Bond Villains: A Ranking - 22-17
Continuning into the second part of my ranking, we go from the truly disgraceful Bond Villains to the ones I would describe as bland. It would be wrong to call half of this grouping uniconic, but unfortunately their iconography has less to do with them and more to do with their role in the meta of the franchise as a whole. The other half of these entries don’t even get that luxury…
Number 22
Yet another Partnership, in theory General Georgi Koskov and Brad Whitaker make for an interesting pair as the main antagonists of The Living Daylights. The film initially presents Koskov as a defector from the Soviet high command, being exfiltrated across the Iron Curtain by Bond himself and sent to a safehouse. When the nefarious Necros raids the safehouse, it appears he is a KGB agent reacquiring Koskov. In truth, the corrupt General has conspired with an American arms dealer, Brad Whitaker, to create a fake Soviet plot against western espionage agents. This is all in service of framing General Leonid Pushkin for the Smiert Spionam plot so the West will assassinate him. With Pushkin dead, Koskov and Whitaker would be free to engage in their backdoor arms and drug deals without arrousing suspicion. Unfortunately, Bond’s better judgement allows him to see through the manipulation.
If that extremely simplified version of the plot seems confusing, that’s because it is, and there are several additional steps I neglected to go over for the sake of brevity, namely the Kara Milovy angle. Overcomplication is perhaps, the biggest issue with Koskov and Whitaker. Jeroen Krabbe and Joe Don Baker both present an interesting theme with their characters; pretending. Koskov pretends to be a terrified incompetent who kisses Bond’s ass before revealing himself as a manipulative politician. Whitaker is a military-history enthusiast with a strong penchant for stolen valor. While Koskov being (probably) exectuted by Pushkin offscreen is quite underwhelming, the final showdown between Bond and Whitaker in a war memoribilia museum is delightful. The problem here is that the showdown with Bond is the only moment of the film where Whitaker shines, and then he’s dead. Meanwhile, Koskov shines in his early scenes when his facade is still present, but he becomes an afterthought by the film’s climax. In essence, neither villain feels fully fleshed out from start to finish. That said… Necros is fucking awesome.
Number 21
Ah… Dr. No, the one who started it all. Well, for the EON films at least, but that’s besides the point. Joseph Wiseman’s performance as Dr. Julius No is solid. That’s really all I have to say about Dr. No, though. He’s only a physical presence in the film’s last thirty minutes and he makes the most of that, but the film relies much more on the mysterious intrigue of who Dr. No is and what he’s up to than showcasing the villain himself. His plan to sabotage Project Mercury is servicable, but Dr. No’s most important accomplishment is setting up SPECTRE as a larger threat in the Connery-Lazenby era. Dr. No also introduced the disfigured villain trope to the franchise with his metallic hands… which would eventually be his undoing as he drowned in radioactive water, unable to grasp his way to safety. All this to say, Dr. Julius No is an extremely important and iconic element of the Bond meta, but that’s all he is.
Number 20
“Didn’t I warn you not to trust anyone, Dr. Jones?”
Oh. I’m sorry, thats a much better Julian Glover villain. If I was to pick the poster child Bond Villain whose name is met with “Literally who?”, it would be Aris Kristatos from For Your Eyes Only. He plays a similar role to General Koskov in that he intially presents himself as an ally and informant for 007 in order to eliminate a rival. However, while Koskov’s larger goal was to manipulate both sides of the Cold War for his own benefit, For Your Eyes Only presents Kristatos as a smaller fish taking advantage of one specific situation. The film is centered around a macguffin known as the ATAC and the race between East and West to retrieve it. Kristatos has a deal with the Soviets to acquire it for a large sum of money and he executes the members of a British search vessel to achieve this goal, making him a target of both MI6 and the daughter of the murdered searchers, Melina Havelock.
Bond and Melina work together with Aris’ rival, Columbo, in order to uncover Kristatos’ role in the murders, avenge them, and get the ATAC back in British hands. Kristatos serves more as a foil for Melina and Columbo than Bond. By the film’s end Bond convinces Melina not to murder Kristatos in cold blood, and Columbo happily does it instead. Bond then destroys the ATAC before Soviet General Gogol can retrieve it. Kristatos is not a bad villain, he’s just an extremely servicable one, and in a franchise like Bond, that puts him in the bottom half.
