History YMMV / Moonraker

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Considering how campy the movie is, one might expect Creator/MichaelLonsdale to ham it up. But he doesn't, instead giving a subdued, chilling performance as main villain Hugo Drax.

** What, pray tell, is such a gorgeous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oieAo5NiYjc title song]] doing attached to [[SoBadItsGood this movie?!]]
** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYw69v0GIaA Space Laser Battle track]] is also epic, though the battle accompanying it?

* IdiotPlot: Putting aside the question of why the Soviets would trust any Nazi with a nuclear weapon just ten years after the Nazis invaded and devastated their country, the Soviets plan to pick up Drax and his fellow conspirators within view of watching journalists in a Soviet submarine.

** ''The doubletaking pigeon''. Also qualifies at StockFootageFailure.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: Drax kills his secretary by having her be eaten alive by his dogs. Bond also murders two scientists with nerve gas for the heinous crime of working for the villain. And then there's the final scene where Bond, er, "attempts re-entry".

** Bond's female contact in Brazil being named Manuela tends to elicit some snickers among Latin American fans, as in the region "Manuela" is slang for ADateWithRosiePalms. Considering the aforementioned "Dr. Goodhead", this ''might've'' been an intentional pun.

* ItsTheSameNowItSucks: This movie's gotten a lot of criticism for essentially being a near beat for beat rehash of ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', which was already a rehash of ''Film/YouOnlyLiveTwice''.

* IdiotPlot: In reality, Drax's plan to repopulate the world with his chosen ones, would simply not work--period. No matter how 'perfect' (attractive) his minions were, there were simply not near enough of them to rebuild or sustain any kind of civilization. His numbers alone would have put humanity into a population bottleneck far more severe than that proposed by the Toba catastrophe theory, in which it is estimated the total number of humans on the entire Earth, at ~10,000, or less even. Far more than Drax's space station could ever hold. His entire harem, would be roughly equivalent to the population of a small village. His group would lack the skills, numbers, and resilience to survive in a de-populated world. A world that would be wracked by massive pollution from abandoned nuclear, industrial and chemical sites, among other threats and dangers. The end result of Drax's megalomania, should his plan have worked, would likely lead to the total extinction of the human race, not a rebirth. At best, his group might have a shelf-life of a few generations before expiring. Inbreeding, infighting, and deaths caused by accidents, pollution, or just plain despair would claim enough of them to render the entire undertaking a lost cause. If they were really fortunate, the (inbred) survivors might end up living an existence not dissimilar to some of the most isolated tribes in South America, Africa and the Indian Ocean, if they survived at all, that is.

* HollywoodHomely: Dolly, the girl Jaws falls in love with, is almost a parody of the trope. Creator/BlancheRavalec's pigtails and big glasses seem meant to make her look unattractive, but she's still clearly an [BuxomIsBetter impressively-proportioned]] blonde woman in a low-cut dress in a Bond film.

* HollywoodHomely: Dolly, the girl Jaws falls in love with, is almost a parody of the trope. Creator/BlancheRavalec's pigtails and big glasses seem meant to make her look unattractive, but she's still clearly an impressively-proportioned blonde woman in a low-cut dress in a Bond film.

** The US military and Drax himself are able to launch fully-crewed and fully-fuelled space shuttles into orbit in only a matter of hours. In truth, the space shuttle took an average six months of preparation before it could be launched, and even the most optimistic prospects for the programme still called for several weeks of such work if multiple flights were to be worked into the span of a year.
*** In this universe, maybe the US military had an always ready shuttle. This universe also has trained space soldiers and hand held laser weapons.
** Equally egregious is Drax deploying an entire space station, larger than anything to have existed in reality without attracting the attention of the world below. Such a feat would have required perhaps ''dozens'' of launches in seeing all the components eventually assembled, and the station's radar jamming system certainly would not have covered for these. Further compounding this absurd scenario is no apparent interference caused by the station's orbit to the world's expansive network of telecommunications or anybody with a telescope taking note of it, not to mention you could see it with the ''naked eye'' from the ground -- true, it would only be a moving point of light, but visible nonetheless.

