Though fans are excited to see Daniel Craig's last outing as 007 in No Time to Die, there is equal excitement about Rami Malek as the latest Bond villain. The bad guys in this franchise have always been important with the likes of Silva in Skyfall and Red Grant in From Russia with Love providing truly intimidating foes.
However, Bond villains can also be ridiculous at times. From their silly plots of world domination to their quirky characteristics, it's hard to take some of them seriously. Whether they are main villains or henchmen, these adversaries represent the most over-the-top aspects of the Bond series.
10 Jaws (Moonraker)
Though they can be pretty silly to look back on, there are many things that hold up well in the Roger Moore Bond movies. One of the best aspects is the beloved henchman, Jaws. But as memorable as he was, it's hard to deny that he was also quite goofy.
The metal teeth were a gimmicky yet fun inclusion, but his redemption arc in Moonraker was really truly silly. Watching this mute giant get his own love story in a Bond adventure proved the franchise wasn't taking itself too seriously in this era.
9 Willard Whyte Aka Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Diamonds Are Forever)
Blofeld is obviously one of Bond's most iconic villains and has appeared in several of the movies. However, after seeming to be killed at the beginning of Diamonds are Forever, he makes a strange and unexpected return.
Blofeld spends most of the movie posing as a reclusive American businessman named Willard Whyte only for his identity to be revealed near the end. Listening to Blofeld talking with a foolish cowboy accent severely damaged how intimidating the villain could be.
8 Xenia Onatopp (Goldeneye)
By the time Pierce Brosnan's turn as James Bond had come along, the series had moved away from the campiness for the most part and was aiming for a somewhat more grounded action franchise. However, Xenia Onatopp seemed like one last fun leftover of the sillier movies.
Along with the suggestive name, Onatopp was a wild secondary villain who memorably killed her foes by squeezing the life out of them with her legs. She is a prime example of how subtlety is not what Bond movies are known for.
7 Max Zorin (A View To A Kill)
Having Oscar-winner Christopher Walken as the villain in a Bond movie was an exciting prospect. Sadly, A View to a Kill isn't a very fun movie and Max Zorin isn't a great villain either. However, Walken infuses the part with enough wild energy to at least make him an eccentric character.
From the way he delivers cheesy one-liners after killing someone, gleefully gunning down his own goons, or his maniacal laugh during his memorable death scene, Zorin feels like a spoof of a Bond villain.
6 Tee-Hee (Live And Let Die)
With henchmen like Oddjob and Jaws having memorable and gimmicky weapons, it became a trend in the Bond franchise. However, Tee-Hee was an example of how the idea for a fun henchman is sometimes better than the execution.
In Live and Let Die, Tee-Hee sports a metal claw as one of his hands which is shown to be very powerful. But the potentially cool feature is made laughable as it is painfully obvious the claw is just awkwardly stuck on the actor's actual hand, giving him a comically long arm and taking away from his threatening nature.
5 Dr. Kaufman (Tomorrow Never Dies)
Dr. Kaufman is a rare Bond villain who makes an impression despite only appearing in one scene. In Tomorrow Never Dies, the twisted doctor comes to Bond as a would-be assassin who is apparently an expert at making murders appear like suicides.
While that is a fairly dark setup for a character, the scene is inexplicably played for laughs. Kaufman is given a comically over-the-top German accent that sounds like something out of an old sitcom and is played as more of a goofball than a cold-blooded killer.
4 Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Spectre)
The return of Blofeld in Spectre was very exciting for Bond fans and the fact that he would be played by Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz was even better. But fans were not prepared for the unexpected and unintentionally funny direction the movie would take the character.
In a twist that was even too silly in the Austin Powers movies, Blofeld is revealed to be Bond's long-lost brother. The totally unnecessary twist completely changes the dark and gritty movie into a silly soap opera.
3 Baron Samedi (Live And Let Die)
Though there are many outlandish things in the Bond movies, they have always sought to keep things somewhat believable and grounded in the real world. However, they abandoned that notion for the character of Baron Samedi who introduces supernatural elements into the series.
This henchman in Live and Let Die was based on the Haitian folklore character. But while the movie suggests he is just a normal bad guy who adopts the persona, he is shown to come back from the dead at the end of the movie which adds a strange dimension to the Bond series.
2 Nick Nack (The Man With The Golden Gun)
Nick Nack is one of the laziest henchman creations in this series. While actor Hervé Villechaize makes the most of the character, it is clearly designed to be an uninspired one-joke inclusion in the movie.
Nick Nack serves as the right-hand man to Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun but is mostly there to be the butt of some lame jokes. To make it even more embarrassing, Nick Nack is brought back for the totally unnecessary finale of the movie that seems designed just to get in one last unfunny gag.
1 Gustav Graves (Die Another Day)
Brosnan's last Bond movie, Die Another Day, is largely regarded as one of the worst in the series and the villain Gustav Graves doesn't help. After a memorable opening in which Bond battles a North Korean villain named Colonel Moon, it is revealed that he underwent surgery to reinvent himself as the white British billionaire Gustav Graves.
It is a ridiculous concept as well as being highly offensive. And the fact that Colonel Moon made for a much more interesting villain in that opening sequence makes it all seem like an even more foolish idea.
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October 05, 2021 at 11:48PM
