User blog:ThatScrewyDuck/PE Proposal: Hugo Drax



To anyone who’s reading this, I hope you’ve had a good, promising and safe start to the new decade. Wanting to do my part in the ongoing effort to get as many of the villains that meet the criteria of the highly debated Pure Evil category officially approved as possible for the sake of organization and contributing something, but also, let’s face it, because I find it fun and enjoyable to participate in discussing, here I am with my first proposal of the year. And with the newest James Bond movie, No Time to Die (which will also almost certainly be Daniel Craig’s last stint as the character), coming out in April, I figured it would be appropriate to start off with covering some of the Bond villains who are listed as such, but not officially approved. My first objective? Getting this nasty piece of work acknowledged as such, who, ironically, comes from one of the silliest and campiest installments in the whole franchise.

What’s the work?
Moonraker is the 11 th  film in the James Bond franchise that was released in 1979. At this point, the science fiction genre was getting a lot of attention due to the recent release of the original Star Wars movie, so naturally, the filmmakers wanted to cash in on that trend, resulting in the first, and so far, only case of Bond being sent into space. This time around, James Bond is sent to investigate Drax Industries after one of their own shuttles, which was being loaned to the United Kingdom, is seemingly and bizarrely hijacked mid-transit, with no trace of it found in the wreckage of the jet that was transporting it. Eventually teaming up with space scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, whom he finds out is really an uncover CIA agent spying on Drax Industries as well, Bond follows the trail of evidence from California to Venice, Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon rainforest, and eventually, of course, to outer space, and stumbles upon a horrific plot to wipe out over 99% of humanity and recreate it with a new master race. And of course, it’s none other than the owner of Drax Industries who’s behind this diabolical plot.

Who is he and what does he do?
Hugo Drax is the billionaire owner of Drax Industries and the main antagonist of the film. As is typical for many Bond villains, he feigns hospitality when he first meets him when he is sent to his spaceplane-manufacturing complex in California, but immediately plots to, in his own words later in the film, create an “amusing” death for him. To this end, he first has his henchman Chang try to trap him on the simulator in the centrifuge chamber, then tries to have him shot by a sniper while inviting him to try shooting quail out on his range. Of course, this being James Bond, he finds way to escape each of these situations and only becomes more suspicious of him as a result. Corinne DuFour, Drax’s personal pilot, doesn’t fare nearly as well though; earlier, he seduced her to convince her to help him uncover some blueprints from a secret vault for a glass vial that’s made in Venice. However, Drax had Chang keep an eye on them, and after reporting this to him, as well as right after his second attempt on Bond’s life fails, he immediately terminates her employment and displays just how ruthless he can be even to his own employees by releasing his Rottweilers on her, who pursue her into an forest and tear her apart (though the last part is left to the audience’s imagination as opposed to being shown).

Meanwhile, Bond travels to Venice to investigate the production of these glass vials, and after surviving more attempts on his life from Drax’s henchmen, he discovers, much to his horror, that the vials are being used to hold a very deadly nerve gas that is fatal to people, but strangely, not to animals. However, by the time he tries to have Drax’s secret laboratory exposed the following morning, he’s already moved it all to Rio de Janeiro with no evidence whatsoever left behind. However, having taken a vial of the nerve gas as proof that is was there, handing it to M, his superior, for analysis, and having seen crates addressed to Rio, he is sent there by M under the pretense of taking a vacation. After surviving more contrived attempts on his life, including by an old enemy named Jaws, who Drax has hired to replace Chang after Bond killed him in another unsuccessful attempt on his life in Venice, Bond meets up with MI6 in the headquarters they’ve set up there, where it is confirmed that the gas is made from a toxin that comes from a rare orchid indigenous to the Amazon River.

After travelling there and locating Drax’s base, James is eventually apprehended by Jaws and taken to Drax himself, where he demonstrates the launch of several Moonraker shuttles, where he explains that he stole back his loaned shuttle since he needed it to replace another one that developed a fault during assembly. He is then reunited with Holly, who was previously captured in Rio, only to find out that Drax has placed them both in the chamber beneath Moonraker 5, the shuttle he’s personally using, to burn them alive with the exhaust from the engine when it blasts off. Luckily, they narrowly escape through an air vent they discover, and proceed to covertly ambush, knock out and pose as the pilots of Moonraker 6, after which, to their surprise, they dock with a huge, city-like space station along with the other shuttles, which has gone undetected due to having a radar-jamming cloaking device.

It is after they arrive that the extent of Drax’s twisted scheme is steadily revealed, first through a speech that he gives to his crew, then a subsequent explanation he gives to James and Holly when they captured by Jaws later on; the several dozen young, physically fit men and women he’s captured/recruited, and that have been seen at his complex in California, and his base in the Amazon, are the most “physically perfect” individuals he’s hand-picked to act as the seeds to a “new, master race”. In the meantime, he plans to have approximately 50 miniature globes launched from the station, each with enough toxic nerve gas to kill 100 million people once spread into Earth’s atmosphere, to wipe out the rest of Earth’s population, and have these few select people descend back to Earth with their offspring when it’s safe again to reshape it in their image, and, of course, to “pay deference to the ultimate dynasty, that he, alone, will have created”.

