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sideburndanny · 1 year

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Favorite Villain defeats?

Okay, this is gonna be quite a long list…

Thanos and his forces getting snapped out of existence by an Infinity Gem-wielding Tony Stark in Avengers Endgame; karmic considering that's exactly what Thanos did to half the universe's population in the original timeline

Two from Dragon Ball Z: first was Freeza’s invasion of earth ending with him getting chopped to bits and blasted away by Future Trunks, second was Cell being vaporized after his prolonged Kamehameha duel with Gohan. Granted, there were a lot of great villain defeats in that anime, but those two are the most noteworthy due to these two all-powerful, sadistic mass murderers being annihilated by foes they arrogantly underestimated

Theo Galavan suffering brutal revenge at the hands of James Gordon and The Penguin in Gotham. Up to that point, Theo had been a smug, high-and-mighty manipulator who got away with any number of horrible things with the public lauding him as a hero, so seeing him reduced to fruitlessly begging for mercy while the two men whose lives he ruined the most put aside their differences to put him down for good was immensely satisfying

From The Princess Bride — Inigo Montoya bouncing back from certain defeat during his sword fight with Count Rugen, overpowering the man who tormented him throughout his life before slashing him through his black heart with one last sword stroke preceded with ten words: "I want my father back, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

Dr. Facilier being dragged into the underworld by his "Friends on the Other Side" in The Princess and the Frog. Suffice it to say, he wasn't ready.

Adolf Hitler getting blown up by American suicide bombers while the rest of the Nazi high command are trapped in a burning movie theater in Inglorious Basterds

The abusive orphanage guy getting run over by Dopinder in Deadpool 2

Miles Bron's mansion getting burned down with the Mona Lisa in it in Glass Onion

Many examples from Saints Row:

The Boss beating Maero's monster truck ambush before capping Maero personally when the latter is pinned beneath the flaming wreckage of his rig

The Boss and Johnny Gat burying Shogo Akuji alive after Shogo had Gat's wife killed and crashed her funeral

The Boss seemingly losing to Shogo's yakuza father Kazuo in a sword fight before "cheating" by shooting him, running him through with his own sword, and leaving him pinned to the deck of an exploding boat

The Boss shooting corrupt CEO Dane Vogel out the window of the top floor of his skyscraper

The Boss donning power armor to challenge the alien overlord Zinyak to a one-on-one fight, concluding with The Boss dethroning the all-powerful extraterrestrial invader by ripping his head off

A lot of examples from James Bond:

Bond tricking Auric Goldfinger into shooting out an airplane window, causing him to get sucked out to his doom in Goldfinger ("Where's Goldfinger?" "Playing his golden harp")

Bond making Dr. Kananga inflate like a balloon until he exploded in Live and Let Die ("He always did have an inflated opinion of himself")

Bond using Scaramanga's own tricks against him during their pistol duel in the funhouse in The Man with the Golden Gun

Bond shooting Karl Stromberg twice below the belt in The Spy Who Loved Me

Bond shunting Hugo Drax out an airlock and launching him into space in Moonraker ("Where's Drax?" "Oh, he had to fly")

Max Zorin plummeting to his doom from atop the Golden Gate Bridge, laughing all the while, in A View to a Kill

Bond setting drug lord Franz Sanchez on fire with the lighter Felix gave him in License to Kill

Bond dropping his evil former partner Alec Trevelyn to the bottom of a ravine where he's left barely clinging to life before the entire satellite building collapses on top of him in GoldenEye ("For England, James?" "No, for me!")

Bond turning Elliot Carver's drill machine against him in Tomorrow Never Dies ("YOU FORGOT THE FIRST RULE OF MASS MEDIA, ELLIOT! GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT!")

