10 Movie Franchises That Need To Ditch ONE Thing
2. Disfigured Villains - James Bond
Though the James Bond franchise largely thrives on its tropes, there's one in particular that feels grotesquely tired in the modern era of 007 - villains with disfigurements, typically of the facial variety.
It's a trope which goes back to the beginnings of the Bond franchise, though has surprisingly been most apparent of all throughout the recently-concluded Daniel Craig era.
Casino Royale had Le Chiffre's (Mads Mikkelsen) scarred eye, Skyfall had Silva's (Javier Bardem) misshapen face due to a cyanide capsule, Spectre gave Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) a scarred eye, and No Time to Die's Safin (Rami Malek) had a heavily scarred face.
This is a supremely outdated convention, that by giving the villain an exterior "ugliness," it serves as visual shorthand for their inner malevolence, upholding an unfortunate stereotype that people with facial disfigurements are anything but normal.
And even if you don't find Bond's continued use of this trope personally offensive, it is a rather old-hat conceit in 2023. Can we not be more creative with our villainous aesthetics?
Very few people would miss the facial disfigurement if it went away for the next era of Bond, so it's at least worth trying to give it a rest, right?