Re: Universal Exports - The James Bond Thread

[Zoltar]

How about James Bond and the Alpine Lair of Death.

Spot on, plenty of opportunity for ski stunts.

[Patrick]

Or since the C=O seems to be such a fan of Moonraker, here's an alternate title:

James Bond and the Space Station of Fatal Comedy Fear

[Rich Flair]

How about Jaws in Love?

[Johnstone McGuckian]

The next film needs to be called The Empire Strikes Back! Either that or Quantum of Solace With a Vengeance.

[Patrick]

How about Jaws in Love?

The next film needs to be called The Empire Strikes Back! Either that or Quantum of Solace With a Vengeance.

Nah, we need the Bond movies to have titles that sound like something from a classic Doctor Who novelisation:

James Bond and The Impossible Wheel In Space (alternate title for Moonraker)
James Bond and The Seven Keys To SPECTRE (alternate title for Thunderball)
James Bond and The Day Of The Blofelds (alternate title for Diamonds Are Forever)
James Bond and The Almost Inferno (alternate title for You Only Live Twice)
James Bond and The Petulance From The Deep (alternate title for The Spy Who Loved Me)
James Bond and The German Invasion (alternate title for Goldfinger)

[Zoltar]

How about Jaws in Love?

Or new series style: Love & Henchmen.

[Nick Barlow]

And the famous The Wedding Of Tracy Draco, of course.

[Johnstone McGuckian]

From Prussia With Love?

[The Co=Ordinator]

Nah.

[Patrick]

I am pleased to report that the worst of it is over. I have watched Moonraker, for the first time in more than a decade. It was on Saturday, and we got alternating snow and rain for most of the day, so the weather correlated nicely with my mood.

It's as bad as I remember it. Now I have write about it.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Javier Bardem to play villain in Bond 23.

[Patrick]

Javier Bardem to play villain in Bond 23.

Mr Bardem was among those rumored to be in the film in a story I posted here back in May, so confirmation that he's playing the villain is good news. I think he played a pretty formidable character in "No Country For Old Men."

[Patrick]

Brace yourselves, my review of Moonraker follows. I'm actually quite proud of myself for finishing this one, because it took all my concentration, all my wit, and all my patience to avoid rolling my eyes at the screen as I watched.

My abiding hope is that, now I posted this review, I will never again be forced to watch this movie for the rest of my life.

And now I'm going to put on my flame suit, as I think a certain Cyber Admin will likely have a thing or two to say in rebuttal, once he reads this...

[Patrick]

Roughly two months before The Spy Who Love Me premiered in the summer of 1977, a rather modest budget science fiction film featuring a farm boy, a princess in distress, a pirate, a wise old man, a tyrant dressed entirely in black, a walking carpet, and something called “the force” made its theatrical debut. It went on to do massive box office throughout that summer, but this was seen as something of a fluke: sci-fi as a genre had never proven commercially successful. Sure, they had legions of hard core fans, but even 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t a box office winner on that scale when it came out. The success of Star Wars, it was felt at the time, was a onetime event.

The following summer, a movie about aliens contacting humans and directing them subconsciously to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming premiered in theaters. Like Star Wars, it greedily inhaled money at box offices all over the world, and with the success of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, the doubters were silenced. Sci-fi had become a trendy and chic money-maker. By the end of 1978, it was announced that the original cast of the television series Star Trek were to be reunited on the big screen, that a sequel to Star Wars was already in pre-production, and that television shows like Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rodgers In The 25th Century would feature as mainstays for weekly prime time viewing.

With this bit of information as a backdrop, the original plans for the eleventh Bond film, to have been called “For Your Eyes Only,” were scrapped. Cubby Broccoli wanted in on this wave of sci-fi chic, and in retrospect, it was a pretty cynical thing to do.

Moonraker
UK Release: June 26, 1979
US Release: June 29, 1979



“James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.”
In reviewing The Spy Who Loved Me, I noted that Roger Moore’s performance as Bond had reached an attenuation that succeeded mainly because it eschewed the playboy twit in favor of the British sophisticate, and that it would remain consistent in his future performances throughout his remaining four Bond films. I can’t add much more to that, because we have essentially the same Bond we had in TSWLM.



