Another summer has passed without a new Bond movie. Indeed, we're no closer to knowing who will be the first 007 to represent His Majesty's Secret Service. But, as Cinema Paradiso marks the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger and the 50th of The Man With the Golden Gun, the focus falls on the villains whose ingenious schemes and sinister sidekicks are crucial to the franchise's wit, suspense, and spectacle.
If the 25 films in the Eon series have taught us anything, it's that James Bond would be just another 00 without the various sociopaths, warmongers, megalomaniacs, and loose cannons he has prevented from achieving world domination. Among the rogues' gallery are mad scientists, double agents, druglords, corrupt generals, media barons, financial tycoons, terrorists, and criminal masterminds. And that's before we've even mentioned SMERSH or SPECTRE.
Iconic heroes need hissable villains and - whether in the guise of Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, or Daniel Craig - 007 has encountered numerous fiendish foes whose dastardly schemes have brought out the best (and occasionally the worst) in him. Invariably secreted in an elaborately futuristic lair, each Bond baddie has a way with words. They also deserve credit for their recruitment skills, as they have always had a small army of ruthlessly cunning sidekicks, murderously alluring femmes fatales, and blindly loyal henchlings at their disposal.
Although less dramatically than Doctor Who's, James Bond's personality changes with each new incumbency. Yet, despite the rumours surrounding Aaron Taylor-Johnson (among countless others), we still wait to see who will be next to receive a licence to kill. One thing is for sure, however, his nemesis will be larger than life, recklessly ambitious, criminously creative, and quick with a quip. For all the devastating brilliance of their outlandish plans, however, Bond villains always have a chink in their armour.
GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995)
BOND: Pierce Brosnan
VILLAIN: Alec 'Janus' Trevelyan (Sean Bean)
BACKSTORY: Born into a family of Lienz Cossacks, Alec Trevelyan was six years old when the Russian and Ukrainian brigades that had fought against the Soviet Union surrendered to the Allies in Austria. However, Joseph Stalin had insisted at the Yalta Conference that all renegade Cossacks were repatriated. As a result of Operation Keelhaul, Trevelyan's parents were sent to a Gulag, where he was orphaned when his father killed his mother before taking his own life.
While still young, Trevelyan was smuggled out of the USSR by MI6, whose profilers reckoned that he had been too young to have been traumatised by these childhood events. Sponsored and educated by the agency, the 18 year-old Trevelyan started operating as 006. Indeed, he was friends with James Bond and they undertook several missions together. While sabotaging the Archangelsk chemical weapons plant in 1986, however, Trevelyan conspires with base commander, Colonel Ourumov (Gottfried John), to fake his own execution with a bullet to the head. However, the right side of his face is severely scarred when 007 changes the length of the fuses on some limpet mines and Trevelyan is unable to escape before they detonate.
FIENDISH PLAN: Adopting the name Janus from the two-headed Roman god of beginnings and endings, Trevelyan plots his revenge on Britain for betraying his people and causing his father to die of shame. As the head of a crime syndicate, he steals an electromagnetically insulated Tiger helicopter from a French frigate and flies to the GoldenEye facility in Severnaya in Siberia, where he steals the access codes to Petya and Mischa, a pair of nuclear-armed satellites whose missiles generate electromagnetic pulses that are capable of destroying any machinery with an electronic signal. Janus's target is the Bank of England, from which he aims to electronically purloin millions of pounds, while also erasing the institution's financial records, thus, bankrupting Britain, and causing a global economic crisis.
HQ & QUIRKS: Janus rides around in a luxurious customised Soviet train, which has armour plating, CCTV surveillance, a helipad, and an intercontinental ballistic missile. When not hiding out in an abandoned graveyard, he bases himself at a radio transmitting site in the Cuban jungle, where an artificial lake hides the giant dish needed to activate the GoldenEye satellites.
As a former 00 agent, Trevelyan has much in common with James Bond. They are both orphans and received the same MI6 training, with the result that Janus shares Bond's ability to manipulate people, turn situations to his advantage, and fight his way out of tight corners with honed hand-to-hand combat skills and unerring marksmanship. But, while they are both sophisticated, charismatic, cunning, and ruthless, Janus is also embittered, egotistical, and immoral. He considers himself superior to his rival ('You know, James, I was always better.') and delights in seeking to blow him to pieces on the missile train: 'I've set the timers for six minutes...the same six minutes you gave me. It was the least I can do for a friend.'
