Moonraker

Moonraker was the title of the third novel in the James Bond series by Ian Fleming.  Although Ian provided the title, the eleventh James Bond film of 1979 was not like the 1955 book of the same title.  At the time, the mid 1970’s was a period in the middle of a science fiction craze promoted by the huge success of Star Wars.   In addition, NASA was also getting ready to launch the first space shuttle.  Both the producer Albert R. Broccoli and United Artists wanted to cash in on the science fiction trend by taking James Bond into space with science facts mixed with science fiction fantasy.

This film was planned from the start as an extravagant film with many expensive scenes and ideas.  The total cost of the film was twice as much as any other Bond film but the profits of the previous Bond film allowed filming to proceed.  The opening sequence of the film showed a spectacular scene to captivate the audience where Bond was pushed from a plane without a parachute.   Cinematic technology was designed using experimental cameras and lenses and the scene was filmed completely with live action.  Now nearly three decades later, that mobile film equipment such as the Go Pro cameras are still available at a reasonable cost to get the same shot.  Many other real scenes were filmed around the globe in an endurance test to pack as much action as possible into the film.  Broccoli had to film most of the live action studio scenes in Paris using every available studio to allow the film to proceed with parallel production of movie sets required for this complex film.  The French film industry actually stopped to allow the film production of a British based Bond film to proceed. 

Science fiction resulted in the need for special effects and a huge amount of work making realistic miniatures at Pinewood Studios.  Derik Meddings who was very skilled at miniature work brought his complete team to work on this film.  There were dozens of models created from space shuttles to the space station and even customized space debris made for individual film shots made up of many exposures.  Basically the effects were being made in the camera and not in the edit studio to create the realistic feeling of the film being made in space.  The technology in computer processing power used many decades latter to create similar effects was not available at the time.  To make the effects of items disintegrating in space very realistic, Derik obtained permission to have a closed set at Pinewood so he could blow up the miniatures with real shotguns explosions while filming.  There was no room for error as there was only one chance to get the image when the miniature set was being destroyed as it was being filmed.  There was one take and one change with high risk.  The resulting effects in the film worked so well that Derik earned an Oscar nomination for his work. 

With all the technical achievements and use of extreme live action, this film proved to be popular to audiences worldwide.  Numerous box office records were achieved by this Bond film during the summer of 1979.  Roger More took James Bond to new heights both literally in the film and in popularity.  Even so this film depended once again on John Barry to score the supporting film music to match the technology of the film.  Barry created a masterpiece during the Venice boat chase sequence using the original Bond theme for one last time during a major film sequence.  Due to the huge cost and work of special effects, this was also the last Bond film to extensively use science fiction fantasy.    Many technical ideas did not make it into the final cut of the film but many of the ideas were saved and reworked to show up in subsequent Bond films shot throughout the 1980s.