“Spectre”, the 24th installment of the James Bond movie franchise movies saw the re-introduction of Ernst Stravo Blofeld. The noted arch-vile and mainstay villain of the classic 1960’s Sean Connery James Bond movies was rebooted for a modern era and audience.
However, as many reviewers and commentators have stated; this version of Blofeld, played by Christoph Waltz, had very little to do in the movie; and that his character was in-developed or lacked any menace.
Indeed, I’m struggling to remember what Blofeld’s plan was in Spectre; only upon reading on Wikipedia I was able to find out that his overall goal was to standardize and monopolized the spying sharing network “Nine Eyes” for monetary reasons.
Many reviewers, including myself hated the reveal that “Franz Oberhauser” was a step-brother relative of James Bond.
Amazingly, this reveal of being step-brothers (or relatives) was used earlier in the Austin Powers’ movies; and the irony of this was not lost on many IMDB reviwers; considering how many within the Bond franchise had complained that Austin Powers’ had effectively emasculated and parodied any serious attempt to recreate Blofeld even before the thought of rebooting him came about.
A further blow came when Blofeld revealed “I was behind everything” force-patching the villain in every previous Daniel Craig James Bond movie was forced and, on the whole, didn’t make sense and again lazy.
Perhaps it was the writers need to patch everything together, the producers desire to make a cinematic universe to rival the on-going Marvel super-hero movies; or perhaps the Sony hack back in 2014 where the leaked script had to force writers down another path had lead to a poorly drafted Blofeld and a poor addition to the continuing James Bond series of movies.
On reddit, the rumors that the next James Bond movie will see a returning Blofeld and will follow plot points from the original Ian Fleming novel of “You only live twice”; that being Blofeld takes the pseduoname of “Dr. Guntram Shatterhand” and Daniel Craig’s James Bond is on a revenge mission to finally kill him.
And yet, I believe Blofeld can be fixed; albeit my idea of Blofeld’s background could have been better.
Make Blofeld a product of the CIA that went wrong
Fundamentally, I’d preface Blofeld a product of the CIA with the vision to ask; can the power of a state in an individual become a danger to the state?
I’d have written Blofeld as a product of the CIA, and a child of the CIA MK-Ultra project; the codename given to a series of illegal human and child experiments undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency, used to manipulate people’s mental states, altering brain functions, and the usage of drugs, sensory deprivation, isolation and verbal abuse, as well as other forms of psychological torture.
Imagine the relationship we saw in the James Bond movie “A View to a Kill (1985)” where Max Zorin had a subtle relationship with “Dr. Carl Mortner”; but on steroids.
I imagine that Blofeld would have fallen into a psychological trap of Stockholm syndrome with a domineering CIA “father” figure.
Similar to how in the movie 1978 movie, “The Boys of Brazil”; I believe that Blofeld’s background could be moulded by an “Dr. Josef Mengele” type individual, whom has a mind-set of creating a world figure; that they themselves controlled ten, twenty years prior.
Perhaps taking cues from the “The Parallax View” (1974); James Bond could investigate the historical routes of
a multinational corporation that has links to Blofeld; and its found that a former majority shareholder was the principal architect behind Blofeld’s rise on the world stage.
These tactics of Gaslighting, and “Divide and conqueror” would explain SPECTRE’s own tactics and where the formualised ideas and strategies came from.
TLDR;
In short, I see Blofeld as a troubled child that turned psychotic and twisted after realising he was remoulded by a shadowy CIA MK ultra project to craft him as a world leader; a Maitreya-esque figure, “a teacher” that created a SPECTRE in order to shape world opinion; as a reaction, a measure to take revenge on the world that blighted and a life stole from him.
I would ignore all ideas that Blofeld was related to James Bond; and perhaps “Franz Oberhauser” was indeed Blofeld’s original name; but Oberhauser took his “father’s” name, the name of Ernst Stravo Blofeld from his CIA handlers.
I believe that creating a solid foundation of what, who and why Blofeld exists and what his reason for being can be crafted; then his subsequent villainy, and evil can be treat the character as as serious comment on whether enemies in the mirror are any different to enemies in the shadows.