User blog:ThatScrewyDuck/PE Proposal: Xenia Onatopp

I’m back with another proposal for a Bond villain. Now, to be completely honest, I’m not entirely sure about this candidate, but after giving it some careful thought and re-examining the film, I think she stands out as depraved enough in her own right/way to be officially approved for the Pure Evil category. Before I start though, I’d like to point out that this proposal is actually a bit special to me, because the Bond movie the candidate is from is the one I grew up with, and the Nintendo 64 game adaptation was actually the first video game I ever owned. In short, I have a lot of history with it. This also happens to be the first female candidate that I’ve done a proposal for which, ironically, also makes this proposal a bit of a unique one for me. Anyway, with that established, I just hope enough people know this particular movie well enough to want to vote so that a consensus can be established regardless of what it is.

What’s the work?
GoldenEye is a spy film from 1995, the 17th installment in the long-running James Bond franchise, the first one released after a 6-year hiatus, and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the main character. The beginning of the film takes place in 1986 when James Bond/007 and his fellow spy and close friend, Alec Trevelyan/006, are sent on a mission to infiltrate and destroy a chemical weapons facility. While the mission is ultimately successful and Bond escapes, it comes at a steep price with Trevelyan being seemingly executed and killed by General Ourumov. The film then quickly shifts to 1995, at which time Bond is sent to investigate the reactivation of a Soviet-era satellite/space weapon named GoldenEye, which has fallen into the hands of the Janus crime syndicate, which primarily consists of ex-Soviets. Much to 007’s eventual shock, it is also headed by none other than his former friend, the aforementioned Alec Trevelyan, who had staged and faked his death, is really the son of Lienz Cossacks, and wants to use the GoldenEye satellite on London to destroy their technology and thereby, completely topple the British economy as revenge for their betrayal of his people.

However, as is very apparent to anyone reading this article, for once, this proposal isn’t about the main antagonist of a respective Bond movie, since Trevelyan is actually one of his comparably more sympathetic and multi-dimensional foes. However, the same cannot be said for this unusually depraved femme fatale, who serves as one of his main henchmen/women.

Who is she and what does she do?
Xenia Onatopp is an ex-Soviet fighter pilot who works as a hired assassin for the Janus crime syndicate. While she initially presents herself as a charming, if somewhat reckless thrill-seeker who is first introduced engaging in a spirited street race with Bond in Monte Carlo and then playing baccarat at a casino, she quickly reveals her true, psychopathic personality when she seduces a Canadian admiral and gets him alone on a yacht. While engaging in rough sexual intercourse, she wraps her thighs around him and suffocates him to death, getting clear sexual ecstasy from the act, and subsequently steals his ID. The following day, right before the military demonstration of a prototype of the Eurocopter Tiger, an attack helicopter that is designed to be immune to any type of electronic interference, Xenia uses her charm to pull aside the pilots before they head out and casually shoots them dead before disguising herself as a pilot to steal it for the Janus syndicate. Although Bond was on her trail due to being informed of her association with the syndicate and discovering the body of the admiral stuffed into the closet of the Yacht’s bedroom, he is too late to stop her.

Later, Xenia uses the helicopter to travel to a facility in Severnaya, Russia and infiltrate it with General Ourumov, who is also secretly working for Janus. Using his authority, he commands a soldier there to give him the GoldenEye and the authorization codes to it under the guise that they are using the base for an unscheduled war simulation test, which involves test-firing the GoldenEye satellite. However, as soon as the soldier hands him Goldeneye and the authorization codes, Xenia pulls out a rifle and ruthlessly and gleefully massacres all of the soldiers and technicians there, save for Natalya Simonova, who happened to be in the break room at the time, and Boris Grishenko, who was also in league with them to save his own skin. To completely erase any evidence of what happened, Xenia and Ourumov then activate the GoldenEye satellite and set it to fire on the base in several minutes. While they escape safely in the Tiger helicopter, the resulting electromagnetic pulse disables the craft used by several Russian fighter pilots sent to investigate the unexpected activation of the satellite, sending them crashing to their deaths.

However, the general later discovers that there is still a witness to their actions alive, that being Natalya, who miraculously survived the base’s destruction, albeit traumatized from nearly dying and seeing her co-workers ruthlessly killed. Xenia is then seen ambushing and kidnapping her at a place she was supposed to meet Boris, and is then sent to kill James Bond while he’s using a hotel pool since he desires to meet with Janus. Despite trying to sadistically kill him the same way she killed the admiral and getting a lot of pleasure out of the whole experience (including when Bond shoves her against a wall, displaying sadomasochist traits), Bond manages to fend her off and hold her at gunpoint, commanding her to take him to meet the head of Janus. After taking him to an abandoned junkyard where he’s supposed to meet him, 007 knocks her out, after which she isn’t seen again until she’s with Trevelyan on a missile train with the captured Natalya, whom Ourumov has brought to her as a bargaining chip, as well as because she knows about the incident at the Severnaya facility. Eventually, 007 catches up though, and successfully derails the train using an army tank. In the ensuing standoff, he shoots Ourumov to save Natayla, but Alec and Xenia get away and share a laugh as they leave them trapped there with a bunch of explosives and only 3 minutes to escape. Thankfully, of course, they do.

