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I guess in Spectre they were actually trying to make him a little more unique, so I can appreciate that.
He’s really just William Randolph Hearst mixed with YOLT Blofeld, though. Hearst’s newspaper is often credited with inflaming the American public against Spain (it repeatedly claimed the American warship the U.S.S. Maine was destroyed by the Spanish in an act of sabotage, despite evidence to the contrary), helping start the Spanish-American war which in turn boosted the newspaper’s circulation; and the stealth ship Carver uses to set the U.K. and China at each other is an obvious riff on YOLT’s plot. He’s okay, but I don’t love him.
Blofeld is fine as an antagonist, but the issue is he needs to kill Bond’s wife to really ascend to his regular iconic level of importance, and that requires a full reboot so you can tell that story again (and I hate the reboot thing) , or to acknowledge the ‘original’ movie continuity (which I’m not convinced Eon are willing to do at this point). Pleasance’s Blofeld is iconic, but unfortunately Austin Powers spoofed him so famously that well is pretty much poisoned, and without the cat, the bald, scarred look, and his status as the man who killed the love of Bond’s life, he does become generic.
When people compare the Bond franchise to Batman they tend to overlook that Batman has a large number of iconic villains who have a strong enough hook (usually with a very strong visual component) to allow a filmmaker to play with them while maintaining their identity. I don’t think Bond has that luxury.
As you say, it’s killing Tracy which gives him the heft, plus in the early films he’s basically Bond’s Moriarty acting behind the scenes who basically develops a bit of a personal grudge towards 007 after foiling so many plans (all of the things people complain about the Craig films featuring!), and without Tracy the Craigs try to add to that with the foster dad thing, successfully or not depending upon your point of view.
But to be honest I tend to prefer a Goldfinger or Zorin or whoever villain, one distinct and unique to the evil plot we’re being presented with. You couldn’t drop Goldfinger into TND, but you could put Blofeld in pretty much any of them, which shows he’s perhaps a bit less interesting.
Goldfinger and Oddjob are iconic - Goldfinger’s gold motif, Oddjob’s great visual and unique steel-rimmed bowler, are hooks strong enough to overcome the fact they are tied to one story that kills them at the end. Cat-stroking Blofeld is iconic. Even Jaws is iconic. I think if you want to stretch James Bond to video games and other merchandising you need these very memorable villains with their strong (reusable!) visual hooks. This is what the Batman franchise has in abundance, but the Bond franchise is lacking in. Carver’s one-and-done bad-guy is so tightly tied to his one story I don’t think he transcends it the way Goldfinger (and Oddjob) does.
I think it’s going to be difficult for Eon to balance the more respectable real-world tone they’ve gone for in the Craig-era which tends to favour relatively real-world villains, while trying to drive the franchise like it’s a Batman merchandising bonanza, which I think they’d also like to do. Safin was definitely an attempt to make it work, and though I loved his visual, I think many people feel he’s a bit undercooked. I’m just not sure how you make this work. I’d think like to see an occasional reoccurring villain who has a strong enough visual hook that you wouldn’t need an exact likeness in other media to identify him… but I worry that might make him cartoony. I’d like that to be interspersed with more one-and-done plot-dependent villains who wouldn’t need to have such a strong visual. I guess I’d like to mix it up, basically.
Sorry, that was more rambling than I intended. I think the franchise needs some big villains, I just don’t know how to make that happen without getting too far into cartoon territory that it makes the films feel too comic-book.
It is kind of why I think rebooting Scaramanga wouldn't be the worst thing in the world: a very memorable villain who was perhaps better than the film they gave him.
Try living here now, lol.
For me, Savalas is the gold standard of Blofeld, despite the accent. He has the plan and he has the menace. Plus, Steppat is just so good (as of course is Rigg) that she elevates Savalas.
I know Steppat died, but in an alternate universe, both Savalas and Steppat returned in the next film no matter who was playing Bond.
I can't put the voiceover Blofelds of FRWL and TB in the same class as the onscreen ones. To me, that's more good screenwriting than performance.
Assuming a start from scratch, might we see a new version of Ernst and Irma. If so,
will they have killed Tracy in the new Bond's past? If Tracy appears, will they eventually kill her? Or will it be Tracy has yet to meet Bond in the next series or perhaps never will?
