FAQ

She never wore braces.

The film depicts Drax's space station as being invisible to radar due to "some sort of jamming device." However, the writers make a serious blunder in this case, as radar jamming consists of issuing a powerful countersignal that can be traced, and doesn't merely make objects invisible. The writers also overlooked a major problem: there would be no point in jamming radar as a station that size would be visible to the naked eye from the earth's surface, and could have been easily tracked by astronomers. (Communications satellites are visible to the naked eye, as bright starlike objects.) This has caused some fans to state that the film's events should never have taken place at all; the world's governments should have spotted the station was being built in orbit and investigated at once, rather than waiting until after it was already built and Drax's plan in action.

When the space shuttle Moonraker is hijacked in midair while being transported to the United Kingdom, MI6 director M (Bernard Lee) assigns his best agent 007 James Bond (Roger Moore), to investigate, starting with the shuttle's creator Drax Industries, headed by billionaire Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale). Aided by NASA astronaut/scientist and CIA agent Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), they uncover a genocidal plot to destroy the Earth's population and repopulate it with selected couples currently being housed in an undetectable space-city hovering over the Earth.

All of the James Bond movies are based, in some part, upon novels by British author Ian Fleming (1908-1964). Moonraker is based on Fleming's 1955 novel of the same title. It was adapted for the screen by English screenwriter Christopher Wood. Wood, in turn, novelized the movie in James Bond and Moonraker, published the same year in which the movie was released (1979). Moonraker is the eleventh film in the EON Bond franchise and the fourth movie to feature Roger Moore as James Bond, 007.

Moonraker is sung by Welsh singer Shirley Bassey, who is the only performer to date that has done more than one Bond theme. She also did the themes for Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever. It was meant for Johhny Mathis, whose voice would have suited admirably, but he was not available at the last minute so Bassey took over. She did not sing it again live for many years regarding it as"his" song.

Bond starts out on an airplane returning to London from Africa, where he was just finishing the last leg of another mission. He is then sent to California in order to talk with Hugo Drax, the builder of the Moonraker that was hijacked in midair. There he meets Dr Holly Goodhead for the first ime. When Bond learns that some of the parts for Drax's Moonrakers are being made at the Venni Glassworks in Italy, he flies to Venice where he encounters Holly Goodhead again. Bond figures out that Holly is a CIA operative, and they decide to work together. They learn that Drax is moving his operation to Brazil, so they fly to Rio. After Bond discovers Drax's base in the Amazon jungle, he and Holly commandeer a Moonraker and end up in outer space.

Drax is playing Raindrop Prelude, opus 28, number 15 in D flat Major, composed by Frédéric Chopin.

In the DVD commentary, it says that the effect was created with high-pressure air jets through a thin nozzle on a tube held off camera by Roger Moore himself. Moore suffered bruising to his cheeks afterwards.

As he explains to Bond, one of the six Moonrakers that were needed for him to complete his mission developed a fault during its assembly. He needed to get back the one that was on the way to England because he was breaking down his operation on Earth and didn't have time to fix the ship that developed the fault or build another Moonraker.

It is a reticulated python, native to Asia and Indonesia.

It's the theme song from The Magnificent Seven (1960).

During his fight with Chang behind the glass-faced clock, Bond spots some large crates with the Drax Industries logo and Rio de Janeiro stenciled on them. One of the crates is partially broken open and Bond spots one of the globes he saw in the Venice laboratory inside it.

Bond and Holly knock out the pilots for the sixth Moonraker and take their place. Flying on a preset course, they eventually rendezvous with the other Moonrakers at a radar-cloaked space station where Drax has assembled numerous pairs of perfect people whom he intends to use to restart the human race. Bond and Holly disable the radar jammer in order to make the station visible from earth. The U.S. subsequently sends a military shuttle to investigate. Meanwhile, Drax has launched the first three of 50 globes carrying the deadly nerve toxin to earth in his attempt to wipe out the imperfect human race. A laser battle in space takes place when the military shuttle arrives, and Bond manages to eject Drax into space after shooting him with a cyanide-tipped dart. The space station begins to break up, so Bond and Holly attempt to get away in Drax's personal Moonraker, but they can't get the release work. Jaws (Richard Kiel), having been convinced to turn sides when Bond points out that Drax won't allow him and Dolly (Blanche Ravalec) to live in his perfect world, agrees to help and frees the Moonraker. As the space station begins to disintegrate around Jaws and Dolly, their module also detaches from the station; they go floating into space just before the space station explodes. Bond and Holly track down the three globes and destroy them. In the final scene, M has gotten visual contact with Bond's Moonraker. Bond and Holly are seen floating in space with only a sheet to cover their naked bodies. "I think he's attempting re-entry," says Q. Bond flicks off the camera, and Holly asks him to "take [her] around the world one more time."

After Bond destroys the last globe, a Houston controller states that the American shuttle rescued two survivors "a tall man and a short, blonde woman", indicating that Jaws and Dolly did indeed survive. Somehow the pod they were in that broke away from the crumbling space station landed safely on Earth.

Bond comes across Drax when M has Bond expose him as a card cheat. Drax has a red beard that covers scarring on his face. The Moonraker is a missile instead of a space shuttle. Jaws and Chang aren't in the book. Dr.Holly Goodhead is instead a Scotland Yard agent named Galatea "Gala" Brand. Drax turns out to be a Nazi named Graf Hugo von der Drache and the Moonraker is secretly aimed to hit London. Drache captures James and Gala and plans to cook them with the Moonraker's rockets. They escape and James changes the gyros then he and Gala hide in the shower turned on full blast. Drache escapes in a Russian submarine but a reprogrammed Moonraker blows him out of the water. Bond and Gala are exiled to France until the event blows over but Gala reveals to Bond that she's engaged to marry another man.

Including Moonraker, Moore made seven movies in which he played James Bond: Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985).