Finally, later on when Bond and Natalya are in Cuba searching for Alec’s base, which they know is there since Natalya spiked the computer Boris was using, she is sent after them to see if they survived when their helicopter is shot down. Rappelling down from a helicopter towards the wreckage, she quickly gets the best of Bond, who is still somewhat disoriented from the crash, and makes one more sadistic attempt to crush him between her thighs. Natalya tries to help him, but she simply pulls her close to her and somewhat suggestively tells her to “wait for her turn”, before head-butting her to the ground. However, this distracts her just long enough for Bond to swiftly hook the rope she used to get down to her safety harness, grab her rifle, and shoot the helicopter pilot. This causes the helicopter to spin out of control and crash, pulling a screaming Xenia into the fork of a tree, with the pressure of the harness crushing her against it, putting an end to her once and for all.

Mitigating Factors
Unsurprisingly, when you get past her initial charm, Xenia’s very lacking when it comes to genuinely positive traits. Unlike Alec Trevelyan, who’s not only in it to electronically rob the Bank of England before using the GoldenEye satellite to erase any trace of the transaction, but is genuinely angry at the British’s betrayal of his people, which led to his parent’s subsequent survivor’s guilt and his father committing a murder-suicide on his wife, which he wants to avenge, Xenia doesn’t seem to have any personal investment in his scheme. If anything, she only appears to be in it for the money, and probably even more so than that, to express her rather disturbing, sexualized love of killing.

Now with that stated, there is one possible mitigating factor to sort out, and that’s that, at least at a glance, she seems to get along perfectly fine with Ourumov and Trevelyan. However, I’m pretty much positive she doesn’t have anything resembling a personal relationship or actual care for either of them. In Ourumov’s case, she only interacted with him when they raided the Russian base together, and that was strictly as partners-in-crime. What makes it even more obvious that it was only a business relationship was that she and Trevelyan didn’t seem to care one bit when he got shot and killed by Bond to save Natalya. As for Trevelyan, again, she only interacts with him in one scene, that being the aforementioned train scene, and the most affection she shows is briefly touching him on the shoulder when passing by him and a couple of shared laughs over a couple of barbed remarks Trevelyan makes at Bond’s expense. Plus, not only did Trevelyan not show any sadness or even so much as mention her after she died, but in typical sadomasochist fashion, she didn’t seem very concerned at the idea of them being derailed by the tank Bond had driven onto the tracks to ambush them or their wellbeing; rather, she actually seemed rather excited about the possibility. Honestly, she shows far more chemistry with and interest in James Bond himself, who she tries to repeatedly kill, than she does with or in Alec.

So in short, I think it’s safe to assume that the most likely conclusion is that their relationship is mostly just business, and she mostly gets along with him due to him both promising to make her rich and giving her the chance to kill people, and to a lesser extent, over their shared dark sense of humor.

Heinousness
If there’s going to be dissent on her, it’s likely going to be here due to it being well-established that the James Bond franchise has quite a high standard. However, since Xenia is just a hired psycho and not the main villain, you can easily give her some leeway and compare her to other henchmen and henchwomen rather than other main villains. And as far as they go, she definitely stands out; most other evil henchmen in the series actually have rather low body counts, if any in some cases, so hers, especially her gleeful massacre of all the soldiers and innocent, unarmed technicians at the Russian base, stand out as exceptionally brutal for a villain on her tier. And few, if any, get the sheer sexual ecstasy she does out of killing, whether it’s shooting them up or crushing them in those deadly thighs of hers. Also, unlike some of those aforementioned predecessors and successors, she’s actively involved and helps with the main antagonist’s plan, so she’s also got the attempted collapse of the entire British economy to her credit, which again, she’s involved in purely for personal pleasure unlike her less unhinged co-workers.

Finally, she’s easily the worst of the ensemble of antagonists in her respective movie. While it certainly doesn’t completely justify his crimes, and his plan to plunge all of England into the stone age is pretty bad, Trevelyan genuinely wants to avenge his parents, and aside from killing at least one scientist and some soldiers in self-defense under the guise of 006, which is standard behavior for even a real double-o agent, he doesn’t have much of an actual, or even attempted body count for a main antagonist. Boris Grishenko might be, as Natalya puts it, a “pathetic like worm” who joined Janus just to ensure his own safety, but on a personal level, he’s pretty much completely harmless, as well as the film’s main source of comic relief. General Ourumov can be ruthless, such as killing one soldier who disregarded an order to not shoot at Bond while he was close to dangerous gas tanks that could blow up if accidently hit, and killing Defense Minister Mishkin along with a guard of his and planning to frame it on Bond when his treachery was being outed, but that’s pretty standard for a Bond villain of his tier. Plus, while he was Xenia’s partner at the Severnaya base and knew they had to get rid of any witnesses, he showed it subtly, but he still seemed genuinely put off by her gleeful and unhinged manner of doing it, which hints that he doesn’t love violence itself, but sees it more as a pragmatic means to an end.

Final Verdict
I can totally see and understand if there are some opposing views over whether she deserves to be approved or not, but after careful consideration, I think she stands out as an especially nasty and depraved hired hand for the Bond franchise. And hey, even if she’s rejected, at least she’s finally getting a solid consensus one way or another, which contributes to the ongoing effort to organize all of the characters who are especially subjective with regards to if they qualify for the category or not into the approved or rejected templates.