| Elektra King | |
|---|---|
| James Bond character | |
 Sophie Marceau as Elektra King | |
| First appearance | The World Is Not Enough (1999) |
| Portrayed by | Sophie Marceau |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Classification | Bond girl / Villain |
Elektra Vavra King is a character and one of the two main antagonists in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough , played by actress Sophie Marceau.
Elektra is the daughter of Scottish oil magnate Sir Robert King and his Azerbaijani wife. Her father had acquired her mother's oil wealth and merged it into his own construction business, forming King Enterprises.
As a teenager, Elektra was kidnapped by Victor "Renard" Zokas, a terrorist and former KGB agent. On the advice of M, a family friend, Sir Robert refused to pay the ransom.
Elektra was embittered, and became Renard's lover. She joined in Renard's extortion scheme and mutilated her own ear to send to her father. James Bond speculates that, after her kidnapping, she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
In the film, she and Renard kill Sir Robert and attempt to blow up her family's oil pipeline as part of an elaborate plan to steal his fortune. Elektra impresses Bond by brazenly betting one million dollars on a card game and shrugging it off when she loses. They briefly become lovers, before she and Renard kidnap him, along with M and nuclear physicist Christmas Jones.
Elektra mortally wounds Bond's erstwhile ally Valentin Zukovsky, and then tortures Bond with a garrote. Zukovsky frees Bond as he dies, and Bond holds Elektra at gunpoint, ordering her to call off Renard from firing a nuclear missile at the pipeline. Elektra taunts Bond, saying, "You won't kill me - you'd miss me," and tells Renard to fire the missile. Bond then shoots her dead, saying "I never miss" though shows some brief regret for having to do so. He then also kills Renard.
Marceau's portrayal of Elektra earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the 2000 Empire Awards.
The film's costume designer, Lindy Hemming, highlighted Elektra's exoticism by "adorning her in luxuriant textiles". [1]
Kirsten Smith suggests that "Elektra holds some of the characteristics of the femme fatale displayed in her clothing choices, her quest for power over all the men in her life, and her ability to use sex to enhance her position." Smith goes on to say, however, that Elektra is also a "damaged and complex woman trying to redeem her mother's name and cultural heritage." [2]
Dean Kowalski notes that while we are led to believe Renard is the main villain of the film, Elektra is actually the "brains and evil heart of the operation". Kowalski concludes that "Elektra's attitudes and behavior are reminiscent of the yin force and exactly what we would expect of a strong (even if misguided) female character." [3]
The World Is Not Enough is a 1999 spy film, the nineteenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Michael Apted, from an original story and screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Bruce Feirstein. It was produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. The title is the translation of the motto on the Bond family coat of arms, seen first in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
M is a codename held by a fictional character in Ian Fleming's James Bond book and film series; the character is the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service for the agency known as MI6. Fleming based the character on a number of people he knew who commanded sections of British intelligence. M has appeared in the novels by Fleming and seven continuation authors, as well as appearing in twenty-four films. In the Eon Productions series of films, M has been portrayed by four actors: Bernard Lee, Robert Brown, Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes, the incumbent; in the two independent productions, M was played by John Huston, David Niven and Edward Fox.
A Bond girl is a character who is a love interest, female companion or (occasionally) an adversary of James Bond in a novel, film, or video game. Bond girls occasionally have names that are double entendres or sexual puns, such as Plenty O'Toole, Holly Goodhead, or Xenia Onatopp. The female leads in the films, such as Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman, or Eva Green, can also be referred to as "Bond girls". The term Bond girl may also be considered as an anachronism, with some female cast members in the films preferring the designation Bond woman.
A femme fatale, sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art. Her ability to enchant, entice and hypnotize her victim with a spell was in the earliest stories seen as verging on supernatural; hence, the femme fatale today is still often described as having a power akin to an enchantress, seductress, witch, having power over men. Femmes fatales are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, and unease.
The damsel in distress is a narrative device in which one or more men must rescue a woman who has been kidnapped or placed in other peril. Kinship, love, lust or a combination of those motivate the male protagonist to initiate the narrative.