Bond ending Silva's rampage with a stab to the back in SkyFall ("Last rat standing")

So many examples from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:

Kars getting launched into space after becoming immortal

Polnareff avenging his sister's death by turning her killer, J. Geil, into a human pincushion

The brutal beatdown Jotaro gave smug bully Steely Dan after putting up with his tricks for too long

Jotaro beating Daniel D'arby in poker by bluffing so brazenly that Dan had a mental breakdown

The shorter but still impactful beatdown Jotaro gave Terence D'arby after the latter cheated in a game to take their souls

Jotaro finally putting a stop to DIO's reign of terror by exploding his head after a massive battle across Egypt

Josuke forcibly fusing serial killer Angelo Katagiri into a rock for all eternity

Rohan tricking the obnoxious Cheap Trick into looking back at the Haunted Alley, causing the ghosts to drag him into oblivion (with Rohan even writing "I will go to Hell" on Cheap Trick just to make sure he wouldn't escape punishment)

Yoshikage Kira getting run over by an ambulance before his soul is ripped to pieces by the vengeful spirits of his many victims

Giorno giving the mass-murdering Cioccolata the longest and most brutal beating in the history of the show

Unhinged mafia don Diavolo being cursed to die over and over again in increasingly horrific ways for all eternity

There are many more, but these are all the ones I could think of at the moment

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sasa-chan · 9 months

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The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Starring:

Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curt Jürgens, Richard Kiel, Caroline Munro

Directed By:

Lewis Gilbert

Genre:

Action/Spy

Rating:

Run Time:

2 Hours 5 Minutes

Release Date:

7 July 1977 (London, premiere)

8 July 1977 (United Kingdom)

3 August 1977 (United States)

Synopsis:

In a globe-trotting assignment that has him skiing off the edges of cliffs and driving a car deep underwater, British super-spy James Bond (Roger Moore) unites with sexy Russian agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) to defeat megalomaniac shipping magnate Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens), who is threatening to destroy New York City with nuclear weapons. Bond's most deadly adversary on the case is Stromberg's henchman, Jaws (Richard Kiel), a seven-foot giant with terrifying steel teeth.

#27 days of james bond #007 #27 days of 007 #james bond #james bond 007 #day 11 #the spy who loved me #roger moore #barbara bach #curt jürgens #richard kiel #caroline munro #lewis gilbert

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carverl · 9 months

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My personal ranking of each main villain from every 007 movie, I'm going to be including each incarnation of Blofeld as seperate for the purpose of this list due to how different they all are in execution and presentation:

25. Brad Whittaker (The Living Daylights)

24. Dominic Greene (Quantum of Solace)

23. Blofeld (Spectre)

22. Aristotle Kristatos (For Your Eyes Only)

21. Gustave Graves (Die Another Day)

20. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who loved Me)

19. Blofeld (Diamonds Are Forever)

18. Lyutsifer Safin (No Time To Die)

17. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)

16. Hugo Drax (Moonraker)

15. Kamal Khan (Octopussy)

14. Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)

13. Dr Kananga (Live and Let Die)

12. Elliot Carver (Tommorow Never Dies)

11. Dr Julius No (Dr No)

10. Elektra King (The World Is Not Enough)

9. Blofeld (You Only Live Twice)

8. Alec Trevelyan (Goldeneye)

7. Max Zorin (A View To A Kill)

6. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)

5. Franz Sanchez (License To Kill)

4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man With The Golden Gun)

3. Red Grant (From Russia With Love)

2. Le Chiffre (Casino Royale)

1. Raoul Silva (Skyfall)

#james bond #villains #ranking

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thefilmsimps · 1 year

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The Spy Who Loved Me (dir. Lewis Gilbert)

