The Aftermath of Villains' Plans
Colonel Shatner
Chavtastic Bristol, BritainPosts: 574MI6 Agent
How would the world be shaped if Bond dies and the villain's master plan goes without a hitch? In the case of Hugo Drax winning, it would be game over for humanity and he'd re-populate the depopulated Earth.
More problematic is Blofeld's scheme in YOLT - it's insinuated that China was sponsoring him tricking the Soviets and Americans into wiping each other out, so they could overtake them (but they'd presumably still be caught in the middle of WWIII). At least Eliot Carver had the intent of avoiding a full nuclear exchange and was really helping an internal PRC coup. Stromberg had a similar plan to Blofeld's, but you wonder how he'd help the survivors of WWIII to colonise the oceans (though Atlantis was a effective prototype for ocean cities).
You wonder how Alec Trevelyan could retain his fortune (stolen from the Bank of England through the internet) when he could potentially crash the global economy altogether, rendering the stolen money pointless. But I can imagine how Trevelyan's Janus group could really screw over Russia after it toppled the UK and considering how lightly Trevelyan expended Ourumov in battle, Trevelyan had no good long term designs on Ourumov's country. After the GoldenEye caper, Janus could've spread its malignant influence even broader and deeper in the former Eastern Bloc and Soviet states, exacerbated the relative anarchy of 1990s Russia, preventing a lesser evil like Putin taking over, and plunged the former-Soviet states into full blown civil war. And Trevelyan's Janus network would've been in a prime position to supply the warring factions with weapons and mercenaries, bloating its wealth and power even more (with the West unable to respond, still reeling from Britain re-entering the Stone Age).
There are also many smaller scale villains who don't care about grand plans, like Octopussy's Kamel Khan who was just a regular crime lord/crooked magnate used as a pawn by a unhinged Soviet commander, Le Chifre the frontman for a much wider criminal organisation, the freelancer Scaramanga (an eccentric hitman who wormed his way into running a power company), Sanchez the drug kingpin who was misfortunate enough to provoke Bond, the completely uninteresting arms dealer and the uninteresting crooked Soviet commander in TLD running a opium smuggling operation (while pulling MI6's chain).
More problematic is Blofeld's scheme in YOLT - it's insinuated that China was sponsoring him tricking the Soviets and Americans into wiping each other out, so they could overtake them (but they'd presumably still be caught in the middle of WWIII). At least Eliot Carver had the intent of avoiding a full nuclear exchange and was really helping an internal PRC coup. Stromberg had a similar plan to Blofeld's, but you wonder how he'd help the survivors of WWIII to colonise the oceans (though Atlantis was a effective prototype for ocean cities).
You wonder how Alec Trevelyan could retain his fortune (stolen from the Bank of England through the internet) when he could potentially crash the global economy altogether, rendering the stolen money pointless. But I can imagine how Trevelyan's Janus group could really screw over Russia after it toppled the UK and considering how lightly Trevelyan expended Ourumov in battle, Trevelyan had no good long term designs on Ourumov's country. After the GoldenEye caper, Janus could've spread its malignant influence even broader and deeper in the former Eastern Bloc and Soviet states, exacerbated the relative anarchy of 1990s Russia, preventing a lesser evil like Putin taking over, and plunged the former-Soviet states into full blown civil war. And Trevelyan's Janus network would've been in a prime position to supply the warring factions with weapons and mercenaries, bloating its wealth and power even more (with the West unable to respond, still reeling from Britain re-entering the Stone Age).
There are also many smaller scale villains who don't care about grand plans, like Octopussy's Kamel Khan who was just a regular crime lord/crooked magnate used as a pawn by a unhinged Soviet commander, Le Chifre the frontman for a much wider criminal organisation, the freelancer Scaramanga (an eccentric hitman who wormed his way into running a power company), Sanchez the drug kingpin who was misfortunate enough to provoke Bond, the completely uninteresting arms dealer and the uninteresting crooked Soviet commander in TLD running a opium smuggling operation (while pulling MI6's chain).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Comments
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
-DN: The US Space Program suffers some setbacks.
-FRWL: Bond dies and Blofeld gets rich off reselling the Lektor to the Soviets.
