“A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a movie. That movie was called Star Wars. You may have heard of it. It became a bit of a scifi phenomenon. Space, the final frontier became the ultimate Hollywood playground. Or so thought some of the people behind our beloved 007 franchise. In their eyes, the only logical place to send Mr Bond James Bond was into orbit. And thus, we have Moonraker.
This movie is generally regarded as the worst in the franchise. For some reason though, I was kinda excited to watch this today, in a Rocky Horror/Plan 9 so-bad-its-good kinda way. But as it turns out, today is Monday. No matter how smooth the day may run, it still sucks. I still just wanna come home and stare at the wall. And you know what, this film does kinda live up to its reputation. But it’s not just the scifi aspect. Oh no. Bond doesn’t actually leave the atmosphere until the last quarter of the movie or so. It’s ridiculous beyond reason before then.
From the opening sequence we’re off to a bad start. There’s this whole skydiving thing and Jaws reappears. That’s all well and good, until Jaws’ parachute doesn’t go off, but he survives because he falls on a giant circus tent. 0_0 Yeah. A few scenes later, we’re in Venice and a boat chase on the canals takes a comedic turn when Bond’s boat suddenly has wheels and he’s cruising past the land population. There’s also some silly outfits not counting his spacegear. We can also add hang glider to the long list of getaway “”vehicles”” he’s apparently skilled in operating. Oh and for the previously mentioned Jaws, impossible not to laugh at pretty much everything he does.
They weren’t even trying to hide the fact that they’re ripping off Mr George Lucas. The artwork looks like the Death Star. There’s the robed dude shooting a blaster. Just to change it up slightly, we have the keycode that sounds like Close Encounters. Yeah so they may have been aiming for Star Wars, but someone should have informed them that the Star Wars Holiday Special was not the standard they should judge off of.
For someone who claims that the opening credits are their favorite part of these films, I sure do criticize them a lot huh? Well, I’m gonna continue that trend a while longer I suppose. First off, wonderful hearing Shirley Bassey again. She’s been gone a lil while. For the visuals, it kinda started going off in the same direction as Spy Who Loved Me, which should have been a good move. But I just found a lot of the placement to be really awkward. Still, much better than some of the early Connery credits.”