10 Famous Movie Villains With Lame Motivations

5. Blofeld (Spectre)

Spectre Christoph Waltz Blofeld.jpg
MGM

The Motivation: His father's favouritism towards Bond.

Before release, one of the most exciting things about Spectre was the fact that Christoph Waltz had been cast to play the film's villain, Franz Oberhauser (revealed as Blofeld in the film), but the character failed to reach the towering heights set by Craig's previous bad guys - namely, Skyfall's Silva, and Casino Royale's Le Chiffre.

Part of the problem here was Blofeld's actual motivation. As the film nears its end we learn that Blofeld and Bond share quite a personal connection, in that they both grew up under the same father figure, Hannes Oberhauser. Hannes adopted Bond after he was orphaned, becoming his guardian, for a time. As a result, Blofeld grew to resent Bond because he believed Hannes preferred him, and so, he went on to form the organisation known as Spectre, to personally target Bond. This revelation retconned Craig's entire run of films, by making Blofeld responsible for basically every bad thing that had happened to Bond since Casino Royale.

And all of that multi-movie villainy - including a lot of murders - stemmed from a trivial bit of childhood jealousy. We never actually see any flashbacks that support Blofeld's point of view either, something to help us understand his hatred a bit better (a scene of Hannes ignoring him in favour of Bond would have gone a long way). As it stands, Blofeld just looks rather pathetic and whiny for holding a life-long grudge against someone who literally did him no wrong in the first place.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!