-GF: Auric Goldfinger, presumably working from Cuba since he's not exactly maintaining operational security, plays havoc with the gold market and heavily damages the US economy...and presumably gets to sell tons of gold to China. However, since the dollar was backed by silver at the time, the damage he does isn't the enormous amount he wants. Also, other gold-producing nations such as South Africa potentially benefit big time, despite not having an interest in Auric Goldfinger.
-TB: Blofeld gets extremely rich and SPECTRE becomes a de facto rogue stateless entity with two nuclear warheads.
-YOLT: China and SPECTRE take heavy casualties in World War III as a result of getting swept up in it. China wins, but only technically.
-OHMSS: Since Blofeld's plan isn't foolproof and you know at least one of the "angels of death" is going to fail (it's implied by some of Blofeld's dialogue regarding backup plans), the one nation...whatever it may be...that avoids or survives the biological warfare attack comes down like a hammer on Blofeld. As in, instead of sending one man, they send in an army.
-DAF: Blofeld is implied to be failing anyway. He gets a ton of money, makes his getaway, and the submarines implied in the dialogue destroy the oil rig (although probably at the cost of one or two of their own number due to the satellite firing at them)
-LALD: Kananga becomes THE drug kingpin of the United States.
-TMWTGG: Considering Scaramanga didn't have any plans in the first place...Bond dies and maybe so do some other people the Chinese want gone. Then they get solar power when Scaramanga's quick draw gets slow or eyesight starts failing.
-TSWLM: Stromberg starts World War III only to lose all manufacturing infrastructure for his planned underwater cities. Sure, the surviving neutral countries can probably build SOME, but not that many. Then again, he doesn't care; he only wants some.
-MR: All human life is wiped out save Drax and his flunkies.
-FYEO: The Soviets get themselves an ATAC.
-OP: Orlov nukes the circus, shoots Kamal (you think a fall guy wouldn't be needed?), and waits for disarmament...which only comes partially. Furious, he goes in with his tank armies and is obliterated since the US retained conventional weapons (funny how he never really thinks about airstrikes...). However, he does take huge swaths of people with him.
-AVTAK: Zorin floods Silicon Valley and offs Bond...only to have the authorities come after him immediately once Bond goes missing.
-TLD: Since he successfully convinces everyone that Pushkin is the bad guy, Koskov has Necros shoot Pushkin and then becomes head of the KGB. He continues embezzling funds with Whitaker's help and Whitaker continues to supply the Soviets with arms in Afghanistan.
-LTK: Sanchez doesn't have a plan for world domination or anything grandiose. The faux-ninajs off Bond and are then killed by Sanchez's mercs and Sanchez continues running his cartel.
-GE: Pretty much what ColonelShatner said, although Trevelyan could theoretically have converted GBP to Krugerrands or Swiss Francs (which, being backed 100% by precious metals, would obviously not lose as much value)
-TND: Carver gets media rights in General "I walked down the hallway in one scene" Chang's military dictatorship of China.
-TWINE: Istanbul is obliterated and the King pipeline becomes a monopoly.
-DAD: Uhh...North Korea gets nuked, big time. As in, dozens of missiles detonating in the upper atmosphere...which gives off an EMP-like effect that brings down aircraft (whoops!)
-CR: Le Chiffre wins. It's really that simple.
-QoS: Quantum gains control of the Bolivian water supply, which devolves into a bunch of Maoist rebels attacking Quantum and probably the semi-secession of five or six Bolivian states (which actually DID happen when Evo Morales went crazy; they removed themselves from constitutional rule and maintained their own defense forces).
-SF: M dies a slow and painful death at the literal hands of Silva.
The (arguably TOO) big three.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
While I can understand the loopy 1960s PRC leadership not really comprehending how costly riding out WWIII would be, if the SPECTRE followers were carrying out their mission in a massive underground facility, that meant they had the means to ride out the conflict. The volcano base personnel seemed to have been procured by Mr Osato's corporation (along with most of the complex's infrastructure, which had the Osato trademark on them, though the rocket was perhaps Chinese supplied), and the Osato Chemical Co. could've always been a front for criminal Yakuza and extreme rightwing Japanese political groups before SPECTRE approached them.
