Time for a villainous debate
actonsteve
Posts: 299MI6 Agent
Best Lead Villain:
Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love.
Granted, she isnt as fleshed out as the novels Rosa Klebb with her donning her smock as she goes down into the KGB torture chambers. But this is one creepy woman. The scene where she interviews Tania in Istanbul is a template of good acting and direction - "You are not here to ask questions! You forget whom you are speaking!" and the knuckleduster in the solar plexus is particularly nasty. A brute of a woman. She puts fear into Tania at the end where she has to chose between 007 and her KGB superior. You can see the fear in Tanias eyes.
Worst Lead Villain
Toby Stephens as Gustav Graves
WTF!! Horribly conceived villain very badly cast. The idea was to have someone the same age as the doddering Brosnan. Did they check whether he can do menace as well? My god I've never seen so much OTT sneering since the last time I watched an Alan Rickman film. The sneering slowly turns to cheese as Stephens utterly ****s up some of the awful lines they gave him. He wont be able to live this one down at the RSC. Mind you, I nearly chose Elliott Carver for this one. It was a very close tie.
Best Secondary Villain:
Wint and Kidd
I cant find it in my heart to damn Diamond are Forever very much and alot of it is to do with W&K. Perhaps they arent the greatest gay role models (the emphasis on scent, the irrational jealousy) and they will never be BOYZ coverboys but they are so damn creepy. They seem to stalk the film hiding in the shadows most of the time. What was that Hitchcock film? Rope? where the gay couple went killing for kicks. I'm sure Fleming based these on that movie. Very un-pc but very unnerving. And the music that accompanies them just adds to their menace.
Worst Secondary Villain:
Robert Carlyle as Viktor Renard
Sorry? But what was the point? Did Carlyle have a charisma bypass doing this. All menace, and there wasnt much to start with, is sucked out of the window by his enfatuation with Electra. He is a tiny physical presence and nothing is done with his inability to feel pain. Dull! dull! DULL!!!!
[
Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love.
Granted, she isnt as fleshed out as the novels Rosa Klebb with her donning her smock as she goes down into the KGB torture chambers. But this is one creepy woman. The scene where she interviews Tania in Istanbul is a template of good acting and direction - "You are not here to ask questions! You forget whom you are speaking!" and the knuckleduster in the solar plexus is particularly nasty. A brute of a woman. She puts fear into Tania at the end where she has to chose between 007 and her KGB superior. You can see the fear in Tanias eyes.
Worst Lead Villain
Toby Stephens as Gustav Graves
WTF!! Horribly conceived villain very badly cast. The idea was to have someone the same age as the doddering Brosnan. Did they check whether he can do menace as well? My god I've never seen so much OTT sneering since the last time I watched an Alan Rickman film. The sneering slowly turns to cheese as Stephens utterly ****s up some of the awful lines they gave him. He wont be able to live this one down at the RSC. Mind you, I nearly chose Elliott Carver for this one. It was a very close tie.
Best Secondary Villain:
Wint and Kidd
I cant find it in my heart to damn Diamond are Forever very much and alot of it is to do with W&K. Perhaps they arent the greatest gay role models (the emphasis on scent, the irrational jealousy) and they will never be BOYZ coverboys but they are so damn creepy. They seem to stalk the film hiding in the shadows most of the time. What was that Hitchcock film? Rope? where the gay couple went killing for kicks. I'm sure Fleming based these on that movie. Very un-pc but very unnerving. And the music that accompanies them just adds to their menace.
Worst Secondary Villain:
Robert Carlyle as Viktor Renard
Sorry? But what was the point? Did Carlyle have a charisma bypass doing this. All menace, and there wasnt much to start with, is sucked out of the window by his enfatuation with Electra. He is a tiny physical presence and nothing is done with his inability to feel pain. Dull! dull! DULL!!!!
[
Comments
As far as I'm concerned, these three hardly ever get their proper due in villian discussions.
As a matter of fact, I find that the Bond bad-guys need more hype...time for a new post.
