“My name is Bond… James Bond.” This archetypal quote has been consistent with all movies about the fictional British spy. But it’s high time Bond’s adversaries got their own too. What better one than “The name is Dumm… Mister Dumm?”
For a movie to be good, both the hero and the villain have to be outstanding. However, Bond movies work just fine even with wooden-headed villains. Does a rich bad guy want to destroy the world for no good reason? No problem. Agent 007 is so suave that he’ll make all the madness look like an everyday setback.
What was he thinking? That’s the question you’ll keep asking yourself while reading about these supervillain plots.
Stromberg’s City Under The Ocean
A city under the ocean? Don’t recheck the title of this list. You haven’t been redirected to a story about Aquaman. We are still minding 007’s business. In 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, Industrialist Karl Stromberg is the supervillain. Let’s imagine what’s going on in Karl’s evil mind, shall we?
He probably thinks: Let me steal submarines from Britain and USSR. How hard can that be?. I’ll make them fire nukes at each other, causing generals from both countries to get mad and go at it. It was you who started it. No! It was you. Eventually, they’ll engage in a nuclear war that will destroy the earth. I will then construct a city under the ocean to offer shelter to survivors.
Stromberg assumed that his cool underwater city will be safe. In reality, nuclear radiation caused by the war would affect the water, rendering his aquatic empire uninhabitable. Plenty of oxygen from outside would also be needed to sustain his underwater guests but there’d be none because all the air will be contaminated.
Sanchez Smuggling Cocaine By Dissolving It In Petrol
Pablo Escobar would have torn his hair apart if someone ever told him about this. Licence To Kill’s villain Franz Sanchez clearly needed proper lessons in drug dealing. Why not dig tunnels or use private planes to move coke?
Traditionally, drug lords refrain from attacking American agents, given the blowback that always follows. Don’t tell that to Sanchez who went on to order an attack on CIA agent Felix Leiter and had his wife killed. To be fair, this movie wasn’t that bad. Timothy Dalton’s portrayal of Bond was outstanding. Robert Davi’s performance as Sanchez was solid. The sole culprit was the plot.
Trevelyan’s Thirst For Vengence
In GoldenEye Alec Trevelyan is a disgruntled former MI6 agent. Why are so many of them disgruntled? MI6 must be a terrible place to work. Does it have something to do with salary delays? M can’t be the problem. She has always looked like a good boss. Well, in GoldenEye, it’s about parents. Yes parents. Trevelyan plans to steal billions from the Bank of England then use the GoldenEye satellite to destroy it and cripple England’s economy.
He is doing all this to avenge the death of mummy and daddy. He believes it’s England’s fault that they died in World War II. Okay, Mr. Trevelyan. What will you do with all the money once you steal it? You already destroyed the economy. Now what?
Carver Starting World War 3 For Broadcast Rights
In Tomorrow Never Dies, media mogul Elliot Carver’s mission was to create conflict between China and Britain in order to start a world war. All this so that his news outlets could get exclusive broadcast rights in China. Wow! This villain should have just been named Lucifer.
Question: How exactly would he be able to broadcast efficiently and profitably in a war-torn world? Would he fit his reporters with helmets and bulletproof vests? Think, Elliot, think! The best part about this movie is that tomorrow never dies but Carver does.
Blofeld Creating Food Shortage
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service saw Blofeld extend his streak of dumb schemes. He decides to use a virus to cause sterility in plants and animals. Goal? To cause food-shortage, forcing governments to pardon him for his crimes.
He builds a highly protected mountain base, does plastic surgery and brainwashes twelve women in order to use them to deliver the deadly virus. Wow! Bond villains really enjoy doing a lot of unnecessary work. Isn’t changing his face good enough? No one would recognize him thus he wouldn’t need to be pardoned. He’d be able to avoid capture. However, he just feels compelled to go the extra mile.
Raoul Silva’s Tideous Plan To Kill M
In Skyfall, former (also disgruntled) MI6 agent Raoul Silva leaked a list of undercover agents so that he could get Bond to hunt him down. He then allowed himself to be captured only to escape again to go look for M. Too much effort just to kill one person.
As a skilled former agent, why couldn’t he just buy a sniper rifle and use it to assassinate M? Better yet, how about sneaking into M’s apartment and killing her? Earlier in the movie, Bond was able to sneak into M’s apartment quite easily. Why couldn’t Raul do the same?
Colonel Moon’s Korean Plan
In Die Another Day, Colonel Tan-Sun Moon (great name) had a long term vision of creating peace between North Korea and South Korea. So, what was the good colonel’s plan to bring his vision into reality?
He intended to fire a laser called Icarus from space through a minefield at the border of the two nations. By doing this, North Korean forces could invade South Korea and start a war. He believed that after fighting for a while, the two nations would learn how to get along. Pretty optimistic. Very unrealistic.
Scaramanga’s Giant Laser
Who is The Man With The Golden Gun? He is Scaramanga. He’s played by Christopher Lee, the actor famous for portraying Dracula. As if a golden gun isn’t unique enough, Scaramanga has three nipples. In an alternate universe, this installment would be called The Man With Three Nipples.
Scaramanga is an effective assassin who charges one million dollars per kill. His job has made him so wealthy that he owns a private island. Confusingly, he finds the need to power a giant laser and use it to destroy the world. Why not just stick to his high-paying job? The bigger question: Why did almost every Bond villain before the Craig era feel the need to use lasers? A plot to assassinate Elvis might have been more tolerable than this laser-fest.
Blofeld Spying On The World
Blofeld is to Bond what the Joker is to Batman. Sadly, he failed to impress in Spectre. What could possibly motivate him to spy on the whole world? Could he have been unsatisfied with current reality TV shows and decided to come up with his own in real-time? He must have been close to naming his surveillance system Keeping Up With The Whole Damn World before James messed things up for him as usual. Damn you, James!
Anyway, Blofeld needed to spy on world governments and their intelligence agencies so that he would know if any efforts were being made to destroy his organization. That’s it. For a man who was supposedly the boss of all the previous Bond villains, he surely needed to have the evilest plan of them all. Nope. He didn’t.
Mister Big Supplying Free Heroin
Mister Big is the antagonist in Live and Let Die. Yawn!. Another Bond movie title with the word ‘die’. Big plans to supply free heroin to the public in order to drive out his competitors. Once people are hooked on his drug, he will start selling it again. In the real world, his plan could have been thwarted by Mister Big’s own competitors. They’d have killed him for spoiling their business.
A supply problem also emerges as Mister Big also discovers that opium can’t be grown anywhere as he thought. Bond finally kills him by forcing him to ingest a gas capsule that causes him to explode. Goodbye Mister Dumm. Oops. I meant Mister Big.
