Getting back to basics with James Bond

Trump is Goldfinger ….. Musk is Hugo Drax ….. Putin is the male version of Rosa Klebb ….. But who is Bond ?? !! ??

I agree with what some have said about weaker villains in the newer films ….. For me the villain makes the film and is essential ….. more recent films were full of villains that were not very good ….. let's take a quick look at villains …..

Dr No set things in motion …. mysterious, scary, intelligent and feared …. he set the bar …. From Russia With Love followed and introduced Blofeld ….. Rosa Klebb was a scary female villain and was the 3rd in control of the terrorist group SPECTRE …. Grant (in the novel a Northern Irish tough guy who worked all sides) set the bar high for henchman/enforcer …..

Goldfinger is often cited as the definitive Bond …. practically defining the Connery and Lazenby eras ….. and it gave us the combo of the iconic villain the film is called after and the North Korean henchman Oddjob ….. this set up continued to give good Bond films since then ….. the Mafia lord Largo in Thunderball was another worthy villain ….. and the original Blofeld as main villain in You Only Live Twice/On Her Majesty's Secret Service/Diamonds Are Forever further solidified what a villain was to be ….. Blofeld was planned to appear again in the Roger Moore era but court cases only restricted him to a cameo in For Your Eyes Only …..

Mr Big/Dr Kananga in Live and Let Die was inventive …… drug dealer in America and dictator of a fictional Africanised island …. plus Tee Hee was the best henchman in ages ….. Scaramanga was a great villain in The Man With the Golden Gun apart from him not given an actual real dastardly plan ….. this Solex thing was not really evil ….. perhaps the court cases prevented Scaramanga from being a member of SPECTRE hired to take out Bond which could have been a better plan …. but he was a great villain ….. Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me and Elon Musk, er Hugo Drax!!, from Moonraker were great too …. good Blofeld like villains ……

For Your Eyes Only was a more grounded Bond film that its immediate predecessors ….. but Kristatos is appropriately creepy and evil ….. plus the KGB agent cum Olympics athlete is a good henchman ….. the unofficial Never Say Never Again remade Thunderball with updates …. and had good villains I felt ….. albeit the same ones more or less as Thunderball of course …..

Octopussy took the move to make an actual Russian general (as distinct from a former Russian KGB agent or a foreigner working for Russia) the bad guy …. coupled with suave deposed Iranian Prince Kamal Khan it set a template that would be revisited in a Dalton and a Brosnan film ….. good solid villains overall but the film chose to have a good Russian deal with the bad general …..

A View To A Kill is often unfairly slated ….. it was Moore's last film and yes he was too old in it ….. but …… Max Zorin may well be the greatest villain of them all ….. well and truly crazed, he was totally unhinged in a way no villain was before ….. Moore's era went out with the best villain ….

Timothy Dalton's Bond copied the Octopussy template in The Living Daylights …… a crooked American arms dealer and another rogue Russian general ….. Bond dealt with the American and a good Russian took care of the general ….. the villains were solid, the film was excellent and the themes were very Fleming …..

Drug dealer Franz Sanchez in Licence to Kill was vicious and violent ….. one could argue that he belonged more in Miami Vice but he was a superb villain and it was good to see Bond fit into a different type of setting …. Dalton navigated the Bond/Miami Vice hybrid well and the film used some Fleming material that was deemed to violent for an earlier film in the series …..

Brosnan's era provided the last decent villains in my view …. Travelyan/006 in Goldeneye saw Bond up against one of his own gone rogue ….. this was copied again but Travelyan was the best incarnation of a rogue agent ….. like Octopussy and The Living Daylights he is coupled with yet another rogue Russian general ….. Tomorrow Never Dies was way ahead of its time …. Elliot Carver is a pure fake news/deep fake style villain and a refreshing take on the old Blofeld/Strombery/Drax types of the past ….. Tomorrow Never Dies is among the most underrated films of the series …..

The World is Not Enough kind of brought in a female villain as the main villain …. albeit coupled with a male terrorist and mercenary who seemed to be inspired by those in the then Yugoslav conflicts ….. I am unsure if these villains worked 100% but they were different …..

Die Another Day was a crazy over the top film ….. love it or hate it, this was one film that was larger than life and deliberately far fetched …… invisible car anyone !!! ….. so the absurd Gustav Graves and his weird origin story is par for the course ….. weird and absurd as he may be, he may be the last proper villain in the series ……

Casino Royale 2006 (not 1967!!!) is a great film ….. but as with the book it is not meant to have a true villain in it ….. Le Chiffre is a great character but he is ultimately an operative who follows orders ….. and meets his end via his own as in the novel …..but unlike Fleming who followed Le Chiffre up with a series of strong SMERSH villains, the rest of Craig's films presented poor villains in my view ….

Dominic Greene from Quantum of Solace was hardly doing anything truly sinister ….. a scarce water plot worked better in Mad Max than Bond too ….. the South American general/dictator was better but underused ….. still and all I enjoyed QoS but not for its villain or plot …..

Skyfall was truly great …. but the villain was someone I didn't know whether to hate or feel sorry for ….. M came across as cold and uncaring to him thus this guy had a point …. he did not seem to have the evil of Goldeneye's Travelyan who he is based on ….

Blofeld in SPECTRE and No Time To Die is not as good as the one in Connery's and Lazenby's era ….. a horrid backstory ruins it and no nuclear extortion plot given to him ….. it just did not feel like SPECTRE ….. the main villain in No Time To Die and his 'smart Covid' pandemic sort of fell flat after the real pandemic delayed its release …. that Bond was supposedly killed off by a rather ordinary villain I do not think rang true either with the nature of the franchise …..

Elektra King was defo a main bad girl …. at least equal to Renard ….. Rosa Klebb was the 3rd in Command in SPECTRE next to just Blofeld and Largo making her the highest placed villain in From Russia With Love ….. Irma Bunt was most likely Blofeld's girlfriend and while not said prob had a high up SPECTRE number ….. and was the one who killed Tracy …..