Bond villains have a long tradition of being exceptionally conscious of the benefits of science and technology. Some major advances in various fields of science and engineering have been explored and exploited by them and few were so ridiculous as to not be proven possible over the decades.
Doctor No took a leap in the field of radioactivity and long-distance communication disruptions. While the underlying physics was left extremely vague, the idea of generating enough power from nuclear fission to fuel a machine that produces incredibly strong waves of some type, needed for the toppling of missiles, seems reasonable enough. The Lector, though more of a MacGuffin, is a testament to increasing abilities in old-fashioned message decoding, forced into redundancy by the age of the computers, and allows us a glimpse into what was considered modern and hightech at the time. Applying lasers for all the energy they might project is what Goldfinger saw fit for his plans. Well, we do indeed have very powerful lasers nowadays. Goldfinger was also aware of the potential of harvesting nuclear power. SPECTRE then settled for nothing less than nuclear energy in its most destructive form and proceeded by conquering space. We turned to biological warfare next and returned to perfected laser technology after that. Our interest in new sources of energy culminated in a brand-new solar power tool, as even hitman Scaramanga understood its potential. The tracking devise, however the bloody thing operates, is what got Stromberg to almost drive his point home and Drax actually managed to launch a space shuttle before the rest of the world could. EMP resistant microchips formed the basis of Zorin's operations and indeed, we would want to posses those, wouldn't we? After all, what are a country's defences worth today when its computers fail? Enter Janus. Again we turn to EMP, this time in accordance with the theory that a nuclear blast in space will create a dangerous pulse and effectively disable all our electronic tools within a broad radius from the blast. Satellites can be used for disinformation, as demonstrated by Carver, which in this day and age can be an even more powerful weapon that the H-bomb. And lastly, we get to invisible cars. Not really a villain's invention but needless to say it's definitely something of a wet dream for most of us. Well, to be honest, research in the field of metamaterials is progressing so rapidly as we speak, the practical applications of invisibility might not be all that far away from us at this point.
I'm wondering though, where might our Bond villains (or Q) take us in the next couple of films? Will a Bond villain use quantum computers to hack all encrypted files, worldwide, within a microsecond? Will a Bond villain learn to master the power of nuclear fusion and become dominator of this world instantly? Will force fields, quantumteleportation, antimatter engines or superintelligent robots all find their way into our beloved franchise? Keep in mind please that most of these concepts are as we speak being taken very seriously by scientists and engineers all over the world, and could become common everyday reality in an unpredictably short amount of time. We could have any of these things as early as 2030 or even 2020 for all we know.
Do you have any ideas for future Bond villains? What are your thoughts on technological advances as major plot points in a Bond film? Are you bothered with the idea of James Bond amidst ultramodern things and would you rather have them keep 007 away from things that are entirely 21st century based or are you looking forward to major scientific breakthroughs being featured almost immediately in the Bonds, giving Bond a head start over the rest of the world?
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I know that there was such similar thing to Bond films already, but i couldn't think of anything better.
pandemics/epidemic/allkindofdemics masterminded by one truly evil villain Who hopefully does not look like Greene.
I think this is interesting. The great fear about Russia is that its nuclear capabilities could fall into the wrong hands or somehow otherwise fail (remember Y2K?), so I could see a plotline like yours happening. And of course Bond in Russia almost always works.