Well if Stromberg's firm was able to deploy a submarine capturing warship (disguised as an oil super tanker) without raising flags (until some insiders late in the operation wanted to sell the submarine tracking system) he may have had the means to protect his manufacturing infrastructure from WWIII somewhere in the world.
Alternately, since it's probable Osato planned the whole thing, he could have been Stalinist/anti-Soviet communist on the extreme left. No really. After all, Stalin advocated massive industrial expansion. That would allow him the following...
1) The ability to make plans with the PRC (remember, even though the PRC has dealt with SPECTRE in the past and it certainly appears they've directly dealt with Osato, they don't seem to have directly dealt with Blofeld, since they're shocked that his demands change). The PRC was certainly stupid during these years, but cooperating with a Japanese extreme rightwinger was one of the few things they absolutely positively would NOT have done.
2) It wouldn't be the first time a corporate bigwig (if not an outright CEO) surprisingly turned out to be on the extreme radical left. And no, I don't mean Jim Buckmaster. Take Citroen. For the longest time, the chairman and managing director of Citroen was a guy named Georges Taylor, born in Romania. And I don't mean French Communist Party, I mean Taylor was a nutjob who thought Nicolae Ceausescu was right! Taylor took this so far that he actually thought building cars in Romania would be better than building them in France, believing every bit of Romanian government propaganda regarding assembly methods and funding the Romanian government's manufacturing operations to the point where it was losing money. If you ever saw an advertisement for the Citroen Axel, then, well, those were the "fruits" of Taylor's work. Some people believe Taylor was doing it for the sake of Romanian nationalism, but those who actually knew him said that he fully supported the Ceausescu regime as well as communism.
3) Shooting Osato would all of a sudden make a lot of sense. SPECTRE has no room for ideologues unless they're useful.
Osato could have been a creature of the Stalinist left, not of the Japanese militarist right. Also, if the guy is of the Japanese militarist right, why does he have a white secretary? Remember, the militarists and far right splinter factions were for 100% "racial purity", including in hiring policies. It's obvious that Helga Brandt had a legitimate job with Osato as a front, and that would only have served to alienate the Japanese far right. You might argue that he tries to keep her under wraps, but he doesn't do that at all. Just about every employee of the company can see her and ditto anyone in public. His business rivals can also see it, which means the far right would learn about it in short order and practically disown the guy.
Which is exactly why I think his manufacturing infrastructure was in a neutral country with some but not tremendous industrial infrastructure along a coast. But then, since we know Stromberg was missing a few cards in his deck, do you think he could have had the vessel built in one of India, or Yugoslavia without realizing that in the former case, Pakistan would have seen it as an opportunity to go to war and in the latter case, Yugoslavia would have probably become a battleground regardless (or, if they somehow managed to survive, that the quality control of the underwater cities would have gone to hell in short order)?
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
If Le Chiffre won the card game and poisoned Bond, MI6 and the CIA were still on to him from one side, while Quantum and the Lord's Liberation Army were encroaching on him from another direction.
Actually, by "Le Chiffre wins", I meant in every respect. I should have explained better. Remember that the first major plot Bond foils is the airliner bombing. I was working under the assumption that the terrorist killed Bond. Le Chiffre wins by default. Because he keeps on manipulating the stock market and Quantum benefits, Quantum doesn't have a reason to eliminate him. They also now have reason, ironically, to protect him from the Lord's Resistance Army, where he admittedly could be killed, but the LRA (which is a real group...) is going up against the modern day equivalent of SPECTRE. Who do you think wins there? And he also wins at poker; remember, Felix was losing big time.
Osato being possibly far left instead of far right is an interesting theory, even though I assumed the jumpsuited mooks in the volcano lair were Japanese nationalists wanting to force their fiercest WWII enemies from just two decades ago, America and Russia, into destroying each other. And those two mystery representatives could've been North Koreans instead of Chinese (the Norks' ideology is really the Korean version of Japanese Imperialism but with a Stalinist coat of paint). Osato having a foreign woman as an assistant could've been hypocrisy on his part or she was just SPECTRE's liaison officer who only recently showed up at Osato's offices.
And as loopy as Stromberg was, I wonder where he got his obviously highly trained crew and marines to man the Liparus.
