Skyfall the service. Javier Bardem was cast as the film's principal villain, Raoul Silva, a cyberterrorist who is seeking revenge against those he holds responsible for betraying him. Bardem described Silva as "more than a villain", while Craig stated that Bond has a "very important relationship" to Silva. In casting the role, director Sam Mendes admitted that he lobbied hard for Bardem to accept the part. Mendes saw the potential for the character to be recognised as one of the most memorable characters in the series and wanted to create "something [the audience] may consider to have been absent from the
Motifs in the James Bond film series with rockets going astray. Similarly Bond's anti-heroin mission in "Live and Let Die" coincided with President Nixon's 1972 declaration of a War on Drugs, whilst "GoldenEye" played against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. For the series of Bond novels, Fleming realised that without threatening villains Bond seemed less heroic: this tradition of strong literary villain was brought across to the screen in the Eon series. The third Bond film, "Goldfinger", set a pattern for having a main villain with a loyal and dangerous henchman, a model which was followed in subsequent films. Whilst Bond scholar Glenn Yeffeth