-Jere Pilapil- 8/10 Double-O Status: Kind of cheating here, as I already wrote about this one before deciding to watch all of these Bond movies in a random order. I had it at a 4/5 on Letterboxd and that seems kind of fair Theme: Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better”. Another odd choice for a Bond theme, but it fits. It’s a lush, romantic song that’s a good fit for a spy movie centered around the interplay between two spies attracted to each other. It’s a bit trite and sappy, though. 7/10 Last time I watched Lewis Gilbert’s The Spy Who Loved Me, it was in the context of trying to rehabilitate my opinion of Roger Moore’s run as the iconic spy. This time, I’m coming at this having spent the year rewatching every James Bond movie, and this one still comes out pretty frickin’ good. This is the story of Bond (Moore) and rival Russian spy, their Agent Triple X (lol), Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach), investigating some sensitive submarine tracking technology and winding up stumbling across a plot to sink the world and reestablish mankind under water (gonna bookmark this in my brain before I see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever this weekend). One thing I respect about these old Bond movies (especially the Moore and Connery years) compared to newer action movies is that they’re so chill. Sure, Bond and Amasova stare down death multiple times throughout the movie (I still dig the opening ski jump off a mountain and the helicopter chase scene), but Moore’s Bond treats this all as perturbing as if the line for a Disneyland ride was longer than expected. Bach’s performance is as stiff as a board, but ultimately it just makes Moore work harder to be charming. His charisma and ease rubs off on her, and they somehow wind up with good chemistry. That keeps the movie afloat, basically, in between the expected action beats. This time, the villain is Carl Jürgens as Karl Stromberg, a rich scientist who, again, wants to force civilization under water. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, which is kind of refreshing after 20-ish Marvel movies where the bad guy is “good intentions and bad methods”. The guy just has an aqua fetish or something, and the resources to force everyone to experience it themselves or whatever. Still, the center piece is, in fact, the Spy Who Love Each Other. I wish more of the later Bond movies worked a bit more with this blueprint (some of Quantum of Solace, including the poster, is an homage to a scene here): there’s a doomsday threat here, but the movie never dips into being gloomy or particularly emotionally involving. It’s a movie where the two spies are mostly equals in skill, where Amasova might occasionally outsmart Bond. That’s a fun take that breaks up the formula ever so slightly enough to make The Spy Who Loved Me a solid highlight.

#movie review #shakenstirred #bond #james bond #8/10

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minya8chan · 5 years

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The Spy Who Loved Me

#The Spy Who Loved Me #Lewis Gilbert #Curd Jürgens #Roger Moore #Filmedit #007 #James Bond #Karl Stromberg

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thealmightyemprex · 2 years

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10 Least Favorite Bond villains

10.Le Chiffre from Casino Royale (2006)

OK I dont hate Le Chiffre, its just when I compared him to other villains ,he kind of fell on the low side . He's just such a small fish in a big pond

9.Alec Trevelyn from Goldeneye (1995)

Again like Le Chiffre ,I dont hate him , its just I find him kind of underwhelming

8.Casino Royale (1967)

He is litterally a joke character

7. Dominic Greene Quantum of Solace (2008)

Now we get to the villains IACTUALLY dislike .Greene has his moments (Especially his fight with Bond ) ,but he is more of a weirdo then a villain

6.Karl Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Too underplayed

5. Emilio Largo from Thunderball (!965)

He's got an eyepatch ....Thats all the personality he has

4. Aristotle Kirstatos from For Your Eyes Only (1981)

I have seen this movie three times ,and I dont remember what his deal is .I had to google his name

3.Gustave Graves from Die Another Day (2002)

He is practically a cartoon character and not in a fun way

2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld from Spectre (2015) and No Time To Die (2021)

Yeah lets take Bonds arch nemesis and turn him into his petty asshole brother ,that sounds good

1.Brad Whittiker from The Living Daylights (!987)

He's an OK idea who just is not a presence

@amalthea9 @metropolitan-mutant-of-ark @lord-antihero @ariel-seagull-wings @princesssarisa @filmcityworld1 @marquisedemasque @theancientvaleofsoulmaking

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claudiosuenaga · 2 years

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Com os loucos bilionários do Vale do Silício no comando do mundo, até o diabo já pensa em aposentadoria

Infelizmente nossos destinos estão sendo traçados por esses loucos bilionários do Vale do Silício e não há nada o que possamos fazer, pois só na ficção é que um James Bond pode deter a força e o poder de magnatas playboys insanos e inescrupulosos que usam como fachada causas ecológicas, tecnológicas e filantrópicas para impor suas caprichosas distopias.

A realidade é muito mais estranha - e terrível - do que a ficção.

Aqueles que eram os piores vilões de 007, os Dr. No, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Auric Goldfinger, Maximillian Largo, Francisco Scaramanga, Karl Stromberg, Hugo Drax, Max Zorin, Gustav Graves e Elliot Carver, estão hoje encarnados em Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Larry Page e outros. Eles são mais do que os engenheiros do futuro: são os deuses do presente.

