As preamble, consider this from James Bond film historians John Cork and Bruce Scivally: “In 1977 and ’78, it was hard to quantify the tremendous impact of Star Wars [1] and Close Encounters [2] on popular culture, which easily equalled Bond’s influence in the mid-60s … [3].

The public wanted outer-space adventure, and [Albert R] Broccoli felt that in Moonraker – Ian Fleming’s 1955 novel … he had a story and a title that were ripe for the times.

The mechanics behind actually pulling that off, however, “staggered” the EON Productions special effects effort [4].

Messrs Cork and Scivally went on to note that in 1978, “there was an explosion in the cost of making movies. Budgets soared along with ticket prices around the globe.”

In this context, Moonraker premiered the following year, on June 28, and its “performance seemed unstoppable [5].

In the US, the film grossed $10 million in four days in 900 theaters. Six days later, the film’s box office reached $21 million.

A first-stop glance at IMDbPro shows a cumulative worldwide gross that put and keeps Moonraker on top of every James Bond film and actor that came before or after it — up ’til 1995, when GoldenEye was released [6,7].

  • Thus: It holds at fifteen slots “better” than On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969); fourteen over From Russia with Love (1963).
  • And: Nine slots “better” than The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

In fact, this bald criteria names Moonraker superior by a clear margin to any James Bond movie produced through the collaboration of Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

John Cork and Bruce Scivally closed their assessment of Moonraker on-screen by asserting that it had failed “to sustain the international performance of The Spy Who Loved Me …” [8].

“The Moonraker Threshold” serves to respect — if not fully account for — the obvious incongruence between ostensibly objective metrics of comparison and, arguably, common sense [9].

© 2022 Dell Deaton, All Rights Reserved. USA

References

  1. “Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV)” / May  25, 1977 / Star Wars (accessed January 10, 2022).
  2. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” / IMDbPro.
  3. James Bond: The Legacy / 2002 / John Cork and Bruce Scivally (page 177; Harry N Abrams: New York).
  4. “Derek Meddings: The Man Who Creates The Magic for James Bond” / August 1981 / Starlog (page 16; O’Quinn Studios: New York).
  5. James Bond (page 181).
  6. “Moonraker (1979)” / IMDbPro.
  7. The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 – New Edition Including The World Is Not Enough / 2000 / Lee Pfeiffer and Dave Worrall (page 121; HarperCollins: New York).
  8. James Bond (page 183).
  9. “Chico Not Groucho: Who Ya Gonna Believe, Me or Your Own Eyes – Duck Soup – Firefly Chicolini” / January 23, 2017 / James Schneider (via YouTube).