It’s something that even the most diehard James Bond fans may have overlooked in their excitement to see 007 outshine all those bad guys over the previous 60 years.
Those villains, on the other hand, have gone from being at least a decade Bond’s senior to being a generation his junior.
The first film in the franchise, released in 1962, starred Sean Connery as a lothario spy who battled Dr. No, who was played by Joseph Wiseman, who was 12 years his senior.
Auric Goldfinger and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, both of whom had at least a decade on Bond during the 1960s, were other adversaries.
In the 1980s, when Bond was confronted against ‘treacherous brother figures’ of a similar age, the trend began to shift, according to a German scholar.
The double-crossing KGB officer Georgi Koskov in the 1987 film The Living Daylights, for example, was only two years older than the British spy.
Bond has recently taken on younger villains who play ‘disobedient sons’ or’spoiled brats,’ with Bond converted from a ‘fresh young man’ to a harsh father figure.
‘The initial Bond films depicted villains as awful father figures and impotent patriarchs, placing the franchise inside the 1960s conflict of generations,’ said Dr Wieland Schwanebeck of Dresden University.
However, when the performers grew older, this pattern could no longer be maintained. Bond cannot be pitted against an 80-year-old man.’
The move towards younger villains, according to Dr. Schwanebeck, is also attributable to older actors playing 007.
Connery made his debut at the age of 32, but Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan were all over 40 at the time.
Daniel Craig was 53 when his final picture, No Time To Die, was released, in which he came out of retirement to face Lyutsifer Safin, played by Rami Malek, an actor 12 years his junior.
‘The last Moore film [A View To A Kill in 1985] is pretty startling because he is surrounded by really old guys at retirement age, like an old boys’ club,’ Dr Schwanebeck told The Mail on Sunday.
‘However, the villains in the last three flicks are all very young. Fresh blood counteracts the perception that Bond is a game for elderly men.’