Henchman recruitment agency perhaps?
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
Although the bit in parentheses is true, they were far more xenophobic than the Chinese, even in 1967. They wouldn't trust anyone, especially a Japanese. The only major power they may have trusted at that point was China. But speaking of Koreans...
It's probably no surprise that Japanese Koreans tend to be on the political left. There's one possible place of recruitment, especially since Japanese Koreans are literally second class citizens that have to carry around a passport in their own country. Duping people into recruitment would be something I wouldn't put past SPECTRE.
Another possibility is that during the early 1960's, the Japanese Communist Party refused to take a position in the Sino-Soviet Split. Osato probably could have easily recruited from much of the party's base (it had 120,000 members when YOLT was filmed), which surprisingly tended to sympathize with Mao, or at the very least remained Stalinists.
The latter is possible, especially since he could explain it away, though I find the former unlikely if he wanted to maintain any kind of alliance with the Japanese far right, which was steeped in total paranoia regarding inter-marriage or having relations of virtually any kind with a non-Japanese woman (or man, if one was a woman). The communists, if anything, would have welcomed it as a symbolic opening up of the country to internationalism. Alternately, since Helga Brandt was German, I've always taken her as East German, not West German. You might find that counterintuitive, but following World War II, the Japanese radical right AND radical left became mistrustful of the West Germans for different reasons: the right more with contempt because they viewed the West Germans as defeatists and collaborators with the Americans and the British (many also actually resented that Germany had not been nuked!) and the radical left because they viewed West Germany as a client state of the US and Britain/illegitimate due to the existence of East Germany. I'll put it this way: Japan's politics during the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's were pretty crazy and often counterintuitive as they tried fully westernizing. It's not really until the late 1970's that we see some normalization.
Her captain was implied to be Italian; he could've been a hardcore Fascist who simply never fit back into Italian society. He probably recruited a mixture of "low-life" type mercenaries and his own corporate security types, given that he operated a legitimate corporation that actually needed sprawling security operations.
North Korean spies deal with Koreans in Japan but also don't mind dealing with some Japanese Japanese malcontents (a Japanese chef became one of Kim Jong-Il's confidants) even if the Japanese get demonised and many North Koreans with Japanese heritage ended up in North Korean prison camps. But I now actually find the theory of Osato being a pro-Maoist making more sense when Osato Chemicals Co. and SPECTRE was working so closely with the Red Chinese (with Tiger Tanaka's outfit being the more conservative quasi-Fascist faction). Although I always thought that many of Osato's less refined heavies (like the unfortunate hit squad in the car picked up by a helicopter magnate and the bloke Bond hit with a statue) came across as typical Yakuza types (the Yakuza are known to be reactionary).
I long held the impression that Stromberg needed thousands of PMC type professionals to protect his ships and other facilities against piracy (the guys in orange), and possibly hired his more unpleasant enforcers (like Jaws and the other plain clothed mooks) from criminal smuggling gangs his company had connections to. My real question was how they got indoctrinated by Stromberg to start WWIII? Although he may have had the charisma to firmly convince his men they would have a major stake in his new civilisation.
True, but you're talking more about the North Korea of today. Kim Il-sung was fanatically anti-Japanese. Also, I realized that in 1967, North Korea was still VERY much connected to the Soviets regarding supplies, so that kinda renders a "we want war between the Soviets and Americans" moot, because they'd be forced to enter the war on the Soviets' side, else they'd probably be destroyed by the Soviets. Kim Il-sung was insane, but not suicidal. He only cut North Korea off from the Soviets in 1973; once he'd gotten enough industrial equipment and supplies to be independent, and even then he still traded with both the Soviets and the Chinese following Mao's death (sort of; Deng Xiaoping traded with Kim, but eventually developed some issues with him).
Perhaps he recruited from prisons along the lines of a penal battalion. Granted, the German Dirlewanger Brigade didn't exactly work (putting it mildly!), but the Soviet penal battalions during WWII (something that Osato, as quite probably a former Stalinist, would look to, by the way) did. You got shot for any infraction whatsoever and the Soviets tended to look for petty criminal types rather than maniacs as Oskar Dirlewanger did.
