Moonraker (film)



"James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season."

- Hugo Drax

The 11th James Bond film, starring Roger Moore. Bond is sent to investigate Drax industries after one of their shuttles is hijacked in mid-transit, which turns out to be part of an Evil Plan to exterminate the world population and replace it with "ideal" specimens.

The movie was blatantly made to cash in on the science fiction craze that Star Wars had started. Jaws returns as the only henchman to make a second appearance in the series, but his role was changed from "vicious killer" to "Wile E Coyote and The Road Runner".

Still, that laser and its Infinite Ammo can come in handy when you unlock it as a cheat in the N64 game GoldenEye.


 * Adaptation Expansion
 * Air Vent Passageway
 * The Amazon: Bond finds Drax's headquarters near the river Tapirapé, which has a waterfall.
 * Animal Assassin: Drax sets his dogs on Corinne after discovering that she's been helping Bond.
 * Animal Reaction Shot: A pigeon has a double take while Bond is driving his gondola on the street of Venice.
 * Apocalypse How: Class 3a (Engineered Human Extinction): lethal spores that will eliminate all human beings on Earth.
 * Artistic License Engineering: Drax's goons steal a Space Shuttle from its carrier aircraft by stowing away, turning on its engines mid-air, and flying it to his secret lair. One minor obstacle: the Shuttle's main engines have no onboard fuel supplies (that's what the orange External Tank is for), and even though the orbiter itself has some fuel storage for its maneuvering thrusters, it's not enough to fly transatlantic, and the Shuttle would never be flown with fuel on board for safety reasons.
 * Artistic Title: The title opens up with Shirley Bassey's "Moonraker" song, James Bond parachuting, a moonlit sky, fool moon, silhouettes, including flying silhouettes, and smoke.
 * Balls of Steel: James Bond knees Jaws in the groin while fighting him in the space station. There's a "clang" sound when Bond does so, indicating that Jaws has Balls of Steel, just like his teeth.
 * Beard of Evil: Hugo Drax.
 * The Beautiful Elite: Drax' whole plan is to destroy all human life on Earth so it can be repopulated it with only genetically perfect specimens that he selected.
 * But What About the Astronauts?: The whole point of Drax's plot.
 * Cable Car Action Sequence: A fight between Jaws and Bond happens aboard the gondola leading to Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro.
 * California Doubling: Weird inversion - Bond is flown to Drax's base in California (aerial plates shot in the US) and lands on a castle which "Drax ordered to be brought from France" (shot in an actual French castle, of course).
 * The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires: Just for starters, making the Amazon river end in a waterfall (not only it ends straight in the ocean, the location of said falls is really far).
 * Chekhov's Gunman: The people shown working out at Drax's estate at the beginning of the film are later revealed to be the same people intended by Drax to seed his "master race".
 * City of Canals: Venice.
 * Collapsing Lair: Drax's space station, due to battle damage.
 * Depopulation Bomb: The devices that will release the spores above.
 * Dirty Communists: General Gogol, though his conversation with an American General counterpart is actually fairly benign.
 * Disney Villain Death: Chang, by falling into and impaling a piano.
 * The Dragon: Chang, then Jaws.
 * Dressing as the Enemy: Bond and Dr. Goodhead in yellow jumpsuits.
 * Elaborate Underground Base: Drax's launch facility in the Amazon jungle.
 * Even Evil Has Loved Ones
 * Evilutionary Biologist: Hugo Drax, who altered spores that caused sterility to make them lethal.
 * Exactly What I Aimed At: Bond on the quail hunt.
 * Failsafe Failure: The "chicken switch" on the centrifuge.
 * Faux Action Girl: For a CIA agent with proper spy equipment, Dr. Goodhead sure doesn't get a lot of action (pun not quite intended) until the finale. Justified trope, as Lois Chiles was pregnant during shooting.
 * Frickin' Laser Beams
 * Gadget Watches: With explosives.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: "I think he's attempting re-entry, sir!"
 * As well as naming a character Holly Goodhead. Somewhere between Pussy Galore and Mary Goodnight in the perverted name category.
 * Giant Mook: Jaws.
 * Good Hair, Evil Hair: Hugo Drax's goatee.
 * Gory Discretion Shot: Corrine's death, in which the camera pulls away and pans upward to the sky as Drax's vicious dogs pounce on her.
 * Groin Attack: Bond does one to Jaws in the space station..
 * Or perhaps he anticipated that might happen...
