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Reflecting on the best Bond baddies in the 50 years of the screen 007
This guy doesn't think Silva will be especially memorable and he explains why. What do you think?
And do you agree with his "best baddies" list?
Bring on the bad guys
Reflecting on the best Bond baddies in the 50 years of the screen 007
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012 - 16:07
by Daniel Chan
EVERY time a new James Bond movie is announced, there’s tremendous interest in who’s the new Bond Girl and the latest Bond Villain.
In Skyfall, opening in cinemas here exactly three weeks from now, on Nov 1, the baddie Raoul Silva is portrayed by Oscar-winning Javier Bardem who had won Best Supporting Actor for his chilling turn as a relentless hitman whose weapon of choice is a pump-gun, in 2007’s Best Picture winner No Country For Old Men.
As cryptically hinted in the Skyfall trailer, Silva seems to have a connection to Bond’s MI6 boss, M (Judi Dench in the role for the seventh time since 1995). In a scene where Bond (Daniel Craig in his third outing as agent Double-O-Seven) has been take captive, Silva taunts: “She sent you to me knowing you are not ready, that you will most likely die... Mommy was very bad.”
Our judgment on whether Silva is one of the more outstanding Bond Villains will have to wait until we catch the movie, but the odds are against Silva being especially memorable.
For the sad truth is that the best Bond baddies on the big screen were mainly in the 1960s for the simple reason that the best Bond novels by British author Ian Fleming (1908-1964) were adapted during that decade.
Fleming had a knack for fashioning larger-than-life villains with sadistic quirks and unusual physical traits, not unlike comicbook baddies, such that Bond’s rogues gallery rivals that of Batman and Spider-Man.
And in most of Fleming’s Bond novels, 007 will get captured and tortured, with the megalomaniacal baddie egoistically revealing his nefarious scheme, allowing Bond to escape and die another day.
The greatest Bond Villain remains Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe should have been Oscarnominated for Best Supporting Actor) who also had the best retort. In the scene where Bond (Sean Connery in the role) lies spread-eagled on a slab of steel and a laser beam inches towards his crotch, our hero desperately asks “Do you expect me to talk?”, and in reply, Goldfinger mocks: “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”
Joining the front-row ranks of Goldfinger are Fu Manchustyled Dr Julius No with his metallic hands (played by Joseph Wiseman), lesbian Rosa Klebb with her poison-tipped shoe (Lotte Lenya), one-eyed Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) who’s as debonair as Bond, and Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) who tortures Bond with a thick rope swung against the hero’s genitals (in the novel, Le Chiffre used a carpet-beater).
In the first four Bond movies, the villains were all secretly working for an international crime cartel called Spectre whose leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who has a penchant for stroking his pet Persian cat, finally confronted Bond in a titanic trilogy from the fifth to seventh movies. Blofeld does not appear in this writer’s shortlist of best Bond baddies because his stature was spoilt by the casting of three different actors (first Donald Pleasance and then Telly Savalas, both bald, and finally Charles Gray with hair as in the novels).
The top four Bond baddies also had some of the most audacious and intriguing plots: sabotaging US missiles by sending them off-course (1962’s Dr No, which opened in the US on Oct 5, 1962, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis from Oct 16 to 28 in which the US and USSR almost engaged in nuclear warfare), humiliating Bond’s secret service agency MI6 by framing Bond in a sexand-murder scandal (1963’s From Russia With Love), making the US gold bullion reserves in Fort Knox, Kentucky worthless by detonating an atomic device there (1965’s Goldfinger) and blackmailing the world by hijacking nuclear warheads (1965’s Thunderball).
Finally, this focus would not be complete without a tip of the hat to the henchmen, a few of whom almost stole the show from their dastardly bosses, among them, femme fatales such as kiss-then-kill Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi in the role) in Thunderball and assassin Janssen) who slays her targets by suffocating them with her thighs in 1995’s GoldenEye.
For most Bond fans, the henchman who wins hands down remains bowler-hatted Oddjob with Harold Sakata well-cast as the silent but eversmiling manservant of Goldfinger (Sakata was an Olympic silver medalist in weightlifting and also a professional wrestler).
t’s examine the services rendered by the aptly-named Oddjob: chauffeur, butler, and caddie (even helping Goldfinger cheat when his employer played a round of gold with Bond). Above and beyond that, Oddjob slays pretty girls who had betrayed or threatened his master, notably, killing Goldfinger’s mistress Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton in an iconic role) by painting her in gold, and later on when Jill’s sister Tilly Masterson (played by Tania Mallet) tries to exact revenge on Goldfinger, Oddjob flings his steel-rimmed hat to break Tilly’s neck.
While the Bond villains are no longer as unforgettable as those during the Swinging Sixties, we fans will continue to expect the Bond film-makers to bring on the bad guys.
http://www.mmail.com.my/story/bring-bad-guys-33127
And do you agree with his "best baddies" list?
