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| “ | Intuitive improvisation is the secret of genius. | „ |
| ~ Max Zorin to James Bond |
Max Zorin is the main antagonist in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill.
He is portrayed by Christopher Walken, who also portrays Max Shreck in Batman Returns.
Background[]
Zorin was born in Dresden around the end of the Second World War, after which Dresden became part of East Germany. He later moved to France and became a leading French businessman, operating on the microchip market. However, it is revealed later in the movie that he was the product of Nazi medical experimentation during World War II, in which pregnant women were injected with massive quantities of steroids in an attempt to create "super-children." Most of the pregnancies failed. The few surviving babies grew to become extraordinarily intelligent—but also psychopathic.
After the war, Dr. Hans Glaub (alias Dr. Carl Mortner), the German scientist who conducted the experiments, was spirited away by the Soviet Union, where he continued his experiments with steroids. It is strongly implied that the young Zorin was raised by Mortner, who was one of Zorin's closest allies in the movie, and explicitly stated that Zorin was trained by and long-affiliated with the KGB. Among other activities, Mortner organizes a doping program for Zorin's thoroughbred race horses, allowing Zorin to win horse races with ease by activating illegal horse steroids by means of implanted microchips; since the drugs are 'administered' during the race, they do not show up on blood tests taken beforehand, and the dose is so minute that they dissolve into the system before tests can be taken afterwards.
Despite Zorin's longtime KGB affiliation, his outside activities draw attention that the KGB sees as unwelcome, and at a meeting between Zorin and KGB head General Gogol, Gogol rebukes him. Zorin responds by telling Gogol that he no longer considers himself a KGB employee.
In the film[]
Zorin forms a plan, dubbed Project Mainstrike to destroy his only competition in Silicon Valley by triggering a massive earthquake in the San Andreas Fault at high tide, causing the valley to flood. Such a disaster would effectively wipe out all computer companies competing against Zorin in the world microchip market and leave him as the leading supplier of microchips, as well as slaughtering millions residing in the valley. His plan was to use his vast resources to set off a super-earthquake in both the San Andreas Fault and Hayward Fault by flooding them both with water from San Andreas Lake and then breaking the geological lock that forbade both faults from moving simultaneously. To accomplish this, Zorin mined underneath the lakes and planned to blast through the lake beds in order to flood the fault, further exacerbating it by pumping water into them via a vast system of oil wells. Once the floodwaters came in, he would set off the explosives necessary to break the lock.
Zorin's plan is foiled by Bond and Zorin's former lover and henchman May Day, who joins Bond's side after Zorin attempts to kill her, having already killed most of his workers as well as May Day's friend Jenny Flex, and sacrifices her life to ensure that the bomb set by Zorin could not trigger the quake - she was killed in the explosion seconds after managing to push a trailer full of explosives out of the valley and into open air.
Bond and his partner Stacey Sutton both witnessed the explosion, which infuriated Zorin and made him even more determined to gain revenge on Bond. When leaving the valley in his airship with Scarpine and Mortner, he captures Stacey and makes away with her, only for Bond to grab hold of a mooring rope as the airship heads for the Golden Gate Bridge. Zorin attempts to kill Bond by flying him into the framework of the bridge, but Bond manages to hold on and bring the airship to a halt by mooring it to the framework. Stacey attacks Zorin and as Scarpine and Mortner try to stop her, the airship crashes into the side of the bridge, knocking Mortner unconscious. Zorin sends Scarpine to kill Bond, but Stacey smashes him round the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, knocking him out too. Stacey then escapes onto the bridge's support cable to join Bond, but is closely followed by Zorin, who viciously attacks Bond with a fire axe. After a brief fight, Bond causes Zorin to lose his balance and he falls a long way to his death into the bay below.
Personality[]
Zorin is extremely psychopathic as well as sadistic and displays a near-total lack of loyalty to his own men, as shown when he oversaw the execution of a Soviet spy who attempted to sabotage his oil well operations and when he personally massacred hundreds of his own mine workers to ensure the success of his own plans. Despite his long-standing and intimate relationship with his right hand woman May Day, he willingly sacrifices her for the sake of his plans, although this betrayal would backfire horribly on him later on.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The role of Max Zorin was initially offered to singer/actor David Bowie (who later portrayed villains Jareth and Maltazard), who turned down the role, saying that he didn't want to spend five months watching his stunt double fall off cliffs.
 Villains
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SMERSH SPECTRE Auric Enterprises Flying Circus San Monique Hai Fat Industries Stromberg Shipping Line Drax Industries Octopus Cult Zorin Industries Wavekrest Marine Research Janus Syndicate Carver Media Group Network King Industries Graves Corporation Quantum/Spectre Greene Planet The Union Malprave Industries Phoenix International Volotech Others | ||