No Time to Die Director Suggests Rami Malek Will be the Biggest Bond Villain Yet

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No Time to Die Director Suggests Rami Malek Will be the Biggest Bond Villain Yet

No Time To Die helmer Cary Joji Fukunaga feels that Rami Malek is the biggest Bond villain yet because he perils not only Bond but the entire world.

No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga believes that Rami Malek's character is probably the biggest villain in the Bond movie franchise yet. Serving as the twenty-fifth installment in the James Bond film series, Fukunaga's No Time To Die features Daniel Craig in his fifth and final turn as the fictional British MI6 agent 007/ James Bond. While the film's plot is mostly shrouded in mystery, the official synopsis suggests that No Time To Die is set five years after the arrest of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), when Bond has left active service. A strange abduction of a reputed scientist Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik), however, prompts Bond to put on his detective hat once again. As he sets out to rescue Obruchev, Bond encounters a menacing villain (Malek), whose sister ploy threatens the lives of millions.

As it has been confirmed previously, Malek - who holds an Academy Award for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody - will star in No Time To Die as Safin, Bond and Swann's (Léa Seydoux) mysterious adversary who bears several scars on his face. Malek's Safin is a vengeful terrorist leader and a former assassin for SPECTRE, Blofeld's criminal organization that Bond helped take down. While describing Safin, producer Barbara Broccoli called him a "nasty piece of work," someone who "really gets under Bond's skin." Fukunaga also warned fans against Safin, suggesting that he is more terrifying than anyone that Bond's ever encountered.

Recently, during a conversation with GQ Magazine, Fukunaga reaffirmed his stance about Rami Malek's Safin being the biggest Bond villain ever. He said that Malek's stakes-shattering Bond villain Safin is perhaps more like a horror villain than a spy movie enemy. As per Fukunaga, after Waltz's performance as Blofeld, he did not have the option to have a mediocre antagonist in the story.

Once we got into Christoph Waltz/Blofeld territory, you can’t go small again. We had to think bigger. It’s tricky because you don’t want to make a cliché supervillain, but you have to make someone that’s threatening not only to Bond and the people he loves but to the world at large.

Earlier, while weighing in on the gravity of his character in No Time To Die, Malek revealed that Safin, unlike other Bond villains is motivated by the belief that he is "a hero almost in the same way that Bond is a hero," and this makes him all the more dangerous. Safin just wants things to be tidier. Unfortunately, his method of tidying things up boils down to a massive plot that can claim the lives of many. Currently, fan theories about Safin are all over the place. While some believe that Safin is an updated version of Dr. No, a reclusive member of SPECTRE, others think that he has been sent to kill Seydoux's Dr. Swann.

Fans will probably only find out about Safin's true identity when No Time To Die finally hits theaters on April 2, 2021, after multiple Covid-19-related premiere delays. But, despite whoever Safin turns out to be in the end, fans can certainly count on him to give Bond a hard time. Malek is a poised performer who has demonstrated his prowess through his acting chops in the Emmy-winning thriller series Mr. Robot and he has also trained rigorously to perfect his Safin act in No Time To Die. So he can be safely relied upon to honor the legacy of the 007 films. The filmmakers too, obviously, will not settle for a villain that is anything less than iconic, as, after all, they would also want Craig's send-off to be as celebrated and iconic as possible.