Bring on the bad guys
Reflecting on the best Bond baddies in the 50 years of the screen 007
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012 - 16:07
by Daniel Chan
EVERY time a new James Bond movie is announced, there’s tremendous interest in who’s the new Bond Girl and the latest Bond Villain.
In Skyfall, opening in cinemas here exactly three weeks from now, on Nov 1, the baddie Raoul Silva is portrayed by Oscar-winning Javier Bardem who had won Best Supporting Actor for his chilling turn as a relentless hitman whose weapon of choice is a pump-gun, in 2007’s Best Picture winner No Country For Old Men.
As cryptically hinted in the Skyfall trailer, Silva seems to have a connection to Bond’s MI6 boss, M (Judi Dench in the role for the seventh time since 1995). In a scene where Bond (Daniel Craig in his third outing as agent Double-O-Seven) has been take captive, Silva taunts: “She sent you to me knowing you are not ready, that you will most likely die... Mommy was very bad.”
Our judgment on whether Silva is one of the more outstanding Bond Villains will have to wait until we catch the movie, but the odds are against Silva being especially memorable.
For the sad truth is that the best Bond baddies on the big screen were mainly in the 1960s for the simple reason that the best Bond novels by British author Ian Fleming (1908-1964) were adapted during that decade.
Fleming had a knack for fashioning larger-than-life villains with sadistic quirks and unusual physical traits, not unlike comicbook baddies, such that Bond’s rogues gallery rivals that of Batman and Spider-Man.
And in most of Fleming’s Bond novels, 007 will get captured and tortured, with the megalomaniacal baddie egoistically revealing his nefarious scheme, allowing Bond to escape and die another day.
The greatest Bond Villain remains Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe should have been Oscarnominated for Best Supporting Actor) who also had the best retort. In the scene where Bond (Sean Connery in the role) lies spread-eagled on a slab of steel and a laser beam inches towards his crotch, our hero desperately asks “Do you expect me to talk?”, and in reply, Goldfinger mocks: “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”
Joining the front-row ranks of Goldfinger are Fu Manchustyled Dr Julius No with his metallic hands (played by Joseph Wiseman), lesbian Rosa Klebb with her poison-tipped shoe (Lotte Lenya), one-eyed Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) who’s as debonair as Bond, and Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) who tortures Bond with a thick rope swung against the hero’s genitals (in the novel, Le Chiffre used a carpet-beater).
In the first four Bond movies, the villains were all secretly working for an international crime cartel called Spectre whose leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who has a penchant for stroking his pet Persian cat, finally confronted Bond in a titanic trilogy from the fifth to seventh movies. Blofeld does not appear in this writer’s shortlist of best Bond baddies because his stature was spoilt by the casting of three different actors (first Donald Pleasance and then Telly Savalas, both bald, and finally Charles Gray with hair as in the novels).
The top four Bond baddies also had some of the most audacious and intriguing plots: sabotaging US missiles by sending them off-course (1962’s Dr No, which opened in the US on Oct 5, 1962, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis from Oct 16 to 28 in which the US and USSR almost engaged in nuclear warfare), humiliating Bond’s secret service agency MI6 by framing Bond in a sexand-murder scandal (1963’s From Russia With Love), making the US gold bullion reserves in Fort Knox, Kentucky worthless by detonating an atomic device there (1965’s Goldfinger) and blackmailing the world by hijacking nuclear warheads (1965’s Thunderball).
Finally, this focus would not be complete without a tip of the hat to the henchmen, a few of whom almost stole the show from their dastardly bosses, among them, femme fatales such as kiss-then-kill Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi in the role) in Thunderball and assassin Janssen) who slays her targets by suffocating them with her thighs in 1995’s GoldenEye.
For most Bond fans, the henchman who wins hands down remains bowler-hatted Oddjob with Harold Sakata well-cast as the silent but eversmiling manservant of Goldfinger (Sakata was an Olympic silver medalist in weightlifting and also a professional wrestler).
t’s examine the services rendered by the aptly-named Oddjob: chauffeur, butler, and caddie (even helping Goldfinger cheat when his employer played a round of gold with Bond). Above and beyond that, Oddjob slays pretty girls who had betrayed or threatened his master, notably, killing Goldfinger’s mistress Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton in an iconic role) by painting her in gold, and later on when Jill’s sister Tilly Masterson (played by Tania Mallet) tries to exact revenge on Goldfinger, Oddjob flings his steel-rimmed hat to break Tilly’s neck.
While the Bond villains are no longer as unforgettable as those during the Swinging Sixties, we fans will continue to expect the Bond film-makers to bring on the bad guys.
http://www.mmail.com.my/story/bring-bad-guys-33127
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