I’m going to go with Goldfinger. He had Bond caught and was going to kill him until Bond happened to mention Operation Grandslam. He hired a flying school and had them in place in Kentucky. He brokered a deal with the Chinese for henchmen and a nuclear device. He easily smuggled that bomb into the US. He acquired “Delta-9” gas to kill everyone within the vicinity of Fort Knox. He got Bond’s watchers to think Bond was still in good hands by parading him around with Pussy Galore. He murdered all the gangsters that might have opposed his gold stealing idea. He had a plan for any gangster that might not have gone for his scheme (a “pressing engagement”). He easily got into Fort Knox. (Although why didn’t he just dynamite the door to the vault? It looked pretty flimsy to me, not sure if he needed that laser). He’d eluded the authorities with his smuggling of gold into Geneva for years. He was so organized that he even got away by wearing a US uniform under his clothes, and was escaping until he took his eye off Bond in the airplane. Hell, the only reason his plan failed was b/c Bond managed to de-lesbify Pussy Galore.
If you will give a broad interpretation on the ‘super-villian’ requirement I would say the bad guys in Living Daylights mainly because General Puskin and Joe Don Baker (here a bad guy & in earlier and later Bonds a good guy) had such pedestrian aims … some drugs, some arms, a war, a couple of billiion$… no biggie. No new humanity, no conquering the world, nothing like that. Stuff that really has happened in a lesser scale. Plus they actually tricked the Service – it was only Bond disobeying orders (no I mean really disobeying) that saved the day
Hard to say. So many of the evil plans DID succeed. To name only a couple, the orbital laser weapon in Diamonds Are Forever was fully operational, and in Moonraker the nerve gas bombs were falling towards Earth. Only Bond’s presence snatched defeat out the jaws of victory (from the villain’s p.o.v.)
Mr. Big (Live and Let Die) and Franz Sanchez (License to Kill) each had clever but mundane plans to monopolize the drug trade in North America. They’re in an entirely different category than Hugo Drax (Moonraker) or Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me), who sought to kill off nearly all of humanity.
My personal favourite evil plan was that of General Orlov (Octopussy) but I’m a sucker for Cold War brinksmanship.
006’s plan in Goldeneye wasn’t particulary complicated, and almost suceeded. He was already stealing large amounts of money from the Bank of England, and had already taken a lot out, but he died and the Goldeneye didn’t work as planned(because it burnt up on reentry due to a little tampering).
Folks, I’m surprised at you! Taking the OP at face value, the answer is simple, but you have to go aaalllll the way back to 1963, to From Russia With Love.
Most film connoisseurs who are not Bond fans regard this movie as the best Bond film on an artistic level. One of the reasons why is because the events the film portrays could’ve played out in real life almost exactly as they are shown in the movie. There’s no crazy plan to destroy the world; SPECTRE just wants to steal a decoding machine and kill Bond. And the plan devised to do it makes perfect sense, involving such mundane matters of espionage as double agents, murder, false identities, and betrayal.
The one blot on all this is an appearance of The Talking Killer in embryonic form. But acting in that scene is so good (no one has ever topped Robert Shaw as Red Grant for subtle acting as a Bond villain) that it still actually works. Shaw sells Grant so well as an egomaniacal psychopath that it’s never noticeable how long he’s keeping Bond alive; it’s obvious he’s doing it because he enjoys taunting Bond before he kills him. This is a lot heavier plotting and much better acting than in any Bond film since.
I’m sure there were several where there was a lengthy timetable leading up to the Big Finish, particularly the ones that involved stuff in orbit. They may have spent some time shooting their mouths off, but even if they hadn’t, they would have just stood there idly whistling while they waited for the countdown to finish.
However, just about every one would have succeeded if he had said, “Holy crud, that’s James Bond we’ve got tied up.” BANG! thud. “Proceed with the countdown.” I mean, how many of them had their hands on Bond at (at least) one point in the movie?
I think I’ll stump for Blofeld’s devious scheme from “On Her Majesties’ Secret Service.” At the time I saw it, I thought - “creating world havok by supplying supermodels with toxic makeup? Puh-LEASE. Who the hell would buy it?” Then upon reflection I thought: botox injections, stomach stapling, silicon implants - sure it’d work! Blofeld could’ve marketed his makeup with a warning label stating “Use of this product may cause massive outbreaks of plagues leading to destabilization of the global economy, and thus causing conditions for international takeover by SPECTRE” and there are women out there that would STILL use it, provided the t.v. ad promised them they’d look like Jennifer Aniston!