On villain ridiculousness over time

At work today I drew a chart on a whiteboard that compared ridiculousness and 007 book villains over time in order of original publication. Here is that chart, recreated in Numbers:

The Bond novels, for the uninitiated, are simply 1950s and 60s trashy romance novels for men. There’s no getting around this. I don’t want to give too much away because the original books aren’t very long and are a hoot to read. It’s easy to forget that these books were written 40, 50 years ago while making your way through them (until something unbelievably racist comes out of Bond’s mouth or, as in Casino Royale, Bond slams on the accelerator of his car and hears “the screams of his Aston’s 25 horses”).

Click through to read the somewhat in-depth analysis.

The Bond novels, for the uninitiated, are simply 1950s and 60s trashy romance novels for men. There’s no getting around this. I don’t want to give too much away because the original books aren’t very long and are a hoot to read. It’s easy to forget that these books were written 40, 50 years ago while making your way through them (until something unbelievably racist comes out of Bond’s mouth or, as in Casino Royale, Bond slams on the accelerator of his car and hears “the screams of his Aston’s 25 horses”).

Click through to read the somewhat in-depth analysis.

For the sake of this post I’m mostly going to discuss the country behind the villain in each book and how they contribute to the ridiculousness levels, with little details thrown in here and there to justify my rating.

CR (Casino Royale): The very first James Bond adventure introduces SMERSH, a secret wing of the Soviet government intended to kill dissenters and opposing secret agents. SMERSH is a recurring villain in the first few 007 novels.

LLD (Live and Let Die): Bond is sent to New York to deal with a voodoo-centric mobster in Harlem who is actually an agent of SMERSH.

MR (Moonraker): SMERSH is nowhere to be seen in this novel, which instead focuses on some WWII bitterness as a team of German engineers executes a diabolical plot.

DAF (Diamonds Are Forever): Back to America, still no SMERSH. American gangs, diamond smuggling and trains.

FRWL (From Russia With Love): SMERSH is back! And so angry about being left out of the previous two novels that James Bond doesn’t actually appear in FRWL until nearly the second half of the book.

DN (Dr. No): Bond is sent on vacation after having a very close brush with death at the end of his previous adventure only to encounter a Chinese man with no hands who lives in an underground mountain lair.

Let’s stop here for a second. So far our villains are Soviets -> Soviets -> Germans -> Americans (with voodoo) -> Soviets -> Chinese man with an underground lair. Where exactly did that last one come from? The villainous plots of every 007 book is ridiculously thought out to the point where you can easily imagine someone actually going through with it. However, taking into consideration that Dr. No’s actual business is selling guano (on the side of just being a rich guy with steel hooks for hands living in a mountain), it sounds like Mr. Fleming got a little too much sun during one of his stays in Jamaica. I’m fairly sure that Dr. No’s sheer ridiculousness is the reason that despite being the sixth book, it was the first movie produced.

Moving on.

GF (Goldfinger): A villain with not one but two names that reference gold (Auric Goldfinger) and happens to be working for SMERSH.

FYEO (For Your Eyes Only): Despite there being a Bond film of the same name, For Your Eyes Only is actually a collection of James Bond short stories, one of which bears the title of the collection. The five stories in the collection are From a View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, Quantum of Solace, Risico and The Hildebrand Rarity.

• From a View to a Kill: small team of spies (assumed to be Soviet)
• For Your Eyes Only: Cubans
• Quantum of Solace: Boredom
• Risico: Soviets
• The Hildebrand Rarity: A drunk guy

A few elaborations: they never really say who the spies in From a View to a Kill work for, but they are spied speaking something that “sounds like” Russian at one point so there we are. Bond doesn’t appear in the actual story of Quantum of Solace. It is presented as a story being told to him during what he describes as a “boring dinner party”. Despite this it actually ended up being one of my favorite Bond short stories. There’s no real villain in The Hildebrand Rarity (this story could also be called Bond and Friends Catch a Fish) but the drunk guy is a real jerk, so I put him down anyway.

TB (Thunderball): SMERSH is dead, long live SPECTRE! SPECTRE is introduced as Bond’s new rival. They’re an incredibly wide reaching yet noble evil organization.

By the time SPECTRE rolls around, it’s obvious that the world is incredibly lucky that Fleming never decided to go into the supervillain business for himself: the detail with which the plot is described is quite remarkable, right down to each individual screw on the stolen plane full of nuclear weapons (an actual 007 plot device). Imagine if the guy actually wanted to build an underground lair in a mountain. I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that he could. reading through any of these books forces the reader to think “Holy crap, this guy has given this a lot of thought.”

This is as far as I’ve read in the series. I still have a lot more to go, including The Spy Who Loved Me, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun, not to mention a few more short stories. As I work my way through them I’ll update my graph with their relative plot ridiculousness.

So I have a question. have you every read James Hadley Chase? Or Modesty Blaise? I loved James Hadley Chase when I was growing up – real pulp fiction with just enough sexual crap to keep a teenage me excited. Modesty Blaise is just awesome. At least I think so. If you haven’t every real any Modesty, please at least try one and let me know what you think =) The author is Peter O’Donnell, by the way.
one year, for my Dad’s birthday, I bought him the entire series on DVD. I grew up watching Bond, not so much reading, but I have some of the books back home in India… And, to be honest, I do like the last few Bond movies, unlike a lot of people. Ok enough, back to my readings for school!