Examples of Amateurism in James Bond Villainy (Novels and Films)?
Silhouette Man
The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,851MI6 Agent
I'd be very interested to know your thoughts on this topic as it's never been discussed before on AJB. 
Basically, I want members here to think back over the James Bond films (or even the Bond novels if you wish, though I personally think that there are less examples of amateurism there) and see if you can uncover any examples of amateurism from the part of the main villains, their henchmen and associates.
Here are a few that occur to me in the James Bond films at least:
Professor Dent (DN)- an amateur assassin with tarantula and gun.
Quist (TB) - being found by Bond hiding in the shower- he is killed by being thrown to the sharks by villain Emilio Largo.
Wint and Kidd (DAF) - leaving Bond to rot in the piece of pipe.
Rosie Carver (LALD) - very amateurish as a CIA and villainess; a badly written character too.
Max Largo (NSNA) - failing to take Bond's laser watch off when he leaves him to rot away in the tower with the vultures.
Dr Carl Mortner and Scarpine (AVTAK) on the airship - laughable amateurism in disposing of the dynamite - squabbling among themselves ("Give it to me"/especially Mortner lighting the dynamite stick the first place, given the armory of sub-machine guns he could have used on Bond and Stacey Sutton first!
Elliot Carver (TND)- not a very good fighter, see his laughable attempt at martial arts! That was intentional, though.
Dominic Greene (QoS)- amateurism in fighting Bond - puts the axe through his own foot and flails about with it wildly. Compare with Max Zorin's proficiency with the fire axe on the Golden Gate Bridge for instance.
Elvis (QoS) - doesn't do very much as Greene's bodyguard/Head of Security and even needs Greene to point his gun in the right direction for him!
Obviously the Dalton Bond was aware of the blatant amateurism of the "KGB assassin" Kara Milovy in TLD too and he refused to kill her, citing the fact that "I only kill professionals."
I'm pretty sure that there are others that I have missed.
If you can add to my list, with your reasons for citing a character as displaying amateurism, please let me know in this dedicated thread. -{
Basically, I want members here to think back over the James Bond films (or even the Bond novels if you wish, though I personally think that there are less examples of amateurism there) and see if you can uncover any examples of amateurism from the part of the main villains, their henchmen and associates.
Here are a few that occur to me in the James Bond films at least:
Professor Dent (DN)- an amateur assassin with tarantula and gun.
Quist (TB) - being found by Bond hiding in the shower- he is killed by being thrown to the sharks by villain Emilio Largo.
Wint and Kidd (DAF) - leaving Bond to rot in the piece of pipe.
Rosie Carver (LALD) - very amateurish as a CIA and villainess; a badly written character too.
Max Largo (NSNA) - failing to take Bond's laser watch off when he leaves him to rot away in the tower with the vultures.
Dr Carl Mortner and Scarpine (AVTAK) on the airship - laughable amateurism in disposing of the dynamite - squabbling among themselves ("Give it to me"/especially Mortner lighting the dynamite stick the first place, given the armory of sub-machine guns he could have used on Bond and Stacey Sutton first!
Elliot Carver (TND)- not a very good fighter, see his laughable attempt at martial arts! That was intentional, though.
Dominic Greene (QoS)- amateurism in fighting Bond - puts the axe through his own foot and flails about with it wildly. Compare with Max Zorin's proficiency with the fire axe on the Golden Gate Bridge for instance.
Elvis (QoS) - doesn't do very much as Greene's bodyguard/Head of Security and even needs Greene to point his gun in the right direction for him!
Obviously the Dalton Bond was aware of the blatant amateurism of the "KGB assassin" Kara Milovy in TLD too and he refused to kill her, citing the fact that "I only kill professionals."
I'm pretty sure that there are others that I have missed.
If you can add to my list, with your reasons for citing a character as displaying amateurism, please let me know in this dedicated thread.
-{ "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Comments
He could have just tried to extinguish the fuse of the dynamite .... Anyways, the villains were supposed to in one way or the other
Thank you, I've added him into the list!
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
Fixed that for you.
Ah, yes! I was thinking of Jaws obviously, although weirdly I've never seen it!
Yes, the two must have become conflated in my mind. I've been meaning to watch Thunderball again so I must do that! My Bond knowledge sometimes gets a little rusty over the years!
The idea that instead there are vast training camps and organizations out there producing highly trained and outfitted spies and the like, outside of very specific government organizations, is a bit silly. It's as tedious as watching really, really tall men put a small orange ball in a hoop they can easily get to. For some people, this is incredibly exciting, but for the rest of us, this is boring and predictable. Amateurs are also more interesting to watch because they are not so skilled that they operated like precise machines but instead are like random acts.
Yes, thank you very much for your erudite (as always) contribution, Gassy Man. You are of course correct.
Spies/secret agents like James Bond of course formed out of lordly amateur spies right up to the professional training of the wartime SOE so the fact that his enemies are sometimes does, as you say, give a pleasing ring of validity and realism to the whole enterprise. It's all a long cry from the massive standing armies of Blofeld in YOLT and Stromberg in TSWLM however...
What a terribly hopeless villain with a horrible overall plan and "mommy issues".
I know he ultimately achieves his aim...But come on! he gets his arse kicked by a bunch of old people and a pretty useless Bond playing "Home Alone"!
Could you go into detail on his amateurism - I think Boris is more of an "Ordinary Joe" type of character given his introduction with the other computer programmers before all of the massacring by Xenia Onatopp goes down and that's something I find rather refreshing about GoldenEye as a Bond film. It helps you to make you feel more empathy for the people killed if nothing else. I find that Bond films need a little time to breathe in moments like this.
I dislike him more and more each time I watch the film. Possibly because the way Alan Cumming (over)acts the character, I just find him a bit silly.
"Better make that two."
Yes, he seems rather out of place and very "90s" (in a horribly dated way) in a Bond film, although as I said in my post above they did try to push things in another direction with GoldenEye given that it was the first Bond film of the new decade and the first for six years too.
Sorry but "I am invicible!" rubbed me up the wrong way. And the dialogue he shares with Natalya is pure American. And that finny fannying with the passwords..
Yeah, I never used to mind him and I agree with what you mean.
The whole Xenia/Boris elements are very different and overt - it's 90s you're right.
Almost like Newman being in Jurassic Park - the "odd-ball" antagonist.
"Better make that two."
And slept with Bond, should've known, he never misses. But then again, she got something out of that too
"Better make that two."