 * Heel Face Turn: Jaws.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: Bond kills a knife-throwing assassin with one of his own knives.
 * Hot Scientist: Dr. Holly Goodhead, who gets bonus points for being close to Bond's age.
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Jaws and Dolly.
 * Improvised Zipline: Bond and Holly Goodhead use a chain to slide down a cable car cable.
 * Inevitable Waterfall
 * Irony: While Bond is driving a gondola in Venice, a hearse ship with a laid-out coffin floats by. Suddenly, an assassin rises from the coffin, and tries to hit Bond with a couple of throwing knifes. But Bond swiftly manages to kill the assassin on the spot, causing his body to sink back into his coffin. The only time a minor Bond-villain gets a real proper funeral.
 * I Shall Taunt You: Bond does this to Hugo Drax in the novel in a desperate attempt to make him leave behind a blowtorch (intended for torture) that can be used to burn through Bond's ropes. It works.
 * It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.
 * It's Raining Men: Bond, Jaws and a mook parachute from a plane and fight in mid-air.
 * It Was Here, I Swear: Hugo Drax's biowarfare lab.
 * Just Between You and Me: Hugo Drax lampshades this trope, and then says he's not going to follow it. But when Bond and the Bond Girl follow Drax up to his space station and see most of what's happening anyway, Drax helpfully provides the remaining details before ordering them Thrown Out the Airlock.
 * Just Hit Him: Jaws and Bond.
 * Just Plane Wrong: The entire sequence in which the Space Shuttle blasts off from the carrier aircraft; it's never carried with fuel or live batteries, and needs the external tank and SRBs to achieve orbit.
 * Kill Sat
 * Made of Iron: Jaws.
 * Mayincatec: Drax's base... in The Amazon, where said civilizations never stepped foot.
 * Meet the New Boss: Drax is very similar to Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me.
 * While true, there are a few differences, and he's arguably a lot more sinister and dangerous. Stromberg is more or less an Orcus on His Throne, mostly just sitting around Atlantis all day, pressing buttons when he wants something done (or someone killed), and leaving Bond's fate mostly up to his minions. Drax does a lot more globetrotting, comes up with amusing deaths for Bond and others who have displeased him. Plus his plan is more evil, since at least Stromberg didn't try and select which members of the human race he was going to spare. Drax is far more egomaniacal, ruthless and controlling, a much more evil bastard.
 * Meganekko: Dolly.
 * Milkman Conspiracy: Drax Industries' space shuttle program that wants to make humanity extinct and replaces them with a new race: Ubermensch astronauts.
 * Minion Shipping: Jaws and Dolly.
 * Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Disappearance of a space shuttle -> a plot to kill all humans on Earth.
 * Mook Face Turn: Jaws.
 * Mugged for Disguise: Bond and Dr. Goodhead knock out two of Drax's employees and put on their yellow jumpsuits.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Drax.
 * New Era Speech: Hugo Drax to his assembled minions on the space station.
 * No Gravity for You: How Bond and his allies escape the space station.
 * No More for Me: While Bond is driving his gondola on the street of Venice.
 * No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Before Drax is revealed as a villain, he invites Bond to tea.
 * Oh Crap: Bond's usual reaction upon seeing that Jaws is after him again.
 * Outcrawl the Fireball: Through an air vent.
 * Priceless Ming Vase: The glass art objects in the fight between Bond and Chang in the museum.
 * Product Placement: Yes, we all know that all James Bond movies have it, but this chase scene is a blatant example. (See it in the second half of the clip!)
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: One of the most criticized aspects of the movie was how easy it was for the United States to launch a space shuttle with only a few hours notice. Except that this was during the height of the space race, and NASA was expected to have at least one orbital space mission a month. Thus, depending on how close they were to the next launch, it's quite possible that a shuttle was indeed prepped enough to pull this off.
 * Recycled in Space: Literally. In the previous movie, James Bond works with a female foreign secret agent to stop a Corrupt Corporate Executive from destroying the world and creating a new empire in the ocean. In this movie, James Bond works with a female foreign secret agent to stop a Corrupt Corporate Executive from destroying the world and creating a new empire in space. Yes, Moonraker in plot is blatantly copied from The Spy Who Loved Me.
