How would the films have gone if EON always had the rights to Blofeld?

Oakvale

This came into my mind today, and I thought I should ask the forum at large.

What if EON always had the full rights to Thunderball, and by extension Blofeld and Spectre? I imagine they would use them after DAF, likely as they planned to in FYEO.

I think that Blofeld being removed from use for the official series was probably the best thing, as it allowed more creativity and more villains.

Matt S

It was The Spy Who Loved Me that planned to use Blofeld again. Since Stromberg is not all that creative a villain, I don't think it would have made a difference in creativity in that film. The rights to Blofeld may have allowed for a creative escape for the villain rather than Bond simply shooting him at the dinner table. Other villains from the Moore films were taken from Fleming's stories, so I suspect we would have seen them anyway. I would have appreciated the occasional appearance of Blofeld to tie more of the Bond films together. Seeing as how the issue of Blofeld didn't come up until TSWLM (as far as I know), the creative villains of LALD and TMWTGG would have happened anyway.

Asp9mm

Blofeld and SPECTRE belong in the 60's and were brilliant. They should have left them there. SPECTRE nearly worked, but it was let down by the 'family' connection and Waltz, who should have been brilliant, but was let down by the script and the family crap, and some cheesy Bond-villain type acting... and the family 'crap'!. Cuckoo... it all went wrong from those words.

superado

Asp9mm wrote:

Blofeld and SPECTRE belong in the 60's and were brilliant. They should have left them there. SPECTRE nearly worked, but it was let down by the 'family' connection and Waltz, who should have been brilliant, but was let down by the script and the family crap, and some cheesy Bond-villain type acting... and the family 'crap'!. Cuckoo... it all went wrong from those words.

You really nailed it. I still have a hard time coming to grips with this movie...I love Spectre, I love the concept of how the organization was reinvented and somehow tied into the preceding 3 films as the overarching secret entity...I love Waltz...then, when I look back at the coolness of SPECTRE's heyday and its juxtaposition with the new movie, there's suddenly a nagging disconnect...cuckoo )

Asp9mm

The SPECTRE meeting scene really set Blofeld up as someone who was a terrifying presence, and then he said 'cuckoo' and it all just went away. In my opinion it would be akin to the introduction of Vader in Star Wars going... 'Commander, tear this ship apart until we've found those plans, and prepare me some sausages, as I missed breakfast'.

Higgins

Asp9mm wrote:

Blofeld and SPECTRE belong in the 60's and were brilliant. They should have left them there. SPECTRE nearly worked, but it was let down by the 'family' connection and Waltz, who should have been brilliant, but was let down by the script and the family crap, and some cheesy Bond-villain type acting... and the family 'crap'!. Cuckoo... it all went wrong from those words.

+1! {[]

Chriscoop

Agree with Asp9mm, Blofeld was a missed opportunity in Spectre, I think if eon had always had the rights he would have been killed off some time ago, probably during Moores tenure.

Matt S

Asp9mm wrote:

The SPECTRE meeting scene really set Blofeld up as someone who was a terrifying presence, and then he said 'cuckoo' and it all just went away. In my opinion it would be akin to the introduction of Vader in Star Wars going... 'Commander, tear this ship apart until we've found those plans, and prepare me some sausages, as I missed breakfast'.

Haha. That's bang on. As Star Wars showed, only the good guys can be shown eating breakfast. Bad guys eat supper.

walther p99

Asp9mm wrote:

Blofeld and SPECTRE belong in the 60's and were brilliant. They should have left them there. SPECTRE nearly worked, but it was let down by the 'family' connection and Waltz, who should have been brilliant, but was let down by the script and the family crap, and some cheesy Bond-villain type acting... and the family 'crap'!. Cuckoo... it all went wrong from those words.

yeah I agree, Blofeld and SPECTRE should be left in the 60's. Especially since during the Craig era when they already had their own updated SPECTRE-like organization in Quantum. It just seemed totally unnecessary and trite.

Sir Hillary Bray

Oakvale wrote:

I think that Blofeld being removed from use for the official series was probably the best thing, as it allowed more creativity and more villains.

This is the key point to me. I think EON would have kept on "milking the Blofeld cow" for as long as they could have, which would not have been a good thing.

Remington

Sir Hillary Bray wrote:

Oakvale wrote:

I think that Blofeld being removed from use for the official series was probably the best thing, as it allowed more creativity and more villains.

This is the key point to me. I think EON would have kept on "milking the Blofeld cow" for as long as they could have, which would not have been a good thing.

