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SPECTRE: In Particular, Ernst Stavro Blofeld
MaxCasino
United States
A thread for the arch enemy of James Bond: Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Let's discuss his impact, past, present and future with James Bond. Books, movies and even video games are welcome. I know we'll see him again in the movies, properly with the next actor. I still think he should get his own spinoff book set in the modern day.
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💯 % @007ClassicBondFan
Yes, that's a style that should never be taken away from the character. Blofeld should always be in the shadows. In one way or another. He should also never be killed off.
I would love to read that. I'm also curious how he is in Agent of Spectre.
Same, waiting for it's release in hardcover
Favourite ESB for me is still the unseen one from the earliest films, but Telly's comes VERY close. Hope we 'unsee' him in future films, albeit not too soon.
That's hilarious.
My hot take is that I'd love for ESB to return right away, but exactly as you describe... and maybe only at the end of the film.
A bit of Blofeld trivia I posted elsewhere, but shall be noted in this thread:
Telly Savalas had a deformed left index finger, as noticed in the film. In the following film, the close-up of Gray's Blofeld handling the satellite control cassette at his desk shows the stand-in hand model has a damaged right middle fingertip. Pure coincidence, or an attempt to give fanatics the OHMSS-DAF continuity they so crave?
It took until the Ate post of this thread for someone to address the word 'Starvo'.
Me too. It’s certainly been delayed more than enough!
For future casting for Blofeld, I think that Peter Sarsgaard would be a possible decent choice. Someone who could work well behind the scenes, but could hold their own in a fight. Personally not afraid to get their own hands dirty.
He'd be an interesting choice for Ernst Stavro for sure.
"Stop getting Bond wrong!" ;)
I'm afraid you got me with "eejit". Does it have something to do with Egypt?
Ah, yes, sorry. It's from Irish dialect and is just another way of saying "idiot".
There's another one. "It Seems There Are More QoS Appreciators Than Thought Before".
Fellas, it's not so hard to spel properly, you know?
One that I've noticed for ages is the Birthday thread where "thoses" is used instead of "those".
I alwas like to spel properly (at the risk of you having made that error on purpose as I did here, mind you).
Anyway, typos do occur. It's just that the premier JB007 board should be able to spell the No. 1 villain of the franchise right.
I didn't even notice the misspelling in this thread title until it was pointed out as my brain helpfully tries to rearrange words so that they're spelled correctly when you look at them! I've heard this is something not just exclusive to myself. It can make spotting errors a little more difficult though.
And maybe you should have mentioned it?
It's annoyed me for a good few years but I was too polite to point of out. If I find I've missed a typo in one of my posts I always go back and edit it to correct the mistake. I suppose it's something of the perfectionist in me but I like things to be right.
Yes not a fan of Jesse's Luthor.
Interesting idea, but didn't have a lot of layers. He was an entitled brat and it wore thin very fast...
I think if Blofeld was to be recast, I want somebody who can physically match the next Bond actor. Even though the character was kept in Shadows, I’ve always felt like the Blofeld of FRWL/TB was much more of an equal to Bond than any of the on screen performances (save for perhaps Telly Savalas.) I can picture the Dawson/Pohlmann Blofeld as being just as physically fit, dangerous, and handsome as Bond; in a word his equal.
Most of Blofeld's fascination comes from the fact that, like Moriarty or Mabuse, the direct influences on the character, he's a shadowy figure who takes the spotlight in later times. He was the man behind the curtain, there were a few details like the Persian cat, but otherwise he was a figure mostly left to the imagination of the original audiences for FRWL and TB, and it took three films to finally see him.
Today, the character and his quirks are so much engrained in our collective memories, because of the past films, the Blofeld-in-all-but-name (like Stromberg or Drax) the rip-offs and the various parodies that it's very hard to build some serious mystique around him, and his appearances in DAF or FYEO don't help either. You can't have the ringleader for a global criminal organization that Bond fights and who remains offscreen for a couple of films, and not think immediately about Blofeld. White cat on screen? Blofeld. Nehru shirt? Blofeld. That's also why the belated reveal was so much disappointing in Spectre. It wasn't just dedicated fans who had guessed early. Everybody and their grandma could see it coming from miles away, when an Austrian actor was hired months after EON had bought the full rights to a certain German-sounding character and had named the film Spectre. So the reveal of Franz Oberhauser's new identity never had the ring Sam Mendes supposed it could have.
However, what I find extremely interesting is that due to the settlement, the films are free to feature a recurring villain or a recurring organization without getting sued by some patent troll, which is the most important thing. Blofeld himself had been mostly done right in the sixties if we consider the FRWL-TB-OHMSS progression, all that was missing was a proper conclusion, and it wasn't DAF or the pre-titles scene from FYEO. However, I think that NTTD more or less closes the book on Blofeld, even if the figure was split there between Oberhauser/actual Blofeld and Safin, who had antecedents with Bond's love interest instead of Bond himself.
The films can now have some new SPECTRE, with a different leader who turns out to be a formidable threat in their own original way. They can have stuff in common with Blofeld, they can even be related to some Ernst Stavro Blofeld, it just takes making up a good villain who's too smart to be detected by the regular intelligence and to be disposed of by the end of the movie.