Dropping the ball on Blofeld

Hank

Blofeld is considered the quintessential bond villain, yet they never really did anything great with him.

And his death scene in FYEO kinda sucks. There's a lot of build up and with no real release.

That's my rant for the moment.

Double 0 Zero

Part of the problem is, of course, that EON goofed up the continuity of the "Blofeld trilogy." It was a nice start with a sinister, faceless "Number One" at the SPECTRE conference in Thunderball. I read somewhere that the voice was provided by Joseph Wiseman - it sure sounds like him. But then they filmed You Only Live Twice before On Her Majesty's Secret Service and jettisoned the novel's plot. As much as I like Donald Pleasance, his Blofeld is just a bit too campy with that cheesy scar meant to make him look scary. It's all too easy to see Pleasance's performance as the template for Dr. Evil. Telly Savalas is a superb Blofeld in the next film: intelligent, dangerous, and diabolically calm (watch as he stands by patiently as Bond tries to shake off the guards as they push him into the machine room). And yet, in a glaring continuity error, this wicked genius fails to recognize Bond from their last encounter despite the superspy's lack of any real disguise (he isn't even wearing his Clark-Kent glasses when he meets Blofeld). Of course this is the result of filming the novels out of order while only being faithful to one of them. Next comes Charles Gray as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, originally a non-SPECTRE novel. Except for the PTS you'd barely know that there was anything personal between Bond and his great nemesis. Gray seems dull after Savalas and even Pleasance. Moreover, his drag queen bit is downright painful to watch. After that, I suppose it was just as well for EON to quite literally drop Blofeld from their series. But it was still anti-climatic. I don't know if there is yet a chance to bring back Blofeld and have him live up to his potential as a character. Between the Dalton and Brosnan films, I imagined Anthony Hopkins for the role. I am not sure who'd be ideal now although I did enjoy Kevin Spacey's turn as Lex Luthor in that other "re-booted" series from 2006. But I seem to be in the minority with that opinion.

jetsetwilly

Part of the problem, of course, is that Eon didn't think they had to kill Blofeld. When they made DAF, I'm sure they fully expected to bring Blofeld back some day, hence his vague disappearance in that film. Sure enough, in 1976, the script for TSWLM was written with Blofeld as the villain.

However, at that point, Kevin McClory popped up and claimed ownership of Blofeld and SPECTRE as his first appearance was in the novel of TB. Blofeld was swiftly changed to Stromberg.

The PTS of FYEO was therefore more of an afterthought, a way of wrapping up loose ends and - reportedly - Cubby's way of sticking two fingers up to Kevin McClory by saying "we don't NEED Blofeld". Because of the legal issues though, he couldn't be formally identified.

If they knew then what they know now, I'm sure that Blofeld would have come to a nasty and very final end at the end of DAF (he did in the original script, as he was pushed into a salt processing plant).