It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
This smells like.....we are perhaps heading towards an epic trilogy in which we actually SEE the character evolve from an ally towards a villain. Perhaps....Blofeld?
A "bald" villian...
Or a super-villian...
I'm really happy Waltz is on board for Bond 24!!!
As a Bond fan, why would you be concerned? That's like a Batman villain being concerned that they were going to put the Joker in a movie!!!
I know I'm in the minority on this but I don't think of Blofeld as Bond's nemesis. To me, he was just the main villain during a certain era, but that era is over. I'd rather they create a new iconic villain for the Craig era rather than just recycle stuff from the past.
he is a flexible villain. He was worked into both FRWL and DAF in the first go-around. Fleming didn't include him in those books.
Blofeld and Spectre can drive the going-forward originality that you crave.
Using Blofeld also saves having to keep dreaming up Blofeld supervillain knockoffs such as stromberg, zorin, movie-drax, gustav graves, trevelyan even, carver etc These baddies are all variations on the Blofeld supervillain template complete with organizations, big lairs, outlandish world destruction type schemes.
Quantum itself is just another variation of Spectre.
Just as easy to use the same guy and Spectre in different scenarios and with different actors and looks. Blofeld can be chameleon, as he was first time around, with 4 different actors plus a bald guy in a wheelchair.
Man From Uncle battled nothing but Thrush for 4 tv seasons and had plenty of variety.
personally I found both Stromberg and Drax to be Blofeld clones practically, and Zorin could just have easily been Blofeld. GF is just Blofeld but with a gold fetish. They are all rich supervillains with organizations and mad destructive schemes of global impact.
That's already been done. Why do it again? Not every Bond villain that came after Blofeld was a copy of him. We've had all kinds of colorful villains. Sanchez, Silva, Scaramanga, Elektra. All great villains who broke the mold. I want more original villains. Nobody stated that villains have to be like Blofeld. I don't want to see Blofeld again because his time came and went. There are lots of unused Fleming villains too. Tap those resources first before going back to the supposedly "Iconic" Blofeld. Besides. Everybody seems to have forgotten Mr. White. He's still around. He's got to pay for what he's done since he's pretty much responsible for Vesper's death. He has significance. In fact you could say he's Craig's Blofeld. He's still out there. Play with the cards your given before reaching into the discard pile.
This. Beside, nobody complains when Moriarty shows up in a Sherlock Holmes movie or the Joker in a Batman one. Because heroes have nemesis.
He started with Mr. Big and Drax, then graduated to the book-title villains Dr.No and Goldfinger, culminating with the biggest baddie of them all, the iconic chief of Spectre, one Ernst Stavro Blofeld, featured in no less than three major novels.
Eon wisely seized on the import of Spectre and made a point of insinuating it into the very first book adaptation, and maintained this continuity over 6 of the first 7 films (time-out for GF) and would have continued, but for Kevin McClory throwing up legal hurdles.
Now there is the chance to go back to Plan A (McClory is no longer a problem) and re-establish Bond vs Spectre as recurring nemesis. This approach also allows for linkage between films, to varying degrees as wanted.
I think its a far more realistic approach too (not that Bond need be pre-occupied with excessive duty to realism) in that a criminal organization of Spectre-like scope, constantly re-inventing itself, under a consistent charter of sorts, is more plausible, even in the fanciful Bond universe, than freshly minted new supervillains, such as Stromberg, movie-Drax, Zorin, Silva, Trevelyan, Carver, Graves, drug lords and Afghan princes as supervillains etc, popping up every 3 years to wreak havoc on the world.
Its like a supervillain epidemic.
With Spectre we get best of both worlds- continuity with Fleming's ultimate creation of villainy - and potential for both continuity and film linkage, along with maxium variety in terms of schemes, characters etc.
It would also re-focus the Craig era back on what it teased with Quantum ie a powerful criminal organization working behind the scenes to manipulate world events.
Quantum is easily devolved or evolved into Spectre.
Could not agree more! Right now is the perfect time to bring back Blofeld and Spectre to the Bond franchise, especially because of how Skyfall set up the iconic Bond template with M, Moneypenny, and Q. And to the nay-sayers who don't think Blofeld is going to happen, why do you think EON went out of their way to secure the McClory estate? They clearly have ambitions to bring Bond's iconic nemesis back, as they should. Is 43 years too soon for you people?
The priority for EON was avoiding any further McClory-esque rights debacles, not a fast-tracking of Blofeld/SPECTRE into the franchise. That's not to say they won't. I'm sure the conversation has been had many times, even before the issues were ultimately resolved. It's a very big call, not something that can be taken as lightly or voraciously as some on here seem to believe. Blofeld's return would set a very definite precedent for the franchise and would define it from thereon in for a long while.
I think the biggest move they could, and did ultimately chose to take with the franchise was re-booting it in the first place. When they had those discussions, I'm sure Blofeld was mentioned and parched out as a future development that would be revived within this new re-booted Bond universe.
I don't think resurrecting Blofeld is comparable. The films have survived the last 40 years without his presence, there is no immediate necessity, in fact will there ever be? To paraphrase Ian Malcolm, a lot of fans are so busy discussing whether EON could bring him back they don't stop to think if they should. I think it has to be carefully considered in the context of the legacy and not in the context of it being a cheap thrill, a DB5 moment, if you will.
The DB5 and Blofeld have fettered in the same number of films: 6, and yet I feel like the car has been thrown around a lot more, especially more recently, as a way to try and bring more Bond iconography to the film, and not given much thought. Blofeld on the other hand I agree requires some great forethought, but I believe that EON has already had that discussion and began laying the groundwork for his resurgence in QoS. I am not just some willy-nilly fan who says bring him back at the drop of a hat. I have given it a lot of thought, and it would be perfect to bring him back now, not just so the new films could have some connection to Fleming, and the original films, but also so that the character of Blofeld himself gets a better re-telling, more closely to the way he was depicted in the novels.
I agree that the return of Blofeld should be carefully planned. I still feel sore about the way they massacred Khan in Star trek: Into Darkness. And I still wonder if it would not be wiser to wait for Craig's successor to resurrect Blofeld. That said, I think the return of Blofeld can work and it may be happening now, especially with the rumoured casting of Christoph Waltz.
The ad nauseam standalone villains have honestly never been an issue though. It's just something you accept as part of the world of 007, same way we accept that Bond has miraculously never been killed in the line of duty. The tradition didn't even begin with the films. Fleming himself instituted the standalone-megalomaniac-without-end (until his Blofeld trilogy, of course, which he then ended and returned to the standalones). I'm not saying a recurring organization like Q. or S. shouldn't be part of cinematic Bond's future, but there certainly is no issue with going the standalone route forevermore.
Seconded!!!
Thirded!!!
Like Moneypenny? Like Q? Like Felix Leiter? How about M? I am all for original stories and characters. I am also all for going back to Fleming. It is only fanwankery if it is done wrong.
But in any case, the reintroduction of a Bond's nemesis is NOT a dead horse: it IS just as relevant as debates about say Moriarty in a Sherlock Holmes forum or a debate about Joker in Batman. Don't blame me if Blofeld happens to be Bond's nemesis. And don't give me the "but he couldn't kill Tracy in the new timeline" fallacy. Bond existed before Tracy.
We've had original stories and characters for 43 YEARS!!! 16 FILMS!!! How long do you have to wait? I understand wanting to have originality, but why don't you see how a lot of people also want something familiar! Whether you like it of not, Blofeld will come back, and I'm sure it will be sooner rather than later. And @Murdock, if you had to chose someone to play Blofeld, would Waltz not be a great candidate? Answer honestly now...