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It describes Bond, too, lol
I can see your perspective, but this isn't to worship Safin (he is a villain, after all, 😂), but these appreciation threads are designed to be yes, more or less, conflict free and be positive.
I don't find it too hard to stay away from Appreciation threads when I'm in conflict with a notion.
Like I said, there are plenty of free-floating threads to be critical, and I'll be able to find them.
These ones though, the appreciation ones, are like churches in the Highlander series, or the hotel in the John Wick series: a place to lay down arms and come together for once.
If one doesn't agree with a particular thread, he or she can easily find another thread with the same topic to go at it.
Edit:
I don't disagree with that either, @AnotherZorinStooge
Aye, thanks Peter, I should have specified what I meant by 'menace'. For me, it has to be something villainous, or even anti-heroic, as our hero is just and virtuous.
Safin and Bond both take turns in saving, and using, Swann whilst the Saffster even attempts to take daughter under his wing.
Good girl, rejecting his tutelage and showing her wisdom but Safin's reaction I like. In another film it would have led to some silly chase but Safin lets the plot breed.
Honestly, my criticism of Safin isn't much with him as it is with trying desperately to have Craig-era villains Bond's alter-ego, what he could become and such.
Having that heightened, added degree of menace is crucial but it is lacking in the Craig era, maybe save for one infamous torture scene.
It's the internet I blame
I blame the parents. Which ties nicely in to Safin again.
🤣 so do I…! Well done once again @Dragonpol !! And no problem, @FoxRox 👍🏻!!!
Aye, if there's one thing Bond movies need more of, it's parenting issues!
Pierce Brosnan may get his comeback on that basis, playing Bond's dad. I remember it being suggested he and Connery would team up. This would have been what TWINE became. It and a terrible idea about Bond saving the peace process and ginger bastard spice.
Luckily none of it happened and Bond just scrapped Begbie, instead, the mad eejit
Lyutsifer means Lucifer in Russian I think, and Safin means 'I saw the prophet' (Islamic reference normally) but can also mean 'pure'.
When we see Bond walk up to Madeleine's house we're given the same camera angles of the opening scene where Safin is coming up to the same place. So we're being shown there's a link of some kind between them. A good versus evil thing that they share? Motivations?
So there's other stuff meant to be found in this character I think. He represents something pretty big and fundamental, and Malek plays it that way very well. He's elusive and mysterious all the way throughout. He does a good job conveying that. They must have reworked and kept refining his script and acting throughout.
I think all Bond villains should be, fundamentally, horrid people who act on the worst aspects of themselves - their inflated egos, their nihilism, their pursuit of success at the expense of others, or just a general lack of humanity.
Safin has a somewhat understandable motivation at first. His family (who seem to basically be assassins themselves IIRC, or at least have knowingly supplied poison to such people) are killed by SPECTRE, and he's left crippled because of this. It's easy to feel sympathy for him, but I think the film wisely points out that he's not a victim as much as he is a despicable person who's been wronged by equally despicable people.
As much as his 'invisible God' stuff in the third act is a bit cerebral and confusing, I think the film needed to have him make that decision. He's a lunatic who's gotten a taste of power and destruction, and will now act on it. He's a lonely, and rather pathetic man who can imprison a woman whom he's formed an attachment to because he can. Much like Scramanga and Silva he even has the gall to compare himself to James Bond, even though fundamentally he's quite different.