** Bluescreening for Jaws jumping between the cable cars.

* WhatAnIdiot: Bond is being all sneaky-like on the eponymous space station when he runs into Jaws, known for toughness and his metal teeth.\\
'''You'd expect''' That Bond would try hitting a weak spot, evading him, or use his poison wrist dart gun to dispose of him.\\
'''Instead''' He punches Jaws in ''the teeth''. Nice going, James. One connection and a "CLANG" sound, and Bond's hand is in agony.

* VillainDecay: Jaws, who was an unstoppable murder-machine in the ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', while already being treated as a comic relief in that film due to DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength and his [[MadeOfIron ridiculous ability to survive]]; falls in love here and even pulls a HeelFaceTurn at the end. In the love interest part at least, the writers were reluctant to give Jaws a love interest in this film (or at least, a love interest like Dolly), but Richard Kiel fought for it. When people said it was silly that Jaws would have such a diminutive girlfriend, he retorted that [[RealityIsUnrealistic his own wife was exactly the same height]].

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** Before he orders her and Bond to be executed, Drax tells Holly [[FalseReassurance "Your desire to become America's first woman in space will shortly be fulfilled"]], which points itself to pre-1983, when Sally Ride became the first female American astronaut.
** An inversion (though only at the time of its release): at the time ''Moonraker'' was made, NASA was intending to launch its first space shuttle in 1979, which would have made the film very timely. Unfortunately, NASA had to delay the launch for two years, rendering the film unexpectedly something that was before its time. Even more so now that the Space Shuttle has been retired as of 2011; in this film it is headlined and touted as the pinnacle of human spaceflight, with none of its viable replacements yet ready to succeed it.

* BrokenBase: The movie itself. For many fans and critics, the space sequences and the camp humour cements this as one of the most absurd Bond films in the series and is often looked upon with disdain. For many, however, it is either a guilty pleasure or a genuinely exciting movie. The latter camp is helped by the absolutely stunning and massive set pieces designed by Creator/KenAdam and the excellent special effects to accompany them.

* HollywoodHomely: Dolly, the girl Jaws falls in love with, is almost a parody of the trope. Her pigtails and big glasses seem meant to make her look unattractive, but she's still clearly an impressively-proportioned blonde woman in a low-cut dress in a Bond film.
* IdiotPlot: In reality, Drax's plan to repopulate the world with his chosen ones, would simply not work--period. No matter how 'perfect' (attractive) his minions were, there were simply not near enough of them to rebuild or sustain any kind of civilization. His numbers alone would have put humanity into a population bottleneck far more severe than that proposed by the Toba catastrophe theory, in which it is estimated the total number of humans on the entire Earth, at ~10,000, or less even. Far more than Drax's space station could ever hold. His entire harem, would be roughly equivalent to the population of a small village. His group would lack the skills, numbers, and resilience to survive in a de-populated world. A world that would be wracked by massive pollution from abandoned nuclear, industrial and chemical sites, among other threats and dangers. The end result of Drax's megalomania, should his plan have worked, would likely lead to the total extinction of the human race, not a rebirth. At best, his group might have a shelf-life of a few generations before expiring. Inbreeding, infighting, and deaths caused by accidents, pollution, or just plain despair would claim enough of them to render the entire undertaking a lost cause. If they were really fortunate, the (inbred) survivors might end up living an existence not dissimilar to some of the most isolated tribes in South America and Africa, if they survived at all, that is.
* InferredHolocaust: See all those beautiful women on the poster? See the same beautiful women and handsome men exercising on Drax's estate and later romancing each other on the shuttle flight up to the station? Consider now that every one of them are likely slaughtered either by the good guys -- the space soldiers -- or in the destruction of the space station, as with the sole exception of Jaws's girlfriend (who was never one of their number anyway), the film gives zero indication of there being any survivors, casting a grim light on what is otherwise an exciting space battle. Of course, it can be argued that they all have AssholeVictim status given that they were totally cool with working with Drax the OmnicidalManiac.

