The James Bond Franchise Has a Major Problem — And It’s Time for It To Die (original) (raw)
Every Major James Bond Villain, Ranked
Image by Federico Napoli
Published Jun 1, 2024, 8:16 AM EDT
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Summary
- James Bond villains often have physical impairments, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and becoming a tired trope.
- The reasoning used by producers to defend physical impairments in villains is weak and dated.
- Film industry initiatives are pushing for more positive representations of facial differences to end stereotyping.
If the James Bond films have proven anything, it's that they are impervious to change — until they have to. For example, sexist, double entendre Bond girl names like Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), and Plenty O'Toole (Lana Wood, a highly unfortunate, but undeniably hilarious, quadruple entendre), died after Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) in The World is Not Enough, with the series at last acknowledging that the time had long passed for the names to go. But one tenacious trend that continues to plague the franchise, right up to Daniel Craig's final act in No Time to Die, is the antagonist with a defining physical trait that's meant to contribute to their intimidation. You know. Eye patches. Prosthetic metal hands. Metallic teeth. An eye that weeps blood. And scars. So many scars of all shapes and sizes, some even diamond-encrusted. The trope is so familiar that Mike Myers' spot-on spoof of the Bond films, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, introduced Dr. Evil, an antagonist with an ashen complexion and a tell-tale facial scar. And with apologies to the franchise, there is indeed a Time to Die for the tired trope, and that time is now.
The Trope of Bond Villains With Physical Impairments Is a Real Thing
Is it fair to generalize that the villains in the James Bond franchise all have some form of these physical traits? To a point. There certainly are villains that have no visible scars or other physical impairments, with big baddy Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) one notable example. However, the percentage that do is astoundingly high. One unofficial count, per Quora, places the percentage of Bond villains with a facial impairment at 44%. That number doesn't even include Dr. Julius No's (Joseph Wiseman) bionic hands, Jaws' (Richard Kiel) metallic teeth, You Only Live Twice's Tee Hee (Julius Harris) and his hook for a hand, Renard's (Robert Carlyle) bullet wound to the head, or Francisco Scaramanga's (Christopher Lee), um, third nipple.
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But official or not, it is those facial impairments that do make up the majority. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who has appeared as the villain in nine of the Bond films, is most notable for the facial scar and milky eye that color the Donald Pleasence and Christoph Waltz iterations of the character. Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) bears an eye patch for an undisclosed reason. Zao (Rick Yune) has a face covered in scars, but fashionably so, with diamonds embedded in his face after an explosion in Die Another Day. Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) weeps blood out of his left eye due to haemolacria. Javier Bardem's Raoul Silva has a severe facial injury to the mouth, eye, and bone structure due to ingesting hydrogen cyanide. Sean Bean's Alec Trevelyan has facial scarring, as do the three antagonists of the last Bond film: Waltz's Blofeld, SPECTRE assassin Prime (Dali Benssalah), and Rami Malek's Safin.
The Reasoning is Weak for Bond's Troublesome Trope
The producer of No Time to Die, Michael G. Wilson, spoke to the use of facial impairments in the Bond villains: "It's very much a [Ian] Fleming device that he uses throughout the stories - the idea that physical deformity and personal deformity goes hand in hand... a motivating factor in their life, and what makes them the way they are." In other words, as it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, the Bond villain. It's the weakest defense of using a dated stereotype, perhaps ever. That would be akin to saying only white male actors are allowed roles of merit (interestingly, the white male is also a prevalent Bond villain type, but that's an issue for another time), or never adding the "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer because the actual harming of an animal is more authentic. What makes the statement even sadder is the fact that the majority of the Daniel Craig era villains have facial injuries, three in the last film alone, as referred to above.
There certainly was, and obviously still is, a long history of associating villainy with some degree of physical disability. William Shakespeare's circa 1592-1594 play Richard III may not have started the stereotype, but it's certainly one of the earliest, with the titular character's villainy linked with his ugly visage and hunched back. It's a defining feature throughout Hollywood history, with villains like The Lion King's Scar (yes, his name is literally Scar), or A Nightmare on Elm Street's iconic Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) and his burned, scarred face being just a few examples. But let's call it what it is: a shortcut. It's a lazy, unoriginal way to define a character as being evil before they have even uttered a single word. The association is so deep that any film that features a scarred protagonist, like The Man Without a Face, still keeps that scarred figure at a distance, someone feared or made the subject of outlandish rumors. And even if they don’t, the filmmaker has to work hard to make the audience believe that the facially impaired character before them can be, and is the hero of the piece. But it doesn't make it right, and a huge franchise like James Bond, which has made strides with Dame Judi Dench as the first female M and a black, woman 007 (Lashana Lynch), could change the narrative very easily.
Movies are Being Strongly Encouraged Not to Follow in Bond's Shoes
Only time will tell if the next James Bond film will have learned its lesson, but it certainly isn't for lack of trying on the industry's part. Changing Faces, a UK charity organization whose goal is to end discrimination against people with visible differences launched its "I Am Not Your Villain" campaign, specifically to "end the use of scars, burns, or marks as shorthand for villainy." That initiative pushed the British Film Institute to proclaim in November 2018 that they would no longer fund films in which villains have visible facial scarring. The statement from the film fund director of the BFI, Ben Roberts, said in a statement:
“Film has such a powerful influence on society … [and] also is a catalyst for change and that is why we are committing to not having negative representations depicted through scars or facial difference in the films we fund … This campaign speaks directly to the criteria in the BFI Diversity Standards which call for meaningful representations on screen ... and [we] urge the rest of the film industry to do the same.”
Has it worked? Somewhat. In the same Guardian article referenced above, Phyllida Swift, a campaigns manager for Changing Faces, cited the Harry Potter films as a positive depiction of facial scarring (except for our noseless friend Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), of course), while BFI's Roberts tipped his hat to Sacha Polak's acid-attack drama Dirty God as a "fantastic example of [an] authentic, empathetic, and positive portrayal." On the other side, 2023's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 had as its primary antagonist the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), whose face had been savagely mauled by Rocket (Bradley Cooper) years before. Then there's No Time to Die, released in 2021, a full three years after the BFI's call for an end to the association between facial differences and villainy. No excuses, Mr. Bond.
No Time to Die is available to stream in the U.S. on Prime Video.