And yet that counts for a lot here. Mr. Moore truly is this film’s only saving grace. His wit, his charm and his sophistication serve to ground what is, ultimately, an absurd film, and Mr. Moore deserves full marks for accomplishing that. Early in the film, after bedding Drax’s helicopter pilot Corinne Dufour, and then engaging in some espionage, Ms. Dufour catches up with him in Drax’s office. He delivers a completely throw-away bit of dialogue: “Take care of yourself,” he tells Ms. Dufour. It’s a rather insipid line played entirely on her, and yet he delivers it with a sincerity that makes you believe he actually cares for her.



As they were in TSWLM, Bond’s military background and leadership skills are also on display, as he organizes the assault on Drax’s space station. And his seductive powers are put to full use, as he has to warm up a frosty Dr. Holly Goodhead.

One has to wonder if Mr. Moore found this a frustrating movie to make. He was essentially tasked with carrying the water for a story that was shamelessly attempting to make the Bond franchise into something it wasn’t: a science fiction genre entry.


“Frederick Gray! What a surprise. And in distinguished company, all wearing gas masks. You must excuse me, gentlemen, not being English, I sometimes find your sense of humor rather difficult to follow.”
There is no kind way to say this, so I’ll simply say it without any sugar coating: the plot of Moonraker amounts to nothing more than series of bizarre plot holes strung together by dialogue and stunts. It isn’t that it’s simply a bad movie. You Only Live Twice was a bad movie that could at least give you a feeling you were watching a spy flick. Moonraker failed as a movie because at its core, the whole reason it was made stemmed from the unexpected commercial success of two science fiction films. Bond is not science fiction, and the two genres need a lot more gene splicing before you can get a credible hybrid.



What this comes down to, then, is the fact that the first place this film was let down was with the script. I have a theory for why this is the case: you’ll recall that at the tail end of the credits for TSWLM, it said “James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only.” I believe a certain level of work had gone into developing a story treatment for the planned eleventh Bond film going well into 1978. Then the decision was made that FYEO was not going to be the next Bond film, thus necessitating a new script with not much time to develop it. Now, after plumbing the DVD extras and the audio commentary, I found no one actually admitting that, so my theory remains unproven. But it’s a reasonable bit of guesswork when one considers the evidence from the film itself.



Let’s start with those plot holes, and for those, we need look no further than the pre-credit sequence that’s supposed to set up the whole mystery. A space shuttle, being flown to England on the back of a Boeing 747, is stolen mid-flight, destroying the jet in mid-air. Even science fiction has to be grounded in some reality, and in this case, it isn’t. Space shuttles, when they are carried piggy-back on a jumbo jet, are left un-fueled for weight saving reasons, and even in 1979, a full year before the first shuttle mission occurred, this science fact was well known.



Bond is given a dart gun that gets strapped to his wrist, yet fails to use it when he’s attempting to evade Chang in the Venetian clock tower, or when he’s having a fight with Jaws on the roof of the cable car. And bear in mind, when he’s fighting Chang, concealed in his shirt pocket is a vial of deadly poison that Bond has already seen resulted in the death of two scientists and the quarantine of their lab when it broke open.



Consistently, the missed opportunities to kill Bond stack up in this movie, and with each obvious blown chance, you start to feel like you’re having your intelligence insulted. Why, for example, even stage a fight on a cable car? You know at some point Bond is going to want to come down from the top of the mountain, why not simply wait until his car has arrived at the lower terminal and blow him away when he gets out? You have an assassin hiding in funeral dirge on a canal in Venice, and his weapon is a knife, rather than a gun? And then there’s the end of that boat chase sequence, as Bond’s gondola inflates to become a hovercraft, and goes motoring though Piazza San Marco, for what? The comedic value of the crowd reaction shots?



All of this, of course, is before we get to the big action set piece, aboard Drax’s space station. That anyone could find the notion that a fully functional space station could have been launched from Earth with no one noticing beggars belief. The launch of Drax’s six shuttles, carrying his master race cargo, certainly got noticed by NORAD and the Soviets- General Gogul’s only appearance in this film is to confer with NORAD on who launched them. So how did that space station get up into orbit? And how was it assembled? Clearly, something as big as that station appeared to be can’t be launched as a finish-assembled piece. The only realistic way to do it would be to send it up in sections. So, assuming you’ve solved the problem of launching multiple payloads, each containing sections of the station, into space without anyone on Earth paying the slightest attention, how, then, do you assemble them if there’s no one up there to do that work?



Ah, but the ridiculousness of “Bond does it in space” doesn’t stop there. We have the US Space Marines, armed with their own laser rifles, ready to go once more into the breach with some of Drax’s henchmen in a zero gravity battle in near-Earth orbit. Space Marines? Really? I must have missed the recruitment posters for that branch of the military. Just where do they conduct their training, anyway?



