Moonraker is awesome! Also man with the golden gun is one of my fav bonds. I've been slowly replacing my bond dvd collection with Blu-rays. Going favourite bond films, one at a time.
Good action, great production design, locations and special effects. It was the most expensive bond film for quite some time. They basically just went all out with it. Roger Moore had proven himself as bond so they had lots of money and they wanted bigger and better. Then after Star Wars everything was all, "space space space" and we got moonraker. It's more like a james bond spin of.
Part of the reason the effects still look quite good is they used an incredibly time consuming process. Instead of compositing with blue-screens like star wars which created matte lines and very often a loss in quality of each element.
The method they used was that they only exposed certain area's of the film to capture an element. They would then whined the film back, covered up what they filmed, then film a new element and so forth. It was done to an extent and difficulty that had never been done before at that time. Keeping track of everything with grid references ect, not knowing if it worked until it was all done.
So it let to superior image fidelity, but it was a bugger to do.
Things like the space station blowing up, they were actually shooting the model with a shot gun. I assume it was low power bird shot. The model as with most the models used were quite large. Which also helped for quality. The only reason they could get away with it was because it wasn't complex movements like x-wings and tie-fighters. You watch other sci-fi films from the period and while complexity of shots often may be more, very little to nothing matches a lot of the work for moonraker. Well the space stuff, there's plenty which isn't up to scratch and period appropriate.
The film off the cuff can easily be rubbished, however I am a big james bond fan and it's one of the most entertaining. It is what it is. A big over the top james bond film where everything is done to excess and I actually think it works surprisingly well as a good solid entertaining film.
People point to it as bond loosing the plot because of the idea that bond goes into space is pure science fiction. It is, but what's wrong with a sci-fi bond film? In You only Live Twice there's a hollowed out volcanoes that launches a rocket which captures US and soviet space capsules.
The problem with the James bond films loosing touch with reality is not in over the top stories like Moonraker, it was when they became gimmicky and the silly nature of a plot point or gadget is there to funny and a sort of wink. Moonraker may be over the top but it's consistent to the world in the film. It's not a film that momentarily goes silly.
I missed it the other night on tv, if it wasn't 10pm i would go chuck the blu-ray of it in.