QUIPS: 'I might as well ask if all the vodka martinis ever silenced the screams of all the men you've killed, or if you ever found forgiveness in all those willing women for all of the dead ones you failed to protect.'
SIDEKICKS: Colonel Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov (Gottfried John) - Having served with the Soviet Space Division before seeing action in Afghanistan, Ourumov joined the Janus Crime Syndicate while commanding the chemical weapons facility at Arkhangelsk. He helps Trevelyan fake his death and recruits his key henchlings, although he personally participates in the theft of the Tiger helicopter and exploits his position at Severnaya to steal the satellite codes and destroy the base; Colonel Xenia Zaragevna Onatopp (Femke Janssen) - born in Georgia, this former fighter pilot joined Janus after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A pitiless assassin, who derives sexual gratification from killing victims with her thighs, she slaughters the Severnaya workforce, with the unknowing exception of programmer Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco); Boris Ivanovich Grishenko (Alan Cumming) - a computer programmer at Severnaya who was disliked by colleagues for his boorishness, he defects to Janus, while retaining Natalya's trust after 'surviving' the massacre. However, he has been spirited to Cuba to control Petya and Mischa.
TRIVIA: Having auditioned to play Bond in John Glenn's The Living Daylights (1987), Sean Bean was cast as Janus. In early drafts of the screenplay, Augustus Trevelyan was in his sixties and had no connection with the Lienz Cossacks. His surname was supposedly borrowed from John Trevelyan, the head of the British Board of Film Censors in the 1960s, who had insisted on several cuts in the early series entries to earn them an A certificate, instead of an X. Alec's status changed from 001 to 004 when Anthony Hopkins and Alan Rickman were in the running for the role. But he was confirmed as 006 because Bean and Brosnan (who did all their own stunts) were of a similar age.
Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997)
BOND: Pierce Brosnan
VILLAIN: Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce)
BACKSTORY: Born illegitimately in Hong Kong to a German woman and British press baron, Lord Roverman, Elliot Carver was sold as a baby to a Chinese family for £50. Having worked for a local newspaper as a youth, he left college with a degree in the communication arts and found a niche presenting weather forecasts on a Hong Kong TV station. On becoming the network's anchorman, he developed a reputation for harassing female staff before he inherited the Roverman empire after driving his blackmailed father to suicide.
Since rebranding the business as the Carver Media Group Network and relocating it to Germany, Carver has started to use his stations and publications to manipulate world affairs to his own advantage. In addition to holding the US president hostage with a cheerleader video, he also spreads Mad Cow Disease rumours to impact Anglo-French relations. He even has glitches built into his own software to coerce users into purchasing upgrades.
FIENDISH PLAN: As he has been denied broadcasting rights in China, Carver sets about overthrowing the government to replace it with one more sympathetic to his ambitions. He has cyber-terrorist Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay) send HMS Devonshire off course into Chinese waters, where he has it sunk by drill torpedoes fired by Richard Stamper (Götz Otto) from a stealth craft he has had specially constructed. Having used one of Devonshire's missiles to shoot down two Chinese military jets, Stamper blows up the British frigate with stolen Chinese munitions in the hope that his actions will start an Anglo-Chinese war that will bring down the Beijing regime.
HQ & QUIRKS: While he has a skyscraper in the Vietnamese city of Saigon, Carver's main base of operations is Germany. The presses that print the Tomorrow newspaper are located in Frankfurt, while the main CMGN headquarters are housed in a purpose-built high-rise in Hamburg. This is also where his global satellites and less benign equipment are designed and manufactured.
Carver is married to Paris McKenna (Teri Hatcher), who used to date James Bond. As a vain man who considers himself superior to everyone around him, this association bothers him and makes him more determined to eliminate 007 when M dispatches him to investigate after the government gives MI6 48 hours to avert a war with China.
QUIPS: 'Soon I'll have reached out to and influenced more people than anybody in the history of this planet, save God himself. And the best he ever managed was the Sermon on the Mount.'
SIDEKICKS: Richard Stamper (Götz Otto) - A protégé of Carver's trusted assassin, Dr Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli), Stamper is head of security at CMGN and the media mogul's chief henchman. In addition to carrying out the Devonshire operation, he is also sent to capture Bond when he starts snooping around; Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay) - having masterminded the South China Seas episode by designing the encoder that Meaconed the Devonshire's GPS signal, this skilled cyber-terrorist aims stolen British missiles at Beijing on Carver's orders; General Chang (Philip Kwok) - a senior figure in the Chinese military, who has entered into a conspiracy with Carver to seize power in Beijing and award CMGN an exclusive 100-year media contract.
