The Family Member
Ernst Stavro Blofeld / Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), Spectre, 2015
The iconic SPECTRE boss is Bond’s most enduring adversary, first as a shadowy, cat-stroking mastermind in From Russia with Love and Thunderball, and then as the central baddie in You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever. How disappointing, then, that when Blofeld returned to the franchise in Spectre, he revealed that he was Bond’s foster brother, and that all of his evil machinations were a way of getting back at the boy who hogged his dad’s attention. Talk about petty. This Austin Powers-alike retconning reduced 007’s adventures from the political to the personal. Instead of being an anonymous blunt instrument, he was someone whose family squabbles resulted in global conspiracies. The change may have been in line with much of today’s fanboy-ish pulp fiction, in which the plots are driven by the heroes’ friends and relations, but it will be a relief if the next Bond villain, Safin (Rami Malek), yearns to take over the world for the sake of it, and not because he resents M or 007.
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