“They’ll be alright,” Bond tells Dr. Goodhead, speaking of Jaws and Dolly trapped in one of the docking ports of the space station as it breaks off and starts hurtling for planet fall, “it’s only a hundred miles to Earth.” Yes, but that last ten or so will be a big problem, as their little docking port shelter is going to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere long before they reach terra firma.

The very illogic of this plot makes it clear that no one either had the interest or the time to fact check some of these points, and fix them in the script before principal photography commenced, and by that time, it was way too late. Hence, my theory of it being a rushed, last minute script.


“Come on, Mr. Bond. A 70-year old can take three g’s.”
Lois Chiles, as Dr. Holly Goodhead, had every chance to be the next Honor Blackman, given her character’s chilly regard of Bond, and the fact that she was a qualified shuttle pilot. But she missed the mark by a standard astronomical unit. For starters, I don’t rate her as the most attractive woman Bond has ever teamed up with (I don’t think Dr. Goodhead can hold a candle to Pussy Galore in the aesthetics department). Worse, Lois Chiles isn’t a particularly strong actress.

I get that the whole cat and mouse interplay between her and Bond in Venice was supposed to recollect the tensions between Bond and Amasova in TSWLM, but it failed. We learned very early on that Amasova was a Russian agent, and the Soviets were the enemy at the time. The fact that Dr. Goodhead worked for the CIA was concealed until very late in the game, and once it was revealed, the competition between her and Bond made no sense. Couple that with Ms. Chiles lack of enthusiasm for the character and her somewhat clumsy movements make her another disappointing note in this film.


“Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him.”
Originally, the part of Hugo Drax was offered to James Mason, who turned it down. That might have been a very interesting performance to see, but I suspect the late, great Mr. Mason knew a stinker of a script when he saw one.

Which leaves us with Michael Lonsdale as our principal villain. The character traits he displayed, the refinement, his grasp of science and his level of sophistication, could have made him a character more interesting that Bond to watch in this film. Sadly, that treatment is all the character got. Dressed up around this, we get another asexual megalomaniac wearing a Nehru jacket, and wanting to plot the demise of planet Earth so his master race could reclaim it. We’ve had this type of villain before (Dr. No, Blofeld), and here, it’s simply reduced to cliché status in order to give Bond a target in the middle of this science fiction mish-mash. What a shame.


“Not socially. His name’s Jaws. He kills people.”
The popularity of Jaws in TSWLM is the principal reason the character was shoved into the plot of this movie. Unfortunately, gone was the menace and the unstoppable force of nature we got in the last film. Here, he is regrettably used as comic relief, something they were careful to avoid in the previous film. And with that change, his character became another disappointing note for a story littered with them.

The whole “insta-romance” between Jaws and Dolly was silly, not credible and frankly, annoying with the over the top love theme played on it. All of this is a waste of a great opportunity. The conversion of Jaws to good guy status could have been handled in a much better way that gave us a real character moment.


“Allow me to introduce you to the airlock chamber. Observe, Mr. Bond, your route from this world to the next.”
I feel I must find something about this film to praise, because, for however dire it is, it still an entry in the James Bond franchise. And that something is the design work of Sir Ken Adams. From Hugo Drax’s estate, to the offices where the shuttle is being designed, to his own personal homage to You Only Live Twice with the jungle temples serving as launch platforms for the shuttles, to his own masterpiece: the design of the space station set itself. Once again, the use of circles and curves are everywhere to symbolize the villains lair, and they truly wonderful to look at.

Moonraker also continued the trend of moving the film around the world to all kinds of excellent locales. From the French country side, which doubled for Southern California (as if), to the streets and canals of Venice, to a great big carnival in Rio De Janiero and the jungles of the Amazon river, and ultimately to space itself. The location shooting is first class.


“What’s Bond up to?”
“I think he’s attempting re-entry, sir.”
The bottom line is that this movie is a misfire from almost every critical standpoint. It’s regrettable that it got made at all, particularly when we know that the reason it got made was to cynically cash in on a genre that woke up to popularity two years previously. Weak characters, a script strewn with plot holes and the watering down of a once great physical villain all conspire to make this easily the worst Bond film ever made. Moonraker gets one centrifuge out of a possible five, and that’s only because I can’t give it zero.

James Bond will return in “For Your Eyes Only.” (And this time, we really mean it.)

