Moonraker

This marks the midpoint of this little project, so a brief status report: Um, it's going all right. The general level of quality is about what I expected. This right here is definitely one of the worst films of the lot, and a disappointing one for the longest tenured M to go out on. It starts out strongly enough as Bond goes to meet Drax, an insanely rich gentleman with his own space program, and there's some mild intrigue and subterfuge as he investigates the disappearance of one of his shuttles. His mission leads him to Venice, where he engages in a wacky chase involving a transforming gondola/hovercraft and a lot of reaction shots, and then to Rio de Janeiro, where one of the single worst sequences in the series occurs. There's a tension-free encounter on a cable car where the irritating Jaws returns to terrorize him in a dimwitted fashion as hilariously bad editing and fake stunt work prevent it from ever being exciting. After Bond escapes a petite but mysteriously strong woman helps Jaws escape from wreckage, and the two fall in love instantly while Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" plays in the background. It's hilarious to me when I read that filmmakers were skeptical such a romance would work with Jaws being so much taller, when the real reason it wouldn't is that she was pretty attractive while he was a hideous freak of nature.

The main thing you'll notice if you watch these movies in order is that this is basically the same damn movie as The Spy Who Loved Me. Bond parachutes in the opening scene, is pursued by Jaws, is chased while driving an amphibious vehicle, defeats the villain on their own turf, and is unintentionally seen by his superiors re-consummating his relationship with the main girl right before the credits. The antagonist her has the exact same scheme as the last one, to destroy civilization and then create his own, only this time using weaponized nerve gas from Brazilian flowers and a space station instead of nuclear missiles and an underwater vessel. Things get truly ridiculous once they reach the station, especially after the cavalry alive (alarmingly quickly considering they're in orbit) and engage the bad guys in a LASER SPACE BATTLE. Seriously, there's outlandish spy action and then there's bad science fiction. Pretty dumb movie overall.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Moonraker" by Shirley Bassey
Foreign locations: California, Venice, Brazil, outer space
Bond, James Bond: 18:00
Martini shaken, not stirred: 57:35
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 11 humans, 1 snake
Non-lethal takedowns: 6