Roger Moore died recently.<\/p>\n
He may not have been the “best” Bond, but he was my Bond, the one I grew up with.<\/p>\n
My parents used to take me to his movies regularly, and it was always a thrill. The iconic, deadly cool theme music, the risque opening in which you could kind-of-and-kind-of-not see naked women, and then the whole camp fantasy of being a handsome and unflappable spy– it was all immensely appealing to a boy on the cusp of puberty.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Kind of like a Wes Anderson film, the Bond movies starring Roger Moore were a child’s vision of the adult world — a comic book fantasia made manifest, but one that promised to be safe, free from the dreary weight of all the unimaginable day-to-day realities that lay ahead.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n I was 13 when Moonraker came out. Jaws, a lurching behemoth with steel fangs, was the primary villain, and he was awesome. At the end of the film, after Bond had coasted to victory and Jaws was pulling himself out of the rubble of some foiled plan, a tiny blonde– busty, pigtailed and bespectacled– appeared to help him. Jaws turns and smiles, his metal teeth glinting, and she smiles back. It’s love at first sight, and they then exit into some charming and eccentric future together.<\/p>\n