Com esses caras no comando do mundo, até o diabo já pensa em aposentadoria.

#silicon valley #elon musk #bill gates #jeff bezos #mark zuckerberg #larry ellison #larry page #blofeld #007 #james bond #bilionaire

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dalekofchaos · 3 years

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My Bond rankings

How I rank the Bond franchise, Bond actors, Bond villains and Bond Girls

Sean Connery Era

From Russia With Love

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service(I am counting On Her Majesty's Secret service in the Connery era because I feel like it matches the tone of these movies and Connery could've easily played the Bond in that movie)

Goldfinger

Thunderball

Dr No

You Only Live Twice

Diamonds Are Forever

Never Say Never Again

Roger Moore Era

The Spy Who Loved Me

The Man With The Golden Gun

Octopussy

Live And Let Die

For Your Eyes Only

Moonraker

A View To Kill

Timothy Dalton Era

License To Kill

The Living Daylights

Pierce Brosnan Era

Goldeneye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough

Die Another Day

Daniel Craig Era

Casino Royale

Skyfall

Spectre

No Time To Die

Quantum Of Solace

Bond ranked

Sean Connery

Daniel Craig

Timothy Dalton

Pierce Brosnan

George Lazenby

Roger Moore

Bond villains

Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Auric Goldfinger

Red Grant and Rosa Klebb

Alec Trevelyan

Raul Silvia

Le Chiffre

Mr White

Francisco Scaramanga

Emilio Largo

Dr No

Safin

Oddjob

Jaws

Karl Stromberg

Mr. Big and Baron Samedi

Max Zorin

Elektra King

Elliot Carver

Hugo Drax

Franz Sanchez

Aristotle Kristatos

Emile Leopold Locque

Gustav Graves and Zao

Kamal Khan

Gen. Georgi Koskov and Brad Whitaker

Dominic Greene

Bond Girls

Tracy Bond

Vesper Lynd

Tatiana Romanova

Sylvia Trench

Xenia Onatopp

Pussy Galore

Wai Lin

Pam Bouvier

Elektra King

Madeleine Swann

Paloma

Nomi

Camille Montes

Domino Derval

May Day

Andrea Anders

Anya Amasova

Natalya Simonova

Solitaire

Miranda Frost

Holly Goodhead(how the fuck did this get past the sensors???)

Lucia Sciarra

Aki

Honey Ryder

Fiona Volpe

Lupe Lamora

Ruby Bartlett

Tilly Masterson

Jill Masterson

Mary Goodnight

Strawberry Fields

Manuela

Countess Lisl von Schlaf

Kara Milovy

Christmas Jones

Jinx Johnson

Octopussy

Stacey Sutton

Magda

Corinne Dufour

Kissy Suzuki

Nancy

Melina Havelock

Sévérine

Rosie Carver

Patricia Fearing

Miss Taro

Solange Dimitrios

Ling

Molly Warmflash

Paris Carver

Paula Caplan

Pola Ivanova

Caroline

Plenty O’Toole

Martine Blanchaud

Tiffany Case

#James Bond #007 #Bond Girls #Bond VIllains #Sean Connery #Roger Moore #Timothy Dalton #Pierce Brosnan #Daniel Craig #My Rankings

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dr-nero-is-god · 3 years

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i felt the urge to riff on the hive streams for a little bit since discussion came up on the hive discord, namely, holding issue with the idea that the alpha stream is inconsistent in that it is about leadership when otto is the only leader, and that it’s also possible that the alphas are just kids with specialized skills, and not actually bonded by any particular unifying element.

and, in response, @vulpix-sinistre brought up a quote from the abridged hive fanfic, that goes something like: “there are four streams: main characters, stereotypical bullies, ?, and nerds.”

and i disagree with the first two ideas, but almost completely agree with the abridged fic quote. that is pretty much how the streams work, and it is IMPORTANT that that is how the streams work.

