How Bond villians have changed with contemporary world events

Jango Black

We've probably all noticed whilst watching decades of Bond films, but putting Dr No besides Le Chiffe and recent Bond villains there's a large difference in their agenda. The Connery movies focused almost entirely on the Cold War and the threat of world domination from the super powers whilst Casino Royale we see an update from Fleming's Cold War setting into modern 2006 with terrorism, blowing up planes and bomb makers. What is the effect of this? Is it purely to keep up with modern events? Does a good villain have to feel threatening to the audience so Bond can reassure us by 'saving the world'? It brings the question whether Biofield and SPECTRE were threatening villains back in the late 1960s.

The villains in the Connery era are very unbelievable as opposed to a terrorist organisation in Casino Royale. But is that because we've seen the way history has unrolled from the 1960 so we don't have to worry about anything like that happening? If we have any older users in this forum who were around during the Cold War were Spectre at least somewhat worrying villains when the Cold War was still a threat?

This is for an essay for Media Studies btw, don't think I'm a pretentious ****.

blueman

Jango you pretentious ****!

I don't think all the villains in the 60s were as unbelievable as you're making out, certainly Grant and Rosa Klebb were quite realistic and chillingly presented IMO. Dr No, Goldfinger, Largo were all also very real threats to Bond IMO. Granted the whole SPECTRE thing behind 4 out of 5 60s Bond films gave them at least a patina of fantasy, sure, but, as you observe, I don't think you can have an audience really identify and be on board with a hero without a suitably realistic and threatening villain. Otherwise it's all a cartoon. Bond has always treaded that line of separation, sometimes lightly (the 60s), sometimes with more of a clunk (the 70s). Fashions do change, and Bond with them. One thing about terrorism now, for many it's as vague as the Cold War was in the 50s/60s: lives are lost and headlines made, yes, but the vast majority of the population is largely unaffected by it all on any deep personal level (ie knowing or related to someone who has died as a result of terrorism or the war on terror is very different from having to wait in line at the airport). In that sense, terrorism is the new Cold War, and quite a few films and film genres make use of that (the DIE HARD series refusing to, well, die is a great example IMO ). CR fits in well with the 60s Bonds in regards to this discussion IMO, and what EON chooses to do with Bond 22 will be very interesting too in light of all this--will the Organization turn out to be a more fantasy-based SPECTRE-type thing, or will it continue (as started in CR) to be the, in contrast, more realistically threatening-type villain thing? Even the minor villains in CR were pretty realistically nasty, I get the impression EON will continue with what they established in CR, but who knows? That line they tread can become rather wide at the drop of a cliched hat, as it were...but they did show they can embrace the fantastic without dropping any internal verissimilitude in CR, the chase through the construction site was pretty "fantastic" IMO, yet did not put the audience in the position to suspend disbelief entirely, ala the CGI impromptu wave-riding in DAD for example, which I would argue failed actually, it was just too silly to be "real" even within DAD's thin definition of reality, lol. Honestly, I don't think there's anything in CR that can't be transformed into a MR-styled romp if EON wanted to go that with Bond 22, just don't see it happening (even if it did, with EON's track record it would likely be wildly successful, lol, just a matter of, as you say, current world trends and all driving the public's imagination).

Blah blah blah. Any of this help?

Jango Black

Defiantly, you make some very interesting points, especially regarding what direction they will take with Bond 22. I can't see them bringing SPECTRE into the films though, and in the Fleming novels it was SMERSH who were behind the events of Casino Royale. It makes you wonder actually, it was SMERSH instead of SPECTRE in the From Russia with Love and Dr No novels but they decided to make SPECTRE behind it in the films. I suspect they did that because they wanted to have a more reoccurring villian organisation as opposed to several. But they might have done it because they didn't want to make Russia all touchy. If somebody knows the proper reason that would be useful.

Some information I found from other sources relates nicely;

"His are villians are emblematic of our contemporary social phobias - nuclear holocayst is typically just around the corner in the Bond adventure - and thus his victories are not just the simple triumph of good and evil, but the triumph of human survival over imminent and complete destruction."

And just for the record, how believable or not a villian is doesn't bother me at all. SPECTRE has great badguys regardless how cheesy most of them are in the modern age. Though Red Grant is still better then any villians from the last 4 Bond movies. :007)

Barbel

blueman wrote:

Any of this help?

Very much so. I was about to write a post, but you've said it all, blue.

7289

During the "Cold War" the main villians were the Soviets, they were fermenting trouble everywhere in the world they could using "moles" and stooges who would advance their agenda. The Red Chinese were not considered a great threat because they had trouble getting their own house in order, but they were supporters of the Soviet agenda which was to spread communism everywhere possible.

Bond swore vengance on Smersh after they marked him, and turned his lover at the end of Casino Royale. Smersh was behind all the Bond villains until "Thunderball" when Blofeld shows up, even then SPECTRE has its share of former Smersh operatives. While Bond chases Blofeld in OHMSS and YOLT, the main enemy of the world is still the Soviet Union, in the last book Scaramanga is very much a contract man for Redland, but it seems by then Smersh may have been disbanded.

In the real world the Soviets and their atomic warheads were very much a ongoing worry until Poland, and then East Germany collapsed and the Soviets themselves fragmentized. What happened to all those bombs makes the "Thnderball" plot anything but fantasy today.

When "The Master" died in 1964, the Soviets were still very much a threat to the West, there was much speculation they were behind the killing of JFK!

In an effort to make their films apolitical, EON merely substituted SPECTRE for Smersh. In the literary world of Bond SPECTRE is pretty well crushed in Thunderball, with Bond chasing Blofeld personally in the next three novels (all the time oo7 is wishing he was doing someting else).

Today SPECTRE is a pretty tired idea, having been beat to death in the 1960's with THRUSH and countless imitations. It would be nice to have Bond chasing a mysterious terrorist group in future Bonds, but the bad guys should remain like Mr. White, and not turn into Bald Baddies with white cats dressed in Mao-Se-Tung uniforms

7289

oops! posted same thing twice.....