out of the film and there is some other stuff on the space station that's not in the film version. The TSWLM novelisation is considered the better of the two and there is again stuff on there that's not in the film version.
Sounds to me like Wood was trying to "fix" parts of his own scripts. :-)
But thanks for the recommendations, chaps. I'll try and secure a used copy online.
Yes, that's exactly what he was doing to be honest. He even admitted in his memoir, James Bond, The Spy I Loved (2006), that he had to convert a late 1970s Bond film (with all that meant) to a novel form that was consistent with the Bond Fleming created. So, no easy task, but he pulled it off.
Now I'm even more intrigued to be honest.
Yes, the Christopher Wood novelisations are impressive. There's some nice background to characters like Stromberg and Jaws which isn't referred to in the film. I've seen a good few people here say that he's the closest to Fleming in writing style of any of the Bond continuation authors and I think there's something in that. I'd add Kingsley Amis and Colonel Sun to that as well.