All 25 Main James Bond Villains, Ranked Worst To Best

The best James Bond villains are just as important as any of the James Bond actors. James Bond movies have been around for over 60 years, and six different actors have played 007 in the franchise. Based on the novels by Ian Fleming, the films have Britain’s best Secret Service agent save the world again and again.

When looking at James Bond villains, most people are familiar with Blofeld, as the character has appeared in several films and has also worked behind the scenes in others. However, even Blofeld has evolved over the years, with different actors portraying him in distinct ways. That said, he isn’t even the best villain in the franchise.

Gustav Graves – Die Another Day (2002)

Toby Stephens is a great actor, but he has the unfortunate luck of playing one of James Bond’s most controversial villains in the movies. Stephens played Gustav Graves in Die Another Day, the film that ended Pierce Brosnan’s tenure as James Bond, for several reasons.

Just sticking to the villain, Gustav Graves, unfortunately, was a North Korean general who had his face changed using “gene therapy” to look like a white British man. Even with science, whitewashing a Korean general was a bad idea, and that doesn’t even bring his ice castle into the equation. It’s no surprise the cheesy Bond film stalled out the franchise.

Dominic Greene – Quantum of Solace (2008)

Daniel Craig enjoyed a mostly critically acclaimed run as James Bond, but there was one movie that stands out as the worst of the run, and it isn’t even close. Quantum of Solace was a massive letdown after Casino Royale, and while that first Craig movie was a masterpiece, this one made several questionable decisions, its villain choice being one of the biggest.

Dominic Greene, was simply a middle-management man working for SPECTRE, but always answering to a mysterious figure upstairs. He committed the worst crime of all for a James Bond villain: he was boring and just stood there, sneering, and never presented any real threat to Bond, nor did he ever come across as intimidating in any way.

Kamal Khan – Octopussy (1983)

It should come as no surprise that the worst James Bond movies are those where the villains are the worst. The worst Roger Moore James Bond movie was the 1983 release, Octopussy. Honestly, the only notable things about the film were the risqué title and the fact that James Bond dressed up as a sad clown to save the world.

The villain, Kamal Khan, was an exiled Afghan prince who wanted to force disarmament by detonating a nuclear weapon at a U.S. Air Force Base during a circus. If that sounds weird, this was the era where Bond was going into space, so the entire scheme fit right in, and Khan was instantly forgettable as a Bond villain.

Georgi Koskov – The Living Daylights (1987)

The Living Daylights is a much better movie than people who watched it in 1987 might remember. This was Timothy Dalton’s first Bond movie, and it served as a precursor to what Daniel Craig would achieve with greater success over a decade later. However, the villains were very weak, led by General Koskov.

He seemed to be on Bond’s side, but ended up as the villain who was behind all the crimes in the film. However, his bumbling and unassuming villain never seemed threatening, and a third-act American arms dealer villain played by Jon Don Baker was even worse. Timothy Dalton was great, but the villains let him down.

Lyutsifer Safin – No Time to Die (2021)

James Bond movies have always featured puns in names, but when a main villain’s name rhymes with “Lucifer Satan,” it suggests that eitherhe will be a terrifying bad guy or he will end up being cringeworthy. For Lyutsifer Safin, it was actually neither, but he did do something that no other Bond villain ever did – he killed James Bond.

It is so disappointing that the man who killed James Bond ended up being so forgettable. His introduction was fantastic, almost like a horror movie moment when he showed up to torment Madeleine Swann when she was a child. After that, he was an afterthought in No Time to Die, and Bond killed him while not even looking at him.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld – Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Each Blofeld appearance in James Bond movies gets its own entry, because every performance was different. Easily, the worst version of Blofeld came in the 1971 Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever. Played by Charles Gray, Blofeld here is not evil, but an arrogant villain who cares more about his cat than he does about Bond.

The idea of obsessing over a cat came from this movie, which was really the only thing that Blofeld was known for here, and he still wasn’t even as good as You Only Live Twice. He wanted to start World War III, but he was highly incompetent, which was a disappointment, given that this was Sean Connery’s last Bond movie.

Hugo Drax – Moonraker (1979)

Moonraker was a polarizing James Bond movie. Yes, Roger Moore’s releases were becoming increasingly campy, but when James Bond went into space, it just took things a little too far. However, there is something to love about the ridiculous nature of the story, even if it was trying too hard to channel Star Wars.

Sadly, villain Hugo Drax is no Darth Vader, and his Stormtrooper-esque henchmen in space are not that scary. That said, there is something that really highlights Hugo’s shortcomings, and that is the presence of Jaws (Richard Kiel) in this movie. He remains the best henchman in Bond history, elevating Moonraker ​​​​​​thanks to his presence.

Aristotle Kristatos – For Your Eyes Only (1981)

For Your Eyes Only was a hit when it came out, thanks to its attempts to get a little more serious after Moonraker. Fans wanted to see Bond take on something threatening, and that came with even Moore turning in a more deadly performance than the comic efforts from the previous films. This was a great Moore Bond release.

However, Aristotle Kristatos was not among the better Bond villains, despite having a better story. Julian Glover is fine in the role, but this James Bond villain doesn’t really have big motives, and the story is a smaller espionage tale, where the bad guy is just pulling strings and not really delivering any Earth-shattering plans Bond needs to stop.

Elliot Carver – Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Jonathan Pryce is a fantastic actor, and he was an interesting James Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies. What makes him so different from other villains in the franchise who want to take over the world is that Elliot Carver is a businessperson, a CEO of a 24/7 international news network, who uses his news network to try to start a war.

This movie was released 28 years ago, and it remains more timely today in the era of fake news than any other Bond movie. Making the main villain a television news CEO was fantastic, and Pryce delivered a spectacular over-the-top performance. Viewers could easily see him on today’s news channels, trying to start a conflict.

Franz Sanchez – License to Kill (1989)

It is a tragedy that Timothy Dalton was only in two James Bond movies, because he could have achieved the same level of success as Daniel Craig if these movies had been released a decade later. In License to Kill, his villain did more to harm James Bond than almost any other character, except for Blofeld (and possibly Silva).

Robert Davi played Franz Sanchez, and he took Felix Leiter and fed his legs to a Great White Shark, while also killing the man’s wife on their wedding night. James Bond wanted revenge like never before, which made this an intense and violent Bond movie, and much of that is thanks to the extremely evil Franz Sanchez.