Christoph Waltz as Blofeld - Hit or miss?

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  • SHF1 wrote: »
    After watching the Spectre again, I would say good, not great. I believe following Javier is a tough call. He needed a serious "psycho" side like Javier or Donald Pleasance back in the day. Both of them have the same "twisted" appeal rather than being subdued

    Hear hear for Donald Pleasance, people hate him here unfortunately.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    SHF1 wrote: »
    After watching the Spectre again, I would say good, not great. I believe following Javier is a tough call. He needed a serious "psycho" side like Javier or Donald Pleasance back in the day. Both of them have the same "twisted" appeal rather than being subdued

    Hear hear for Donald Pleasance, people hate him here unfortunately.

    I don't think anyone hates him, but I think most feel his legacy is the visual, rather than the performance. Next to the Dawson/Pohlmann version he's significantly diminished as a threat from my pov. He's like a sniping little weirdo, rather than a force of nature. I actually don't think anyone has absolutely nailed it, but I genuinely think Waltz brought something of Fleming with him. More than Pleasance, that's for sure.
  • Posts: 1,052
    Waltz did his usual thing really, a bog standard performance for me. Thought he was better in the Green Hornet!
    Donald Pleasance is probably the best remembered, vocally and visually not bad but I think he was to slight a figure of real menace. Blofeld yet to be done justice on the screen.
  • Posts: 108
    How do we feel about Max Von Sydow in NSNA? I think he gave it an interesting approach - not the great menace and psycho, but a very calm and relaxed man. He didn't overdo it and that gives it more credibility to me. Someone who has his act together and delegates the menacing situations to subordinates (which makes a lot of sense) - just as M has his act together and delegates the menacing situations to his 00's.

    His approach reminds me of Max in Mission Impossible, with Vanessa Redgrave also playing a terrorist quite in a "loveable" way.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,356
    I like Von Sydow but he was totally wasted in NSNA. Could have been a fantastic Blofeld too if he had been given something to do.
  • Posts: 1,631
    Waltz did his usual thing really, a bog standard performance for me. Thought he was better in the Green Hornet!
    Donald Pleasance is probably the best remembered, vocally and visually not bad but I think he was to slight a figure of real menace. Blofeld yet to be done justice on the screen.

    I agree with everything in your post, especially the bolded part. His first two appearances in the film series were great, when he was hidden from view and was just a voice and a pair of hands. For my money, the only truly successful appearance that he's actually made in front of the camera was in OHMSS, where Savalas was solid in the role and, along with Dianna Rigg, helped to carry that film in the absence of a quality performance from the film's lead. But, there's been no truly great rendition of the character put up on the screen, aside from the hidden-from-view Blofeld of FRWL and TB.
  • Posts: 1,052
    dalton wrote: »
    Waltz did his usual thing really, a bog standard performance for me. Thought he was better in the Green Hornet!
    Donald Pleasance is probably the best remembered, vocally and visually not bad but I think he was to slight a figure of real menace. Blofeld yet to be done justice on the screen.

    I agree with everything in your post, especially the bolded part. His first two appearances in the film series were great, when he was hidden from view and was just a voice and a pair of hands. For my money, the only truly successful appearance that he's actually made in front of the camera was in OHMSS, where Savalas was solid in the role and, along with Dianna Rigg, helped to carry that film in the absence of a quality performance from the film's lead. But, there's been no truly great rendition of the character put up on the screen, aside from the hidden-from-view Blofeld of FRWL and TB.

    Savalas was definitely the most credible threat and yes the unseen version was much more menacing. I think Waltz was almost a victim of the over confidence that surrounds Spectre, it's like they just signed him up and he read the lines, there's no angle to the performance just bad guy by numbers.
  • Mendes4LyfeMendes4Lyfe The long road ahead
    Posts: 8,428
    Savalas isn't even in my top 3 ESBs. :P
  • Posts: 4,325
    I had a dream about Waltz last night - it was both funny and creepy. In his Spectre interviews he would carry over his Blofeld persona, and here he was in this dream as Waltz thinking he really was Blofeld. And he thought I was Bond and wanted to get me. We were at an auction with secret bids being made. My name was revealed at the end as the winning bid, and he turned to me and I knew he wanted to get me. And he kept goading me and said 'Goodbye James Bond' as he challenged me to a fight that I knew I would lose.
  • Posts: 7,507
    tanaka123 wrote: »
    I had a dream about Waltz last night - it was both funny and creepy. In his Spectre interviews he would carry over his Blofeld persona, and here he was in this dream as Waltz thinking he really was Blofeld. And he thought I was Bond and wanted to get me. We were at an auction with secret bids being made. My name was revealed at the end as the winning bid, and he turned to me and I knew he wanted to get me. And he kept goading me and said 'Goodbye James Bond' as he challenged me to a fight that I knew I would lose.