TRIVIA: For the second Bond movie in a row, Anthony Hopkins turned down the role of the principal villain (he opted to make Martin Campbell's The Mask of Zorro instead). Named Elliot Harmsway in early drafts, Carver was based on disgraced press baron, Robert Maxwell, although his proposed 'Declaration of Principles' echoed the one issued in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) by Charles Foster Kane, who was modelled on press tycoon, William Randolph Hearst, who was played by Kevin Tighe in Paul Mazursky's Winchell (1998), James Cromwell in Ridley Scott's RKO 281 (1999), Edward Herrmann in Peter Bogdanovich's The Cat's Meow (2001), Matthew Marsh in Agnieszka Holland's Mr Jones (2019), Charles Dance in David Fincher's Mank (2020), and Pat Skipper in Damien Chazelle's Babylon (2021).
The World Is Not Enough (Michael Apted, 1999)
BOND: Pierce Brosnan
VILLAIN: Elektra King (Sophie Marceau)
BACKSTORY: On marrying his second wife, Scottish construction tycoon Sir Robert King added his father-in-law's oil business to his portfolio. Educated at exclusive schools and summering with her Azerbaijani relatives in the Middle East, daughter Elektra became used to luxury and getting her own way. This extended to running King Enterprises on her own terms and using her brains and beauty to manipulate the media.
The publicity, however, prompted the anarchist and former KGB agent, Renard (Robert Carlyle), to kidnap the teenager. When MI6 chief, M (Judi Dench), advises Sir Robert not to pay the ransom, Elektra becomes Renard's lover and conspires with him to extort money from her father, even mutilating her own right ear to raise the stakes. On being released, she resumes her old life, while feigning trauma from her ordeal, and seduces James Bond when he shows her concern as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
FIENDISH PLAN: Elektra resents the fact that her father inherited the oil wealth she believes should have gone to her mother. When he fails to ransom her, she connives with Renard to attack MI6 headquarters and kill Sir Robert and M. She then has Renard threaten to blow up the main Russian oil pipeline. But her real intention is to use a submarine to detonate a nuclear device in the Bosphorus and cause such lasting contamination that the world's oil traders will be forced to use the King pipeline at inflated prices.
HQ & QUIRKS: Having developed a distaste for the King family seat of Glen Darrock, Elektra prefers to live in the lap of luxury on an estate outside Baku. Filling her opulent bedroom with family portraits, she has a small study and a large garden, at the far end of which is a barracks for her extensive security detail.
In addition to being spoilt and manipulative, Elektra also harbours resentments. She also has a penchant for torture, hence strapping 007 into a device designed to snap his spine using a metal rod. Elektra is also an accomplished actress, who convinces everyone that she is Renard's victim, when she's actually his boss.
QUIPS: 'Let's keep it simple. One card. High draw. A million dollars.'
SIDEKICKS: Victor 'Renard' Zokas (Robert Carlyle) - The illegitimate product of a one-night stand between a Bosniak and a Muscovite lush, Renard was raised in poverty with his three half-sisters. Running away as a youth, he joined the Soviet military, where his disregard for discipline led to him being recruited by the KGB as an assassin. Dismissed after the break-up of the USSR, Renard went freelance and undertook hits around the world. Enamoured of Elektra, he abducted her, only to fall under her spell. When 009 was dispatched to rescue her, Renard was left with a bullet in his brain that renders both unable to feel pain and invincibly strong; Gabor (John Senu) - born on the Fijian island of Beqa, he is Elektra's trusted bodyguard and an accomplice in her scheme to irradiate Istanbul; Sasha Davidov (Ulrich Thomsen) - a terrorist who acts as Elektra's head of security, the Ukrainian is sent to kill Bond in Azerbaijan with Russian atomic scientist, Mikhail Arkov (Jeff Nutall), and a band of Parahawks on their paragliding snowmobiles.
TRIVIA: Elektra King is based on American media heiress Patty Hearst, whose kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army is related in Paul Schrader's Patty Hearst (1988) and Robert Stone's Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2005). Hearst herself is a favourite of director John Waters, with the Pope of Trash casting her in Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), Cecil B. DeMented (2000), and A Dirty Shame (2004).
Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori, 2002)
BOND: Pierce Brosnan
VILLAIN: Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens)
BACKSTORY: In the hope his son can find a way of bridging the gap between East and West, Moon (Kenneth Tsang), a high-ranking North Korean general, sends son Tan-Sun Moon (Will Yun Lee) to Oxford and Harvard. However, he makes contacts in the murky worlds of diamond smuggling and hi-tec weaponry that enable him to establish a base in the Demilitarised Zone from which he aims to reunite the Korean Peninsula.
When MI6 sends James Bond to investigate the diamond racket, Moon tries to shoot down his helicopter with a Tankbuster. However, when 007 survives, Moon appears to plunge to his death after a hovercraft chase. But he remains alive and travels to Cuba, where Dr Alvarez (Simón Andreu) performs the DNA replacement therapy that transforms Moon into the Eurasian, Gustav Graves. He claims to be an orphan, who started out working in the diamond mines of Argentina before stumbling across an enormous mine in Iceland. In fact, the Graves Corporation was actually founded on laundered African conflict diamonds and Graves's philanthropy is merely a front for his grand plan.
FIENDISH PLAN: Graves has built a satellite named Icarus, which he claims will harness solar energy to improve farming in the Developing World and eradicate poverty. However, Icarus is a super-laser and Graves plans to use it to decimate the DMZ and give troops from the Democratic People's Republic free access into South Korea.
HQ & QUIRKS: Graves is based at his fake diamond mine in Iceland, where he has established his headquarters in a bio-dome. Next to this, he builds an Ice Palace to demonstrate how Icarus can bring light and warmth to the world. However, when he discovers that National Security Agency operative Giancinta 'Jinx' Johnson (Halle Berry) has infiltrated the structure, he destroys it in a bid to kill her.
Graves shares Moon's arrogance and short temper. But he jokes that he has modelled his new persona on 007, whom he confronts in a fencing duel overseen by Blades Club instructor, Verity (Madonna). Despite purporting to be an ecologist, Graves has a large collection of sports cars and an inability to sleep that is a legacy of his DNA treatment.
QUIPS: 'We only met briefly, but you left a lasting impression. You see, when your intervention forced me to present the world with a new face, I chose to model the disgusting Gustav Graves on you. Oh, just in the details. That unjustifiable swagger, the crass quips, the self-defence mechanism concealing such inadequacy...'
SIDEKICKS: Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) - Having met Moon at Harvard, she won fencing gold at the 2000 Olympics after he nobbled her opponent. While supervising publicity for the Graves Corporation, Frost operates undercover for M (Judi Dench). Yet, she betrays Bond in North Korea, resulting in him being tortured by General Moon for 14 months; Tang Ling Zao (Rick Yune) - having helped Tan-Sun Moon arm his DMZ complex, Zao has his face disfigured in a showdown with 007. Part of the prisoner exchange that sees Bond return to London, Zao becomes Graves's key henchman and is ordered to eliminate Jinx when she shows up at the Ice Palace; Vladimir Popov (Mikhail Gorevoy) - the Russian scientist who designs the Icarus Space Programme and the armoured battle suit that has to be worn when operating it; Mr Kil (Lawrence Makoare) - head of security at the Ice Palace, Kil (who is informed by Bond that he has a name to die for) is ordered by Zao to zap Jinx with a laser.
TRIVIA: Elements of Gustav Graves's backstory were lifted from Hugo Drax's in Ian Fleming's 1955 novel, Moonraker, which saw a fleeing Nazi assume a new identity after the war. In another literary nod, the name Tan-Sun Moon was chosen in homage to Colonel Sun, a 1968 official James Bond spin-off novel, which was written by Kingsley Amis under the pen name of Robert Markham. Salma Hayek, Saffron Burrows, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor were considered for the role of Jinx before Halle Berry was cast and emerged from the sea in a bikini in imitation of Ursula Andress's Honey Rider in Terence Young's Dr No (1962).
Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006)
BOND: Daniel Craig
VILLAIN: Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen)
BACKSTORY: Believed to be Albanian by birth, Le Chiffre is a private banker who finances terrorist organisations, including Al-Qaeda. A brilliant mathematician with a unique gift for reading the markets and the odds in games of chance, he made a fortune in airline stocks by exploiting his foreknowledge of 9/11. However, when the mysterious Mr White (Jesper Christensen) asks Le Chiffre to launder some money for Ugandan Steven Obanno (Isaach de Bankolé), who is a leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, he invests it in SkyFleet, an aerospace manufacturer that is about to launch a new plane. His plan is to short the company by destroying the S570 before its maiden flight. However, James Bond thwarts two bids to sabotage the plane and Le Chiffre faces ruin after losing over $100 million.