Exactly right. They should've killed off Blofeld at the end of DAF. Although I do dig the PTS for FYEO. After SF, I wish Quantum would've returned and we had absolutely no ties to SF. Waltz could still play the leader, Guntram Shatterhand.

caractacus potts

I think Blofeld worked best when he was the big boss behind the baddies, unseen and unnamed yet the audience knew he was there
that way Rosa Klebb or Emilio Largo got their fair share as the main villain of each film
once Bond actually met Blofeld, that sort of limited what could be done with the remaining films
he only meets Blofeld near the end of YOLT, so that allows the supporting villains in that film to each have their moment without being outclassed
Savalas is very good, so no problems that he dominates the next film
Charles Gray was very bad, and its a big problem he dominates the last half of that film
but imagine if in every Moore film Blofeld had been the villain? they would all have been so much more predictable than they already are, I think the need to come up with new villains was the only choice possible to keep the series going

on the other hand, if I saw an Austin Powers film without Dr Evil, I'd feel seriously ripped off

Gassy Man

Asp's comments are still making me laugh. {[]

A big problem for the Bond series is that they flailed about looking for a concrete villain after Blofeld left. The occasional one-off, like Goldfinger, worked when done right, but the diabolical Russians who later stood in place of SPECTRE in later films just didn't do it.

The reason Blofeld worked was because he was so rational and yet mysterious in his villainy. You lost that when it's the various rogue general or whatever from a regime you already know a lot about.

Matt S

Gassy Man wrote:

Asp's comments are still making me laugh. {[]

A big problem for the Bond series is that they flailed about looking for a concrete villain after Blofeld left. The occasional one-off, like Goldfinger, worked when done right, but the diabolical Russians who later stood in place of SPECTRE in later films just didn't do it.

The reason Blofeld worked was because he was so rational and yet mysterious in his villainy. You lost that when it's the various rogue general or whatever from a regime you already know a lot about.

That must be why Scaramanga was so great. He was rational and mysterious.

I think OP was great in that it had the crazy rogue general and the rational villain working together.

Dracolis

I think Blofeld should have only been in 3 films, like he was only in 3 of the Bond books.

Barbel

Adding him to FRWL works nicely, and since YOLT and OHMSS were filmed the wrong way round then he had to return in DAF.

Chriscoop

I enjoy Blofeld in the films he appears in ( Spectre being the exception as he was badly written) but bond would have had to kill him at some point or he's failed! And bond doesn't fail.

Matt S

Chriscoop wrote:

I enjoy Blofeld in the films he appears in ( Spectre being the exception as he was badly written) but bond would have had to kill him at some point or he's failed! And bond doesn't fail.

Craig's Bond fails often. Success is an outdated form of character development.

Chriscoop

Matt S wrote:

Chriscoop wrote:

I enjoy Blofeld in the films he appears in ( Spectre being the exception as he was badly written) but bond would have had to kill him at some point or he's failed! And bond doesn't fail.

Craig's Bond fails often. Success is an outdated form of character development.

In Skyfall bond failed terribly. But I meant more along the lines of having Blofeld cropping up constantly throughout the series would become farcical. How many times could bond have thought he'd got rid of him only for him to pop up again. Bond ultimately succeeds in varying fashion. The bad guy gets thwarted and bond moves on. I suppose at some point we need the garden of death and Blofelds ultimate demise, but I suspect now eon have regained the character he will be milked enabling more lazy writing and having the audience screaming " just shoot him in the head bond for God's sake" at the screen.

caractacus potts

Chriscoop wrote:

I suspect now eon have regained the character he will be milked enabling more lazy writing and having the audience screaming " just shoot him in the head bond for God's sake" at the screen.

damn, that's certainly a good point: they can't kill him off now, therefor no Garden of Death style final showdown can ever happen
every film will have to end with him making his getaway on the monorail from now on

Chriscoop

caractacus potts wrote:

Chriscoop wrote:

I suspect now eon have regained the character he will be milked enabling more lazy writing and having the audience screaming " just shoot him in the head bond for God's sake" at the screen.

damn, that's certainly a good point: they can't kill him off now, therefor no Garden of Death style final showdown can ever happen
every film will have to end with him making his getaway on the monorail from now on

Yes shaking his fist out of the window screaming " next time Mr bond you wont be so lucky"
Oh hang on, now we have the brother thing going on we could just have a Scooby doo type ending when Bond takes off the villains mask to reveal Blofeld. " and I would have got away with it too if hadn't been for you pesky foster brother and mi6"

Gassy Man

If they want to go that route, they don't need Blofeld -- they just assign his character traits and actions to another character, as they've done many times before. if you look at the Bonds after CR, that's essentially what they've been doing -- recycling past characters and elements, sometimes more clearly with some than others, and putting them in a blender. For instance, Silva is just a 008 redux, Swann is Tracy, Mr. White transforms into the anti-Draco, Hinx is OddJob and Jaws, and even Blofeld seems to inhabit spaces that other Bond villains have.

Barbel

Hell, they've been doing that since the word go- and that's not just Eon, Fleming did the same! (And that's not a criticism; it's a fact common to any long-running series which may indeed be crucial to the fact that they ARE a long-running series.)