This is a Top-10 that I was planning on doing a while back already, but for some reason I never had the energy to just sit down and put it into words. Well, now I’m finally done with it and can present it here on the blog. I’m a huge fan of the James Bond film series but as many have noticed, women aren’t always depicted very flatteringly in Bond films or in some cases they have the living fuck are objectified from them. Yes, these are the proverbial “Bond Girls”. However, this is not what this list is about.
This is my list of the most interesting Women in James Bond movies. Those who have somehow contributed significantly to the plots or events of Bond films.
10. Honey Rider
If you look for a proto-type of all standard Bond girls, I think Honey Rider from Dr. No is about as basic as they get. Played by Swiss-American model Ursula Andress but dubbed over by Nikki van der Zyl, due to Andress’ heavy accent, Honey rises from the sea in the middle of Dr. No.
To be honest, there isn’t much to Honey, she just shows up while Bond is hiding out on Dr. No’s island and waiting for his chance to sneak into his facility. However, Rider becomes wrapped up in what’s going on while searching for shells. Indeed, Honey is a self-sufficient woman and she’s not afraid to protect her prospect of shells from Bond when she thinks he’s about to steal them.
Perhaps more than anything, I think Honey Rider’s name and her lovely rendition of “Underneath a Mango Tree” are what stand out the most. She’s not that colourful as a character, but I liked her quite a bit in the very first Bond movie which is why I decided she should be on the list, but in genuine accomplishment, she does fall short in comparison to everyone else on the list.
9. Moneypenny 2.0 (Caroline Bliss)
Quite frankly, I’ve never cared that much for Moneypenny. She’s always just played the role of Bond’s “regular squeeze” who actually doesn’t get “squeezed” very often. Some renditions of Moneypenny do get a bit of sympathy from me and I think Naomie Harris’ energetic performance as her in Skyfall makes me at least moderately interested to see what she and Bond will get up to in the future.
However, Caroline Bliss is the Moneypenny who was never given the opportunity to show her skills. However, she is the first Moneypenny to have done something useful for Bond from her office. Caroline Bliss played Moneypenny in the two late-80s Timothy Dalton films. In Licence to Kill, worried about Bond who has gone rogue, she convinces Q (played by the lovable Desmond Llewellyn) to go out and help Bond on his quest. This has been one of the best moves by the character in addition to the fact that it gave Q another excuse to join 007 in the field.
So yes, Moneypenny may not be the most interesting character in the Bond universe, but she does have her worth.
8. Elektra King
The rather by-the-numbers The World is not Enough did at least have one of the most unexpected plot-twists of the series, where it turned out that Bond’s love interest was actually the villain all along. Elektra King was kidnapped by Renard, the film’s purported villain, as a teenager. Thanks to a healthy dose of Stockholm syndrome, King became her kidnapper’s lover.
King however, was clearly the more forceful of the duo she and Renard form. She’s the one with the means and she willingly takes part in his father’s assassination and tries to ruin her father’s oil empire.
Aside from everything else, King kidnaps M which was enough to solidify her as one of the most memorable women in any Bond film.
7. Xenia Onatopp
For some reason most female Bond henchman aren’t that interesting. Xenia Onatopp is really unique as a Bond Girl. A female henchman who can hold her own against the boys and probably kills more people in her one film appearance than Bond does usually per movie.
Xenia is noted for her powerful thighs which she uses to squeeze men to death. On top of that she gets pleasure from hurting and killing people, making her probably one of the scariest Bond women out there.
Onatopp is one of those slightly larger than life figures in the James Bond universe that really stand out. She goes head to head with Bond and very nearly kills him. She is one of the many reasons I love GoldenEye. She wasn’t quite Top-5 material in my view but memorable enough to make it this high.
6. Vesper Lynd
The “real” first Bond girl, Vesper Lynd was an important central character in the very first James Bond novel and also set the standard for tragic female figures in the James Bond franchise. In the Daniel Craig’s Bond debut, Casino Royale, she is played by Eva Green.
Lynd and Bond have some of the greatest repartee between Bond and a “Bond Girl”. Lynd is sharp and even more witty than Bond and she is also more responsible and sensible in many ways. She gets shaken up when La Chiffre’s creditors send hitmen after him and Bond and Lynd are caught in the middle of it. After La Chiffre gets taken out and the heroes seemed to have survived the events of the film, Bond contemplates leaving MI6 and marrying Lynd.