FIENDISH PLAN: Needing to recoup his losses before any of his clients discover that he gambles with their money, Le Chiffre enters a high-stakes poker tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. M (Judi Dench) sends Bond to compete against him, in the hope of coercing Le Chiffre into revealing the contents of his contact book. The banker proves too good, however, and cleans Bond out. But, when he returns to the table after being bankrolled by the CIA, Le Chiffre resorts to spiking Bond's drink.
HQ & QUIRKS: Although his base of operations isn't shown, Le Chiffre is seen aboard a luxury yacht. The Sunseeker Predator 108 has a large stateroom, where Le Chiffre plays cards while visiting the Bahamas with Madame Wu. She was played by Tsai Chin, who had appeared as Ling in Lewis Gilbert's You Only Live Twice (1967).
In addition to requiring an asthma inhaler, Le Chiffre also suffers from haemolacria, which causes him to weep blood from a damaged tear duct in his left eye. He has bichromatic eyes, with the left being blue and the right, brown. Despite his dispassionate brilliance at poker and chess, he is arrogant and callous and shows indifference when Obanno threatens to sever the arm of his girlfriend, Valenka (Ivana Milièeviæ).
QUIPS: 'You know, I never understood all these elaborate tortures. It's the simplest thing...to cause more pain than a man can possibly endure...And, of course, it's not only the immediate agony, but the knowledge that if you do not yield soon enough...there will be little left to identify you as a man. The only question remains: will you yield, in time?'
SIDEKICKS: Mr White (Jesper Christensen) - Less a henchling than a go-between representing an unnamed criminal organisation, he introduces Le Chiffre to Obanno and helps trick HM Treasury official, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green); Alex Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian) - Greek contact of Le Chiffre, who loses at cards to 007, who cuckolds him in the Bahamas before they meet again at the SkyFleet launch in Miami, where Dimitrios is to liaise with the terrorist chosen to destroy the airliner; Kratt (Clemens Schick) - Le Chiffre's factotum, who breaks the bad news about the SkyFleet failure and attends the Casino Royale tournament before being ordered torture a naked Bond by strapping him to a cane-bottomed chair.
TRIVIA: Although Quentin Tarantino reportedly wanted to direct Casino Royale with Pierce Brosnan in the lead, the Eon hierarchy was keen to move on. Four Scots, David Tennant, Ewan McGregor, Dougray Scott, and Sam Heughan were considered for Bond, as were New Zealanders Karl Urban and Anthony Starr, Australians Sam Worthington, Alex O'Loughlin, and Julian McMahon, Croatian Goran Višnjiæ, and Brits Matthew Rhys, Rupert Friend, and Henry Cavill (who was deemed too young at 22). Instead, Daniel Craig accepted the role after initial misgivings. As the first 007 of the social media era, he faced an online backlash that was taken up by the Daily Mirror, who accused him of being 'James Bland' in a front-page story.
Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008)
BOND: Daniel Craig
VILLAIN: Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric)
BACKSTORY: When he was 15, Greene had a crush on one of his mother's piano students. However, when he heard her mocking him, he ruthless beat her to death with an iron. Having seemingly escaped punishment, he now fronts Greene Planet, a company that acquires large tracts of land for ecological preservation. But this is a front, as Greene is a member of the Quantum criminal network.
FIENDISH PLAN: On the orders of Quantum's Mr White (Jesper Christensen), Greene enters into negotiations with the President of Bolivia to acquire a 60% control of the country's water supply. When the offer is rejected, Greene approaches General Medrano (Joaquín Cosío), the exiled dictator, who is promised a return to power if he gives Greene the water monopoly and a supposedly barren area of wilderness that is actually rich in natural resources and which will be key to Quantum's plan for global domination.
HQ & QUIRKS: Greene is based at Perla de las Dunas in Bolivia's Atacama desert. This hydrogen-powered eco hotel doubles as the headquarters of the Greene Planet environmental charity and as a recuperation centre.
Intelligent, cunning, and charismatic, Greene is also voraciously ambitious and pitilessly sadistic. His weakness lies in selecting cohorts who don't always go along with his schemes.
