The eternal Bond villain mistake du jour, not killing Bond while they have the chance is the reason why countless villains have since gone to live permanently underground, and why he continues to live to this day. Bond villains need Bond out of their way to carry out their evil operation without fail and, though they might have a gun (or possibly laser) trained right on him, instead they talk, they explain the ins and outs of their plan, they demonstrate their power they do anything, basically, to spend some quality time with the guy before they finish him off. It's almost as though they just don't have the heart to kill him. Red Grant's been there. Auric Goldfinger's been there. Even Bond's old ally, Alec Trevelyan, had a chance to shoot that he didn't take. Some Bond villains, of course, choose not to use guns, but an overly-elaborate method of execution that the amorous agent can easily slip out of - a whole bunch of animals have been used to kill Bond, for example, including sharks, crocodiles, spiders and piranhas, but all have shockingly failed. In a sense, Francisco Scaramanga is one of the smarter Bond villains after all, his entire evil 'plan' revolves around just shooting Bond straight off. The only problem, of course, being that James Bond is the greatest shot there's ever been, and probably the man for whom the handgun was invented.
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
