15. Mads Mikkelsen is… Horror Villain Bond

15. Mads Mikkelsen is… Horror Villain Bond

One of the more interesting aspects of the Daniel Craig Bond films is the way they emphasize 007’s role as a killer, the cold trigger finger of British foreign policy. Let’s push that iciness to the extreme, then, by flipping the usual Bond perspective to get an outsider’s look at his state-mandated indulgence in the license to kill. We’ll need a team of vaguely sympathetic criminal protagonists—a crew of well-intentioned eco-terrorists, maybe—to serve as fodder for Bond’s attack, guilty of some crime that draws the British empire’s murderous ire. Soon, they start to vanish and die, one at a time: sniped from afar, poisoned at a distance, garroted from the dark. The killer: unseen, ruthless, and perfectly equipped for the job. Paranoia rises with the body count, until eventually, the group’s charismatic leader is left alone, his comrades vanished into the night. From out of the darkness comes death, blond-haired and immaculately dressed, in the form of an unsmiling Mads Mikkelsen. The leader attempts to negotiate, to monologue, but he shouldn’t assume that Bond is here to talk (and he can’t, anyway, thanks to that accent). No, Mr. Bond is here to make sure other people die, and he does so swiftly, before fading back into the night, vigilantly waiting for his next bloody assignment to come. [William Hughes]