Jaws Saves the World in Moonraker Because He Falls In Love with a Lady with Pigtails and Glasses
This 1983 James Bond movie is the space-based romantic comedy you never knew you wanted, from a certain point of view.
For all their gadgets, exotic locales, and post-coitus banter, Bond movies are about fundamentally broken people trying to survive in a lawless, inexplicable world.
No one is happy or content. Nothing makes sense. The villains have often survived multiple rounds of insanely horrible trauma, and yet find time and energy to taunt Bond’s brokenness.
"Did all those martinis silence the screams of all the women you failed to protect?” asks Alec in GoldenEye. It’s just pots calling kettles black as far as the eye can see.
That is, except for Jaws in Moonraker. He survives, finds love, and escapes. He makes it out alive. He chooses the beauty and hope of an unseen better life and appears to be truly happy and content with his choice.
Yes, I’m talking about the giant man with metal teeth.
Jaws is Moonraker’s hero and emotional backbone. He begins as an unthinking attempted-murder machine, finds love and purpose, and becomes a world-saving hero in a stable and supportive relationship with a very pleasant woman whom he met in a pile of rubble.
And that movie, and not the rest of Moonraker, is amazing.
The Road to Love For the Man with the Metal Teeth
Among James Bond movies, Moonraker is known as the Star Wars knock-off that’s basically “What if James Bond fought in a star war, but instead of seeing other planets and meeting interesting aliens, they just go to EPCOT Center?” Mysterious industrialist Hugo Drax steals a space shuttle, some international travel occurs, and then everyone ends up on Drax’s space station. Space Marines wearing water polo caps battle people in yellow jumpsuits, and the world gets saved once again.
All of that is just window dressing to Jaws’ journey of self discovery and redemption. The decision to fill this character with heart comes from the actor playing him, Richard Kiel. In an interview with Den of Geek in 2009, he talks about how he sought to convince Bond producer Albert Broccoli to take the character in a fuller direction.
"Whomever you cast, whether it's me or somebody else, I think it needs to be an actor because a character who kills people with his teeth could become over the top quite easily. If I were to play the role, I'd give him some human characteristics; perseverance, frustration, those kind of things,” Kiel said.
Jaws begins his path to emotional redemption doing what you’d expect a Bond henchperson to do—jumping out of an airplane and trying to skymurder James Bond.
From there, Jaws does a lot of standard remorseless bad guy with metal teeth stuff—lifting up people, biting things, lifting up people while he bites them—until he meets Dolly.
Hello, Dolly. After crashing through a gondola station in Rio De Janeiro, Jaws is trapped under a giant metal wheel that’s too heavy for him to lift by himself. But Dolly, who’s probably all of 5 feet tall if you count her pigtails, helps our preternaturally strong henchman lift up the wheel.
Her super strength is never explained. It’s probably Pilates but they don’t say.
Jaws and Dolly lock eyes. They are instantly in love.
In the Den of Geek interview, Kiel recalls having to convince Broccoli to play the moment with heart rather than a joke about him being a giant person.
“Mr Broccoli had found a 7’7″ woman who he wanted to play Dolly. It would have been a funny thing but it would have been a quick laugh and that would have been it. It was having the small woman that was much more charming. I had to talk him into not doing that and going with the tiny woman. They were kind of reluctant and said ‘Will the audience believe it?’ I said, ‘My wife is 5’1″ and I have two children and one on the way, so obviously it works. Opposites attract.’”
Swipe Right For Space Station Date
And boy did they ever. Not since Paula Abdul and MC Skat Cat did such an outwardly unlikely pair fall in love. We know that their love is real and eternal for two reasons.
The movie’s score tells us so, with appropriately soaring accompaniment from the theme to Romeo and Juliet.
Their next date is ON THE SPACE STATION.
Seriously. We first meet Dolly on the gondola platform, and the next time we see her, she’s in space, holding hands with Jaws. I love Dolly’s sense of adventure—”Space station? Totally! I don’t have much going on this week. I would love to go to space with you. Do you have a cool jumpsuit I can wear?”
