James Bond villains have come up with some really ingenious schemes over the years. Some steal nuclear bombs and hold the world for ransom; others want to destroy a large amount of one resource to increase the value of their own stockpile, and one even wanted to stage a coup in China, all so he could get broadcasting rights in that country. All brilliant schemes or at least ahead of their time. However, there is another side to that coin. Some James Bond villains have schemes that can only be described as completely ridiculous. Whether it's the implausibility of pulling them or the methods they take to do so having a few issues, let's look at some of the sillier villain schemes from James Bond movies.
6 The Man With the Golden Gun - Scaramanga Decides to Steal Technology he Doesn't Understand
The man of the movie's title is Francisco Scaramanga, the deadliest assassin in the world. When a golden bullet with "007" engraved on it arrives at MI6, they assume James Bond is his next target and send our favorite secret agent to eliminate Scaramanga before he can eliminate Bond. With a setup like that, one would assume we're in for a cat-and-mouse style chase, with Bond and Scaramanga traveling to exotic locales and just missing one another. While there is traveling to exotic locales (Beirut, Macau, and Thailand), the villain's main goal (the bullet was sent by Scaramanga's lover in the hopes Bond would kill him) is to mess around with a solar energy gizmo that will solve the energy crisis making headlines when the film came out in 1974. What makes it truly absurd is that Scaramanga admits he has no idea how the gizmo works or how solar energy in general works. It's a really silly stumbling block to what otherwise is a very good villain.
5 No Time To Die - Safin Wants to Sell Nanotechnology for Reasons that are Never Explained
In all honesty, Lyutsifer Safin's plan to steal MI6's secret nanobot project and sell it to the highest bidder is a fairly solid plot by Bond standards. The only reason this plan crosses into silly territory is because we have no clue exactly why Safin is even doing it. Safin spends the first half of the film wanting revenge on Blofeld and Spectre for killing his family, but he achieves that halfway through the movie. For the remaining half, there's this constant nagging question of why he's doing the whole "sell the nanotechnology to the highest bidder" shtick, and it's a huge problem for any movie to have an antagonist who doesn't really have a motivation for the final act of their film.
4 Octopussy - Orlov and Khan Want To Blow Up an Air Force Base... Which Will Magically Cause US Forcesto Withdraw from Europe
Roger Moore's penultimate outing as 007 sees Afghan prince Kamal Khan team up with Soviet General Orlov to blow up a US Air Force Base in West Germany in the hopes that it will force Europe to kick American forces off the continent. Already we have a plan that relies on some serious magical thinking. The film has no scene where the nations of NATO threaten consequences for the US if there's another accident. Also, if a nuclear bomb did go off on a US military base in Germany in 1983, wouldn't the more realistic reaction be an all-out nuclear strike on the Soviets? Far from causing a decrease in US troops, Orlov and Khan's scheme would more realistically do the opposite. Orlov's completely insane, so it makes sense why he thinks the way he does. Kamal Khan is not and should have slapped some sense into him the moment he heard this loony idea.
3 The Spy Who Loved Me - Stromberg Wants to Start World War III... So He Can Create an Underwater Utopia
The Spy Who Loved Me is widely regarded as Roger Moore's best James Bond film, which is a correct observation. However, it heavily borrows from You Only Live Twice by having its villain hijack British and Soviet military equipment (in this case, nuclear submarines) and use them to start World War III. SPECTRE's motivation is much more sane in You Only Live Twice. They're doing it because an unnamed country (implied to be China) is paying them to do it. Stromberg wants to start World War III so he can build an underwater utopia and rule over it. Where we get into silly territory is that any nuclear fallout from the war would probably contaminate the oceans, so where exactly is Stromberg planning on building his city? In the Mediterranean, where his HQ is? Does he have willing volunteers to join him in his underwater city? If so, the film doesn't show them.
2 A View To A Kill - Zorin Wants to Copy Another Bond Villain's Plan
Roger Moore's final Bond film sees him go up against French industrialist Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), who pretty much copies Goldfinger's plan from the movie of the same name, except replace the gold for microchips and replace nuclear bomb with a bunch of dynamite in the San Andreas Fault. The idea is that by causing a huge explosion in the fault, it will cause the lakes along it to flood, wiping out Silicon Valley in the process. All of this was brilliant when Goldfinger was doing it 20 years earlier, but the only real change Zorin makes is using non-nuclear explosives. For a villain who is supposed to be a genius, Zorin shouldn't have copied another villain's homework.
1 Moonraker - Drax Wants to Repopulate the Earth With a Master Race... IN SPACE!
Moonraker, despite its occasional outlandishness, is actually a pretty entertaining Bond film. It helps that main villain Hugo Drax gets some of the best lines any villain in the Bond franchise has ever gotten. What hurts is that his evil plan is a ripoff of the plot from the previous movie, except in space, with a little Nazi master race ideology thrown in for good measure. On the plus side, Drax has thought through a few things better than Stromberg. He plans to use globes containing a lethal nerve gas launched from his space station to commit his genocide, all while his selected perfect breeding couples watch from said space station. All of this is outlandish and completely bonkers, but it's a fun level of outlandish and bonkers. However, there is one not-so-fun instance of bonkers early in the film. What exactly puts Bond on the trail of Mr. Drax? A space shuttle from his company gets stolen... by himself. Why? "Because he needed it." As it turns out, another shuttle had some mechanical issues, so the solution is of course to steal another one from your own company. Makes perfect sense.