    Well, his performance definitely made an impression on you then ;))
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    With the new one coming up, this theme should be reevaluated.
  • Posts: 380
    Waltz was brilliant in Inglorious Basterds but he was gifted a great piece of writing and direction by Tarentino. In Spectre he had writing by Wade and Purvis. Say no more. He did his best but you can't polish a turd.
  • MinionMinion Don't Hassle the Bond
    Posts: 1,165
    cooperman2 wrote: »
    Waltz was brilliant in Inglorious Basterds but he was gifted a great piece of writing and direction by Tarentino. In Spectre he had writing by Wade and Purvis. Say no more. He did his best but you can't polish a turd.

    I'm not sure if that's fair given it was mostly John Logan's script.
  • MeanwhileMeanwhile Brooklyn
    Posts: 34
    cooperman2 wrote: »
    Waltz was brilliant in Inglorious Basterds but he was gifted a great piece of writing and direction by Tarentino. In Spectre he had writing by Wade and Purvis. Say no more. He did his best but you can't polish a turd.

    Completely agreed. The rewritten torture scene, which many of us recognize from Colonel Sun, was well done. The meteorite reveal of him as he steps out of the shadows, though a little over-the-top, feels inspired by Dr. No (and a lot of that block of the film clearly was). And his intro in the SPECTRE meeting - holy s**t - is one of the great highlights of Craig’s tenure.

    But then off-screen, he went by FedEx Kinko’s and printed off a bunch of poorly Photoshopped promo portraits of the dead characters from previous films. 😳

    The failure is just as much the writing, especially at the end, as it is the acting. He may have been directed by Mendes to play it more subdued or under-the-radar, but on premiere night I kind of wanted him to be truly terrifying and bats***t crazy. I don’t feel like that was how Blofeld came out in the final product. It wasn’t just Christoph. I don’t think that will probably improve in NTTD much either - we will just be used to it.

  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,584
    Waltz as Blofeld was a great choice IMO. Let down by the writing/story to be sure, but he still has some brilliant moments, as previously mentioned. “The things that bring people together. Out of horror… beauty.”
    He’s one of the best parts of the Craig era for me, and a huge reason I love Spectre so much, pitfalls be damned. The ‘banter with Bond in the basement of the blown up building’ I also love, and even “Goodbye, James Bond” is delightfully campy.
  • It felt like there were so many more complex layers to Blofeld that never got explored. I could imagine someone like Jonathan Majors really tapping into the nuances of the character and helping to show what made him tick, but here he just seemed flat considering the richness of the backstory.
  • quantumspectrequantumspectre argentina
    Posts: 61
    was good, not perfect, but good, needed more screen time to develop more
  • Posts: 230
    Waltz is my second favorite Blofeld behind Savalas. As iconic as Pleasance is it's hard for me to put him ahead of Waltz with his skant screentime, Waltz is also good and much more central to his films.

    Since we're talking about Von Sydow, he's one of the greatest actors of all time and would have been a great Blofeld in another film, like YOLT or OHMSS. But there's just not much for him to do in NSNA.
  • Posts: 1,974
    100% a miss. Its a shame because of what an amazing actor Waltz is
  • RyanRyan Canada
    Posts: 692
    Even though I enjoyed Blofeld coming back, his performance overall is very one note. I think he was going for cool, calm, and collected but I just never feel the menace. He's the same the whole time. It's interesting because Waltz himself was critical of his own performance so I thought for sure we'd see something different this time.
  • VenutiusVenutius Yorkshire
    edited October 2021 Posts: 3,154
    Ryan wrote: »
    Even though I enjoyed Blofeld coming back, his performance overall is very one note. I think he was going for cool, calm, and collected but I just never feel the menace.

    Agreed. Mendes probably thought an understated Blofeld would be more menacing and disturbing. Waltz had already pulled that off in Inglourious Basterds, but it fell flat in SP. Maybe Waltz lost interest when he found out he'd been lumbered with 'Brofeld'...I know I almost did.
  • Posts: 391
    Blofeld in SPECTRE is basically Jonathan Pryce original idea of the bad guy in TND.
    He wanted him to be nondescript, inoffensive looking, like most Billionaires from the silicon valley are, ie wearing no socks, etc. They said no to him, but all the "no" in the Bond series are recycled ideas that comes up later in other films.