He could have had a bunch of mercenaries whom he paid very handsomely to believe him aboard the Liparus (and, notably, would keep them aboard the Liparus with a loyal captain), but very little else in the way people who knew the full truth or full scope of his operations.
It seemed apparent to everybody working on board the Liparus what was going to happen (unless Stromberg tricked his mercs and crew into thinking it was a ransom rather than a attack - but then he openly discussed his villainous scheme in front a few random marine guards that took Bond and XXX up to the command deck).
I guess for Stromberg's organisation to ride out WWIII, he may have had his private shipyards and factories (that assembled the Liparus and Atlantis) on a remote coastal region in Australia, a fairly developed country that would more likely to be relatively unmolested by the nuclear exchange between Russia and America, and Stromberg may have recruited many of his mooks from around there (like perhaps that marine guard Bond held hostage and expatriate British like Naomi). I always thought the Liparus captain was Italian or Greek (Golden Dawn type) and there may have been a fair few South African mooks on board as well.
Other mooks who seem the well trained and equipped Blackwater types from more recent Bond movies are Trevelyan's Soviet surplus equipped troops guarding his Cuban satellite dish facility in GE, Eliot Carver's German henchmen in TND, the Quantum operatives accompanying Adolph Gettler in CR, and Silva's cadre in Skyfall's final battle.
I think you may have misunderstood. What I meant was that he took his loyal personnel and put them aboard the Liparus. In other words, the entire crew would be aware of his plans, but outside of the Liparus's crew (and obviously his board of directors onboard Atlantis), there was very little in the way of people who knew the full truth.
Given the state of Australian intelligence at the time, I would think Argentina or South Africa would be far more likely. The Argentines hated pretty much everyone and the South Africans were falling deeper and deeper into half the world boycotting them. But you're right about the captain.
Truthfully, I doubt any were Blackwater, for the simple reason that they're too high-profile and they wouldn't be needed. Trevelyan was keeping so many people in the dark as to his actual plans (including his own partner, who supplied most of his small army) that it's probable most were hardline communists from Russia and possibly disaffected former soldiers (probably the committed communists) from the other former Soviet client states.
In the case of Carver's "German" henchmen, maybe they weren't even German, given that we only see Stamper and Kauffman (whom he obviously sought out). He could have hired what was left of the Executive Outcomes types, since they'd just been banned by the UN and many were blacklisted in their home countries of South Africa and Namibia (where they'd have spoken German).
Regarding Gettler's bodyguards, Quantum seems to have access to considerable manpower. They probably recruit the disaffected and the outcast types, partially dupe them, and when they no longer become useful, dispose of them. They could be recruiting anyone from the radical left, the radical right, or possibly even using the same recruiting pools as people like ETA in Spain (and now what's left of ETA), what's left of the PIRA in Northern Ireland, and what's left of the LTTE in Sri Lanka. They've already been shown dealing with the very-much-still-active Lord's Resistance Army.
Silva's mercs are a bit harder to figure. He could have drawn upon former East Bloc mercenaries, since they're both low in profile and cheaper than western mercenaries, but he alternately could have gotten access to disaffected Basques (would it really be that hard to fake it, given his background?), and he also would have had immediate access to the hardliners since the ceasefire happened in 2011. Remember that Silva's helicopter actually has its own governmental symbol, so he could be posing as a fake head of state to his men (who might not be able to speak English as he reveals his some of his plans). He could have presented himself as some kind of militant version of Julian Assange with Basque nationalist tendencies; his public persona isn't really delved into in the film aside from the "militant version of Julian Assange" aspect. His only goal is to keep his men duped long enough until M is dead and presumably, he is dead. Therefore, he doesn't have to put up that elaborate of a ruse, nor would he mind plotting against himself once the mercs find out he's a fake so long as said plotting, by his calculations, doesn't succeed in time for him to kill M. It can succeed after that; his only self-preservation instincts are to survive until he can kill M.
I thought Atlantis was more his private retreat and I imagine his hypothetical land based main facilities based in Australia would be similar to Hugo Drax's massive complex in California (or Globex's complex in The Simpsons's "You Only Move Twice") and hiring ex-servicemen or cops from Australia for his legitimate private security would not really raise flags (but I figured he'd get enough English speaking mercs from New Zealand, South Africa, and Rhodesia as well anyway). The security men Stromberg selected for the Liparus would've been the misanthrope/sociopath types and many may have drunk Stromberg's Kool Aid.