QUIPS: 'There is nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than friends talking behind my back. Feels like...ants under my skin.'
SIDEKICKS: General Luiz Medrano (Joaquín Cosío) - The former ruler of Bolivia, who had murdered the family of Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko) while in power. She becomes Greene's lover in order to seize an opportunity for revenge; Elvis (Anatole Taubman) - Greene's cousin and chief henchman accompanies him to the performance of Tosca in the Austrian city of Bregenz, where he falls down the stairs after being tripped by MI6 agent, Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton), while pursuing Bond after he infiltrates a secret Quantum meeting; Colonel Carlos (Fernando Guillen Cuervo) - the corrupt Bolivian police chief, who orders the murder of Bond's friend, René Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini), and has his body stuffed into the boot of 007's car to incriminate him; Edmund Slate (Neil Jackson) - a hitman in Greene's pay, who is sent to kill Camille after she becomes an inconvenience.
TRIVIA: Roger Michell, who had directed Daniel Craig in The Mother (2003) and Enduring Love (2004), was asked to direct the 22nd Bond movie. Delays with the screenplay, however, prompted him to walk away. Tony Scott, Jonathan Mostow, and Alex Proyas were considered before Marc Forster was hired. He wasn't a fan of the franchise, but had been so impressed by the change of direction in Casino Royale that he signed up, noting that, like 007, he had a Swiss mother. Forster insisted on the death by oil sequence, as a homage to the demise of Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), in Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger (1964). He also offered cameos to fellow directors Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón.
Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012)
BOND: Daniel Craig
VILLAIN: Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem)
BACKSTORY: Born in either Portugal or Brazil, Tiago Rodriguez had once helped his grandmother rid her island of rats by capturing them in oil drum and letting them to destroy themselves. He compares this to the fate of an espionage agent, as he resents the fact that Olivia Mansfield (Judi Dench) - whom he had revered before she became M - had sacrificed him to the Chinese while serving as Hong Kong section chief when she feared that his illegal hacking into Beijing computer systems would disrupt the peaceful handover of the colony in 1997.
Having been tortured by the Chinese, he changes his name to Raoul Silva and uses his hacking skills to amass a colossal fortune by rigging elections, fixing stock prices, and other cyber crimes. But wealth and power are not his prime motivation.
FIENDISH PLAN: In league with a mercenary named Patrice (Ola Rapace), Silva steals a hard drive containing the names of every active NATO agent. Remotely accessing M's computer, he makes it look as though she is to blame for the breach of security. Sending her a warning to reflect upon her sins, Silva kills eight employess in blowing up her MI6 office. With Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), a former SAS Lieutenant Colonel and chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee calling for her resignation, Silva starts murdering field agents five at a time to destroy M's reputation before he attempts t to execute her at a public inquiry into her conduct.
HQ & QUIRKS: In order to evacuate an island off the coast of Macau, Silva fakes a leak at a chemical plant and promptly relocates his base of operations. The facility is fortified and extensive, with the abandoned warehouse in which the first five NATO agents are summarily executed being part of the complex.
During five months of torture, Rodriguez had tried to commit suicide with the hydrogen cyanide capsule that had been implanted in one of his teeth. However, the failed attempt had left him with rotting gums, damaged teeth, and a sunken left cheek that requires him to wear a prosthesis, as well as a drooping lower eyelid. In constant pain, Silva has developed a reckless indifference to his own safety, a sarcastic wit, and a disregard for human life.
QUIPS: 'Medical evaluation: fail. Physical evaluation: fail. Psychological evaluation, alcohol and substance addiction indicated. Ooh! Pathological rejection of authority based on unresolved childhood trauma. Subject is not approved for field duty and immediate suspension for service advised. What is this if not betrayal? She sent you off to me, knowing you're not ready, knowing you're likely die. Mommy was very bad.'
SIDEKICKS: Patrice (Ola Rapace) - Silva's most trusted assassin steals the hard drive from MI6's offices and speeds away in a black Audi A5. Bond and Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) give chase, with 007 and Patrice exchanging gunfire aboard a train before resorting to hand-to-hand combat when they run out of ammunition. Having managed to escape and believing Bond to be dead, Patrice heads to Shanghai to kill an art critic; Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) - Silva's mistress helps Patrice hit his target in Shanghai. However, she feels indebted to the cyber-terrorist for rescuing her from the Macau sex trade and takes Bond to Silva's island on her yacht, The Chimera, in return for him helping her to escape exploitation.
