Nearly four decades ago, Moonraker sent James Bond into outer space as a way to inject a little bit of Star Wars into the 007 franchise. Moonraker hasn’t always gotten a lot of love from the Bond fans, which is why it’s easy to overlook the fact that it was one of the highest grossing 007 films. If there had been a James Bond theme park ride in the early ’80s, it could have very easily been based on Moonraker. Now, we have a fully realized idea of what that would have looked like.
Via Kotaku, Brad Hamilton has recreated Moonraker as a ride within Planet Coaster. It’s a pretty impressive approximation of the film’s story into the sandbox of a theme park simulator. This Planet Coaster creation isn’t quite up to date with things that the Disney Imagineers and Universal Studios creative teams can do with current technology. But we would still be the first in line for this ride, which even features the Moonraker theme song by Shirley Bassey. Even the line queue takes riders inside the story, as they walk through the halls of MI6 and see briefings from Q.
For this simulation, Hamilton skipped ahead in the story to Bond’s chase sequence in Venice, before taking Roger Moore’s 007 on a globetrotting adventure before blasting him off into space. By modern standards, the simulated ride is actually a little bit too long and it drags in the middle before sending fans into the wild space battle between the Marines and the forces loyal to Hugo Drax.
If there is ever a real James Bond theme park ride, it would probably be based on an original story rather than one of the movies. But this captured some of the flavor of Bond in its dark ride/roller coaster hybrid. That’s a quality that we’d love to see retained if a Bond ride ever becomes a reality.
Hamilton has previously released other Planet Coaster creations including Tron: Legacy on his YouTube Channel, which you can visit here.
What did you think about the Moonraker simulation? Let us know in the comment section below!
Image: MGM
