Moonraker on its original album program barely felt like a Bond score at times, something La-La Land’s new expansion helps rectify. The album nearly doubles the score runtime (including several pieces which were either mangled in or completely excised from the film), and those additions include the Bond bravado for the early freefall sequence as well as the more playful version for the mid-movie boat chase through Venice. A brief bit of music for the Hang Glider Crash foreshadows the grandeur of Out of Africa. The inserts of prior works including the theme from The Magnificent Seven (likely all new arrangements from Barry’s pen, though the credits aren’t clear on this) are amusing if not exactly essential. I’ll admit some disappointment that the incremental tracks from the climactic space sequence are largely reprises of previously released material, though the slow intoning of Barry’s space motif in Launch Program Command is a marvelous lead-in to the score’s famed Flight Into Space track.

I also completely forgot that Frank Sinatra was originally slated to sing for this.

****, up from ***½ for the original album program.

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Prior 2024 album posts
- Live and Let Die - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=131612
- Octopussy - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=131627
- Hellboy II - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=131961
- HTTYD: The Hidden World - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=132742
- Top Gun - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=132758
- Rock-a-Doodle - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=132825
- Something Wicked This Way Comes - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134359
- Night Passage - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134397
- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134671
- Backdraft - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134759
- Nightbreed - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134774
- Scorpio - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=134915
- Star Wars: Rebels S3 & S4 - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136026
- You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136088
- For Love of the Game - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136102
- Eye of the Needle - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136116
- Dinosaur - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136878
- Torn Curtain - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=136901
- Goldfinger - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=137378
- Jurassic Park III - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=137846
- The Godfather Part II - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=137847
- Spider-Man 2 - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=137848
- The Sugarland Express - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=137856
- The Man with the Golden Gun - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=138906