Very good points. He reminds me of the WW1 generals who sent soldiers running from the trenches, knowing they’d be mowed down. He’s in the process of leaving, knowing the place is going to be destroyed, but demands the staff remain at their post. I like his Blofeld a lot - he’s a cold hearted snob.
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That attitude for Blofeld does also crop up in FRWL and YOLT, this view that everyone but himself is expendable, but none are clearly having as much fun with it as Charles Gray.
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Someone, maybe here or at the old site, said a couple of years ago that the Blofeld of SPECTRE must be a very evil guy to blow up the MI6 building for the second time!
I thought that was a very funny remark.
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I tend to think that Largo is a pretty nasty piece of work. Leaving whats-his-face in Vindicator cockpit is pretty brutal, and then the implied torture of Domino is from the Sanchez school of villainy.
Unlike the villains that surround his era, Goldfinger, YOLT Blofeld, Largo was more than comfortable getting his own hands dirty.
I think the “send-up” potential of the eye-patch has diminished our institutional memory of him, and that he followed the OTT-ness of Goldfinger tends to leave him forgotten somewhat.
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Largo was a nasty and mean guy, but he wasn’t the mainvillain, he just did what he was ordered to do by Blofeld, who was the real bad guy with the evil plan.
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In terms of his function Largo was closer to Red Grant - but I suspect he could have the potential to be his own boss just as well.
There has been the idea - for TSWLM - of the ‘junior staff’ gatecrashing the Spectre headquarters and killing the top guard, to install themselves as the new bosses and do their own thing. Largo is of course already a top rank within Spectre - but I could see him going for just such a scheme, provided he was sure to succeed.
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I actually see Largo as the main villain in Thunderball. Blofeld was above Largo in the context of SPECTRE, but the NATO project is very much Largo’s plan.
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Agreed: Dr No, Kronsteen, Klebb, Largo, Osato and Brandt are all equals, as operatives of SPECTRE. Blofeld, of course, always is top dog and so the most twisted and evil as the brains of the operation and the one twisted enough to come up with the idea of a syndicate of sickos dedicated to terrorism, revenge and extortion… legend!
Franz Sanchez, without a doubt.
Blofeld delegated most of his evil doings. SPECTRE underlings are still underlings. Other villains–Stromberg, Drax–at least had some charm, or feigned class. Sanchez whipped his girfriend, depressurized Krest without even flinching, killed his own underlings pulling trigger with his finger, and wanted to get America addicted to cocaine smuggled in gasoline.
I think an argument could be made for Carver. Tricking two world superpowers into starting WW3, a conflict in which millions of people would no doubt die, in order to stroke his own ego and make money off of it, is pretty evil.
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Is that any worse than Sean Bean in MI2 starting an epidemic in order to market the antidote for which he holds the patent? Or Jude Law the conspiracy theorist promoting snake oil in Contagion?
Who would even think of trying to hold a monopoly on a vaccine, or tout an unproven treatment for profit? That level of cupidity would be beyond villainy.
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Sean Bean in MI2? Don’t you mean Dougray Scott?
Quite right. Only saw it once.
His character was called Sean Ambrose, probably where the confusion came from.
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Heard of hydroxychloriquine?
I thought about that, but he left a lot of the dirty work to Stamper and underlings. Sanchez got his hands dirty.
But Sanchez is not a big villain who’s evil sceme’s are treating the whole planet, he’s just a drugs lord realy. Carver is trying to evoke W.W.III to get first coverage for his TV station and newspapers. That’s evil doing on a complete other scale.
By that argument Hitler wasn’t evil.
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“Que?”
No. I did not say Carver wasn’t evil, just that Sanchez is the most evil. “Not most evil” does not mean “wasn’t evil.”
By the numbers, Stromberg, Drax and Blofeld have surely killed, or planned to, more than Sanchez. So if most evil is correlated to most kills, they are the most, along with Blofeld and Carver. Probably should throw Orlov and Elektra into that mix since they involved nuclear bombs. Stromberg and Drax aren’t going to kill you in a room together (or at least they weren’t shown doing that despite trying once on film.) Colonel Moon comes close but when he becomes Gustav Graves it becomes cartoonish. Whereas Sanchez is a clear psychopath, not just a sociopath. Electra almost qualifies but she seems to care for Renard. Franz has no such attributes, though Electra is certainly cold hearted and more manipulative. Carver seems that cold hearted as well.
That was how I answered the question “most evil.”