Then Lynd sacrifices herself while about to betray the government money to the Quantum criminal organisation who was holding her boyfriend hostage, leaving Bond scarred and bitter. Lynd is truly a stand-out character and it’s only because she entered the story of the film so late that I don’t feel quite comfortable putting her much higher. She just barely misses making the Top-5.
5. Natalya Simonova
For some reason, Natalya Simonova tends to get ignored even though she probably the most resilient of all the characters in GoldenEye. She has to witness the slaughter of her closest friends, cope with being betrayed by Boris Krishenko, she escapes the Siberia after the satellite-station she works at is destroyed by the EMP from GoldenEye and generally shows just major gusto.
Plus, there’s something really sympathetic about her. Though she is resourceful, she’s not flippant and you can see her full-scale of emotion during the destruction sequence of the satellite base.
I really like Natalya. She’s got a lot attitude but she’s never too cool or too larger than life. She’s one of the most likeable characters I’ve seen not only in a James Bond movie but in any movie. She had to make the Top-5. However, she is still outshined by four other ladies.
4. Tracy Bond (née di Vicenco)
James Bond’s wife couldn’t have been left off the list (a real one this time, not a fake like in You Only Live Twice). Tracy, the daughter of crime boss Marc-Ange Draco, had one of the most romantic and involved relationships with Bond and she really felt like the first woman in a Bond film that 007 really cared about.
But Tracy wasn’t just a pretty face. She helps Bond escape Blofeld’s compound in the hilarious chase sequence which is one of the definite highlights of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Tracy just kicks ass, there’s no two ways about it.
And of course her death at the end of the film, the most tragic of probably any character in the series would have served as the perfect catalyst for Bond’s vengeance trip in later instalments. Sadly, Lazenby retired the part after only the one movie and the vengeance theme just didn’t come through in the film’s follow-up Diamonds Are Forever (Connery’s final official Bond film).
-Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
3. Pussy Galore
With a name like that, Pussy would seem like a character more of a Bond parody than a serious character, but Ms. Galore really is one of the first tough as nails Bond girls out there. She starts off as just a lackey for Auric Goldfinger, but Bond eventually convinces her to switch to the side of the good guys, the first major character to have done a complete 180 in the franchise.
Also, Pussy is a pilot and could hold her own against Bond, to a degree at least. She’s really the first Bond girl who wasn’t just a pretty face and this is why I felt she deserved to be this high on the list. That and her epic name.
You’ll also be surprised to find out that her film adaption is actually cleaned up from her character in the novel who was actually a lesbian (well, bi-sexual I guess would be more accurate).
2. Octavia “Octopussy” Smythe
People may be surprised that I like the movie Octopussy quite a bit. It’s another campy Roger Moore faire, yes, and it has some positively ridiculous crap in it, Moore was already pushing 50 and the title sounds like a bad joke (though it comes directly from Fleming’s Bond stories). But Octopussy also had a lot of surprising elements, a more sympathetic and respectable depiction of the Soviet General Gogol, a fairly serious storyline about the villains wanting to start war between the US and the USSR and a female lead so awesome they named the movie after her.
Maud Adams had actually played a Bond girl before, in Roger Moore’s The Man with the Golden Gun, but this time she had a much more involved role. A partner in the fake Fabergé Egg smuggling ring who also runs her own legitimate circus act on the side, Octopussy is one of the most single powerful and influential female characters to star in a Bond film. She basically has her own fortress and an army of acrobat women.
She’s one of the few empowered female leads from the Moore era Bonds, so I thought she really deserved to be this high. Plus, like I mentioned before, the film is named after her.
1. M (Judi Dench)
I’ve always had a bit of a mixed opinion of M as a character. The Bernard Lee version had a sort of fatherly demeanor who scolded Bond like a naughty school boy. Robert Brown was a lot more non-distinct and strict, more of a stereotypical hard-ass boss. However, Judi Dench completely changed the character up.
For the first time, the antagonism between Bond and M seemed really genuine but also like both sides knew what they were doing when making decisions. Judi Dench’s M has also been at the core of the plots of two Bond movies, The World is Not Enough and Skyfall. This really makes her the most fleshed out version of the character and unquestionably my favourite version of the character. I’m interested to see how Ralph Fiennes will be able to live up to her example in the next film.
M is proof that Bond films can have powerful female characters and that they don’t need to be sexy to kick ass. M has got more balls than most of the Bond villains combined and she is always on top of things (except for Quantum of Solace, but she was being mislead which is why she fell into the background).
