As It Was In the Days of Noah Pt. 2

I made a trip to Blockbuster last week looking for Bond - Roger Moore Bond. As luck would have it, Moonraker was the only Roger Moore movie available - hardly my favorite. But I grabbed it anyway, Roger at his worst is still better than Pierce. Funny thing is, it became obvious that Moonraker followed exactly the same plot as Sky Captain. How odd.

Every Bond movie begins with this quick gunshot at the eye of Horus. Why does Horus need to be killed? And why is he "me"?

Hugo Drax (Michael Londsdale) oddly resembling James Mason’s Captain Nemo, is a fabulously wealthy industrialist obsessed with the conquest of space. His company - Drax Industries - builds the Moonraker space shuttle. The bible doesn’t say if Noah was chairman and CEO of Noah Industries, but it doesn’t say he wasn’t.

Drax lives in a fabulous French Chateau in California, from which he directs and funds an astronaut training program (a thinly veiled eugenics operation) to create genetically perfect individuals for his new world in space, and it turns out, to repopulate the (soon to be decimated) earth.

These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. --Genesis 6:9

Christian nutters say that the "giants" begotten by the angels (Nephilim), were their genetic experiments and "children", back in the day of Noah. Alien cross-breeding is a major feature of modern day alien abduction mythology - Agent Scully duly noted.

How interesting that we have a giant in Moonraker: "Jaws". Jaws (played by seven foot Richard Kiel), eventually sides with James, once he figures out that Noah isn't cool with his seed, or his new girlfriend.

So we don’t forget, this is a Masonic tableau, note the “playing field”.

James follows the leads to a glass blowing shop (and twin towers) in Venice , with an interesting hexagonal logo:

As it turns out, this glass blowing studio is a front for Drax’s nerve gas production lab. The gas (which effects only humans), is injected into hexagonal cylinders, and then placed into globes encased within a hexagonal ring. Drax is seriously into hexagons.

Meanwhile, back on the canals, Bond is being ferried around in his black and gold sea chariot when he’s attacked by a funeral procession (a frequent Bond motif). Thanks to his usual technological advantage, he escapes the grim reaper - this time via a gondola/hovercraft complete with Masonic stripes. Later, Bond is seen skulking about the canals in the same gondola. He docks, and then tosses his gondolier’s hat atop a sea horse. For some horses for courses, read C Horses.

After the lab in Venice, Bond follows the trail to Rio, via some well marked boxes. In Rio, Bond visits the secret lair of British Intelligence: a "Catholic" monastery.

While there, he walks in on some brothers in “meditation”: a pair of warrior monks - Latter Day Knights Templar? So there is no doubt, remember Sean Connery played William of Baskerville, the Franciscan friar in 'The Name of the Rose', by the sly grail echo, Umberto Eco.

James follows the clues north, to a remote Amazonian tributary. He discovers Drax’s earthly, pyramidal headquarters, from which he is launching a squadron of Moonrakers. He follows a white robed Circe across a subterranean river into a pre-Columbian, post-Modern realm.

He soon meets more of Drax’s perfected genome, and Drax himself. He's then cast into a pool to be eaten by a large reptile. James is frequently the Crocodile Huntee, see Jake Kotze’s recent post Gemini about all consuming crocodiles.

James and CIA agent Dr. Holly Goodhead skulk about the complex, and they happen across this crazy box on its stage/alter, that is ignored and left totally unexplained. I gotta ask, why/how does Drax/Noah have the Ark of the Covenant stashed in his pyramid?

All Bond villains have their personnel conveyers, and Drax is no exception. I love this shot, it’s straight out of Josie and the Pussycats.

After all that, James and the good doctor hijack a Moonraker to Drax’s secret space lair, which resembles a shining sword of Damocles at first glance, but is in fact a cloaked space station, AKA the death star, VALIS. I have to admit the idea of a cloaked satellite is interesting. Maybe the satellite is actually hiding in plain site, but cloaked in myth. The moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie...

NOTES:

Richard Kiel acted in an unaired TV-pilot featuring Lee Falk's superhero The Phantom, where Kiel played an assassin called "Big Mike", who was hired to kill the title hero.

Roger Moore rose to Bond prominence playing Simon Templar in 'The Saint'. Is it just me, or does the Saint walk like an Egyptian? Isis/Liberty is a nice touch at the end.