TRIVIA: While filming David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Daniel Craig met Swedish director, Thomas Nordanstad. He had just made a film about Hashima (aka Gunkanjima or 'Battleship Island'), which lies off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture. The island had been the site of an underwater coal mine, with the concrete buildings having once house Korean conscripts and Chinese prisoners of war, who were forced to work in appalling conditions. Craig was so fascinated by the island and its past that he suggested it as a model for Silva's lair. As the island was unsafe for filming, replicas of the buildings were constructed at Pinewood and supplemented by computer-generated imagery.
Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)
BOND: Daniel Craig
VILLAIN: Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz)
BACKSTORY: Franz Oberhauser, the son of an Austrian Alpine instructor, was greatly put out when, in 1983, Hannes took temporary custody of a 12 year-old British orphan named James Bond after his parents were killed in a climbing accident. During his two-year stay, James learned to ski, climb, and hunt. But Franz became so jealous of his foster brother's bond with Hannes that he committed patricide by causing an avalanche at Kitzbühel.
Presumed dead, Franz used his mother's maiden name to reinvent himself as Ernst Stavro Blofeld. By the 2010s, he is the head of SPECTRE, a powerful terrorist organisation that incorporates the Quantum network. Indeed, in conjunction with Mr White (Jesper Christensen), Blofeld has been the puppetmaster seeking to use Le Chiffre, Dominic Greene, and Raoul Silva to destroy Bond and anyone he loves.
FIENDISH PLAN: Following the merger of MI5 and MI6 as the Joint Intelligence Service, M (Ralph Fiennes) opposes a plan of Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), the new body's Director-General, to disband the 00 network of agents and sign Britain up to a global surveillance and intelligence-gathering initiative known as Nine Eyes. Unknown to M and 007, Blofeld has joined forces with C (as Denbigh is code-named) to orchestrate a series of terrorist bombings designed to show the obsolescence of the existing security system. In return for its collaboration, SPECTRE demands unlimited access to Nine Eyes data, so that it can remove obstacles to its operations in trafficking people and facsimileing pharmaceuticals.
HQ & QUIRKS: In addition to having the Palazzo Cardenza in Rome as SPECTRE's baroque meeting place, Blofeld also owns a base in a crater in the Sahara Desert. Having machinated in a Japanese volcano in You Only Live Twice and a Swiss mountain top in Peter R. Hunt's On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Blofeld clearly felt a change of scenery was needed. Modelled on Dar Bianca, a villa in Marrakech, the lair was situated inside a hollow similar to the Gara Medouar, a meteorite crater outside the Moroccan oasis town of Erfoud. The explosion required to destroy the complex earned production designer Chris Corbould a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for using 8418 litres of fuel and 33kg of powdered explosives to create the biggest stunt kaboom in screen history.
A diabolical megalomaniac and control freak, with a ruthless streak rather than a short fuse, Blofeld is too calm and methodical go off suddenly. But he pettily bears grudges and never forgives what he perceives to be failure or betrayal. Moreover, he can be sadistically cruel, as he proves while torturing Bond by drilling holes in his skull.
QUIPS: 'I've really put you through it, haven't I? Well, that's brothers for you. They always know which buttons to press.'
SIDEKICKS: Mr White (Jesper Christensen) - Having served Blofeld well in attempting to make Bond suffer, the Pale King became disillusioned and, realising he is succumbing to thallium poisoning, devotes himself to protecting his daughter, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), who works as a psychiatrist at the Hoffler Klinik in Vienna; Mr Hinx (Dave Bautista) - dramatically announcing himself as a force to be reckoned with when slamming rival Guerra's head into a Roman conference table, Hinx proves durably strong and impervious to pain in pursuing Swann and Bond; Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott) - based at the Centre for National Security in London, C is so determined to ensure that the Nine Eyes initiative is unanimously approved that he liaises with SPECTRE to ensure that an atrocity in Cape Town will strongarm South Africa into changing its vote.
TRIVIA: In being cast as Lucia, the wife of Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona), the SPECTRE assassin killed by Bond in the pre-title sequence, 50 year-old Monica Bellucci became the oldest Bond girl in the franchise's six-decade history - if you discount Lois Maxwell, who was 58 when she played Miss Moneypenny for the 14th and final time in John Glen's A View to a Kill (1985). Bellucci had auditioned to play Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies, but lost out to Teri Hatcher.