[barnaby morbius]

you didn't mention "he seems to be attempting re-entry"-surely the greatest line in film history...?

[Rich Flair]

you didn't mention "he seems to be attempting re-entry"-surely the greatest line in film history...?

I concur - the only reason to watch this film!

[Johnstone McGuckian]

you didn't mention "he seems to be attempting re-entry"-surely the greatest line in film history...?

I concur - the only reason to watch this film!

I prefer "Keeping the British end up" from TSWLM. Either that or the Christmas line from TWINE.

Please note that this is probably the only time I'll ever say something positive about TWINE.

[Patrick]

you didn't mention "he seems to be attempting re-entry"-surely the greatest line in film history...?

I concur - the only reason to watch this film!

I did mention it. Scroll back up, I used it as a quote from the movie just before the paragraph where I gave the rating.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Well as I said last week, bothe the critics and the public loved Moonraker - it was a huge success. So here are 45 reasons to love Moonraker, although there are actually lots more!

The opening scene with Shuttle laden 747 blowing up.
Amazing mid air struggle.
Dame Shirley.
Last chance to see the wonderful Bernard Lee as M.
The Drax residence – a French Chateau and grounds in California.
Reworking of the Oscar Wilde quote from The Importance of Being Ernest.
Doctor Goodhead. Bwahahahahaha.
“Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him”.
007 on the microfilm camera.
Bond shooting the hit man in the tree. “You missed Mr. Bond”. “Did I? As you said, such good sport”
The wonderfully filmed sequence where the Dobermans chase and, inevitably, get Corinne Dofour.
Venice & Murano Glass. We went there on our honeymoon.
The Bondala.
Alfie Bass cameo.
CE3K.
Nerve Gas/Biological Lab. Very Planet of the Daleks!
“I hope you know what you’re doing Bond. I’ve played bridge with this fellow Drax”.
Jaws going through the metal detector.
Bond being a cunning linguist.
Manuela’s surprise survival.
The cable cars.
The Magnificent Seven.
“Balls Q”.
Amazonian river chase and waterfalls. Superb cinematography.
Lots of lovely ladies.
It’s not the bridge, it’s the rock.
The Mara – well not really, it’s hundreds of times better!
The Moonraker dock set and lift offs.
More Planet of the Daleks, but with flames rather than icecano eruptions.
John Barry’s wonderful space flight music.
The Space Station reveal – I still remember my breath being taken away when first watching the movie at the cinema.
The Station interior a brilliant follow up to Stromberg’s ship.
Drax’s speech.
Gogol – dirty so and so!
“Allow me to introduce you to the airlock chamber”.
Jaws realisation of his fate.
Big shiny button!
The battle in space – awesome.
And then onboard the Space Station.
“At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery.”
“Take a giant step for mankind.”
True love – and Jaws speaks!
Big Bang.
“I think he’s attempting re-entry Sir”. BEST. LINE. EVAH.
Disco version end theme.

Moonraker is simply the finest James Bond film ever made, and I give it 6/5.

[Patrick]

Well as I said last week, bothe the critics and the public loved Moonraker - it was a huge success. So here are 45 reasons to love Moonraker, although there are actually lots more!

Right, time to disabuse you of a few of your delusions, Cyber One.

The opening scene with Shuttle laden 747 blowing up.

As I pointed out in my review, that was completely unrealistic. Shuttles being carried on the back of a 747 are left unfueled to save weight.

Amazing mid air struggle.

I've always thought the second unit work in Bond movies was first class, and I won't disagree here.

Dame Shirley.

Who's forced to sing a slow, lumbering lullabye of an opening theme song. The opening theme songs to Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever were significantly better.

Last chance to see the wonderful Bernard Lee as M.

Bernard Lee will indeed be missed. It's a real shame that passed away just as principal photography was beginning on FYEO, because it's a real shame his final appearance was in such a woefully dire movie.

The Drax residence – a French Chateau and grounds in California.

A quote from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me:
"Isn't it amazing that the roads in Britain look in no way like Southern California?"

Doctor Goodhead. Bwahahahahaha.

Honey Rider, Pussy Galore, Kissy Suzuki, Miss Mary Goodnight. Agent XXX, Octopussy, Jenny Flex, Bambi & Thumper, Xenia Onatop.
There've been loads of better names.

