Moonraker is a 1979 spy-fi film, the eleventh in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Cléry and Richard Kiel. In the film, Bond investigates the vanishing of a Space Shuttle orbiter, leading him to Hugo Drax, the owner of the shuttle's manufacturing firm. Along with astronaut Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond follows the mystery from California to Venice, Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon rainforest, and finally into outer space to prevent a plot to wipe out the world population and repopulate humanity with a master race.
The story was intended by author Ian Fleming to become a film even before he completed the novel in 1954; he based it on a screenplay manuscript he had devised earlier. The producers had originally intended to make For Your Eyes Only, but chose Moonraker as a result of the resurgence of the science fiction genre, following the success of Star Wars, and NASA's concurrent test flights of the Space Shuttle. Due to budget problems, it was shot primarily in France; other locations included Italy, Brazil, Guatemala and the United States. The soundstages of Pinewood Studios in England, traditionally used for the series, were only used by the special effects team.
Moonraker had a high production cost of $34 million, more than twice as much as The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and it received mixed reviews. However, the film's visuals were praised, with Derek Meddings being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and it eventually became the highest-grossing film of the series at the time with $210.3 million worldwide, a record that stood until 1995's GoldenEye.
The next film in the series, For Your Eyes Only, was released in 1981.
Plot A Drax Industries Moonraker Space Shuttle orbiter on loan to the United Kingdom is hijacked in midair while aboard a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The carrier is destroyed, but no wreckage of the shuttle is found. M, head of MI6, assigns James Bond, Agent 007, to investigate. En route to England, Bond is attacked and thrown from a plane by assassin Jaws. He survives by stealing the pilot's parachute, while Jaws lands on a trapeze net inside a circus tent. At the Drax Industries spaceplane-manufacturing complex in California, Bond meets company owner Hugo Drax and his henchman Chang. He also meets Dr Holly Goodhead, an astronaut, and survives an assassination attempt inside a centrifuge chamber. Drax's personal pilot, Corinne Dufour, helps Bond find blueprints for a glass vial made in Venice. After discovering her betrayal, Drax has Corinne pursued and killed by his Beauceron hounds.
In Venice, Bond encounters Goodhead and sees her sneaking around a door near the glass factory. Drax's henchmen pursue him through the canals, but he later returns to the factory and discovers a secret biological laboratory. He learns that the glass vials are designed to contain a nerve gas deadly to humans but harmless to plants and animals. Chang attacks Bond, who throws him through the stained glass clockface of the Saint Mark's clocktower, killing him. During the fight, Bond finds evidence that Drax is moving his operation to Rio de Janeiro. He rejoins Goodhead and sleeps with her after revealing that he has deduced she is a CIA agent spying on Drax. Bond has preserved one of the vials as evidence after the laboratory disappears; he gives it to M for analysis, and M permits him to travel to Rio de Janeiro under the pretence of being on leave.
Bond survives attacks by Jaws, now serving as Chang's replacement, during Rio Carnival and on the Sugarloaf Cable Car at Sugarloaf Mountain. After the cable car crashes, Jaws is rescued from the wreckage by Dolly, a young woman, and they fall in love. Drax's forces capture Goodhead, but Bond escapes and learns that the toxin is derived from a rare orchid native to the Amazon jungle. Travelling along the Amazon River, Bond comes under attack from Drax's forces before locating his base. Captured by Jaws, Bond is taken to Drax, where he witnesses four Moonraker shuttles launch. Drax explains that he stole the loaned shuttle because another in his fleet had developed a fault during assembly. Bond and Goodhead are imprisoned beneath the launch platform and narrowly escape being incinerated by the exhaust of Moonraker 5, which carries Drax. They then pose as the pilots of Moonraker 6. The shuttles dock with Drax's space station, which is hidden from radar by a cloaking device.
Bond and Goodhead disable the radar jamming cloaking device, allowing the United States military to send a company of space marines aboard another shuttle to intercept the now-visible station. Jaws captures Bond and Goodhead, and Drax reveals his plan to destroy humanity by launching fifty globes that will disperse the nerve gas throughout Earth's atmosphere. He has transported several dozen genetically perfect young men and women of varying races to the station, where they will remain until Earth is safe for human life. Their descendants will then become a "new master race". Bond persuades Jaws to turn against Drax by getting Drax to admit that anyone failing to meet his physical standards, including Jaws and Dolly, will be exterminated. Jaws attacks Drax's guards, and a laser battle follows between Drax's forces and Bond, Jaws, and the Marines. Drax's forces are defeated and the station destroyed; Bond shoots and ejects Drax into space. Bond and Goodhead use the laser-equipped Moonraker 5 to destroy the three launched globes before returning to Earth. Jaws and Dolly, having ejected themselves in one of Drax's escape pods, are recovered by the Marines. Bond's superiors receive a video feed from Moonraker 5 and are shocked to see Bond and Goodhead having sex in zero gravity.
