The James Bond movies are defined by their familiar tropes. The filmmakers usually kick things off with a mind-blowing action scene before the opening title sequence, which is accompanied by a moody theme song by a contemporary pop artist. After a mission briefing from M, 007 will jet across the world to various exotic locales. Along the way, he’ll meet a one-off love interest whose name is a sexual double entendre and the whole thing will culminate in a big climactic battle.
One of the most beloved staples of the franchise is its villains. Like the Star Wars saga’s Sith Lords and the Rocky series’ strapping boxing opponents, the Bond movies have their own unique kind of villain. 007 routinely has to contend with megalomaniacs bent on world domination (or something equally grandiose). They have an army of henchmen, a cool secret lair, and a convoluted backstory that explains the wealth that’s funding it all.
The villain is easily one of the greatest Bond tropes. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the trickiest to get right. There are many things that make a great Bond villain – an eccentric personality quirk, a diabolical plan, a memorable performance, a jaw-dropping death scene, etc. – but only a few have all these things going for them.
No Time To Die’s Villain Was Wildly Polarizing
The latest Bond villain – No Time to Die’s Safin, played by Rami Malek – was wildly polarizing. The movie was praised for its breathtaking action scenes, Daniel Craig’s emotionally charged performance, and the sense of finality it provided. But Safin himself was met with a mixed response. Some fans felt he was one of the best Bond villains, while others felt he was one of the worst.
Malek’s understated performance was praised as a refreshing alternative to the usually hammed-up portrayals of Bond villains, but the character’s vaguely defined motivation has been criticized. Either way, Safin marked a welcome return to the traditional megalomaniacs of 007 lore. With his delusions of grandeur, ridiculous plan to infect the world with a robotic virus, and badass lair located in an abandoned World War II base on an island between Japan and Russia, Safin ticks off almost everything on the Bond villain checklist.
The Bond Villain Checklist Is Pretty Well-Defined
After six decades’ worth of movies, that checklist has gotten pretty rigid. Bond’s villains tend to have a unique quirk that makes them stand out, like Blofeld’s scar, Dr. No’s metal hands, Scaramanga’s third nipple, and Renard’s inability to feel pain. It also helps if the actor gives an unforgettable performance, like Christopher Lee’s portrayal of Scaramanga as the anti-James Bond or Mads Mikkelsen’s genuinely unsettling turn as Le Chiffre. But it’s possible to go overboard in this department. Christopher Walken hams it up far too much as Max Zorin in A View to a Kill.
Sometimes, a henchman is so lovable and interesting that they overshadow their employer. Dave Bautista’s brutal enforcer Mr. Hinx is the most memorable villain in Spectre. Jaws became such a fan-favorite icon after The Spy Who Loved Me that he was brought back in Moonraker. Red Grant poses a much more ominous threat to 007 than the main antagonist Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love – especially when he confronts Bond on the Orient Express.
Since a villain’s purpose is to be defeated by the hero, a satisfying death scene can go a long way. Bond movies build up to Bond killing the villain, so that kill needs to be spectacular. Zorin falls off the Golden Gate Bridge, License to Kill’s Dario gets fed feet-first into an industrial-sized cocaine grinder, and Bond shoots The Spy Who Loved Me’s Karl Stromberg in the crotch twice before shooting him in the head.
Very Few Bond Villains Tick Everything Off The Checklist
There aren’t many Bond villains that manage to tick everything off the checklist. They sometimes nail one or two aspects, but fall short on the rest. Skyfall’s Raoul Silva has a solid motivation – he wants revenge against M for responding with callous disregard when he was captured behind enemy lines – but his plan to achieve that goal is nonsensical. It’s needlessly complicated (he gets caught just so he can escape) and a lot of it relies on coincidences like Bond standing in the exact spot where he planned to crash a train.
Scaramanga is widely regarded to be the best-characterized Bond villain. Like Bond himself, Scaramanga is a sharpshooting assassin. He’s a version of 007 with even fewer morals, and wants to kill Bond purely for the bragging rights. Unfortunately, this near-perfect Bond villain is squandered in a lackluster Bond film. Desperately trying to cash in on the then-ongoing martial arts movie trend, The Man with the Golden Gun as a whole is pretty subpar.
Some of the best Bond villains are the non-traditional ones. Alec Trevelyan, played by Sean Bean opposite Pierce Brosnan’s Bond in GoldenEye, isn’t an evil megalomaniac from the offset. He’s actually a fellow 00 agent, 006, who goes rogue. After he’s presumed dead in the opening sequence, Bond spends the movie mourning his supposed death and blaming himself for it.
The Earliest Bond Villains Are Still The Best
The first-ever Bond movie villain, Dr. Julius No, is still one of the best. Joseph Wiseman is a haunting on-screen presence and Dr. No has all the hallmarks that would go on to define the trope: he has an interesting psychological defect with his “god complex,” an unforgettable physical quirk with his metal hands, and a brilliant death scene in which the large scale of his evil plan ironically becomes his downfall (his metal hands prevent him from climbing out of his own nefarious contraption).
Arguably the quintessential Bond villain, who checks everything off the checklist and still holds up after more than half a century, is Auric Goldfinger, played to eccentric perfection by Gert Fröbe. Goldfinger has a great personality quirk (a dangerous obsession with gold) and a wonderfully ludicrous plan. And on top of that, the plan is related to his quirk: he wants to melt down all the gold in Fort Knox to increase the value of his own stash of gold. His henchman Oddjob is iconic, but not so much that he steals the spotlight. Goldfinger has plenty of his own classic moments, like sending a laser beam up between Bond’s legs, and a shocking death scene when he’s sucked out of the window of a plane.
Every Bond villain since Goldfinger solidified the franchise’s now-familiar formula has been an attempt to replicate what worked about the titular gold-loving magnate who battled Sean Connery’s Bond in that movie.