Will the new villainous couple be reinvented without any connection whatsoever to the events in previous films and novels?
That's fine with me.
The genius of rebooting with CR is that it freed the character, and series, from all of that backstory.
I'd rather Eon start afresh. Let Bond #7 have his own adventures. I really don't want to see Goldfinger or Tracy reappear. And I'd rather Bond #7 not be saddled with Tracy or callbacks to Goldfinger either. Same thing for the Craig era. Leave Vesper, Madeleine, all of them in the past.
I suppose they could eventually try for a new Blofeld, but I hope they think the character through first. Part of me feels that they should ditch Blofeld as well because they never quite seem to get him right. The cat and the scar and all that feels as retro to me as continually dusting off the Aston Martin.
What made CR work is that it all felt *fresh* again. Aside from M, Bond, and Leiter, it was showing us characters that we hadn't seen before in the Eon continuity: Vesper, Mathis, etc.
I think it’s fine for a vast majority of us.
There are more interesting baddies they can create than going over this ground again.
The belief is there are only six (some say seven) types of stories/plots.
But creative writers find a way of telling a story with a unique spin. So I’m afraid you’ll never get what you are truly looking for, @CrabKey .
Especially in film where producers literally want “the same, but different” (which is asking for one of these stories with a fresh spin).
There isn’t a story out there that hasn’t been told. So the writers for Bond will have to come up with a fresh spin on stories they’ve already told several times in the first twenty five films.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots
And that’s not a bad thing. It’s how genre movies work in general. Heck, it’s pretty much how all art works. It’s about what each individual work does with those basic story outlines, tropes etc.
The guy making electric vehicles is a villain!
For a second I thought, duh, it's Mads Mikkelsen!
Obviously, James Bond has to return. So, to Felix Leiter and even Rene Mathis would be okay for a fresh spin, in the next Bond eras films.
Leave the likes of Vesper and Madeleine in the past, along with the DB5!
It's a beautiful and legendary Bond car, but it's done its time. Let's try something new, Bond doesn't need the DB5 to be Bond.
Whilst Blofeld has been done in both the earlier films and the Craig era, and arguably better in the earlier films. The reintroduction of the character in the future need not be a negative. Following the Fleming character who changes his appearance and doesn't have a scar or a white cat would be a possible route.
I'm all for using story ideas from Fleming that have yet to make it into the films, along with Fleming characters that haven't been utilised yet. Sir James Molony for example.
There are many ways Bond can move forward, and still be James Bond. Without the need to place a homage to the past or bringing out the DB5 again.
I can assure you; I’ve never thought of a Bond story that’s never been told (because the ones that don’t get told are usually not told for a reason: they’re crap).
This is what I think as well. I like the idea of using Fleming characters who haven’t been used yet. Sir James Molony is a great idea @Benny I wouldn’t have thought about him. My top 5 would be Charmian Bond, Ronnie Vallance, Gala Brand, Loelia Ponsonby and May. As for the car, how about a Bentley? More true to the books. The main reason that I honestly assume Blofeld and Spectre will return is simply because they are Bond’s arch enemies. Maybe he can get the gold tooth finally!
Well that would be a change from the Craig era where Bond's personal car is the Aston Martin....................or at least it was in CR.
I like some of those ideas a lot, but I think the issue is they're simply concepts, which by all means should be fresh and inventive, even if just for Bond. They're not stories however. Some of them have been done before even just broadly in the 007 series (ie. Bond preventing someone from being assassinated is TLD. Bond infiltrating anything, whether it's football or Formula One, is a tried and tested story outline that we see, for example, in Fleming's DAF with Bond infiltrating a diamond smuggling operation, or OHMSS with Bond going undercover as Bray). I'm pretty sure the others have all been done in non-Bond films before. That's not to say they couldn't or shouldn't be done in a Bond movie by the way. I'd love for a Bond film to start with Bond going on a training mission which goes wrong/leaves him without gear (it sounds a bit like TLD's PTS with a bit of DAD's and SF's thrown in, but stretched out a bit into the main story, which has potential).
It's impossible for a Bond film not to have some sort of similarity to its predecessors. Again, they're formula based adventures. Short of having a Bond film with no villain, no Bond girl, no scheme for Bond to prevent etc. I'm not sure if a Bond story can be completely original. And that's fine. Doesn't mean it can't be fresh.