Sure, a new 007 film would be nothing without a Bond girl, the title song, the strict boss M. and the cool gadets. But they bring the spice in first: the nasty villains, each of whom are psychopathic in a different way and always strive for limitless power.
Exactly 60 years ago, on October 5, 1962, it all started: “James Bond – 007 chases Dr. No” was released in cinemas. The nasty Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman) provided the role model for all other villains: the mine owner was incredibly megalomaniac (“I’m never wrong”), dreamed of world domination, which is prototypical for all successors, and fingered red atomic buttons with his steel claw. The press at the time thought it was “escapist nonsense,” but viewers loved this caricature of evil.
The second Bond film already showed a trend that continues to this day: the bad guys seem particularly bad if they come from Germany. Lotte Lenya, widow of the Threepenny Opera composer Kurt Weill, made the beginning – but embodied a Soviet agent named Rosa Klebb.
From Götz Otto to Goffried John
In the very next film, a German was allowed to do it again. Gert Fröbe, who was frighteningly convincing as the child murderer in “It Happened in Broad Daylight”, also showed himself to be a match for Bond. Since the 90s, Götz Otto, Gottfried John and Clemens Schick have stood in the way of 007 – all without success, of course.
However, the biter played by Richard Kiel, who impressed not only because of his height of 2.17 meters, left more of an impression than she did. He even got to face Roger Moore twice, in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).
With the Jamaican Grace Jones, the Dane Mads Mikkelsen and the Spaniard Javier Bardem, the Bond adversaries became more and more diverse and international over time. And so in “Spectre” the main villain comes from Austria. He is played by Christoph Waltz. He was remembered for a long time – and can also be seen again in the latest film “No time to die”.