For anyone who wants to see Christopher Walken at his most unhinged, look no further; it'll take far more than a cowbell prescription to cure this sick puppy.
Hi all, I hope you’re coping well and finding nice and/or fulfilling ways to use your time. I’m back with another proposal for yet another James Bond-related baddie. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to seeing their respective movie, any compilation of the most vile and depraved of Bond’s enemies feels incomplete without this guy. So, whenever you’re ready, let’s dance into the fire… um, sorry, proceed with the details about who they are and what they do (man I love Duran Duran’s theme song).
On a side note, due to changing my username since posting this, for some weird reason, you can't see the votes anymore. If you want to see them, and by extension, the proof that this was approved, follow the redirect here.
What’s the work?[]
A View to a Kill is a 1985 spy film, the 14th overall entry in the James Bond film franchise, and the 7th and final one to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent that they all center around. This time around, Bond has just recovered a microchip from a mission in Siberia, and after some analysis, it is discovered to belong to Zorin Industries, so Bond is sent to investigate the company at a horse race competition that it’s holding. After some poking around, he discovers that it’s really just a front for a massive storage of microchips, and the company’s owner, Max Zorin, has a very diabolical plot to monopolize the global microchip supply in the works. And of course, this is the main antagonist of the film whom I’m proposing should be approved as pure evil. Would you like to know more? It would be my pleasure…
Who is he and what does he do?[]
Maximillian “Max” Zorin is a wealthy industrialist with ties to the KGB as a former operative. However, he has since gone rogue to pursue his own interests, and presently runs his own company. While like many Bond villains, he comes across as sophisticated and polite, it’s just a public front for what he really is; a vicious and insane psychopath with no regard for human life. As mentioned previously, he publicly runs horse-racing competitions. However, they’re rigged; he has a German scientist named Hans Glaub, who has responsible for the experiments that gave birth to him (more on that later), and who is operating under the alias of Dr. Carl Mortner, secretly implant the horses with adrenaline-releasing microchips to ensure he wins the bets (oh, and since they’re “administered” during the races and the doses quickly dissolve, he’s able to hide this from blood tests done to check for signs of drugs).
Meanwhile, he has anyone who tries to investigate him and his microchip-related operations promptly disposed of. First, he sends out May Day, his main bodyguard and apparent lover, to assassinate a French private detective who had some knowledge about his business. Later, when he discovers who James Bond really is, he also has her kill Sir Godfrey Tibbett, Bond’s fellow MI6 operative and partner in the investigation, and tries to kill him too by knocking him unconscious, putting him in a car, and drowning it in a lake. Bond, of course, being Bond, manages to come to and escape before drowning.
Later on, Max calls a meeting on his blimp with a group of investors where he reveals his plan to monopolize the microchip market. How? By “ending the domination” of Silicon Valley, where, by his own estimate, at least 80% of the world’s microchip distributors are located. After asking that they each contribute millions of dollars towards a project that he labels “Project Main Strike”, one investor finds it so outrageous and uncomfortable that they declare they want no part of it. Max then pretends to simply have May Day escort him outside the room to keep the meeting confidential, only to have her eject him out of the airship to his death, lightheartedly quipping to the rest of them afterwards, “does anybody else want to drop out?” Not long afterwards, Bond investigates an oil rig in San Francisco that he owns, where he crosses path with a female KGB agent named Pola Ivanova from his past and an unnamed male partner who have been sent to take him out due to, as mentioned previously, his refusal to cooperate with them in pursuit of his own interests. While Bond and Pola get away, the unnamed male agent is not so lucky and gets caught, after which Max demonstrates his penchant for visceral overkill by ordering for him to be dropped into an underwater turbine, gruesomely shredding him to death.
After meeting and partnering up with a State Geologist named Stacey Sutton, who owns a family oil business that Max is trying to buy out, they head to San Francisco Hall to check his submitted plans in the hopes of exposing what he’s trying to do. Unfortunately, they are caught by him and May Day, after which he callously executes Stacey’s employer, W.G. Howe, a city official and State Geologist who had been covering for his illegal activities, with the intention of framing it on Bond and Stacey, then forces them into an elevator before setting the building on fire and leaving them to die. Of course, once again, Bond manages to get both himself and Stacey out of their predicament, after which they make their way for his mine and infiltrate it by posing as his mine workers.
While they are doing so, they discover the horrific extent of what his “Project Main Strike” involves for Silicon Valley; he plans to set off a “double earthquake” by one, detonating multiple explosives that he’s had his mine workers placed beneath the lakes along the Hayward and San Andreas faults, two, further exacerbating the resulting flooding by pumping water into them through a vast system of oil wells, and three, using a larger bomb in the mine to destroy a “geological lock” that prevents the two faults” from moving at the same time. The end result of this would be a massive flood that will completely submerge the Silicon Valley to wipe out all the computer companies that distribute microchips, leaving Zorin’s company as the leading supplier, while undoubtedly killing millions in the process.
Unfortunately for them, they are soon discovered by Zorin, after which he sends May Day and her henchwomen after them into the mines. Then, in his crowning moment of personal villainy, Max and his chief of security, Scarpine, set off some of the explosives early to flood the mines and drown the rest of his men, as well as May Day and her henchwomen. They then proceed to open fire and viciously gun down the remaining men who are trying to flee, all for no reason beyond them no longer having any value and for the simple thrill of it. They then board his airship along with Hans Glaub, during which he gloats with the latter about their plan being close at hand. However, after helping Stacey escape, Bond gets some unexpected help from May Day, who is outraged at his betrayal and for causing the death of her henchwomen/friends. Much to Zorin’s shock, they succeed in removing the larger bomb from the mines, with May Day sacrificing her life by transporting it out into the open on a handcar before it explodes.
Enraged by this, Zorin has the airship swoop down and abduct Stacey to get revenge on Bond for ruining his plan. Bond manages to grab hold of a mooring rope before it takes off for the Golden State Bridge, which delights Max, after which he tries to crash him into the bridge. However, Bond manages to halt the airship by mooring it to the bridge’s framework, after which Stacey comes to his rescue by attacking Zorin, which causes the airship to crash into the bridge’s side, knocking out Glaub. She then knocks out Scarpine by conking him in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher and flees to join Bond. Max then takes matters into his own hands by pursuing them with a fire ax and viciously attacks Bond with it. This leads to a tense one-on-one duel, with Max also trying to kick Stacey off the bridge during the fight. Eventually, however, Bond causes him to lose his balance, after which he gives one last fit of laughter before taking a long plunge into the bay to his likely death.
Mitigating Factors[]
For the most part, Max is very obviously devoid of any redeeming qualities, seeing as how he’s a text-book psychopath who’s willing to let millions die for personal profit, and betrays and/or kills nearly all of his partners and followers by the end of the film. He even leaves May Day to drown without a second thought, despite the fact that for most of the film, she seemed like his lover and the single closest person to him. That said, there are a couple of possible mitigating factors to address, the first and most important being a possible excuse that’s presented for him being the way he is. Remember how I briefly mentioned that he’s the result of experiments? Well, to elaborate, back in World War II, Hans Glaub, his current physician, was a scientist who worked for the Nazis and experimented on pregnant women with steroid injections to breed a race of “perfect” beings. Max was one of the few survivors of these experiments, and it is noted that those like him who were the result of these experiments grew up to be brilliant, but psychotic.
Now, at first, that may seem to throw his “moral agency”, that is, his ability to truly tell right from wrong, into question. However, considering that he’s as good as any other Bond villain at showing an impressive degree of self-control whenever it benefits him to do so and at faking affability and civility in general, I think it’s safe to state that he’s a high-functioning psychopath who’s fully aware of what he’s doing and practically revels in what he is. If anything, he’s like many versions of The Joker in that respect; definitely insane, but clearly in a self-aware and shameless way.
On a more minor note, you could also possibly assume he cares a little for Scarpine, and especially Dr. Carl Mortner/Hans Glaub, since they’re the only ones he doesn’t betray in the end, with the latter being his creator. However, while the latter shows some genuine care for him, most notably when Max fell to his death, which visibly upset him and lead to him trying to get revenge on Bond and Stacey for it, Max doesn’t really show any for him. The most affection he shows is when he briefly puts his arm around his neck while gloating about the success of his plans, and notably, when Glaub gets temporarily knocked out from the blimp crashing as a result of Stacey’s meddling, Max doesn’t even acknowledge him, let alone show any concern for his well-being. All he cares about is killing Bond, and when Scarpine gets knocked out as well, he simply frustratingly takes matters into his own hands and heads out with his ax to try to chop him up. In short, I think Max is way too psychopathic to truly care about, let alone love another person, and these two were simply lucky to be the only ones who he still saw some value in by that stage of his plans, especially considering that he even treated May Day as disposable, who he showed way more chemistry and closeness with than either of them until he nonchalantly left her to die.
Heinousness[]
While it’s been long established that the James Bond series has a considerably high heinous standard, I’d say he easily fits this part of the criteria. Even by the standards of Bond villains, Max is an utter lunatic; while a decent number of them have shown bad boss tendencies by executing at least one or two henchmen for disloyalty or failure, he takes it much further than that by drowning and sadistically gunning down dozens of his men out of a mix of no longer seeing value in them and simply for the sick thrill of it. Dropping an investor to his death who was uncomfortable joining in his plan, shooting a city official who was assisting him in a small way to frame it on Bond and Stacey, and especially dropping an agent into a underwater turbine are also comparably minor, but clear demonstrations of how casually murderous and depraved he is. And of course, there’s his plan; creating a double earthquake to cause a massive flood to submerge the Silicon Valley just to monopolize the microchip market, not caring at all that millions of innocent people would die. This is astonishingly bad, with only a handful of other Bond villains having plots on a similar scale and involving similar amounts of collateral damage; it’s essentially the 2.0 version of Goldfinger’s plot, only on an even bigger scale.
Final Verdict[]
He seems like a pretty easy keeper for the category to me, but it’s up to you.