Moonraker is the Star Trek V of the Bond series. It's by no means a good film but it's fun and more enjoyable than some films considered "better."
I'll watch Moonraker all day. The World Is Not Enough is objectively a smarter and better film but I rarely have the desire to go back and rewatch it.
Actually…it’s the “Planet of the Titans” of Star Trek because Ken Adam’s Enterprise interiors were to use tubes like what we saw on that station…though it is more my idea of what the office complex/Regula station should have been
And Moonraker was a runaway hit and adjusted for inflation the most successful Bond film since Thunderball, remaining so until GoldenEye. TFF was a box office fizzle and wasn't in cinemas very long.
Moonraker was The Spy Who Loved Me... INNNNNNN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!!! Instead of a megalomaniac tycoon who wants to nuke the world and start again in a giant SeaLab complex, we have a megalomaniac tycoon who wants to kill all human life with poison gas and repopulate the planet with a new "master race" that he starts in orbit. At least with Drax we actually see that he's got the people lined up to try and do this with. And 40+ years later, Drax still has some of the best lines for a Bond villain. Not to knock Jean Tournier, he had a long career as a cinematographer, but he was no Claude Renoir. The step backwards from TSWLM to Moonraker is definitely noticeable.
"Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him." Arguably the best villain line in the whole franchise not spoken by Auric Goldfinger.
"Mr. Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you." "James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season." "Allow me to introduce you to the airlock chamber. Observe, Mr Bond, your route from this world to the next. And you, Dr Goodhead, your desire to become America's first woman in space will shortly be fulfilled." "Frederick Gray! What a surprise. And in distinguished company, all wearing gas masks. You must excuse me, gentlemen; not being English, I sometimes find your sense of humor rather difficult to follow!" "You have arrived at a propitious moment, coincident with your country's one indisputable contribution to western civilization: afternoon tea. May I press you to a cucumber sandwich?"
And his speech to his followers before beginning their mission aboard the space station: downright chilling.
I'll currently take it over GOLDEN GUN, LICENCE TO KILL, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, OCTOPUSSY, QUANTUM, NEVER SAY NEVER or even DR. NO, which (like SHAFT) is chintzily climaxed in comparison to its sequels. I'm in the minority which loves THUNDERBALL the most of all the Bonds, so it still delights me that I was once in matching tune with the general public. And yet, like Stromberg, matching been-there, done-that personalities. I love SPY and like MOONRAKER. MOONRAKER is a sharkless JAWS 2 in the end, which is not to disparage either movie.
Moonraker was the very first James Bond movie I ever saw. I saw it in the theater with a buddy of mine. I went in to this film cold. I was something like 10 years old. And I loved it. To this day I enjoy this movie. This one and For Your Eyes Only are my favorite Roger Moore 007 films.
I'll never forgive Moonraker for allowing Bond and Goodhead to escape out from under a shuttle launch through the ventilation ducts. They should have been really most sincerely dead.
In a way, both Stromberg and Drax are reheated leftover Blofeld, which especially makes sense when you look at how the main plot of both movies is just You Only Live Twice writ on successively larger canvases. I'm not even going to bother spending time trying to parse what the heck that statement means.
It's the first Bond movie I remember seeing. I don't know if I saw others before Moonraker but it's definitely my first 007 cinematic memory and it was on network television.
Moonraker was the first Bond film I saw in the theater, and that was first run. The first Bond film I remember seeing was The Man with the Golden Gun on television. Wiki says that would have been in 1977 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_films_on_television#Basic_overview].
I can't remember which was my first Bond movie, but it was probably during one of those "## Days of 007" marathons they'd run on TBS back in the '90s. So it could have been any of the EON films from Dr. No to Licence to Kill.
Dr. No and Moonraker could hardly be further apart in tone and execution yet both are high on my list of Bond rewatches.