    I think he works much better in NTTD.
  • Posts: 15,193
    Although the hows are never explained, I loved the booby trap he set up in the PTS of NTTD. Absolutely monstrous. Also, love the decadent birthday party in Cuba. It's like the boss and the organisation are descending together into madness. There's a real Mask of the Red Death feel.
  • DoctorKaufmannDoctorKaufmann Can shoot you from Stuttgart and still make it look like suicide.
    Posts: 1,261
    There is a nice portrait of Christoph Waltz on arte.
  • Posts: 526
    Give him a D- at best. Very tiring.
  • I liked him much more in NTTD than I did in SPECTRE. Maybe it was the fact that they didn’t shine too much on the brothers aspect, or maybe it was because of the glass eye/birthday party thing. I for some reason got heavy Charles Gray vibes from him in NTTD and I can’t put my finger on it.
  • M16_CartM16_Cart Craig fanboy?
    Posts: 541
    Miss, miss, miss!

    Silva > Le Chiffre > Safin & Greene >>>>>>> Oberhauser
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    edited November 2021 Posts: 24,232
    I don't hate Waltz as Blofeld. This incarnation isn't bad. But it's far from the best in my opinion.

    YOLT and OHMSS offer the best Blofelds in my opinion. And those were rooted in the '60s fantasy world of Bond. It was relatively easy to construct such charmingly evil world dominators back then. And both actors played the role with indisputable charisma.

    The Craigs existed in a different world, a world that tried to be more naturalistic and more real. They tasked themselves with finding a Blofeld that could convincingly exist in such a world, yet still be larger than life and exotic enough to appeal to us. Where do you start? With an evil Elon Musk? We certainly weren't expecting Bond's long lost foster brother we didn't know existed. And did he really have to be the man behind not just LeChiffre and Greene, but behind Silva as well? But those are really my only two gripes with this Blofeld. I like his SP introduction scene (minus the cuckoo) because it is dark and feels menacing. I like the fact that he wants to work with information and desinformartion (21st century) rather than with hijacked nukes. Waltz himself is pretty good when you try to look past bald heads. He's probably too much Landa and Schultz, but Waltz is still good. Was he the best choice for the role? Maybe not. But he doesn't not make sense either.

    Obviously a big problem is what we didn't get:
    a film with Blofeld as the big and obvious villain from start to finish. He was introduced in one film and killed off in the next. I understand why... it's just unfortunate that we didn't get the chance to spend an entire movie duking it out with "number 2" in the field while Blofeld remains somewhere safe, moving his pawns around, treating the defeat of Nr 2 as a mere inconvenience and moving on to the next film.
    The rights issues were solved too late, I guess. 😉
  • edited November 2021 Posts: 15,193
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    I don't hate Waltz as Blofeld. This incarnation isn't bad. But it's far from the best in my opinion.

    YOLT and OHMSS offer the best Blofelds in my opinion. And those were rooted in the '60s fantasy world of Bond. It was relatively easy to construct such charmingly evil world dominators back then. And both actors played the role with indisputable charisma.

    The Craigs existed in a different world, a world that tried to be more naturalistic and more real. They tasked themselves with finding a Blofeld that could convincingly exist in such a world, yet still be larger than life and exotic enough to appeal to us. Where do you start? With an evil Elon Musk? We certainly weren't expecting Bond's long lost foster brother we didn't know existed. And did he really have to be the man behind not just LeChiffre and Greene, but behind Silva as well? But those are really my only two gripes with this Blofeld. I like his SP introduction scene (minus the cuckoo) because it is dark and feels menacing. I like the fact that he wants to work with information and desinformartion (21st century) rather than with hijacked nukes. Waltz himself is pretty good when you try to look past bald heads. He's probably too much Landa and Schultz, but Waltz is still good. Was he the best choice for the role? Maybe not. But he doesn't not make sense either.

    Obviously a big problem is what we didn't get:
    a film with Blofeld as the big and obvious villain from start to finish. He was introduced in one film and killed off in the next. I understand why... it's just unfortunate that we didn't get the chance to spend an entire movie duking it out with "number 2" in the field while Blofeld remains somewhere safe, moving his pawns around, treating the defeat of Nr 2 as a mere inconvenience and moving on to the next film.
    The rights issues were solved too late, I guess. 😉

    Well now we have the stage clear for a new incarnation. Which I find both exciting and worrying. The most difficult aspect of Blofeld is his casting, IMO. Waltz may not have been the best choice, but which actor is at this point? I always imagined Ciaran Hinds, but he's getting old now. Gary Lewis perhaps. But then he's getting old too. And both of them are British. I'd rather have an Eastern European actor with about the same age as the Blofeld of the books, with an appearance similar to one of the source material's incarnations. Waltz would not have been my first choice, but I understand why they went for him and we could have had far worse.
  • Posts: 391
    Mike Meyers.
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