The answer is yes. You are in space. This is a Bond movie. There’s always a cool jumpsuit you can wear.
But even with a new love at his side, Jaws’ transformation is not yet complete. During a standard “welcome to our killer space station” onboarding meeting, Jaws learns that Drax intends to kill all human life on earth by shooting nerve gas bombs at the planet from the space station. Drax, we learn, wants to create a “super race” of people who look like United Colors of Benetton models.
I’m underselling this. Drax, as played by incomparable French actor Michael Lonsdale, says the following:
“First, there was the dream, now there is reality. Here in the untainted cradle of the heavens will be created a new super race, a race of perfect physical specimens. You have been selected as its progenitors. Like gods, your offspring will return to Earth and shape it in their image. You have all served in public capacities in my terrestrial empire. Your seed, like yourselves, will pay deference to the ultimate dynasty which I alone have created. From their first day on Earth they will be able to look up and know that there is law and order in the heavens.”
HE IS STATING UNEQUIVOCALLY THAT EVERYONE WHO REMAINS ALIVE WILL KNOW THAT HE IS GOD. Never has genocidal megalomania sounded so euphonious.
Then, Drax orders Jaws to throw Bond and lady Bond into the vacuum of space. Bond protests, asking Drax if anyone not getting work as a United Colors of Benetton model can, you know, remain alive. You can guess what Drax says.
This is our moment of clarity for our steel-chomper’ed hero. His giant heart has been forever changed by love, freely given and freely received between him and Dolly. He looks to his new love for a few moments. She looks back. He understands that he has a choice, and that Drax’s perfect society doesn’t include giant dudes with metal teeth and their very pleasant girlfriends with glasses and pigtails.
Ladies and Gentleman, Explosions in the Sky
For the first time in Moonraker, Jaws acts selflessly, channeling the love in his heart to save the entire human race. He rejects Drax’s orders and wrecks an unbelievable amount of shop within that space station. The entire space station set is built with sparks and styrofoam, and he destroys SO MUCH OF IT.
During all this shop-wrecking, we lose track of Dolly. After most of the station has been destroyed and Drax has been shot into space, Dolly and Jaws search for each other. Magically, they reunite VIA SLOW MOTION RUNNING.
Look at Dolly’s smile when she sees him. Just try not to tear up as that suspenders-wearing mastodon of a human embraces the woman he loves. Keep those tissues close.
Jaws’ only line in the movie is “Well, here’s to us.” They sit together, two people in love, drinking champagne. They saved the world and everyone on it. It’s the kindest, sweetest thing that has ever happened near James Bond, and amid a movie that feels like 14 movies stitched into one, it offers a grounded, beautiful reality that makes everything else make sense.
And because he has love in his heart, and his darling Dolly is ready to share what precious moments of life and oxygen she has left with him, Jaws helps Bond and Lady Bond escape on a space shuttle and destroy the remaining nerve gas bombs. They do end up getting picked up by another spaceship (no, it doesn’t make sense), and assumedly live happily ever after.
Love, and Jaws, Conquers All
After the events of Moonraker, I imagine Jaws living with Dolly somewhere on a farm back in Brazil. She grows tomatoes in the garden, he’s the fire chief, and it’s lovely. It’s a good life he’s found. They probably hold hands as they watch Murder, She Wrote in Portuguese at the end of the day.
He doesn’t have to try and sky-murder people anymore, or chase them around space stations, or work for despotic industrialists bent on genocide. He can just be himself, and create the life that he wants. Jaws is free, and his transformation is complete.
We have Kiel to thank for creating a henchman that’s so empathetic. What could have just been window dressing created the soul of this movie. In his book Bond on Bond, Roger Moore remembers Kiel and their time together on set fondly, which apparently set up a decades-long friendship between the two. At Kiel’s passing in 2014, Moore told The Guardian that he was “totally distraught” at the death of his “dear friend.”
The ebullience and warmth that Kiel brought to his life shines through in his work on screen. Because of him, the true message of Moonraker is that love conquers all. It is the 2nd Corinthians of James Bond movies, if you ignore the space flight and the innuendo.
Even for metal-toothed henchmen, love never fails.