Moore was in a peculiar position replacing Connery. Should he attempt to emulate the Bond that Connery portrayed to retain continuity? Connery was a confident, sardonic Bond who was as charming as he was deadly. Moore took a different approach. According to Moore, “Sean was a killer; I was a lover (Walliams).”

A Mel Brooks in the Making

Roger Moore’s Bond was first seen in bed after having sex. He later unzips his female friend’s dress with a new magnetic gadget and quips. This is the only instance, outside of Connery’s  initial introduction in a casino, in which Bond is not first shown through an action sequence. A lover, indeed.

Moore’s introduction, both as an actor and as a character, marked the moment Bond stopped reflecting the real world and started reflecting Hollywood. In order to successfully portray Bond, Moore looked at the previous films starring Connery. Moore chose to adopt the sardonic quips and sexual promiscuity of Connery while abandoning his harder-edge and predilection for violence.

This change may have proved successful if further character development for Bond was given in favor of the action heavy sequences of Connery; however, no effort was made to remedy this lack of character contrast. Instead, the action sequences became elaborate comedic set-ups for the eventual joke at the end. By cannibalizing the lighter aspects of Connery’s Bond and disregarding the darker characteristics, Moore’s films became a montage of sex, quips and a middle-aged man attempting to perform action stunts. “He does what i consider unforgivable,” said screenwriter Richard Maibaum, “he spoofs himself and he spoofs the part.”

Moore had become a caricature of the rugged Bond of the Revolutionary era. The postmortem one liner became Moore’s bread-and-butter during the cannibal era, Bond Gadgets became ludicrously impractical with each film and Moore’s Bond successively slept with more women in this era than any other Bond in any other era; reaching a stunning eleven women in four films. Even Connery described Moore as, “a parody of the character (O’Connor).”

A comparison of the ski sequence from both On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and The Spy Who Loved Me illustrates both the cannibalization and parody of the earlier films during the first few Moore films:

Serial Cinephiliac

But the Bond series was not the only series to become lampooned by Moore during his initial run as Bond. Moore runs the gamut of popular 70s cinema fads leaving nothing sacred.

Moore first follows the trend of blaxploitation cinema of the early 1970s in Live and Let Die (Guerrero). The film takes major departures from the original novel in order to conform to blaxploitation convention. An entire scene in Harlem is devised to allow for the urban environment of blaxploitation cinema to be seen before the plot takes us to caribbean.

Moore then adapts the sudden kung-fu movie spurned by Bruce Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun (Li). An elaborate kung-fu scene, not included in the novel, is one of the central set pieces of the film:

The Spy Who Loved Me avoids the need to steal from current Hollywood trends by, instead, regurgitating aspects and plot points of the original Bond films. The plot is lifted directly from From Russia With Love and the set pieces appear like a highlight reel of Bond’s greatest moments.

The Spy Who Loved Me does offer one piece of social commentary that is worth mentioning. This is the first film of the series in which the Soviets and the British work together toward a common goal. After the escalation of the Cold War in the sixties, the seventies characterized a period of relative peace, dubbed detente (‘Detente and Arms Control, 1969-1979’). The reflection of detente during the 70s elevates The Spy Who Loved Me beyond self-parody and into Moore’s most memorable film.

Finally, Moonraker closed the cannibal era with an ode to the science fiction opera, Star Wars. Originally planned as a later film, Moonraker was given precedent after the science fiction boom of the 70s gave way (Rothman, Lily). The film attempts to adapt the novel as well as it may. Much of the first two acts remain decently faithful to the source material. The final act, on the other hand, is completely original as Bond and company fly rockets, fight in zero gravity and save the world in space.

Despite the success at the box office, James Bond could not sustain this cinematically conscious film-making. The character had abandoned much of the original Bond envisioned by Fleming. The introspective gentleman-agent had been replaced by a walking joke book. Bond had become a living museum for the film movements of the 70s. Bond needed a new identity and a grounded story. A return to Earth might give 007 the breath of fresh air it needs.