in the end, you may conclude that the streams system still doesn’t make sense. you won’t be like “well clearly dr. nero was just logically dividing the labor of his students to reflect a specialized training program” because it’s more complicated on that. i hate to do this to y’all, but a lot of everything streams-related requires an out-of-book explanation to get where you’re going, but i can promise that i will at least try to go

first, let’s think about why h.i.v.e. would have streams at all

on the one hand, it’s inescapable to consider that one primary reason that hive has streams is because harry potter had houses, and for the same reason that percy jackson had cabins, the 39 clues had branches, hunger games had sections (or counties, idk), divergent had factions, and so on and so on. the rise of fandom spaces on the internet was concurrent with a big ya/mg boom in the post-2005 world (after twilight was published), and within those fandom spaces it became important to identify with an aspect of the fantasy world as part of your personality. that became a very marketable thing for a while, and so separating children into streams would, to a publisher, seem like a pretty solid storytelling choice.

however! the alpha stream is not the same as gryffindor house. on the one hand, it seems easy to make an alpha/gryffindor and henchman/slytherin parallel, because one group is good (relatively) and one is bad (or at least antagonistic). but it doesn’t work because while slytherin has a reputation for constituents of poor moral character (which has been largely revised in fanon), being a henchman is where you go, according to the books, if you are unintelligent and burly. it’s not a really sexy stream, is what i’m trying to say. and though there are undoubtedly some readers who would look at the henchman stream and see themselves, i think the majority of readers would likely find the henchman stream a completely undesirable stream to be in.

and, given how little importance the role of streams have after the first book, i will go out on a limb and say that mark walden knows that the henchman stream is unsexy. we aren’t interested in the hopes and dreams and motivations of the henchman stream; as we learn in book two, the ideal henchman is weak-minded and easily led—so what dreams would they even have? this leads me to conclude that while mark walden might have sold h.i.v.e. on the “there are personality-based groups in the school!” idea, he had something completely else in mind when he started writing and that, I think, is actually far more interesting.

but really, why would h.i.v.e. have streams at all

a few things about mark walden: 1) he studied english lit in school, 2) he has a background as a video game producers, and 3) he likes james bond. i know the first two things because i have read his bio and i know the third thing because i have read his books in conjunction with seeing all the james bond films. so we will call 1-3 facts.

if you are wondering what a lit degree, video game production, and the james bond franchise all have in common, then let me connect those dots: all three of those things depend heavily on the study and understanding of repetitive structure in storytelling as an interpreter and creator of meaning. each one of these fields requires an understanding of how stories and words work to create meaning in order to be successful.

and, to quote mr. walden here directly (sourced from this here link):

“So, I was playing with this cat one day and it got me thinking that those old-school Bond villains always just seemed to appear out of thin air with very little back story and that got me thinking about how they became world- conquering megalomaniacs in the first place. It was only a short mental walk from there to HIVE.”

so, imagine you’re a writer trying to tell a story about a school for villains like those in james bond—you’ve studied storycraft and you have a lot of experience in a job finding believable and compelling obstacles for people to interact with in video games. you have noticed patterns. and you need to make those patterns work for you.

enter: streams

i have watched all the james bond movies (all of ‘em) (i mean it) (just not the unreleased one yet lol) and you know what?

there’s probably just about four kinds of villains in those movies.

henchmen include the likes of jaws, oddjob, and tee hee. often physically disabled in a cinematically interesting way, these guys are the muscles and the machines in every bond film. they are the ones who tail bond as he takes long train rides and who try to personally throw him into shark tanks. they are the hands and feet of their evil masters and they don’t have a lot of emotional depth or backstory.

politicians/financiers abound in the james bond franchise because he is a government employee who often hangs out with other government employees (he has no friends). these people are like colonel rosa klebb, georgi koskov, prince kamal khan. there are a lot more, as a matter of fact, because the whole point of james bond is that they are in the cold war and even people without titles have political and financial motivations for screwing around with stuff. these types of villains depend on being well and truly embedded in an existing infrastructure or hierarchy, somebody who worked their way up from being a foot soldier or clerk into a powerful leadership position that gives them a lot of state-sanctioned trust and authority.

