It was not a must-have but a nice-to-have. And since they had the best spy in the world, well, the most-famous one, they at least wanted to take a look at this space shuttle. Beats having a spy to steal the instructions on how to build one. Especially without the budget to build one.
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Q always wanted to go to Greece on the company‘s budget. Or dress up as a priest. Or both. And his usefulness had already gone the way of a fun uncle for Bond. It‘s just nice to meet him and get his opinion whether one needs to or not.
Does the ATAC work? Who knows? It was the equivalent of a new Android phone back then. With no alternative on the market.
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Does an Android phone still work when it’s been submerged in salt water for a few days?
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… and wouldn’t any secret service agency collect all the parts after it has been thrown off a mountain?
If Q can reconstruct an Aston Martin after it has been hit with a rocket…
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If you think it’s nuts that Q travels all the way to Greece to deliver a brief message to Bond while disguised as a priest, keep in mind it was originally supposed to be M!
Maybe we should look at it this way. What’s worse, the entire senior management staff of MI-6 relocating their offices for periodic check ins with Bond wherever he is in the world – as we saw in the “Classic” era – or the whole team being able to continuously transmit to his earpiece and hold his hand every step he takes, as in the modern era? I’ll put up with silly “priest” cameos if it means 007 gets to wear his big boy pants.
Also I’m sure a really big ziplock bag full of dry rice will have the ATAC working in no time.
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And let‘s not forget Young Q traveling with his magic laptop to see Bond and… well… not do much but escape two really easy to fool goons.
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It’s not realistic or economically justified, but I love that type of stuff - sending the MI6 team to offices inside pyramids, sunken ships or submarines. It gives the Bond universe colour and variation on customary scenes.
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I like to think those locations weren’t all at Pinewood and Bernard, Desmond and Lois actually got some fun trips out of it all.
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So do I. Such touches give the films an offbeat, poetic unity–MI6 is everywhere–always ready to lend a helping hand to Bond.
MOONRAKER is supremely good at this–M, Moneypenny, and Q turning up wherever/whenever they are needed. The poetry even extends to Drax–exactly why is he in Venice? And how/why does his personal office transform into a laboratory at night? Under such a spell, the movie going into space makes perfect sense.
Of course, when the films move toward realism, this poetry evaporates. But instead of supplying a new lyricism in the key of realism, the films generally settle for prettiness. Maybe one reason I like SPECTRE is that it harks back to Moore Bond poetics. Q , his magic laptop, and two easily fooled goons may not be realistic, but they fit the poetics. For a Bond movie to be successfully realistic would require someone to get out their ouija board and channel Rossellini.
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Given what we continue to learn about Russian MO it’s highly likely they didn’t just notice their jewellery disappearing - half the country’s officials in three letter kleptocracy are in on the scheme and continue to get kickbacks/bribes/bonuses from it. Most likely betamax video cassettes with Rocky and James Bond films; say ten of them for a Fabergé egg. And 600.000 Levi’s jeans for the nuclear warhead nicked from the strategic silos.
General Gogol is most likely after the Orlov/Khan konspiratsia because he didn’t get his share in time.
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Absolutely.
And M, well, he often sends Bond to places which make less sense to start an investigation. He‘s just funny that way. Or he knows that Bond attracts the villains like a flame attracts moths. So… send him to India or cold and dirty Berlin?
Also, the budget for foreign travel needs to be used. Otherwise next year it’s all London. Remember SKYFALL?
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It’s a good point. Drax is a man who makes the impossible possible, shifting large amounts of resources like a magician. Imagine the manpower and workload required to renovate a room of that size and detail in such a short time. And done not just out of necessity, but to make Bond and his accusations seem baseless and absurd. If Drax and his team is capable of pulling that off, in a way that seems commonplace, I’m willing to believe they can build a city in space over a period of time.
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The Eiffel Tower isn’t there purely because they wouldn’t give him a permit 
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It‘s a), b), c) and d).
Does Bond stop the leak? Well, he ends up under rushing water. Kind of a metaphor, but with a smirk, while not looking for soap.
Do Zorin‘s conspirators get away with it? Of course not. Didn’t you see the high tech spying drone in the bathroom? Such equipment will make sure justice is served. Just like today.
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Ages since I’ve seen it the last time. Doesn’t Gogol hint at Silicon Valley being THE main source for computation technology behind the Iron Curtain? Wouldn’t have done to crash that well of knowledge.