 * Yet the latter film is considered one of the best in the series and of the Moore era, while this one is mostly reviled.
 * And annoyingly enough, both steal from You Only Live Twice, where James Bond works with a female foreign secret agent (Japan, this time) to stop Ernst Stavro Blofeld from causing World War III (i.e. destroying the world) so that another global power can take over. All three plots involve stealing exotic government vehicles of some kind. All three were directed by the same dude, Lewis Gilbert . All three end with Bond and the girl being "interrupted" by their superiors as well.
 * Gilbert admits this in the "The Spy Who Loved Me" DVD "making of" featurette.
 * Safecracking: Bond opens the safe in Drax's headquarters with an X-ray device.
 * Scenery Porn: In addition to natural beauties/cities, there's the space station.
 * Sequel Escalation: How can you top a madman stealing SSBNs to start World War Three? A genocidal madman IN SPACE!
 * To date, the films never escalate to this scale again.
 * Sexy Stewardess
 * Shark Pool: Only this one contains a reticulated python.
 * Shout-Out: Opening an electronic lock creates musical tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
 * Also, Bond's gaucho ride is scored by The Magnificent Seven theme.
 * Sic Em: "Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him."
 * Not to mention poor Corrine...
 * Songs in the Key of Lock: The famous Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme, nevertheless.
 * Space Is Noisy
 * Space Marines: Apparently, NASA keeps a shuttle load of U.S. Marines on standby just in case.
 * Steel Ear Drums: Bond and Goodhead are completely unaffected by the sound of a space shuttle blasting off even though they're only inches away. Never mind being deafened by the noise, in Real Life they probably would have been killed.
 * Storming the Castle: U.S. Marine astronauts with lasers vs. Drax's space station.
 * Story-Boarding the Apocalypse: Provides the page quote. See also New Era Speech above.
 * Take the Wheel: Jaws and some mooks are chasing Bond in a speedboat when Jaws takes the wheel a little too literally.
 * Tap on the Head: Multiple examples.
 * Technology Marches On: Moonraker came out 2 years before the first Space Shuttle flight, so some particulars changed between the concept depicted in Moonraker and reality.
 * Drax's shuttles were depicted with external tanks painted white. The first two Shuttle flights did have white tanks (many rockets are painted white to help keep their cryogenic fuels cold), but afterward they were left unpainted to save weight, resulting in the iconic orange color (the natural color of the insulation).
 * The finale kicks off with six simultaneous Shuttle launches by Drax, and after Bond deactivates the station's cloaking device, NASA sends up a couple shuttles of Space Marines within minutes. In reality, each shuttle launch cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 million to $1.5 billion dollars (depending on how you count it) and required months of preparation time.  Theoretically, a Shuttle could be stacked up and held at T-9 minutes, but that would mean leaving a fully-fueled and fully-crewed Shuttle on the pad for an indefinite period of time, which would strain safety limits, not to mention the sanity of the crew (they board at T-3 hours, no bathroom breaks or snacks allowed).  NASA came up with a plan for "Launch On Need" rescue missions, but almost all of them revolved around sending the crew needing rescue to the ISS, where they would stay for 40 days while another Shuttle was prepared with extra seats to rescue them.  Even the comparatively urgent "STS-400" plan (prepared in case STS-134, the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, ran into trouble -- they would not be able to reach the ISS because of their orbit), with Endeavor standing by on the launchpad while Atlantis took off, could not have launched less than seven days after Atlantis.
 * Thrown Out the Airlock: Bond does this to.
 * Trapped in Containment: Happens to two of Drax's scientists.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means: Drax.
 * Variable Terminal Velocity
 * The Voiceless: Jaws...
 * We Need a Distraction: Dr. Goodhead pulls this on one of the henchmen in the ambulance.
 * Why Won't You Die?: "Mr. Bond, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you."
 * There's a very good chance that Bond himself is thinking this about Jaws, who seems unkillable.
 * You Have Failed Me...: Corrine is fed to Drax's dobermanns.
 * Zero-G Spot: Bond and Dr. Holly Goodhead after defeating Drax's plans.