Reworking of the Oscar Wilde quote from The Importance of Being Ernest.
“Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him”.
Bond shooting the hit man in the tree. “You missed Mr. Bond”. “Did I? As you said, such good sport”
“I hope you know what you’re doing Bond. I’ve played bridge with this fellow Drax”.
“Balls Q”.
Drax’s speech.
“Allow me to introduce you to the airlock chamber”.
“At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery.”
“Take a giant step for mankind.”
Bond being a cunning linguist.
“I think he’s attempting re-entry Sir”. BEST. LINE. EVAH

Quote-worthy dialogue does not a good movie make.

007 on the microfilm camera.

Not even the best Q gadget in this film, let alone the BEST! Q GADGET! EVAH! I hate to break it to you, oh Cyber One, but microfilm cameras have been around since the 50s.

The wonderfully filmed sequence where the Dobermans chase and, inevitably, get Corinne Dofour.

She was a minor character who didn't make it out of the first act alive. I'll give her this, though: she was a better actress than Lois Chiles.

Venice & Murano Glass. We went there on our honeymoon.

You sound like you regret your honeymoon wasn't interrupted by a Samauri fight with Chang in the glass museum.

The Bondala.

Pandering to outright comedy. I mean, a blinking pidgeon doing a double take? Really? Even Live & Let Die avoided this.

Alfie Bass cameo.

Sadly, he was upstaged when Chang broke his piano.

CE3K.
Nerve Gas/Biological Lab. Very Planet of the Daleks!
The Moonraker dock set and lift offs.
More Planet of the Daleks, but with flames rather than icecano eruptions.

I quote myself: Bond is not science fiction, and the two genres need a lot more gene splicing before you get a credible hybrid.

Jaws going through the metal detector.

A foreshadowing of how low his character has sunk in this movie- he's used for a laugh.

Manuela’s surprise survival.

And what a surprise- Jaws gives in and starts dancing with the carnival goers, leaving Manuela to live another day.

The cable cars.

Another glaring plot hole. What was the point in fighting on the cable cars, anyway? Bond was always going to need to come down from the upper terminus at some point. And for that matter, why didn't Bond use his wrist dart gun surprise and blow Jaws away then and there?

The Magnificent Seven.

I seem to recall they were about six short when that musical cue occurred.

Amazonian river chase and waterfalls. Superb cinematography.

I've already conceeded that I've always been a fan of the second unit's work. Pity they don't get scriptwriting duties, too.

Lots of lovely ladies.

I don't remember any of them delivering much in the way of dialogue, though.

It’s not the bridge, it’s the rock.
The Mara – well not really, it’s hundreds of times better!

You, of all people? You HATE Kinda! This is a well established Wrinkly fact.

John Barry’s wonderful space flight music.

Slow, somnambulant strings and a pace that would put a caffeine addict to sleep.

The Space Station reveal – I still remember my breath being taken away when first watching the movie at the cinema.
The Station interior a brilliant follow up to Stromberg’s ship.
And then onboard the Space Station.

That was Ken Adam's work, and I'll never dis Mr. Adams.

Gogol – dirty so and so!

A more effective cameo than Alfie Bass'.

Jaws realisation of his fate.
True love – and Jaws speaks!

One of the worst elements of this movie. That was not "true love," it was an annoying, intelligence-insulting plot point contrived to give audiences a plausible explanation for Jaws' conversion to good-guy status. I wonder where the burned up remnants of their docking port shelter finally landed? Probably in the sea, somewhere on top of Stromberg's bombed out Atlantis.

Big shiny button!
The battle in space – awesome.
Big Bang.

Yes, finally the movie did end. Two hours of my life I'll never be able to get back.

Disco version end theme.

On top of everything else, you bring disco into this. Have you no shame?

I'm sorry, C=O, but the fact loads of crowds went to see the movie is more a testament to how the late 70s represented a high point in science fiction imagery as "flavor of the month," rather than a reflection of how good a movie it was. It has not held up well over time, and the fact that it got made at all is down to the cynical motives of Mr. Broccoli. Moonraker is a convoluted, illogical mess, and it represents the point where the Bond movies nearly jumped the shark, altogether.

[The Co=Ordinator]

I have no intention of sinking to your level Fast-Whinging one!

I decided sometime ago to accentuate the positives of this fantastic movie rather than spend my time picking your critique to pieces. Suffice to say Moonraker is as good as it ever got for Bond movies, and I still love every one of the 121 minutes (at 25 fps) that it lasts.

[Zoltar]

While I do not share the C=O's love for Moonraker, I would comment on these two points.

