Realism vs. Fantasy

After buying the remaining Bond books needed to complete my collection I decided to go back and read the ones that I had missed and catch up to From Russia With Love. The first one I started with was Moonraker, the third book in the series. I had heard that this book was quite different from the film, but I didn't know it was going to be this different. It is almost an entirely different story. Sure some of the main characters have the same names, but everything else has changed. The settings and the plot are completely different. The plot of the novel is the investigation of a missile based national defense system. It is more realistic in tone. We learn about Bond's day to day life and what he does for hobbies. It is a hard-nosed spy thriller far more practical than its movie counterpart. The movie is all about space shuttles and guess what Bond actually gets to go into to space and shoot laser guns. Still even though the movie is fake beyond belief it is hard to choose which one I like best. It might help to put both into some historical context.

The novel came out in the 1950's. The missile testing by the Nazi's was still fresh in the minds of the public. A story based completely on the threat of nuclear bombs and missiles seems totally feasible and frightening when read in a post WWII context. Reading it today provides with a history lesson of England and the rest of the West in the aftermath of WWII and the start of the Cold War. Ultimately the novel accomplishes its purpose as a brutal spy thriller from the 50's. And it is a great Bond novel full of guns, danger, and of course girls.

As you can see from the trailer above the film makers took some liberty with the material from the novel. The movie was released in 1979 just two years after....

Yes the Bond producers thought they could cash in on the science fiction craze that begun with Star Wars. Everyone was doing it and even James Bond got caught in the mix. The plot was just a rehash of the previous movie The Spy Who Loved Me, but it was set in space instead of underwater. Nothing remains of the novel's plot, but I find it hilarious that the trailer had a quote from the book. To be honest the Bond movies had been taking an increasingly unrealistic tone since Roger Moore took the helm from Sean Connery. But this was by far the biggest Bond movie ever made and the stunts were actually pretty amazing like this parachute sequence at the beginning of the movie

Even by today's standards that was pretty awesome. Really Moonraker is the result of trying to make the perfect Bond film and it is pretty entertaining as long as you don't take it too seriously. Also I may be biased as the males in my family are not only huge Bond fans, but big Roger Moore fans. They grew up in the 70's and 80's watching Roger and so I grew up watching Roger in all the reruns on tv. Over and over again. I can't tell you how many times I have seen these films. But my generation grew up with a very different Bond. Daniel Craig might just trump all of the Bond actors that came before him and he is definitely more like his literary counterpart. Still I always find myself in conflict between this fantasy Bond found in the films and the more realistic Bond found in the novels. And I think all of us as fans of literature and film can relate to this concept. The source material always seems to be more realistic, more understated than the spectacle found in the movie adaptations. The movies often stray far from what we personally envisioned in our minds. Sometimes they sell out because of fads. But if we take them both for what they are considering the context they were born under I believe we can find enjoyment in both.