* TheScrappy: Holly Goodhead isn't as actively despised as [[Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun Mary Goodnight]], [[Film/AViewToAKill Stacey Sutton]] or [[Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough Christmas Jones]], but she's often considered one of the dullest and least interesting Bond Girls in the entire series. Many fans think her dynamic is just a less interesting copy of Bond's dynamic with Anya Amasova in ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe''. Another common criticism is that she has virtually no impact on the plot after her abduction in Rio, other than providing someone for Bond to exposit to and then have sex with at the end, whereas even the more widely hated Bond Girls at least did ''something'' in the climaxes of their respective films. Unless you count her piloting the airship that levels the humanity-destroying bombs during the last stretch, of course, but her bland personality is still a persistent issue for most. This is made worse by the fact that her book counterpart is Gala Brand, one of the few great women characters that Fleming wrote. RealLifeWritesThePlot here as Lois Chiles was pregnant during filming, so there wasn't that much she could do.

* BrokenBase: The movie itself. For many fans and critics, the space sequences and the camp humour cements this as one of the most absurd Bond films in the series and is often looked upon with disdain. For many, however, it is either a guilty pleasure or a genuinely exciting movie. The latter camp is helped by the absolutely stunning and massive set pieces designed by Ken Adam and the excellent special effects to accompany them.

** Bond is placed in a centrifuge that can test the durability of potential astronauts against a g-force of up to twenty gs, which Dr. Goodhead remarks would be fatal. In actuality, Air Force Colonel John Stapp had set the record for a human's sustainability against g-forces of up to 46 gs in ''1954'', twenty-five years before ''Moonraker'' was released.

** Kudos to the film for dealing with artificial gravity in a realistic way, by spinning the station. The problem is, that only works on surfaces perpendicular to the center of rotation. The control center has floor surfaces parallel with the center of rotation— everybody would be stuck on the walls. Certainly for budget reasons, as really doing it correctly like Kubrick would have been extremely expensive.

** One of the actors considered for Drax was James Mason. Had he taken the role, it would be just like playing [[Film/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea Captain Nemo]] again, only IN SPACE AND WITH BOND!

* ToughActToFollow: While the film is often easily dismissed, it doesn't help that it's coming on the heels of ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', a common pick for Moore's best film, and a contender for one of the series' best installments overall.

* CompleteMonster: Though his plan is smaller in scale than [[Film/{{Moonraker}} his film counterpart's]], Creator/IanFleming's original version of Sir Hugo Drax is no less vile. Born "Hugo von der Drache" in Germany and an avid fan of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, Drax ran undercover missions against Britain for the Reich until he was mistakenly wounded by his own side and nursed back to health by the British. Stealing the identity of a MIA soldier with a similar name and feigning amnesia, Drax murdered the first rich man he could find after leaving the hospital for startup money and began plotting to avenge UsefulNotes/NaziGermany's defeat. Using his family's holdings in rare metals, Drax paid out of his own pocket to design the Moonraker, a state-of-the-art nuclear missile meant to defend Britain from the Russians, with Drax's philanthropy elevating him to a national hero. The only problem was, the missile was set to destroy London on its first test firing with a real atomic bomb. When Drax describes the intended death toll for this catastrophe to him, Bond (a hardened killer himself) is left almost catatonic. Other crimes include running a motorist off the road and over a cliff due to the mere possibility he might've been a spy, and having people tortured for information with welding torches. For Drax, the mere destruction of their greatest city was not enough; he made himself into the British people's greatest hero [[HopeCrusher just so their collective spirits would be crushed]] when the nuke hit.

* NeverLiveItDown: The ''only'' film to date in which Bond ventures into outer space, and for good reason as it was a blatant effort to cash in on the science fiction craze launched by the release of ''[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' two years prior.[[note]]The previous film had even stated that next up was ''Film/ForYourEyesOnly'' in a big sign of just how much they rushed this one out.[[/note]] For many a Bond fan it provides for a fun and exciting ride, if an over-the-top and absurd one at that. For many others, though, it is the sheer absurdity of this premise that has made it impossible to take seriously.