When I said Blackwater, I didn't mean Bond villains got their mooks from legitimate PMCs per se, but the armed goons I mentioned seemed like the professional mercenary types (and you said Eliot Carver likely recruited his stealth boat crew from a African based PMC, even if got disbanded). I long suspected Trevelyan's privately employed goons were mainly ex-Soviet people (like Xenia Onatopp) or also mercs from Cuba (but Trevelyan's Cuban security captain spoke with a clipped English accent).
Quantum is still a bit mysterious and uses many proxies (like elements of the Bolivian armed forces, LRA militiamen, Haitian gangsters, and various other terrorist/criminal freelancers), with Le Chifre's entourage, Gettler's back up, Mr. White's rescue team, and opera bodyguards being the core fighting force for Quantum and not necessarily lied to riffraff (with a legitimate PMC perhaps used as cover for Quantum's recruitment/training of its more valued heavies).
Silva's organisation was perhaps a bit like Bane's private army in TDKR and they came across as either hired underworld reprobates (Severine's entourage and her boat crew), highly skilled freelance hitmen, or competent Second/Third World mercenaries (the Skyfall estate attackers). His helicopter's emblem could've just been his quasi-corporate logo.
True, although I would still take issue with Australia being the country he's got his industrial complex set up in. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) at the time the film was made was so shrouded in mystery that not even the Soviets were fully aware of the depth of its operations. Now add in that ASIS very much had a culture of secrecy and outright paranoia not seen in the US or UK (they did cooperate heavily with MI6 and the CIA, but that was about it...they were even reported to be spying on New Zealand during the 1960's!) and I don't see how they miss Stromberg's operations. Rhodesia would be good if it weren't isolated to Southern Rhodesia at the time the film was made, New Zealand was a bit too public, but that leaves South Africa and Argentina.
The South African Bureau of State Security was extremely insular and not willing to share information with anyone (by contrast, its 1980 replacement, the National Intelligence Service, was at least willing to cooperate with the Mossad). The Mossad's attempted inroads pretty much failed because of the pervading culture of paranoia within the South African Bureau of State Security. The Bureau was also corrupt, although ironically, some of its own members didn't know it. Basically, it had gone beyond the "secrecy for the sake of efficiency" that was the ASIS's hallmark and became incompetent as a result of it. Stromberg could have picked up on that.
Then there was Argentina, which when the movie was made, had a right-wing dictatorship brand new to power, although the leftist government the preceeded it really had too much time on its hands fighting the right-wingers to carefully monitor foreign interests it considered benign. Most of its intelligence assets had gone to fighting the so-called Dirty War. Again, Stromberg could take advantage of Argentina's conserable industrial base (and HUGE coastline) to construct all kinds of water-borne craft and structures. Even the CIA's assets in the region were mostly tied up in monitoring the Dirty War. Like South Africa, Argentina in 1976 and 1977 would have been a great place to covertly build pretty much anything he wanted to.
Regarding Trevelyan's Cuban security captain, who knows, maybe the guy took an English course? Trevelyan certainly would have had the funds for translators. I doubt he got mercs from Cuba, although he could have gotten Ourumov to lie to the Castro government saying "okay, we're going to bring back communism and, therefore, start sending foreign aid to you once we control Russia again! We need you to turn your back, though, and some soldiers here and there familiar with the local terrain would help." I doubt the Cubans would say "no". I do think that at least some of Carver's goons were ex-EO, given the circumstances.
I don't see them as mutually exclusive. In other words, say Quantum sets up a PMC front organization which at first doesn't really attract too many people, but eventually gets enough high-quality contractors that they can start a training program and then starts recruiting the malcontents and putting them through its training program, which doubtless isn't done on a shoestring budget given how much wealth these guys seem to have. Quantum would likely have much more difficulty actually finding top flight US, British, and other NATO veterans that don't start getting suspicious, so the ones that don't ask questions are probably not treated as disposable assets. On the other hand, the few they are able to recruit are used to train the malcontents, freelancers, riffraff, terrorists, etc.
