| “ | Intuitive improvisation is the secret of genius. | „ |
| ~ Zorin bragging about his intelligence |
Maximillian "Max" Zorin is the main antagonist in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill and the posthumous overarching antagonist of the video game Everything or Nothing.
He is a nefarious industrialist who is leading a powerful governmental contractor company called Zorin Industries. Zorin was also a former KGB agent until he broke ties with them.
He was portrayed by Christopher Walken, who also played Iago in a 1989 production of Othello.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- He organized a nefarious doping program, in which he subjects horses to illegal horse steroids via implanted microchips to ensure that he wins horse races for profit. He also ensures that the doses that he puts on the horses are to be dissolved into their bloodstream so that they don't show up on blood tests before the races.
- Upon hearing that the French detective Achille Aubergine is informing MI6 about the upcoming horse sale at Zorin's estate, Zorin gets his chief bodyguard and lover May Day to murder Aubergine at the Eifel Tower.
- During the horse race, he uses remote-controlled obstacles to trip up Bond's horse, then has his thugs jump onto the track and attack him. He even gets May Day to murder MI6 agent Godfrey Tibbett and tries to murder Bond by drowning him in his car, though Bond escapes.
- Upon being berated by an angry General Gogol (his superior at the KGB) for his doping activities and his attempted murder of Bond, rather than taking responsibility for his actions, Zorin instead severs his ties to the KGB, even getting May Day to threaten one of Gogol's loyal agents named Klotkoff when they tried to intimidate him into standing down.
- During a business proposal inside his zeppelin, Zorin announced his true plot called Project Main Strike, which is to destroy Silicon Valley to gain control of the microchip monopoly. He also suggested an 'exclusive marketing agreement' that will force any businessman to pay $100,000,000 (plus half of his net income) if he agrees to be a part of it. When one of the businessmen refused to be a part of it, Zorin gets May Day to drop the businessman from the zeppelin to his death in the San Francisco Bay to keep the meeting confidential. Following the businessman's death, Zorin gleefully asks the other businessmen if they want to "drop out", implying that he intends to have them killed if they refused to take part of his plot. It was also told that the KGB have their own secret base of producing technology located in Silicon Valley, which would imply that Zorin has no qualms of betraying his former comrades at the KGB for his own benefit.
- As part of his plot to destroy Silicon Valley, Zorin gets his men to mine underneath the nearby lakes and pump water into the lake beds through a vast system of oil wells. When Klotkoff was caught trying to set explosives in one of Zorin's oil wells to foil his plan, Zorin forced Klotkoff to disarm the explosives. When Klotkoff reluctantly does so, Zorin callously orders his men to murder Klotkoff by dumping him into an underwater turbine.
- He took control of a family oil business from the original owner Stacey Sutton, who attempted to regain control by becoming a geologist and entering into a series of legal battles against Zorin. As such, Zorin attempted to maintain control of Sutton's oil company by giving her a check of $5,000,000 and sending several goons in an attempt to murder her in case she refused (which she did by tearing the check apart), though Sutton was rescued by Bond.
- Upon hearing that Bond and Sutton have aligned themselves with CIA agent Chuck Lee to report to W.G. Howe (the Director of Oil and Mines) about the illegal water pumping, Zorin gets May Day to murder Lee while he murders Howe himself. To cover his tracks, Zorin gets May Day and her team of thugs (Jenny Flex and Pam Ho) to burn down Howe's office and frame Bond and Sutton for the incident.
- As part of his final preparations for his plot, Zorin arranges for multiple explosives to be placed on a geological lock that prevents the Hayward and San Andreas faults from moving simultaneously, as he intends to set them off at a timed duration and cause a super earthquake, which will cause the water from the nearby lakes to submerge all of Silicon Valley and drown millions of civilians.
- Upon finishing up placing the explosives, Zorin betrays his employees by having his right-hand man Scarpine set off a few explosives to destroy and flood the mines, drowning many of Zorin's miners in the process. Even when his head geologist Bob Conley furiously objects to this, Zorin has him drowned as well. Zorin and Scarpine then proceed to shoot down the rest of the miners with machine guns, and Zorin laughs as he shoots them for his own pleasure.
- In spite of his intimate relationship with May Day, Zorin willingly betrays her when he sets off the explosives to flood the mines and drown many of the miners, including Jenny and Pam.
- Upon watching his plot being foiled by a May Day's sacrifice and seeing Bond reuniting with Sutton, Zorin furiously kidnaps Sutton as he plans to murder her out of spite against Bond. Upon seeing that Bond has grabbed the blimp's mooring rope to catch up, Zorin furiously orders Scarpine to kill Bond by flying him into the framework of the Golden Gate Bridge.
- Despite placing a lot of trust for Scarpine and Dr. Glaub during his plot, it's unlikely that Zorin ever cared for them in return. This was proven when Sutton caused the zeppelin to crash at the bridge in order to escape and reunite with Bond, knocking out both Glaub and Scarpine in the process. Paying no attention to what happened to his two men, Zorin arms himself with an axe to kill both Bond and Sutton in revenge for foiling his plot.
- Despite being a psychotic super soldier who was creating as part of a Nazi project, Zorin is still a high-functioning psychopath who knows right from wrong and can even put on an affable front when he wants to, so he has no moral agency issues.
Trivia[]
- The scene where he kills all of his minions by drowning and shooting them with a machine gun (alongside Scarpine) was so violent that it became one of the reasons why Roger Moore quit the franchise.
- Max Zorin is, alongside Hugo Drax, one of the two James Bond villains from the Roger Moore era to be Pure Evil.
External Links[]
- Max Zorin on the Villains Wiki
- Max Zorin on Wikipedia
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 Pure Evils
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