Lucy Butler was the scariest villain ever...
But that was another series
Vote NOW for the vilest Bond villain
In the 50 years since Her Majesty's Secret Service first let 007 loose on the silver screen, James Bond has faced some truly fearsome adversaries. Menaced by steel-toothed giants, Koreans wielding killer bowler hats, and dagger-shoed Russian madwomen, it's fair to say that the world's favourite spy has survived some of the …
-
-
Friday 12th October 2012 10:17 GMT James Micallef
I agree that Stromberg has got to be high on the list. He scores highly for his Proper 'Bond villain' base + supertanker with private army. Also the harpoon gun under the table adds a personal touch to his killings. Somehow having minions do all the dirty work seems to me to be too 'remote' to be a proper villain.
Blofeld is the 'classic' Bond villain, it's just that for me just pressing a button and having someone die, or being basically a 'CEO' of a villanous organisation without getting your hands dirty doesn't cut it. At the top end of the REALLY getting your hands dirty scale is Sanchez who is personally handling a couple of rather gruesome killings.
Incidentally, why is teh list a mix of master-minds and henchmen. Odd-Job and Jaws are fearsome opponents but not much in the way of brains. Why not have a vote for best super-villain and another vote for best henchman?
-
-
-
Monday 15th October 2012 06:50 GMT Steven Roper
In my book
Hugo Drax was no villain. To me he was a hero and a martyr, who sadly failed in a noble endeavour. If I had his money and resources, I'd certainly do exactly what he tried to do - wipe the human plague off the face of the planet and replace them with a selected few - namely, non-religious people with at least a semi-decent education who aren't concerned with telling everyone else how to live their lives.
Only I wouldn't do it with mere poison gas from orbiting probes - there's NO substance toxic enough that a handful of bar-fridge-sized probes' worth would wipe out every last human on the planet (yes, I know about botulinum toxin, and no, those probes would not be an effective method of spreading it sufficiently.) My preferred technique would perhaps be a weaponised disease with the fatality rate of ebola and the contagiousness of the common cold, since most other forms of destruction (like my erstwhile favourite, grey goo) would wipe out all other life as well.
I 'm surprised Elliot Carver didn't get more votes - after all, he's the only one obviously based on a real-life villain, namely Rupert Murdoch. Now there's an evil megalomaniac despot if ever there was one.
-
Friday 12th October 2012 09:52 GMT auburnman
Hmmm......
While I remember the villains, I'm struggling to remember what most of them actually did/tried to do, which is making the vote tricky. Carver was pretty vile when he tried to start a war to profit, but wasn't that Blofeld's objective in You Only Live Twice? Where's Emilio Largo on the list? He held cities to ransom with nukes in Thunderball.
I think El Reg should re-run this poll after ITV have finished their seasonal 'show every Bond film we can afford over Christmas' and we've reacquainted ourselves with the baddies.
-
-
-
Friday 12th October 2012 11:47 GMT A Known Coward
Franz Sanchez - Most realistic, most violent
Franz Sanchez for me. He's the least comic book of the villains, an ultraviolet drug cartel leader based on real life characters. Unlike Blofeld et al he didn't have henchmen doing his dirty work, he got his hands dirty, very dirty. Whether it was dismembering people with a machete or string them up and lowering them slowly to a hungry shark - not to kill outright in one bite as other Bond villains might but to be chewed up piece by piece.
There was always a touch of the absurd to the other Bond villains which made them hard to take seriously, but Franz Sanchez was a cold blooded, psychopathic butcher and by far the vilest of them all. Not my favourite, but that wasn't the question being asked.
-
Friday 12th October 2012 17:41 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Franz Sanchez - Most realistic, most violent
The guy is now in charge...
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_21389331/even-more-brutal-leader-takes-over-mexicos-zetas
MEXICO CITY (AP) - A falling out between the leaders of the hyper-violent Zetas cartel appears to have put the gang in the hands of a brutal and feared gangster who has been blamed for an eruption of bloodshed in Mexico's once relatively calm central states. Miguel Angel Trevino Morales is a former cartel enforcer who apparently won a showdown with Zetas founder Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano for leadership, law enforcement officials say. Lawmen and even competing drug capos picture Trevino as a brutal assassin who favors getting rid of foes by stuffing them into oil drums, dousing them with gasoline and setting them on fire - a practice known as a "guiso," a Spanish word for "stew."
