Every family has a seating chart problem. Ours is worse, because the guest list comes from the James Bond films. So we sat ten Bond characters down for Thanksgiving dinner and ranked them by who is most likely to start a fight.
The rule: each guest is judged on one thing they actually do on screen, not on their whole record. Starting a fight on purpose counts the most. Getting dragged into one, or walking away from one you could have made worse, puts a guest further down the list. We start with the guests you could seat anywhere and finish with the one who shouldn’t be seated at all.
10 to 8: Next to Grandma
10. General Gogol, For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Gogol’s side spends the film after the ATAC, the British transmitter that sends launch orders to the navy’s missile submarines, and at the end he lands by helicopter to collect it. Bond throws it off the cliff instead: “That’s détente, comrade. You don’t have it. I don’t have it.” Gogol has every reason to start something. He leaves amused. Losing the prize and taking it well is the rarest skill at any family dinner.
Seat: Head of the table, and the first plate.
9. Sir Godfrey Tibbett, A View to a Kill (1985)
To get inside Zorin’s estate, Bond plays James St. John Smythe and Tibbett, his ally on the job, plays his chauffeur. Bond orders him around in front of everyone: “Don’t stand there panting, Tibbett. Start unpacking.” When Zorin’s staff put the driver in the servants’ quarters, Bond agrees that will do nicely. Tibbett takes the whole act without a single scene, and only once they are alone does he ask whether they really have to keep it up.
Seat: Next to the loudest relative. He can take it.
8. René Mathis, Quantum of Solace (2008)
The last time Bond and Mathis worked together, Bond suspected him and he was taken away. He was cleared, and MI6 bought him a villa in Italy. When Bond shows up there asking for help, Mathis complains to his girlfriend, in Italian, that this is the man who had him kidnapped and tortured, and she is serving him fine wine. She reminds him who paid for the villa. By the end of the visit he’s agreed to go to Bolivia. One complaint, made in Italian to someone else, and no fight at all.
Seat: Next to Bond. He has earned the right to bring it up all evening.
7 to 5: Seat Them Apart
7. Marc-Ange Draco, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
After Bond turns down Draco’s offer of a dowry, the two make a quieter deal: Draco will help Bond find Blofeld if Bond keeps seeing his daughter, Tracy. At Draco’s birthday party, Tracy finds out. She tells Bond to revise the terms of his contract, then turns on her father: “Tell him, Papa, or you’ll never see me again.” Draco gives Bond his lead on the spot. His backroom deal started the fight, and he ended it in a sentence.
Seat: The host’s chair. He caused the scene and cleaned it up himself.
6. Milos Columbo, For Your Eyes Only (1981)
At a casino in Corfu, Columbo and his companion, Countess Lisl, have a loud row in front of the whole room. She storms off, and Bond offers to see her home. Later Bond calls it “an amusing performance,” and Lisl admits what Columbo whispered to her: find out more about this man. Columbo starts an argument in public on purpose, which costs him. He earns some of it back because it’s an act and nobody gets hurt.
Seat: Across from his date, with the argument penciled in for after the pie.
5. Valentin Zukovsky, GoldenEye (1995)
Bond shot Zukovsky in the leg years ago, and he still limps. When Bond turns up in St. Petersburg, Zukovsky makes sure he hears about it: “My knee aches every single day! Twice as bad when it is cold.” He also fires a pistol into the couch Bond is sitting on, between his legs. Then he does a deal and sets up the meeting Bond came for. He brings the grudge to the table, says his piece, and still passes the rolls. His best line is on our funniest lines list.
Seat: Closest to the fireplace. The knee is worse when it’s cold.
4 to 3: No Board Games After Dinner
4. Kamal Khan, Octopussy (1983)
Kamal plays backgammon with dice he later describes himself as “preferably loaded.” Bond takes over a losing position from another player, the stake climbs to 200,000 rupees, and he needs a double six. So he invokes player’s privilege, borrows Kamal’s lucky dice and rolls one. Kamal pays up and tells him to spend the money quickly, which is about as gracious as he gets. Goldfinger ranks one place higher because his cheating needs a henchman to help. What Kamal did next to Bond is a different list.
Seat: Near the games cupboard, which is locked.
3. Goldfinger, Goldfinger (1964)
Goldfinger plays Bond at golf, with Bond’s gold bar riding on the last two holes, and cheats. When his ball goes missing, Oddjob drops a replacement down his trouser leg. Bond, who has quietly swapped Goldfinger’s Slazenger 1 for a Slazenger 7 he found on the course, lets him finish and then calls it: “We are playing strict rules, so I’m afraid you lose the hole and the match.” Even his cheating needs staff. His bigger mistakes are covered elsewhere.
Seat: Anywhere, as long as someone else keeps score.
2 to 1: Eats in the Garage
2. Blofeld, Spectre (2015)
In his desert crater, the head of SPECTRE finally explains himself. He is Franz Oberhauser, whose father looked after a young Bond after Bond lost his parents and asked his son to treat Bond as a brother. Franz resented sharing him. He calls Bond a cuckoo, and he admits he killed his father, which is not something we’ll joke about. A sibling grudge that has been simmering since childhood, aired out in one long reunion, is the most Thanksgiving fight in the entire series. It misses the top spot only because Blofeld’s quarrel is with one guest in particular. How the reunion goes for Bond is in our list of times they should have just shot him.
Seat: The far end, as far from Bond as the table allows.
1. Gustav Graves, Die Another Day (2002)
At the Blades fencing club, Graves asks if Bond is a gambling man, and they fence for £1,000 a point. Bond raises the stakes to a diamond he picked up in Cuba. Graves, now behind, raises the weapons: real swords, first blood drawn from the torso. When Miranda Frost tries to stop it, Graves brushes her off: “It’s just a little sport, Miranda.” Bond raised the bet, but Graves is the one who brought real swords into a fencing club and called it an afternoon’s sport. He follows it with an invitation to his ice palace in Iceland. Blofeld’s fight is with one guest. Graves will start one with anybody holding a sword, which is why he takes the top spot.
Seat: Not at the table. The garage has a card table, a space heater and nothing sharper than a spoon.
The Seating Chart
Ten guests, one table. The guest most likely to start a fight is Gustav Graves, who turned a fencing lesson into a sword fight and called it sport, so he eats in the garage. Blofeld, whose fight is with one guest in particular, is close behind. At the other end, the Soviet general gets the best chair, and the patient chauffeur and the grumbling old ally sit closest to the turkey. If your own table runs longer than ten, the same rule works: one thing each guest actually did, judged honestly, and nobody gets the carving knife until you’ve checked.