As I pointed out in my review, that was completely unrealistic. Shuttles being carried on the back of a 747 are left unfueled to save weight.

Quite a lot of Bond is unrealistic, that's nothing new really.

I quote myself: Bond is not science fiction, and the two genres need a lot more gene splicing before you get a credible hybrid.

Bond is often SF. The more advanced gadgets and volcano hideouts are not really espionage drama. That's Spy-Fi. If Moonraker did anything it was to go too far to the Sci-Fi side of the spectrum, but SF elements are not unheard of in Bond.

[Patrick]

While I do not share the C=O's love for Moonraker, I would comment on these two points.

As I pointed out in my review, that was completely unrealistic. Shuttles being carried on the back of a 747 are left unfueled to save weight.

Quite a lot of Bond is unrealistic, that's nothing new really.

I try to call the unrealistic moments when I see them. I also think there's a difference between "heighted reality" and unrealistic. Goldfinger represented heightened reality. The 360-degree car flip in TMWTGG was heightened reality. US Space Marines with laser rifles fighting supervillain henchmen outside a space station is unrealistic. There are no US Space Marines. There is no way you can get a space station into orbit with a launch of vehicle carrying it as payload, and there's no way such a launch would go undetected. And even if there was, once you get the parts of the space station up there, who's going to assemble it?

I quote myself: Bond is not science fiction, and the two genres need a lot more gene splicing before you get a credible hybrid.

Bond is often SF. The more advanced gadgets and volcano hideouts are not really espionage drama. That's Spy-Fi. If Moonraker did anything it was to go too far to the Sci-Fi side of the spectrum, but SF elements are not unheard of in Bond.

I draw this line of distinction: there is a difference between science fact, helped by heightened reality, and science fiction. Bond having a hand held x-ray machine to crack a safe is science fact, helped by heightened reality. Blofeld's volcano lair is simply domesticating an inactive volcano- Kissy Suzuki specifically states in YOLT that the volcano on her island has never been active, not in her lifetime. Yes, Bond has gadgets, and the villains have fantastic lairs. All formula, and yet not as far fetched as it may seem. Military and intelligence services worldwide are frequently the first beneficiaries of new tech.

The line gets crossed when, in 1979, a year before the first actual real-life shuttle mission happened, we have villain who has developed a fleet of them and has already built himself a space station on a vast scale. Remember Skylab? It was about half the size of your average school bus, and that was really pushing the limits of technical capabilities in the 70s.

[Zoltar]

I try to call the unrealistic moments when I see them. I also think there's a difference between "heighted reality" and unrealistic. Goldfinger represented heightened reality. The 360-degree car flip in TMWTGG was heightened reality. US Space Marines with laser rifles fighting supervillain henchmen outside a space station is unrealistic. There are no US Space Marines. There is no way you can get a space station into orbit with a launch of vehicle carrying it as payload, and there's no way such a launch would go undetected. And even if there was, once you get the parts of the space station up there, who's going to assemble it?

For me, Laser Space Marines is more of an issue than the stuff you might call "heightened reality". I didn't disagree with you there. Heightened reality, to me, is just another way of saying "we're not going to let adherence to realism stop us from telling a larger-than-life spy adventure". Whether a shuttle is fueled or not falls within that.

I draw this line of distinction: there is a difference between science fact, helped by heightened reality, and science fiction. Bond having a hand held x-ray machine to crack a safe is science fact, helped by heightened reality. Blofeld's volcano lair is simply domesticating an inactive volcano- Kissy Suzuki specifically states in YOLT that the volcano on her island has never been active, not in her lifetime. Yes, Bond has gadgets, and the villains have fantastic lairs. All formula, and yet not as far fetched as it may seem. Military and intelligence services worldwide are frequently the first beneficiaries of new tech.

The line gets crossed when, in 1979, a year before the first actual real-life shuttle mission happened, we have villain who has developed a fleet of them and has already built himself a space station on a vast scale. Remember Skylab? It was about half the size of your average school bus, and that was really pushing the limits of technical capabilities in the 70s.

My reaction here is the same, heightened reality = "this gadget would be cool here, even if it is SF for today's level of technology". As I said, I do think the film veered a bit too far into SF territory. But I don't think some SF is out of place in Bond. Sometimes Sci-Fi is possible, not far fetched. Doesn't make it any less SF if we couldn't realistically create those devices in the era that film is set.

[The Co=Ordinator]

There are no US Space Marines.

Another 6/5 movie.

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