technicians and inventors include folks like henry gupta and boris grishenko, who use technology as their primary weapon. they are often inventors or innovators and are really good at making high-tech stuff. however, i think this stream is also a direct result of the character Q, someone who is actually on James Bond’s team and who runs an entire department of people who test sometimes outlandish gadgets for Bond to use in the field. (but we love the gadgets. they are fun.) in other words, Bond arguably has a technical stream at his disposal in MI6, which means the idea isn’t necessarily evil, but, likewise, our James Bond School also needs Qs. it’s the rules. if you are familiar with Q from James Bond at all then you understand

and that leaves us with alphas... the “supervillains.” these are the famous ones. dr. no. mr. big. scaramanga. le chiffre. blofeld. max zorin. emilio largo. goldfinger. these are the ones with the master plan, the dreams to recreate the world as they see it, the passion to see their desires to fulfillment and the resources to make them happen. they are rich. they are fancy. they are larger than life. is it weird that karl stromberg tries to incite a nuclear war between Britain and the USSR so that a lot of people can die so that he can colonize the ocean? yes. but by god, it’s fancy and dramatic, and that’s what counts.

are there other kinds of villains? oh, definitely. lots more. but you have to understand, that those kinds of villains generally don’t appear in Bond. sometimes! but it’s not a staple. for example, not many people in the bond films are motivated by revenge because each movie is kind of designed to function as a one-shot. villains don’t come back and so there is no revenge. the villain who gets the most notable reprise, jaws, actually ends up finding his true love in space.

compare: every movie is going to have henchmen. every movie has government stooges making morally questionable decisions. (almost) every movie has Q, or some gadget stuff going on. and every movie has a big bad that has to be better than the last.

so that explains why the streams are what they are.

it was a jumping-off point for mark walden to figure out what this universe might look like and how different character types need to function. consider that while the core four are all alphas and are kind of insulated as a group, the teachers all kind of roughly align with one of these groups. colonel francisco, raven, and chief lewis are henchmen types, doing on-the-ground work to get stuff done. ms. tennenbaum and the contessa are political af, they are all about the corruption and infiltrating institutional power. ms. gonzales, ms. leon, and professor pike all have technical skills that help keep an organization moving forward. and over them all is the singular alpha, dr. nero, who is coordinating and monitoring it all for his own evil plan: to run a high school.

honestly, dr. nero’s hive idea operates just like a james bond villain plot! it works, or it does when pitching the idea. the problem is that the books continued after the pitch did, and with worldbuilding came some complications. namely, the fact that the megastructure of james bond villainy does not replicate well into a small friend group on which the narration focuses. so let’s return to the question presented at the beginning:

how can alphas really be alphas when not everyone on the field trip can be a mastermind?

i’m gonna give this to you in two ways. one, the way i personally interpret it as an in-universe explanation, given the background premises we have already established. and the other, why the stream system kind of ruins the structure it sets out to create.

so, for me, the alphas can be alphas because there is more to villainy than being a mastermind and there is more to being a mastermind than being in charge. as i think about it, this novelization is actually the backstory for every one of the students, who will go on to do great and scary things. they will manage big projects and come up with interesting ways to terrorize the British government, because that is what James Bond villains do (and James Bond does canonically exist in their universe). much like your actual teenage years, this is not the main event.

as students, the core four need to learn to do a little bit of everything. you gotta learn some lock-picking, that’s essential. everyone has to be able to climb a rock wall. it’s the rules. and everyone needs to be able to do some programming. that’s just the way school is. though everyone has a different personality and a different way of looking at the world, their education has to cover the basics because the fact of the matter is, none of them are villains yet. will they become one? that remains to be seen. but they are being given the tools to become the greatest villains if that is something they choose.

the main problem that remains when holding this attitude is that the specialized skills of otto and his friends might be better suited to other streams, in which case, what is an alpha anyways?

here’s the facts: if everyone were assigned to a stream by talent, then there wouldn’t be an alpha stream.

franz? political/financial stream.

nigel? laura? otto? technical stream.

shelby? wing? henchman stream.