After hearing his initial speech, James and Holly head off and successfully locate where the radar-jamming cloaking device is and disable it, allowing the United States to pick up the station on their radar and send a shuttle with a platoon of marines to intercept it. It is shortly after this, however, that they are discovered and captured by Jaws and some other personnel, after which Drax tries to have them ejected out of the airlock, while ordering his subordinates to use a laser that the station is equipped with to destroy the deployed shuttle. However, Bond then tricks him into admitting right in front of Jaws that anyone who doesn’t measure up to his standards of “physical perfection” will eventually be eliminated, even among his subordinates. Since it’s immediately apparent that Jaws and his new, petite and not particularly strong girlfriend wouldn’t fit into his vision, Jaws turns against Drax to protect her, and right before the laser can be fired on the shuttle, Bond pulls an emergency switch which causes the whole station to violently shake and stop spinning, which also messes up the gravity.

This allows the platoon to safely approach the shuttle, which soon leads to an all-out battle with Drax’s men, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides. By the time the technicians get the station spinning and the gravity back to normal, it is too late, with many of the US soldiers infiltrating the control room, and damaging the launching mechanism for the globes to the point of being unusable. During the mayhem, Drax tries to flee with Bond in pursuit. Cornering him at the end of an airlock chamber, Drax then pulls a gun on him from a deceased soldier and remarks that he will at least have the pleasure of putting him out of his misery. However, Bond raises his hands, only to shoot him first with a cyanide dart out of his wrist gun, after which he quips to Drax as he’s stumbling backward to “take a big step for mankind”, and ejects him out of the airlock, putting an end to the genocidal madman once and for all. Finally, he then subsequently pilots Moonraker 5 with Dr. Goodhead to take out the three globes that were already launched with the laser it’s equipped with, saving the millions that still would have been killed by his deranged scheme.

Mitigating Factors
Well, he does enjoy things like afternoon tea and cucumber sandwiches, so he can’t be all bad… right? Speaking/typing seriously though, no, Drax has no truly positive traits whatsoever. He’s an utter megalomaniac with a god complex who see himself as perfectly qualified to judge over 99% of humanity as not being worthy of life, and which select few get to make up a new “master race”/cult that practically worships him like a god. There’s nothing remotely redeeming or well-intentioned about that. Even his subordinates are completely expendable to him; when he talks about replacing the recently deceased Chang on the phone, it’s with such a casual tone that you would think he’s ordering a replacement for a broken tool or utensil; when a couple of scientists in his employment accidently got exposed to the nerve gas when a vial shattered on the ground and killed them during Bond’s investigation, he simply had their bodies removed and presumably disposed of without any sign of guilt when he had the  lab moved to another location; and of course, he even outright admits to Bond near the end that he will eventually have anyone who doesn’t measure up to his standards of “physical perfection” exterminated, which undoubtedly includes those that work under him, and caused Jaws to turn against him. It kind of makes you wonder why all those technicians and assassins went along with his plot. I’m guessing it’s a mix of being paid well enough and especially because they probably know they’ll die, and they’ll die horribly at that, if they show any signs of disloyalty. Look at what happened to Corinne.

Heinousness
Well, it goes without saying that he’s the most heinous character in his respective movie since he’s the main antagonist and mastermind behind the plot. However, it’s no exaggeration to claim that his plot is probably one of the single most horrifying and heinous in the entire 007 franchise. Other Bond villains have attempted body counts in the thousands, and a select few in the millions. Drax’s scheme to launch globes full of synthesized, toxic nerve gas into Earth’s atmosphere would kill billions, with only about several dozen people, in other words, the equivalent of a small village’s worth, being spared from this fate. And while it’s obviously unsuccessful, we still get a harsh picture of how nearly all of humanity would perish when Bond witnessed a couple of scientists die quickly and horribly when accidently exposed to the amount of gas released from a single small vial, so the implications are quite dire. One of the only other villains who had a plot that was on a similar scale to this was, appropriately enough, his immediate predecessor from The Spy Who Loved Me, Karl Stromberg, and even in comparison to him, Drax is definitely worse. At least Stromberg seemed to genuinely think an underwater utopia was preferable to the world as it was and didn’t have nearly as much of an ego, let alone a god complex, making Drax and his plot far more self-centered, and giving if far more pronounced supremacist overtones.

If that isn’t enough, what makes Drax stands out all the more is that he happens to be in what is, at times, one of the silliest and lighthearted films in the whole franchise. Even the other villains are pretty silly; Jaws, who previously had his comic moments, but was largely an intimidating and very dangerous threat in The Spy Who Loved Me, is practically reduced to comic relief here, even before he finds love and redemption, and Chang, apart from being a standard Bond villain henchman, has what might be the single most laughable attempt on Bond’s life in the whole franchise; his second attempt involves dressing up in kendo gear and, yes, trying to kill him with a ''wooden kendo stick. ''Drax, however, has no incompetence or funny quirks whatsoever. He’s not even bombastic or over the top in the same way some other Bond villains are, including some of the other really bad ones. He’s just a smug, cold, and understated megalomaniac who finds amusement in coming up with creative deaths for his intended victims. Speaking of which, having Corinne presumably torn apart by his attack dogs and some of his attempts to kill Bond like having him and Dr. Goodhead incinerated by his ship’s engine stand out too in their own right for the very reason he’s from the more lighthearted, Roger Moore-headed era. Corinne’s death may not be nearly as graphic as what Sanchez and Dario do in License to Kill, for instant, but it’s still stands out to many who’ve seen the film as one of the most chilling deaths in the franchise for the very reason that it leaves the more gruesome details to your imagination.

Final Verdict
I’d say he handily qualifies and deserves to be listed in the category. All in all, he’s probably one of the single worst Bond villains in the whole franchise, and very few others can claim to have tried to exterminate nearly the whole human race. What do you think?