If you’re like me, you were introduced to 007 with The ABC Sunday Night Movie, while your dad reclined in a La-Z-Boy® and your older brother sat next to you on the couch, smearing Elmer’s® glue all over his hands, waiting for it to dry, and then peeling it off and rolling it into a little ball.
 |
| A scene not nearly as dumb as it looks here. |
Before big budget action and special effects-laden movies became so commonplace, 007 was no longer unique?
Then came Casino Royale (2006)—a reboot so worthy, it makes watching any prior James Bond movie nearly intolerable.
So, I know. Let's watch Moonraker!
Yes, the Bond film largely regarded as the goofiest entry in the whole franchise. I pick this one, because it happens to be the first 007 movie I actually saw in a theater, as part of a double feature with For Your Eyes Only (1981).
If you never saw it, your life probably progressed in a different direction than mine. One where you never walked up to a cash register at a Ben Franklin store and said, "Please take my lawn mowing money in exchange for these Moonraker trading cards."
Basically, in this movie, James Bond must stop a guy who looks like the children's book author in Elf (2003) from wiping out the planet with a deadly gas, and then re-populating it with a master race he plans to create on a space station.
 |
| Miles Finch, clutch children's book author |
=
 |
| Hugo Drax, would-be world conqueror |
Put another way, the James Bond producers wanted to cash-in on Star Wars mania.
There is a space battle with lasers.
But before that, Bond is nearly spinned to death in a giant centrifuge chamber, shot at repeatedly, attacked in the air and on a cable car by a metallic-toothed giant, almost driven over a waterfall, and nearly had the life squeezed out of him by an anaconda.
 |
| Disappointed henchman. |
And this was the highest-grossing Bond movie to date(!) until GoldenEye in 1995.
 |
| "To those crazy American movie-goers!" |
We're suckers.