you can debate me on the specifics of those assignments, but the point is this: all the other streams are based on hard skills. franz can manage a ledger and that is a financial skill. laura can build a computer from scratch and that is a technical skill. wing can do martial arts, and each martial art is a physical skill that can be taught and performed in a measurable level of proficiency.

the idea of being a “mastermind” is a much softer skill—which is to say, there’s no one recipe that will make it work. my manager at work has coached me by saying that leadership is often about having a “style,” and working at it that way. leadership requires interpersonal flexibility, being able to stay organized and to make important decisions rapidly, it is about being able to prioritize and delegate. and it’s very much open to interpretation, every day, all the time.

let me tell you something else about james bond: there is a lot of classism, racism, and sexism embedded into every aspect of those films, but that goes for double when it comes to the villains in the show. to vastly oversimplify that very concept, it shows up in the bond films like this: henchmen are working class folks, the villainous equivalent of “the help,” and the supervillains are (usually) rich and glamorous and powerful. henchmen are uneducated (read as: stupid) and ugly and poor. no one cares if they die. (there’s more complexities, as always, but this essay isn’t actually about james bond so we’ll fast forward through My Opinions to the end)

the problem with replicating james bond in your villain school universe is that some of the biases of the james bond universe get replicated in there, too. poor and uneducated folks get turned into disposable henchmen whose lives are irrelevant. people who are educated and talented get fast-tracked to a more glamorous and interesting stream that will catapult them to the top of the ladder as soon as they graduate. if you look at the dialect with which block and tackle are written, they are clearly meant to be seen as a different social class than otto, despite the fact that otto is coming from basically nothing. and we understand that when otto graduates, he will be able to do basically anything that he wants to at all.

so, if you’re asking why wing has a role in the alpha stream when he doesn’t seem as leader-y as otto, there’s a simple answer: because dr. nero believes that wing can be more.

the climax of book one is dr. nero explicitly telling otto, wing, laura, and shelby that they are in his school because he believes in them and he wants to see them grow. they are given an elite status other students do not have despite the fact that they have just literally tried to escape. as we see in the case of duncan cavendish, the main way to get on that highway to a guaranteed career is to convince him that you’ve “got it.” for those who are not believed in, there is no way to make up for the special grooming. you’re stuck with the stream you’re placed in, doomed (perhaps) to be a second-in-command at best.

is all this intentional? probably not. but it is implicit in the structure of the story and, alas, that’s the way it is.

all i can think to say in conclusion is that while the stream system tends to replicate some of the unfair and classist realities present in other media and the world we live in, i think part of the reason we read h.i.v.e. is because the alpha stream is so appealing. imagine! you are competent and you have a desirable, specialized skill as well as a proficiency in many general skills and you are certain you are going to do good things—and all because someone believes in you. to receive someone else’s support and confidence can be life-changing. the magic of h.i.v.e. is that yes—lives are changed and ordinary, boring people were elevated to the level of supervillains. we are only left to wonder, are they the only people who deserved that honor?

#meta #spoilers #streams #alpha #henchman #political/financial #technical stream #technical #james bond #hive #h.i.v.e.#higher institute of villainous education #the higher institute of villainous education #otto malpense #max nero #streams post #musings

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No Time to Die Review: Daniel Craig Carries One of a Kind James Bond Sendoff

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Let there be no doubt about it: in his final outing as James Bond, Daniel Craig gives his finest performance yet in the role. His 007 is a near-perfect fusion of strength, brutality, resourcefulness, humor, inner pain, and physical weariness—making the Bond of No Time to Die possibly the most layered and multi-dimensional edition of the character in the franchise’s entire 59-year run. While Bond’s never been the most complex of onscreen characters, past attempts at fleshing him out in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Craig’s debut, Casino Royale have been surpassed here.

But then there’s also the movie itself, all 163 minutes of it, which makes it the longest Bond adventure to date. To be honest, it sometimes feels like it too. No Time to Die, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective), ties up a lot of loose ends and brings back a lot of characters from the Craig era for an encore while also delivering some of the series’ most smashing and intense action sequences. Yet the story at the core of the movie is thin, the villain not well defined, and the movie at times feels like it’s wrapping up those other storylines at the expense of a more dynamic central plot.

