Episode 172 – Moonraker (1979)

A sinister-looking man who looks like Peter Dinklage's evil brother stands surrounded by minions in what looks like the latest in Gold Derelicte

James Bond goes up against Hugo Drax, a billionaire with a private space rocket company who’s secretly a eugenicist, plotting to kill everyone on earth and replace them with his idea of a master race who lives in space. I don’t know why this sounds so familiar. Also, Jaws the Henchman shows up and goes through so many near-deaths, you’d think he was fighting Bugs Bunny.

Starring Roger Moore, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel, Lois Chiles, and Corrine Clery. Written by Christopher Wood from Ian Fleming’s novel. Directed by Lewish Gilbert.

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This week: 1/30/2025

EPISODE 172 – MOONRAKER (1979)

Also, Jaws the Henchman shows up and goes through so many near-deaths, you’d think he was fighting Bugs Bunny.

I initially put this film on the list of potential episodes years ago, thinking that the James Bond franchise–something I didn’t grow up with–would be good to cover. We’ve previously watched Octopussy and Never Say Never Again for the show, neither of which are particularly good films, though I didn’t particularly mind their mindlessness. And so I selected Moonraker as a bit of fluff for us to watch, as times are, let’s be honest, pretty stressful, what with, oh, everything.

So naturally, the villain of the movie is Elon Musk.

Look, I don’t know how you spin Drax being a billionaire with a private space program who is secretly building a space station where he can hide out with his carefully-selected breeding specimens, but if you try and tell me this doesn’t remind you of the guy who has somehow become the de facto head of the U.S. government.

Anyway, the movie isn’t exactly good, but we had a good time watching it. It’s the usual James Bond globetrotting, bouncing from England to Venice to Brazil to Space (but not the moon–I was disappointed). There’s a boat-chase in the canals of Venice that absolutely inspired a similar scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, high-brutalist architecture in the villain’s lair, and some pretty decent zero-gravity scenes, all things considered.

Starring Roger Moore, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel, Lois Chiles, and Corrine Clery. Written by Christopher Wood from Ian Fleming’s novel. Directed by Lewis Gilbert.

HOLLYWOOD AVALON – THE ADVENTURES OF SIR LANCELOT (1956)

We took a look at a British tv series from the 1950s, dramatising the Arthurian story in a high-romance fashion. Believe it or not, it’s pretty good! Starring William Russell–who later played “Ian” on Doctor Who–it’s a fairly faithful rendering of the story, with Lancelot as an outsider who comes to Arthur’s court, Gawain as his rival, a belligerent Kay, and a Merlin who is part magician, part con-man. Lancelot isn’t just the best of knights here, he’s also a champion of underdogs, defying the more hierarchical standards of Camelot–it’s no surprise to find out that several of the writers for the show were Americans who were blacklisted during the Red Scare. Once again, the Arthurian world is used as a playground for utopian politics, not unlike Twain’s Connecticut Yankee and T.H. White’s Once and Future King.

Starring William Russell, Cyril Smith, Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Robert Scroggins, and Jane Hylton. With various writers and directors depending on the episode.

This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.

What else are we up to this week?

Mary: I finally got a new laptop, which means I can actually write again. (Oh no, now I have to write the newsletter again!) I know I haven’t put out a newsletter for a while, and honestly, as good as it was to watch The Boys From Brazil and Eraserhead, and even Moonraker, I am honestly burned out on thinking about Nazis and existential horror.

Having said that, I do want to say the death of David Lynch really is hard to get over. I wasn’t a completist, as I discuss in the Eraserhead episode (I don’t think I’m a completist about any filmmaker other than Wes Anderson)–but seeing Twin Peaks as a kid was a formative experience–who knew that television could be so strange? So arch, but scarring as well? And it was the same seeing Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive in college. We’ve covered several of his films for the show now–Dune, Wild at Heart, and now Eraserhead–and each time I’ve deepened my appreciation for him as a filmmaker. Films and tv were stranger and more wonderful because of his vision, and we’re poorer for his passing.

Other than that, since last I wrote, we’ve been to the movies to see A Complete Unknown, a movie I’m of two minds about. As I wrote over on Letterboxd:

Moreover, the film dances around the politics of the American folk scene—from opening with Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads, to first encountering famously-left-wing Pete Seeger fighting contempt charges during the Red Scare, to the presence of Dylan himself at the March on Washington—without really grappling with Dylan’s own dropping out of that world in favor of the less politically focused rock scene. While Dylan here is always shown as a rock fan, making his musical turn inevitable, there’s almost no true exploration of how or why or even if he was truly disillusioned with music as a political force in the wake of the various failures of the ‘60s movements, the assassinations, etc., or if that was always just another mask he wore and grew tired of. (That Dylan made his own autographical fable called Masked and Anonymous, well, you can speculate amongst yourselves.)

Having said all of this, as a film—a pretty standard biopic—it’s extremely well-made, and Chalomet really is uncanny in the role, even singing the tracks himself far better and closer to Dylan’s voice than Phoenix was as Johnny Cash. I don’t know if he replaces Cate Blanchette, but he’s certainly up there. All the complaints I have, maybe it’s nitpicking, maybe it is its own kind of shallow politics that Dylan ran away from, I don’t know. I enjoyed the movie despite all my problems with it.

Anyway, your mileage may vary.

Meanwhile, in the middle of the month, we went to Walt Disney World, and had a great time, even if the experience was somewhat surreal, coming a week before the inauguration. I wrote about it a bit over on Bluesky, but the gist was:

There’s something kind of sad about walking around in this Disney vision of the future—“It’s a Small World”, “The Carousel of Progress”, “ Spaceship Earth” and EPCOT—and feel just how out of touch it is with the reality of the 21st century. There’s a reason so much hasn’t been updated in over 20 yrs

The whole thread is here: https://bsky.app/profile/tlachtga.bsky.social/post/3lfohxaqw4c2u

Like our recent trip to Italy, I want to write about the whole experience later, and how both trips fell in the space between the election and inauguration. There’s something there that I need to dig at.

Dennis: