No action hero could survive for over half a century without compelling and memorable villains with whom to do battle, and the James Bond series has contributed some of the most iconic bad guys ever to menace the silver screen. Here's Bond s most powerful baddies, ranked.
After the outlandish Moonraker, Productions sought to return the series to its roots with the relatively restrained For Your Eyes Only, released in 1981. That film's central villain is Aristotle Kristatos, a Greek businessman introduced as Bond's ally in his pursuit of a missing British ATAC missile targeting computer. Kristatos is actually trying to get his hands on the ATAC so he can sell it to the KGB.
Kristatos has no plans for world domination and no terrifying superweapon, just a couple of hired guns and a strongman on loan from the KGB. Kristatos doesn't even win the honor of being killed by Bond himself, and is instead dispatched by the man he tried to frame for his plot.
The lifecycle started over once again with 1987's The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton as a more sinister, brooding Bond. Soviet General Georgi Koskov tries to trick MI6 into assassinating his rival, General Pushkin, so he can take his place as the head of the KGB. Koskov's scheme drives much of the plot of The Living Daylights, but he shares the billing of Bond Villain for this feature with American arms dealer Brad Whitaker, a West Point washout who wears a bootleg military uniform and fancies himself a spiritual descendent of Napoleon. Date: 2021-04-06
