Article of the Week - Max Zorin

Max Zorin
A Nazi super-child!

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."

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.

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.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Max Zorin"