Maybe, maybe not. Silva was totally insane, but there was an obvious method to his madness and in spite of his madness, he was also obviously pretty effective. I do agree he used a mix of thugs such as those that surrounded Severine, hitmen, and mercenary types (as you mentioned, the guys that hit the Skyfall estate), but the question is "where did he find these guys"? He could have used the method I outlined above for Quantum, but probably not, because he had nowhere near the money they did. He would have had access to ETA immediately after its disarmament for one, and probably also various and sundry former Soviet satellite state mercenaries that wanted a return to the glory days of the USSR; if not in size, then at least for themselves. This rag-tag bunch probably would have gotten suspicious in a few cases and may even have started a plot against him, but I doubt Silva would have acted given that his only goal was to stay alive long enough to personally kill M and then himself. The only way he would have acted is if he believed that they were working too quickly. If they were the slow, "let's form a plot to overthrow him" types, he probably didn't care.
Well when Trevelyan's security captain barked 'Sir!' and handed over the portable CCTV screen, it sounded like clipped English and he didn't look typically Russian/Ukrainian/Belarus, he looked very Western European (like a combat Mr. Tanner).
And Carver's stealthboat captain was clearly English as well.
I can imagine that happening and Janus had enough power to sway a relatively pissant country like Cuba that's on friendly terms with ex-Communist countries and set up a significant military operation in its backwoods. One example of a possibly local recruit was the dusky looking Janus guard that wandered over to the surface elevator door when it opened up (then he got pounced on and knocked about by Bond).
Quantum top leadership operated like a secret society hidden in plain sight and hopefully (not holding our breath) we could see more of them to see how they operate.
Silva just seemed to have the charisma and suitcases of cash to hire high end contract killers (Patrice and those helpful mooks in London) and warzone mercenaries (Chechens, Mexicans, South Africans, etc), with few questions asked (with Silva not minding getting rid of them).
That's true, though they might have simply encountered a casting limitation. Either that or the guy was British-born, but Eastern European of some kind (Czech, perhaps?).
He could still be an Anglophone South African and ex-EO. Remember, when Southern Rhodesia collapsed, not everyone went to the UK; there were also those who left for South Africa, and who spoke with much more "English-sounding" accents.
True, although he could either have been supplied by the Cuban government or come from Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia, or Azerbaijan.
I agree here regarding not holding your breath. I'd like to be let in on some of how Quantum operates, while Bond is the one left in the dark.
Good point. I agree.
True, but the reasons for its cover being blown was fear of abuse of its secrecy. Even then, only in 1977 was it outright stated by the Australian government that the ASIS was a foreign intelligence-gathering operation, and that it did not engage in domestic spying. It wasn't fully understood until the 1990's, even then (I know they that a Royal Commission into the ASIS's activities circa 1994 or 1995). Maybe Stromberg might have started in Australia if it were ten years later, but he logically would still be too uncertain of the ASIS's activities to start there in 1972 (assuming Atlantis and the Liparus took about three years to build, each).
Given that I doubt Trevelyan completely severed contacts with MI6 (otherwise, how would he keep tabs on them?) and probably tried bringing a few into his fold, this is an interesting possibility.
Good one! Didn't think of that, either!
A henchman much like Gary Busey's turncoat US Navy officer from Under Siege. :v
Well, in that case, he'd have been a really awesome character!
Carver: "What rank were you when they kicked you out?"
Mook Captain: "I was a Lieutenant, Mr. Carver."
Carver: "You're a Captain now. And keep working well and I'll make you an Admiral."
Mook Captain (thrilled): "Yes sir!!!!"
I wonder why Janus' "main competition" in St. Petersburg seemed a bit laughable (a tired, boozy ex-KGB guy running a dingy clubhouse with appalling entertainment; but hey, comic relief). Outside of Janus' Cuban security force and Janus' best enforcer, Xenia Onatopp, we have various Janus operatives like the mystery man assisting Xenia stealing the helicopter (often mistaken for Ourumov), the bloke in the hotel bathhouse that tried to back Xenia up, Trevelyan's sniper that was covering Bond in the statue park, Ourumov's military driver in the tank chase (a Russian security officer on the take from Janus?), and the unfortunate train driver.