Number 19
When asking a Bond fan what their top ten favorite things about The Spy Who Loved Me are, it’s very unlikely that Karl Stromberg even cracks the list. Stromberg has a deliciously ridiculous scheme (one shared almost exactly with two other villains higher on this list). He has one of the most iconic henchmen in film history. He has not one, but two amazing evil lairs in the Liparus and Atlantis. The list goes on. Stromberg is simply the least compelling aspect of his battle against Bond. He makes a stunning first impression and then presents the audience with diminishing returns until he is ultimately shot by Bond. Yeah, his death isn’t even particularly exciting in comparison to plenty of 007’s big bads.
The highlight for Stromberg doesn’t even focus on him as a character. At the end of his first scene, classical music crescendoing, the ocean-loving megalomaniac summons his henchmen; Sandor and Jaws. He looks to Jaws and orders, “Every person who even comes into contact with that microfilm is to be eliminated.” Jaws replies with a malicious metallic grin, and so a Bond legend was born.
Number 18
There’s many a Bond fan who would consider Emilio largo in the bottom half to be outright heresy. Let me be clear; Largo is good, but much like Dr. Julius No, his iconography has overrated him as a presence in the Bond filmography. As Number Two of SPECTRE, Largo is a cunning and intimidating force 007 must face head-on to recover stolen NATO warheads. The scenes where Bond and Largo are having a battle of words are where Thunderball is at its best, the scene where Bond and Largo are having a battle of fists are where Thunderball is at its worst. Outside of the fact that Emilio Largo is satisfyingly put down by the very women who suffered most of his abuse, his demise is immensely unsatisfying for who is presented to the audience as the backbone of SPECTRE. Another issue Largo suffers from is his role as a direct subsidiary of Blofeld himself.
Now is probably the time to explain another class of villain I use. The Overarching Villain is present in several Bond films, through Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Mr. White. An Overarching Villain is a villain within the franchise who appears across several films as a larger threat, while still maintaining a specific film’s exclusive antagonist. In Thunderball, Largo clearly serves under Blofeld, but it is Largo who takes the central role as Bond’s adversary. Despite this, a weakness of Number Two that some other villains under Overarchers do not have, is that it can be unclear at times how much of the plan we see in Thunderball was Largo’s own, or how much he is merely executing on SPECTRE’s behalf. We will see a good example of how to solve this problem much higher on the list.
With all this said, Largo is one of the most important Bond foes in cinema culture, right alongside his master. So much so that finding a spy spoof without a well dressed, eye-patch-having miscreant is a rarity.
Number 17
The legendary Christopher Lee has had knack for playing famous cinema baddies; Dracula, Saruman, Dooku, etc. So naturally, Lee effectively embodies Francisco Scaramanga aka the Man with the Golden Gun. The three-nippled carnie turned million dollar assassin seems to be a brilliant idea for a Bond foe, and yet he sits in the bottom half. Why? The Solex Agitator, which is certainly the macguffin which most screwed a 007 adventure out of being good.
The Man with the Golden Gun was expected to be a delightful romp in which Scaramanga and Bond, two of the world’s deadliest instruments, engage in a globetrotting duel of the century. The intial thirty minutes of the film sets this premise up well by showing off Scaramanga’s Funhouse and M’s ratger cross briefing with Bond. However, the film eventually sets off on a detour involving the Solex Agitator as a way to losely tie Golden Gun into the ongoing Bond Cold War element. The idea of Scaramanga engaging in a hostile takeover of a solar energy company and his plot to sell the corporation’s revolutionary technology to the highest bidder is exceptionally half-baked for how much screentime the Hai Fat plotline adds to the film.
Criticisms aside, Scaramanga is great when he’s engaging in his cat and mouse games, especially during Golden Gun’s two Funhouse setpieces that almost bookened the movie. The fact that he’s already eliminated 002 prior to the film’s opening creates a threat for the audience to take seriously and Scaramanga never loses that menace until Bond is able to trick him and put the gilded assassin down for good. Additonally, the man has a dignified henchman with dwarfism (who is actively trying to kill him), a superlaser, and a flying car. The more I think of it, Scaramanga might have jumped the shark for the EON franchise even before the likes of Moonraker.
Oh also… Golden Gun mode exists because of him in just about every multiplayer Bond game, so there’s that.
Oh… also… the Golden Gun itself is a really cool prop.
Oh oh… also also… this is the end of Part 2.