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Comments
That'd be a great concept for a future villain. Someone who's so vain they clearly have remnants of cosmetic surgery rather than facial scars/the need to cover anything up.
The literary Blofeld famously used plastic surgery to alter his appearance while he was on the run from Interpol etc. so that could be used in a future film if they ever bring Blofeld back again.
They could even give it to a different villain for similar reasons. I dunno, say if there was a villain with a similar backstory to Drax from the MR novel (a billionaire with a secret backstory essentially) you could depict him with things like a bad facelift, a strange hair transplant, maybe even funny coloured contact lenses, but instead of it being to hide facial scars it's simply to disguise his face so he doesn't get recognised.
If they really wanted to subvert things further with such a character the film could initially state that the character has facial scars due to some 'heroic' reason like being in a War or saving people in a horrific event, hence the need for cosmetic alterations. As Bond investigates he realises the villain hasn't actually been in such an event, and that the facial scars themselves are fake/due to plastic surgery so that the villain can hide from whoever it is he's running from.
Love it :-bd
Thank you. I'll ring Barbara and see if we can get it into Bond 26 (she never returns my calls though... strange, didn't think she was that busy).
It would be in keeping with Fleming, for sure.
I think Ian Fleming kept on with an old 19th century notion regarding the villain: the appearance must be off, enough to make "normal" people around him uncomfortable, but nothing too blatant as to make him come off as a monster or deformed. Something akin to the uncanny valley. Both Dracula and Edward Hyde look strange, but there's nothing specific. It's easier to convey in literature than on a visual medium and that's why the Bond films use short cuts such as scars. I think the closest they came to the literary approach was with Silva. Taken individually, every little oddity (the blonde hair, the false teeth, the lisp when he speaks) doesn't really seem much, but added together Silva comes off as unsettling, his "fake" beauty turning him ugly.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2550473/Gaddafis-plastic-surgeon-tells-operations-bunker-WITHOUT-anaesthetic-despot-afraid-murdered.html
I love that that the Mail's website shows me an ad immediately under the story saying '13 top beauty secrets for pampering ‘You’ time'. Unbelievable.
That's a great observation: Silva really is closer to Fleming's conception of a villain than most. in much the same way that to me, the crater base in Spectre felt more like a Fleming book than most of the films which were actual adaptations of his books. Something about the atmosphere is just right.
And I do think Silva is kind of the acceptable way of doing 'disfigurement' as an evil trait, because in his case it really is a sign of his twisted mental state; rather than being the other way around and placing a stigma on anyone who has a birth defect or scar. I'd have no problem with them going back to the idea of excessive cosmetic surgery.
:)) Brilliant - you couldn't script it any better, eh!
Must have been a fan of Laurence Olivier's Richard III. Unfortunately nothing about him seemed especially menacing. Telly Savalas, who arguably should have been a preposterous choice, was actually a great Blofeld. Charming, witty, and dangerous.