The Victor class, Soviet designations Project 671 Yorsh, Project 671RT Syomga and Project 671RTM/RTMK Shchuka,, are series of nuclear-powered attack submarines built in the Soviet Union and operated by the Soviet Navy. Since the 1960s, 48 units were built in total, of which the last remaining are currently in service with the Russian Navy. The Victor-class submarines featured a teardrop shape, allowing them to travel at high speed. These vessels were primarily designed to protect Soviet surface fleets and to attack American ballistic missile submarines. Project 671 began in 1959 with the design task assigned to SKB-143.
The World Is Not Enough is a first-person shooter video game developed by Eurocom and based on the 1999 James Bond film of the same name. It was published by Electronic Arts and released for the Nintendo 64 on October 17, 2000, shortly before the release of its PlayStation counterpart. The game features a single-player campaign in which players assume the role of secret agent James Bond as he fights to stop a terrorist from triggering a nuclear meltdown in the waters of Istanbul. It includes a split-screen multiplayer mode where up to four players can compete in different types of deathmatch and objective-based games.
The Facts of Death, first published in 1998, was the third novel by Raymond Benson featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright—the final James Bond novel to do so—it was first published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton and in the United States by Putnam.
Xenia Zaragevna Onatopp is a fictional character and Bond girl in the James Bond film GoldenEye, played by actress Famke Janssen. She is a fighter pilot and assassin who crushes her enemies with her thighs to get sexual satisfaction, working for the renegade MI6 agent Alec Trevelyan.
William Tanner is a fictional character in the James Bond film and novel series. Tanner is an employee of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) who acts as M's chief of staff.
Femme Fatale is a 2002 erotic thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma. The film stars Antonio Banderas and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. It was screened out of competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
The Silencers is a 1966 American spy comedy film directed by Phil Karlson, starring Dean Martin as agent Matt Helm. The screenplay by Oscar Saul is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Donald Hamilton, while also adapting elements of Hamilton's first Helm novel, Death of a Citizen (1960). The film co-stars Stella Stevens, Daliah Lavi, Victor Buono, Arthur O'Connell, Robert Webber, James Gregory, Roger C. Carmel, Beverly Adams, and Cyd Charisse.
Daji (Chinese: 妲己; pinyin: Dájǐ; Wade–Giles: Ta2-chi3; Jyutping: Taan2 Gei2) was the favourite consort of King Zhou of Shang, the last king of the Shang dynasty in ancient China. In legends and fictions, she is portrayed as a malevolent fox spirit who kills and impersonates the real Daji. Her identification as a fox spirit seems to have originated from at least the Tang dynasty. These accounts have been popularized in works such as the Wu Wang Fa Zhou Pinghua (武王伐紂平話), the Fengshen Yanyi, and the Lieguo Zhi. She is considered a classic example of how a beautiful femme fatale can cause the downfall of a dynasty in Chinese culture.
The World Is Not Enough, published in 1999, is the fifth novel by Raymond Benson featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond based on the 1999 film of the same name. It was only the second James Bond novel copyrighted by Ian Fleming Publications. It was published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton and in the United States by Putnam.
The James Bond series of films contain a number of repeating, distinctive motifs which date from the series' inception with Dr. No in 1962. The series consists of twenty five films produced by Eon Productions featuring the James Bond character, a fictional British Secret Service agent. The most recent instalment is No Time to Die, released in UK cinemas on 30 September 2021. There have also been two independently made features, the satirical Casino Royale, released in 1967, and the 1983 film Never Say Never Again.
Films made in the 1990s featuring the character of James Bond are GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World Is Not Enough. The films are notable for several "firsts": The first Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond (GoldenEye); the first appearance of the Walther P99 as Bond's pistol ; and the first Bond film in which the titular spy drives a BMW, all as part of a three-film product placement deal with the manufacturer.
The depictions of women in film noir come in a range of archetypes and stock characters, including the alluring femme fatale. A femme fatale, is a prevalent and indicating theme to the style of film noir.
Fiona Volpe is a character in the James Bond film Thunderball, played by actress Luciana Paluzzi. Paluzzi originally auditioned for the role of Domino Vitali in the film, but was given the role of Volpe. The character does not appear in the novel, and was originally an Irish woman, but was changed to match Paluzzi's Italian ethnicity: "Volpe" is Italian for "fox".