Max Zorin

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James Bond character

Max Zorin
Gender	Male
Role	Villain
Affiliation	KGB, Self-employed
Current status	Deceased
Portrayed by	Christopher Walken

Max Zorin is the main villain in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. He was portrayed by Christopher Walken.

[edit] Biography

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Zorin was a leading French business man, 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 psychotic.

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 confidants 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.

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.

His plan was simple: To destroy his only competition in Silicon Valley by triggering a massive earthquake in the San Andreas Fault at high tide, causing the flooding of the valley. Zorin's plot failed thanks to Bond, with major assistance from Zorin's former lover and henchman May Day, who sacrificed her life to ensure that the bomb set by Zorin could not trigger the quake.

His death comes when he slips off one of the support cables of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco while attacking Bond with a hatchet and plunges into the waters below. Oddly, Zorin actually lets out a giggle before falling, as if appreciating that the final joke is on him.

[edit] Henchmen

[edit] Video games

In the 2004 video game Everything or Nothing, it is revealed 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.