SPECTRE: A Brief History of James Bond's Greatest Enemy
SPECTRE: the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. This organization has been the bane of one 007 James Bond's existence since Thunderball, the film where they first made their debut. Now that they've officially been announced as the focus for the upcoming movie, we figured it'd be great to give you a brief history of one of James Bond's greatest enemies.
Creation
In the original Bond novels, author Ian Fleming felt he had reached an impasse. The year was 1959, and Fleming was writing what he knew would become the eventual film Thunderball. Fearing that the Cold War would end before the film had wrapped, he thought it best to create a nation neutral enemy in place of his former criminal masterminds SMERSH (a Russian acronym meaning "Death to Spies"). It was then he created SPECTRE, which was not only nation neutral but featured the baddest of the bad worldwide.
SPECTRE is headed up by one Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Fleming's original envisioning of the character casts Blofeld as a physically dominating man. In the novels he is nearly 300 pounds of all muscle, as well as incredibly intelligent. He is described as a man driven by power alone, and unlike Bond, doesn't drink, smoke, or have sex.
The film version of Blofeld, up until this point, has shown us a much more frail and older genius. More maniacal than calculated. This version of Blofeld is still very brilliant, but much less menacing and successful than his novel counterpart. Blofeld in the novels never had a Persian cat either, and I think that's a shame.
Personnel
In the novels, SPECTRE is made up of members of the Mafia, Gestapo, Unione Corse, and the secret police of Yugoslavia. Modern interpretations will undoubtedly update this lineup, but expect a team of high level crooks nationwide to be under the Octopus umbrella.
In the novels each member has a number system that rotates in twos periodically. In real life, this is done to prevent spies from matching identities to specific numbers. At the time of Bond's arrival in Thunderball, Blofeld (leader) is actually number two as opposed to his one rank in the films. In the films, number rank was the decider of what number you had, which led to the infamous Austin Powers joke...
Locations
SPECTRE operates anywhere and everywhere. Their first home base was in Paris, but then later moved to islands, yachts, volcanos and whatever cool place a villain might want to hide out. Seriously, these guys wrote the book on secret hide outs. If you see a villain with a cool hide out, chances are he stole the idea from SPECTRE.
Goals
Pop culture has already engrained the goals of SPECTRE into your mind with its numerous parodies and nods to the series. SPECTRE is bent on world domination, but not with the giant lasers and world crippling devices we've seen before. SPECTRE largely plays off the world's major superpowers and acts independently of both to cripple and weaken both targets while they fight each other. Their strategy for success was shown quite well in From Russia with Love. Two fish fight to the death while the third fish waits to kill the victor. Expect SPECTRE to be playing both sides of the table in this installment.
What This All Means For The New Movie
Honestly, it looks like Sam Mendes is playing his cards close the chest on this one. None of the new characters revealed bear any similarities (in name at least) to any past SPECTRE villains, film or novel. While the big internet rumor was going for a while the Christoph Waltz (playing Oberhauser) would be revealed to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld, a more accurate likeness to the novelization Blofeld would be Dave Bautista, who's playing Mr. Hinx.
The real question is, if Blofeld is not in the film, where is he? Do we accept that he is dead and the timeline reflects that? The optimist in me hopes that maybe well see him near the end and the film will be a continuation of SPECTRE vs. Bond. Given Daniel Craig's age (46) and the rising price tag for Mendes, I really hope not, as I would like to see both in tow if a follow up film would bring such awesomeness. Who knows if that's even in the cards at this point?
While the real reason for the resurgence of SPECTRE is due to the ending of a never ending copyright battle between parties in the courts, I like the fact that SPECTRE has made its return while Mi6 is in a state of flux. Hopefully they play off of that in the film, and hopefully we are in for a film that could somehow top Skyfall.