Although, come to think of it…
It is now, and was then, mostly an industry based on science and know how. You can smash all that stuff to smithereens - if the knowledge, the ideas and concepts, get away, then the industry simply sets up shop in Seattle, or Macau, or Timbuktu the next day and can be operational within a year, two at most. A catastrophe for the US; a minor glitch for the computer age. Zorin’s de facto monopoly would have been extremely short lived.
Gogol’s role seems indeed more interesting to me. Over the years he morphed from a villain - in Wood’s concept of TSWLM’s novelisation he isn’t just behind the Berngarten attempt on Bond; his goons also kill the drugged up girl they used as bait - to an almost benign elderly gentleman who surely isn’t involved with torture chambers, murder and terror. Almost exactly the opposite trajectory a certain gospodin Putin is on (though still applauded and fawned over by some…).
At the time it was accepted as a sign of Bond becoming an international hero, global 007 so to speak, and far more universal than that ‘global’ Britain that would come as a claim 30 years later. In some ways the films anticipated history much better than the feuilleton would give them credit for.
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“Were would Russian research be without it?”
everyone laughs
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Having seen it today, I think it’s C. AVTAK is a prescient foretelling of current world events. Jokes it’s obviously A. Two hours is a long time, I mean the chap who picks up Fiona Fullerton in his car is bizarrely not Gogol until it is. The stunt of sitting in a car with engine running must be tougher than it looks.
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This might have helped NTTD not be the drag that it ultimately ends up being, although I do wonder if it might have been a bit much to have both Felix and M essentially be traitors within the confines of the same film, or even the same actor’s tenure.
I think the better thing might have been to have the blonde guy’s role taken by someone else, or at least have had it played by an actor who wasn’t going out of his way to tell the audience that he was working with the bad guys. Maybe Gregory Beam returns from QOS, working under Felix’s employ, having worked his way back into something resembling the good graces of the CIA. Bond, and the audience, obviously mistrusts him, but he ends up being the one that’s working on the right side and gives the film some cover for Felix’s betrayal, by dangling an obvious red herring in front of us that they don’t need to spend too much time building up.
Sciarra would have been a better villain than Safin. Then again, a broom and a dust bin would have been a better villain. Still, why bring in someone like Bellucci if you only plan to use her for a short while so that you can make headlines for having the oldest “Bond girl” ever.
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Now it would matter even less, thanks to teleworkers. If Silicon Valley – in the real estate sense – disappeared, that wouldn’t necessarily put all its companies out of business.
Anyway, I think the objection that’s usually raised against Zorin’s plot – and has been, since day one – is that Silicon Valley isn’t the world’s largest producer of microchips, but rather the largest consumer, since they’re key to the design and function of a host of devices. By destroying the region, Zorin would be killing off the largest part of his customer base and insuring the failure of his business enterprises. Indeed, he is so clueless as a businessman, he’d probably have ended up in the White House if he hadn’t perished in that fall.
Indeed, he’s almost cuddly by the end. Originally I thought TLD might have made more sense if it were Gogol that Bond were sent to kill for the “Smiert Spionom” thing…after all, we were familiar with him already whereas we don’t know Pushkin from Adam, so the stakes would have been higher, right? But the more I think on it, the less I think it would’ve worked. By that point, he’d become the “funny uncle from Russia” in the Bond Family. There’s no way viewers familiar with the series would’ve believed he could ever do anything really nasty.
It is when Miss Fullerton is picked up on location and Walter can only make it to the Pinewood lot.
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An ability mirrored by the film itself–Bond’s watch/dart gun suddenly appearing on his wrist when he needs to kill Drax being one example. Jaws surviving his freefall would be another.
Beautifully put. Drax’s reach/power is indicated by his ability to get almost anything done–a capacity pervading the film itself. Through the use of basic Eisensteinian montage an aerospace factory and a French chateau can be next to one another.
The entire film operates on this fantastic level, which may not be to all tastes, but it is an aesthetic that pervades the film and provides a poetic unity–Georges Melies meets James Bond if you will. MR uses some of the oldest and most basic techniques and grammar of film to send Bond into space. As Ken Adam said, he wanted the jungle lair to look artificial, so he needed the rocks to look like real rocks, but not be real rocks. Such is the aesthetic of MOONRAKER.
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