No Time to Die (Cary Fukunaga, 2021)
BOND: Daniel Craig
VILLAIN: Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek)
BACKSTORY: Gostan Safin was a toxicologist who supplied poisons to SPECTRE. However, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) decided to eliminate the middle man and take over the facility himself. He dispatched Mr White (Jesper Christensen) to kill the family. However, the young Lyutsifer survived, albeit disfigured and traumatised, and he vowed revenge on the organisation.
By 1998, Safin was a notorious terrorist and he used his contacts to identify White's Norwegian home. He murdered the assassin's ex-wife in front of her young daughter, Madeleine, only for her to grab a gun and shoot him several times. Although the Japanese Noh mask he was wearing was cracked, Safin was unharmed thanks to a bulletproof vest and regained consciousness as Madeleine was seeking to dispose of his body. He chased her on to a frozen lake, but felt pity when she fell through the ice and broke it to enable her to swim ashore.
FIENDISH PLAN: Despite being aware that Mr White had killed himself and that Blofeld is in Belmarsh Prison, Safin reasons that SPECTRE remains operational. He corrupts Dr Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik), the scientist behind Project Heracles, a bioweapon that is passed by touch and infects targets with nanobots programmed to their genetic code that will kill them and anyone sharing their DNA.
On hearing that SPECTRE members will convene at the El Nido bar in Cuba, Safin instructs Obruchev to allow himself to be abducted from his London laboratory so that he can reprogramme Heracles so that when the order is given to unleash the toxins on James Bond, they kill henchlings Dr Vogel (Brigitte Millar), Moreau (Marc Zinga), Abrika (Adel Bencherif), Valerian (Oleg Mirochnikov), and Marshall (Erick Hayden) instead. But Safin still isn't content and turns his attention to Blofeld, who has viewed the massacre through the camera in his bionic eye.
HQ & QUIRKS: Built in the 1940s on an island in the Sea of Japan that was deemed of strategic importance to the Soviet Union, the heavily fortified compound became known as the Poison Garden after being acquired by Gostan Safin. In addition to the chemical plant, the facility also boasts concrete bunkers, submarine pens, and missile silos, which made it attractive to SPECTRE. But Lyutsifer reclaimed the rundown base in order to manufacture Heracles and it's here that he has his climactic showdown with Bond.
Facially disfigured, Safin may be driven by revenge, but he is also fiercely intelligent and resourceful. Despite his terrorist activity, he remains something of a mystery, which makes him a difficult opponent for Bond (who had been retired for five years when the operation begins), as his single-mindedness makes him so ruthless that there are no rules of engagement.
QUIPS: 'The thing that no one wants to admit is that most people want things to happen to them. We tell each other lies about the fight for free will and independence, but we don't really want that. We want to be told how to live and then die when we are not looking. People want oblivion and a few of us are born to build it for them. So here I am, their Invisible God...sneaking under their skin.'
SIDEKICKS: Dr Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik) - Despite working for the British Secret Intelligence Service, this specialist in genetics and nanorobotics is on Safin's payroll. Thus, he puts his revolutionary DNA-targeting Hercales weapon at his disposal; Primo (Dali Benssalah) - fitted with a prosthetic left eye connected to Blofeld's bionic right eye, Primo attempts to kill Bond at Vesper Lynd's grave and attempts to poison Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) on SPECTRE's behalf. However, Safin persuades him to switch sides after the Cuban incident and he relocates to the Poison Garden; Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen) - the partner of CIA veteran, Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), Ash is loyal to Safin and not only tries to kill Bond aboard a trawler after the rescue of Obruchev, but also attempts to kidnap Swann and her five year-old daughter, Mathilde (Lisa-Dorah Sonnet).
TRIVIA: When Christopher Nolan ruled himself out of the running, Yann Demange, David Mackenzie, and Denis Villeneuve were approached to occupy the director's chair. Danny Boyle accepted Eon's offer, on the proviso that longtime collaborator John Hodge should write the script. However, creative differences soon arose with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and American Cary Joji Fukunaga was awarded the job. Having agreed to return to the franchise for a final time, Daniel Craig insisted that Phoebe Waller-Bridge was hired to ensure that Bond was more woke than in previous outings and the creator of Fleabag (2016-19) became only the second female screenwriter in 007 history, after Johanna Harwood had co-written Terence Young's Dr No and From Russia With Love (1963).