"He seems fit enough. Have him report to me in Istanbul in 24 hours."
Ah, but Rickman has turned OTT sneering into an art form and Stephens (son of illustrious parents though he is) just ain't got the chops for it.
Great post, great subject.
(1) When is he going to be knighted? Lesser talents and lesser names have been so honoured.
(2) Is he ever going to be a Bond baddie, which is surely his destiny?
No! No! No! No more stunt casting!
The reason Le Chiffre worked was that Mads Mikkelson was not well known outside Denmark. The reason Halle Berry came crashing down was that it WAS Halle Berry - I couldnt get past the actress.
Dear Producers, please just write good villains and find decent unknowns to play them. Lets not have Jonathan Pryce, Sean Bean or Robert Carlyle ever again.
That's not stunt casting. Stunt casting is putting Madonna in one scene as a fencing instructor, not hiring a star actor well-known for playing evil roles (eg Christopher Lee) to play Bond's antagonist.
No, he was too well known. I remember him in 'Caravaggio' in the eighties or his arse going up and down in 'Lady Chatterleys Lover'. To me he wasnt Trevelyan he was Sean Bean.
Bond works best when casting unknowns.
Rickman is a "name", he is a villainous "name". He appeals to casting agents with no imagination.
I think he would be a terrible villain because we would all be in on the joke.
Yup, that's what I said in different words.
Although I disagree that unknowns automatically make better Bond baddies: Christophers Lee & Walken are the highlights of their respective films, for example, and both were well established before their Scaramanga/Zorin roles and continue to be to this day while Robert Shaw wasn't a big star before his excellent performance in FRWL, and only became one years later. Toby Stephens wasn't and isn't a star, and his turn as Graves has produced many negative comments; Curd Jurgens was a name, but gave a flat Stromberg in TSWLM.
Gert Frobe (up till then mainly a comedian) was the right man for the job, as were Julian Glover (excellent character actor, not a star name), Christopher Lee (a star for over 50 years), Joseph Wiseman (hardly heard of before DN, hardly heard of afterwards), Christopher Walken (won his Oscar pre-Bond, nominated again subsequently)... the list goes on.
In short: being a star or an unknown doesn't preclude an actor from being a good Bond antagonist, although it doesn't guarantee it either.
An example that sticks out to me is Jack Nicholson in Batman. A lot of people didn't like the idea of him in that role, for similar reasons, and he ended up giving us one of the most memorable villains in action movie history.
My favorites are: Wiseman's Dr. No, Gert Frobe's Goldfinger, Savalas' Blofeld and Michael Lonsdale's Hugo Drax.
Best Secondary Villain
Robert Shaw as Red Grant is easily my favorite. He doesn't say anything for the first 2/3 of the film and is always lurking in the shadows, killing people. Fiona Volpe in TB is another obvious choice, if for no other reason than her deadly sex appeal. Runners up include Harold Sakata in GF, and Jaws (only in TSWLM however). Wint and Kidd were certainly amusing, primarily when they were finishing each other's sentences.
Why does it matter wether Rickman is known or not? I think that an actor should be judged based purely on their performance, not based on wether they are well-known or not. The reason I think that Rickman would be a great Blofeld is precisely because IMO he is fantastic at playing villains. Toby Stephens, on the other hand, whom I had never heard of, gave IMO the worst Bond villain performance of all time.
BTW, considering who has received knighthoods (Tom Jones for example), I agree that Rickman certainly deserves a knighthood.
I'm with you there. It's Rickman's voice that's his main selling point: rather than sneering something like "You haven't been doing your homework, Potter" it should be wrapped around "Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you" or similar uber-baddie lines. I don't want to see him with a machine gun- that's for the henchmen- just sitting metaphorically stroking a white cat, luxuriating in evil. (The cat's only a symbol; after Dr Evil the real thing can't get away with that anymore
And I love Rickman, yes, but not as a villain. Maybe as a sarcastic brittle M. Maybe that would work?
That said, if Toby Stephens is the alternative...bring on Alan!