Every Main James Bond Villain Ranked Worst To Best
1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger, 1964)
Who else could it have been but the mad genius that headlined the most famous Bond film of all, and set the gold standard of villainy? The grand criminal ambition of Auric Goldfinger is so remarkably majestic that even Bond is forced to admit his appreciation of Goldfinger’s inspired plan to irradiate the gold supply of the United States and skyrocket the value of his own stock.
His power, his ingenuity, and his pairing with arguably the physically strongest henchman of all helped him to actually defeat 007: Goldfinger has a captive Bond at his mercy multiple times in the film, spends a large portion of the plot holding him hostage, and finally locks him within an inescapable vault in close proximity to a nuclear bomb rapidly approaching detonation.
His sole flaw proves to be underestimating 007’s secondary weapon: Bond’s prior seduction of Pussy Galore paves the way for her to alert the CIA to Goldfinger’s scheme, allowing them to foil a man whose defeat of Bond had left him within a cold finger of utter victory.
If not for the nice CIA gentleman kindly locating the off button on Goldfinger’s bomb, the man with the Midas touch would have succeeded in his attempts to achieve a criminal miracle. Any villain who could so effectively neutralise 007 himself deserves the very top spot among the finest James Bond villains of all time.
Best Moment: The most iconic scene in Bond history finds a powerless 007 strapped to a table and about to be split in half by an industrial laser. Sweating at incoming death and fishing for any potential lifeline, Bond in desperation asks “do you expect me to talk?” to which Goldfinger provides the cinematically immortal reply: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”
Worst Moment: Goldfinger is a man of a divine heaviness, yet somehow manages to be sucked through the tiny window of an airplane in the midst of decompression. The silly visual is one of the very, very few blemishes in a film that’s otherwise solid gold.
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