-
-
Friday 12th October 2012 11:58 GMT Alister
Difficult decision
One's instinct is to go for Blofeld, but in fact he was quite charming, in all his guises, rather than frightening or villainous. Eliot Carver was quite nasty - much more obviously evil, to my mind, possibly because his plot was almost believable.
Some of the others mentioned were too over the top to be really menacing, and in fact I always had a sneaking feeling of pity for Jaws, he didn't really come out of things well.
Red Grant was pretty evil, he came across as a real psychopath, but I would say that the outright nastiest, though, was Franz Sanchez, definitely the most vile.
-
Friday 12th October 2012 21:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Eliot Carver believable?
What about Dominic Greene? He's not too much of a stretch from real life I think... given the opportunity I could see the radical greens giving us a real life villain somewhere between Greene and Drax.
Speaking of, I think Al Gore will make a great Bond villain someday. Trying to take over the world economy with a mandatory carbon credit regime enforced by the UN. Quick, someone give that man a yacht with a submarine (like Paul Allen has - another real life candidate for being a Bond villain someday) or a volcano island base!
On second thought, maybe I like my Bond villains a little more comic book (Blofeld) than real (Sanchez).
-
-
-
Friday 12th October 2012 15:06 GMT Whistler
Thunderball
Where's Largo? I thought he was one of the best. Happily throws people to his sharks, but also leads his men from the front. Some of the others, once bond dealt with the henchmen, were a pushover.
Largo from the original Thunderball of course, not any remake.
Big explosion, what all villains love to threaten
-
Friday 12th October 2012 15:10 GMT kdh0009
Convincingly unpleasant..
Has to be Sanchez. Whilst he's far from the 'best' villain or the smartest villain or the most world-dominatingly deluded villain, he can easily be considered the one you would least want to meet.
A classic Bond villain has enough charm to be tolerable for a while. You would not want to be anywhere near Sanchez for any time at all.
-
Friday 12th October 2012 16:14 GMT jason 7
I must say....
Mr Wynt and Mr Kidd puzzled and disturbed me as a 10 year old from a sheltered background. I felt there was something a bit different about them
I still find them a bit unsettling (not so much the fact they were a couple, I get that now) in their tone and mannerisms. That's what makes good villains.
Highly underrated in the Bond world.
-
Saturday 13th October 2012 06:12 GMT Colin Brett
Baron Samedi FTW!
Most of the other chief villains are obsessed psychos with massive personal wealth and an ego to go with it. This is their major failing: they will lose when their ego goes out of control and they start making mistakes (like telling Bond their plan when they should have just put a bullet in him from the start).
That's why I voted for Baron Samedi, the loa Lord of the Graves. Bond might beat all the rest but can even 007 beat Death himself?
Colin
Skull icon because that would be his symbol!
PS: Others have called for the poll to be split into villains and henchmen. I propose two more polls: "Best Bond Movie Quotes" (hero or villain) and, of course, Best Bond Girl (preferably with 8x10 glossies :-) )
-
Sunday 14th October 2012 10:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Novartis CEO?
If we consider they were involved in;
* Human testing of LSD, LAE, BZ and other psychoactives for MKULTRA.
* Selling drugs they know don't work, to cover costs of marketing more than the R&D costs.
* Creating potentially deadly retro-viruses by using pig organs in people, and pumping those people full of immune system inhibitors.
* Implicated in the manufacture of a biological weapon that possibly then led to HIV (hep-c tests on people who were considered very sexually active)
All of those items are independently verifiable (see Mark Thomas, xenotransplantation, MKULTRA files, etc... etc...)
I'd say that Novartis are a whole hell of a lot worse than any of the fictional bond villains.
-
Sunday 14th October 2012 20:02 GMT Patrice
Goldfinger
Goldfinger is certainly the most watchable villain performance of the series. There is something about the look and the voice of that performance that is very memorable and enjoyable.
And the best line of the series ever is Goldfinger's: "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die".
It even has an XKCD strip for it http://www.xkcd.com/123/
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