Cast
Roger Moore as Commander James Bond "007", an MI6 agent assigned to look into the theft of a shuttle from the "Moonraker" space programme. Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead, an astronaut scientist on loan from NASA working at Drax Industries. She is later revealed to be a CIA agent. Michael Lonsdale as Hugo Drax, an industrialist who plans to poison all humans on Earth, then repopulate the planet from his space station. Richard Kiel as Jaws, Drax's new henchman who replaces Chang at Drax Industries. He is known for his giant stature and possessing a set of strong steel teeth. Corinne Cléry as Corinne Dufour, Drax's personal pilot.
Emily Bolton as Manuela, 007's contact in Rio. Toshiro Suga as Chang, Drax's first henchman. Irka Bochenko as Blonde Beauty, Drax's lead henchwoman. Geoffrey Keen as Frederick Gray Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary. Bernard Lee as "M", the head of MI6. This was Lee's final appearance as M before his death in January 1981.
Desmond Llewelyn as "Q", MI6's quartermaster who supplies Bond with multipurpose vehicles and gadgets useful for the latter's mission. Anne Lonnberg as a museum guide, and Drax's henchwoman. Jean-Pierre Castaldi as the pilot of the private jet from the opening sequence. Blanche Ravalec as Dolly, Jaws' girlfriend; her name is not given in dialogue but she is named in the closing credits. Michael Marshall as Colonel Scott, an American Space Marines commander. Leila Shenna as the hostess of the private jet from the opening sequence.
Production The end credits for the previous Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, said, "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only". However, following an increase in the popularity of science fiction such as 1977 space opera film Star Wars, the producers chose the novel Moonraker as the basis for the next film. For Your Eyes Only was postponed and ended up following Moonraker in 1981. It was intended to be released alongside the test launches of the Space Shuttle.
Script Ian Fleming had originally intended the novel, published in 1955, to be made into a film even before he began writing it. A part of the novel was thus based on an original idea for a screenplay which had been on his mind for years. Fleming first pitched the novel to Hungarian-British film producer Alexander Korda, who had expressed interest in purchasing the rights to Live and Let Die. In 1954, Stanley Meyer attempted to purchase an option for both Live and Let Die and Moonraker, but withdrew his offer after Fleming asked for too much money. In 1955, American actor John Payne offered $1,000 for a nine-month option to Moonraker, plus $10,000 if production eventually took off. The negotiations broke up the following year because of disagreements regarding Payne's ownership of the other Bond novels caused when Fleming tried to manipulate Payne and the Rank Organisation into getting in a bidding war with each other. Fleming eventually settled with Rank Organisation, a British company who owned Pinewood Studios. Rank wound up not developing the film, even after Fleming contributed his own script trying to push production forward, and Fleming purchased the rights back in 1959.
However, as with several previous Bond films, the story from Fleming's novel is almost entirely dispensed with, and little more than the idea of Hugo Drax as an industrialist who makes rockets was used. Drax has a plan for a master race in the film, but in the novel actually had been a Nazi (unbeknownst to the British). The dramatic scene of Bond and his female companion being trapped in an exhaust duct under a rocket where they are nearly burned to death also appears. Otherwise the film is more in keeping with contemporary trends in science fiction. The 2002 Bond film Die Another Day makes further use of some ideas and character names from the novel. Tom Mankiewicz wrote a short outline for Moonraker that was mostly discarded. According to Mankiewicz, footage shot at Drax's lairs was considerably more detailed than the edited result in the final version. Some scenes from Mankiewicz's script were used in subsequent films, including the Acrostar Jet sequence, used in the pre-credit sequence for Octopussy, and the Eiffel Tower scene in A View to a Kill.
In 1978 Steven Spielberg offered to direct after the release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but Albert R. Broccoli turned him down. In March 2004 rumours surfaced about a lost 1956 version of Moonraker by Orson Welles, and a James Bond web site repeated it on April Fool's Day in 2004 as a hoax. Supposedly, this recently discovered lost film consisted of 40 minutes of raw footage with Dirk Bogarde as Bond, Welles as Drax, and Peter Lorre as Drax's henchman.
Novelisation
The screenplay of Moonraker differed so much from Ian Fleming's novel that Eon Productions authorised the screenwriter Christopher Wood to write a novelisation, his second (after James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Me). It was named James Bond and Moonraker to avoid confusion with Fleming's original novel Moonraker. It was published in 1979, with the film's release.
Casting Roger Moore had originally signed a three-film contract with Eon Productions, which covered his first three appearances: Live and Let Die in 1973, The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974 and The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977. From Moonraker onwards, Moore was contracted on a film-by-film basis.
Initially, the chief villain, Hugo Drax, was to be played by British actor James Mason, but once the decision was made that the film would be an Anglo-French co-production under the 1965–1979 film treaty, French actor Michael Lonsdale was cast as Drax and Corinne Cléry was chosen for the part of Corinne Dufour, to comply with qualifying criteria of the agreement. Stewart Granger and Louis Jourdan were considered also for the role of Drax. Jourdan later portrayed prince Kamal Khan, chief villain of Octopussy.