Max Zorin

Max Zorin
Character from the James Bond franchise
Affiliation	ex-KGB, Zorin Industries (Self-employed)
Portrayed by	Christopher Walken

Max Zorin is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. He was portrayed by Academy Award winner Christopher Walken. The role was initially offered to David Bowie, who turned it down, saying, "I didn't want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off cliffs."^[1]

Biography

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.

Zorin is extremely 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.

Zorin forms a plan 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 in the scuffle both Scarpine and Mortner are knocked out. She escapes onto the bridge with Bond, and Zorin attempts to attack them both with an axe, but in the scuffle he loses grip of the framework, falls from the bridge and dies hitting the waters of the bay below. Mortner and Scarpine, meanwhile, regained consciousness and Mortner becomes determined to prevent Bond's escape, even though Zorin was dead. Mortner runs out of bullets in his gun and lights a dynamite stick as a last resort to eliminate Bond, but Bond cut the airship free from the ropes and Mortner drops it, causing the dynamite to explode in the airship seconds later - killing both him and Scarpine. Their remains and those of the blimp soon joined Zorin in his watery grave at the bottom of the bay.

Legal problems arose before the film's release when producers became aware there was a pre-existing company named the Zoran Corporation which makes microchips. The Zoran Corporation threatened to sue for defamation. Pre-production crew had neglected to do a trademark search prior to filming. The parties came to an agreement and, because of this, A View to a Kill is the first 007 film with a legal disclaimer inserted.

Henchmen

• May Day
• Scarpine
• Jenny Flex
• Pan Ho
• Dr. Hans Glaub/Carl Mortner

Other appearances

Zorin is a playable multiplayer character in the 2002 video game Nightfire.

In the 2004 video game Everything or Nothing, it is stated that Zorin had an apprentice named Nikolai Diavolo (voiced by Willem Dafoe), who plans to use nanobots to commence the rebirth of the Soviet Union. Diavolo also wishes to kill Bond in order to exact vengeance for Zorin's death.

References

1. ^ Nicholas Pegg (2004). The Complete David Bowie. Reynolds & Hearn Ltd. pp. p.561. 

Preceded by Kamal Khan General Orlov

James Bond Villain A View to a Kill

Succeeded by General Georgi Koskov Brad Whitaker