| “ | You are a kite dancing in a hurricane, Mr. Bond. So long. | „ |
| ~ Mr. White's last words. |
Friedrich König, more commonly known as Mr. White, is a recurring character in the James Bond rebooted series, serving as the secondary antagonist in the 2006 film Casino Royale, a major antagonist in the 2008 film Quantum of Solace, and an anti-hero in the 2015 film Spectre. He is the mastermind and leader of a nefarious organization called Quantum, which helps support terrorism, and is only seen a few times whilst his role in Quantum's events still remains unclear. He is later revealed to be the father of Madeleine Swann and that Quantum is revealed to be a affiliate of SPECTRE, a criminally terroristic organization that was responsible for Quantum's foundation.
He was portrayed by Jesper Christensen.
History
Casino Royale
| “ | Money isn't as valuable to our organization as knowing who to trust. | „ |
| ~ White to Le Chiffre before killing him. |
White is seen introducing Le Chiffre, the main antagonist, to the terrorist named Steven Obanno, and arranges for Le Chiffre to bank Obanno's money. White is next seen after Le Chiffre has lost Obanno's money. While Le Chiffre tortures Bond, the door bursts open and Mr. White enters with a silenced pistol aimed at Le Chiffre. Though Le Chiffre tries to reason with Mr. White by telling him that he will get the money back, White kills him because Quantum can no longer trust him. Ironically, this action saves the life of MI6 agent James Bond, who will become Quantum's main enemy. When Mr. White returns to his villa on Lake Como after stealing back the casino winnings from Vesper Lynd, he receives a phone call. While answering the call, he is shot in the leg and falls to the ground. As he tries to crawl into cover, he is approached by James Bond who takes him captive for interrogation by MI6.
Quantum of Solace
| “ | The first thing you should know about us that we have people everywhere. | „ |
| ~ Mr. White reveals that Quantum has infiltrated MI6. |
The next film begins with Bond and his superior questioning White, who states that his organization has people everywhere. Upon this statement, M's bodyguard Mitchell opens fire, and Bond pursues him out of the room. In the ensuing confusion, White escapes. He is later seen at an opera house in Bregenz, Austria, where he has come to meet with other members of Quantum (arranged by Dominic Greene of Greene Planet). During the opera, the Quantum members discuss their Bolivia project through small headsets. Bond uses a headset previously taken from a Quantum member to trick the members into leaving the opera and takes photos of everyone who leaves, providing MI6 with valuable information about Quantum's top agents. However, Mr. White removes his headphone and remains seated to avoid being caught. He tells the woman next to him that "Tosca isn't for everyone", thereby giving his partners a reason for leaving the room. Following the deaths of Greene and General Medrano, Bond learned that Vesper's boyfriend Yusef Kabira is a Quantum agent who faked his kidnapping in order for Mr. White and Greene to coerce Vesper into working for them in the first place. Following Kabira's arrest and Quantum's dissolution, Mr. White remains at large.
Spectre
| “ | She is clever, she's smarter than me, she knows how to hide. If you will find her, she'll take you to L'Americain, she knows L'Americain! | „ |
| ~ Mr White on his daughter Dr. Madeline Swann. |
Following the deaths of Raoul Silva and M, it was revealed that Quantum itself is a subsidiary of SPECTRE, which would make Mr. White incidentally a member of the latter organization; even Le Chiffre, Greene and Silva were all revealed to be agents working for SPECTRE. It also turns out that Mr. White was nothing more than a mere pawn alongside Vesper, Kabira, Le Chiffre, Greene and Silva; all of them used by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (the leader of SPECTRE) in his true plot of inflicting psychological pain on Bond. However, Mr. White decides that he can no longer serve Blofeld as he did not feel well about trafficking women and children, so he decided to quit. As such, Blofeld ordered multiple attempts on Mr. White's life, which leads the latter into hiding, slowly dying of thallium poisoning. After locating him at an abandoned house at Austria, Bond shows Mr. White a ring which bears an inscribed octopus from assassin Marco Sciarra. Mr. White tells Bond to find his estranged daughter Madeleine Swann as she has the knowledge Bond needs to know about SPECTRE, giving him a name 'L'Americain', which happens to be a Moroccan hotel where Mr. White has hidden coordinates to SPECTRE's North African facility. Mr. White also makes Bond promise to protect Swann before bidding farewell and shooting himself in the head with Bond's gun.
Out of pity, Bond mourns for Mr. White by closing his dead eyes before leaving to find Swann. Blofeld's henchman Mr. Hinx later broke into the safe house to kill both Bond and Mr. White, only to find that Bond is gone and Mr. White's corpse is being pecked off by several crows, much to Hinx's disgust. It later turns out that the entire suicide was recorded through a video surveillance system controlled by SPECTRE, and after capturing Bond and Swann in his North African facility, Blofeld used the footage to deeply traumatize Swann (much to Bond's anger), saying that Mr. White was too weak to see exactly what Blofeld was planning for the world. This made Swann realize that in spite of Mr. White's past crimes while working at SPECTRE, he was still a good father to her at best.
Eventually, Bond and Swann brought closure to Mr. White's death by defeating Blofeld in his plot to control all of the world's intelligence systems and leaving him to be arrested for his crimes against humanity.
Personality
Mr. White is a man as mysterious as Quantum and SPECTRE who wants above all to maintain the anonymity of these organizations which he persists in never mentioning. As a result, he is not cowardly enough to disclose the existence of the factions when subjected to interrogation pressure by intelligence services such as MI6 and his numerous contacts and undercover agents may allow him to escape easily to captivity. In addition, White is also determined to maintain Quantum's reputation, whether by executing associates that displease him or simply by indicating to other terrorist groups that he is not responsible for their incompetence. Although he prefers to let his subordinates do the dirty work for him and pull strings in the shadows, the terrorist can nevertheless get his hands dirty if necessary.
However, despite his cold, ruthless and calculating temperament, White is not necessarily a heartless individual since he cannot in particular resolve to contribute to sexual businesses led by SPECTRE and which involve women and children, so he left the organization for that. He also had a real love for Madeleine, whom he wanted to keep safe, far from his life as a criminal, so as not to endanger her. White also enjoys using his wealth and his position as a high-ranking criminal to buy expensive costumes and thus adopt the appearance of a refined and polite person while settling in a number of splendid dens like the his villa on the shore of Lake Como, in Italy, and the chalet in which he is hiding in Altausee, Austria.
Gallery
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Trivia
- Mr. White served as the Bigger Bad in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace because, even though Le Chiffre and Dominic Greene served as the main antagonists in their respective films, they still answered to him. However, it turns out that White, Le Chiffre, Greene and Raoul Silva were all answering to Franz Oberhauser (as Quantum itself is a subsidiary of SPECTRE), as part of Oberhauser's plot to wreak psychological pain on Bond, something that Mr. White would later regret to hold a part in following the deaths of Le Chiffre, Greene and Silva.
- On early scripts of Spectre and in the story of Octopussy, it was revealed that Mr. White and Oberhauser were military brothers-in-arms and were very old "friends", but on a mission at the desert of Afghanistan, their unit was killed by a group of bandits whom taking the two as hostages, but Blofeld managed to kill every single one of them, left White alone and went on to create SPECTRE as name of the military legion they served.