The opening pre-credits sequence (which we didn’t time, but which may be the longest in the series’ history) actually consists of two: the first is a flashback to a terrible childhood tragedy endured by Madeline Swann (Léa Seydoux), the woman whom Bond drove off with and into retirement at the end of 2015’s Spectre. As we emerge from the flashback, we now find that Bond and Madeline are indeed still together and very much in love—although their happiness, of course, doesn’t last long.

By the time the opening titles roll, the couple have been attacked by a literal army of SPECTRE agents and finally separated, with Bond losing whatever trust he had in Madeline. Five years later, Bond is living a solitary existence in Jamaica, apparently well and truly retired, when he gets a call from an old friend: CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright, a welcome and too-brief presence).

Felix has an off-the-books mission for Bond: track down a rogue scientist (David Dencik) who is in cahoots with SPECTRE (or so he thinks) and has made off with a deadly biological weapon. But there is another adversary lurking in the shadows and pulling everyone’s strings, which results in Bond getting yanked back into service, clashing with M (Ralph Fiennes), getting reluctant backup from Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw), and going head-to-head with the fiery new 007 (Lashana Lynch), a more than formidable foil for her predecessor.

The new villain is named Safin (Rami Malek), and it seems he has a vendetta against certain people specifically, and the rest of the world in general. As Bond races to find him and learn what he’s up to, his journey brings him back into contact with Madeline and also necessitates a visit to old foster brother and arch-nemesis Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) in a Silence of the Lambs-type encounter that finds the one-eyed baddie picking away at Bond’s psyche in classic Lector fashion.

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Make no mistake, No Time to Die delves into 007’s psyche with perhaps more depth and profundity than any of the previous two dozen pictures in the official canon, and it’s those moments where we see all those emotions and responses on Craig’s face that are among the best in the film. But the narrative itself (in somewhat similar fashion to Spectre) often feels like Fukunaga and his three co-writers (which include Phoebe Waller-Bridge and longtime Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) are checking off boxes until they can get to the big emotional crescendos that they’re really interested in.

The overall effect is a movie that is frequently entertaining, often intense, yet never quite creates the majestic sweep of other behemoths like The Dark Knight or Avengers: Infinity War. It feels both overstuffed and sparse; Ana de Armas gets one extended scene as an agent who’s paired with Bond in Cuba, and she’s delightful, but she’s gone after that and you end up wondering if she even needed to be there. The same with the revisits to characters like Felix and Blofeld—they’re fun to see again, but they might have been rewritten out of the script with little difficulty.

More problematic are Madeline and Safin. We never bought the relationship between Bond and Madeline in Spectre; it seemed to happen too quickly and be saddled with too much unearned weight. It’s a pale imitation of the truly incendiary love affair with Eva Green’s doomed Vesper in Casino Royale. To make their relationship the linchpin of No Time to Die feels off-balance as well. As for Safin, Rami Malek is slithery and creepy, but his motivations are muddled and his plan comes off as kind of a cross between earlier Bond villains like The Spy Who Loved Me’s Karl Stromberg and Marvel’s genocidal Thanos.

That puts the load squarely on Craig’s broad shoulders, but luckily he can handle it all with the help of Fukunaga’s visceral direction, some truly jaw-dropping action and Hans Zimmer’s propulsive score (in which one can hear a few nods to his previous famous work on The Dark Knight trilogy). Yet it all comes down to Craig: the man is compulsively, endlessly watchable as Bond, he gets some good jokes and meatier dialogue this time, and you almost wish that he would stick around for another entry.

No Time to Die strives to be an epic and just misses; it’s certainly a huge movie and there’s a lot of it, but it never quite takes your breath away. Yet Daniel Craig does achieve that effect as Bond, giving a final performance that the series has never quite seen before. His 007 has always been different in many ways from the five previous versions, but now we can add another: unlike nearly every one of his predecessors, his has a sign-off for the ages. Whatever issues No Time to Die may have, Craig’s farewell will leave you shaken and stirred.

No Time to Die opens in the UK on Sept. 30 and in the U.S. on Oct. 8.

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