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Zorin and May Day — The Diabolical Double Act
A look at A View To A Kill's antagonists
Max Zorin and May Day hold a unique place in the rogues’ gallery of 007 villains. Zorin (played by the Academy Award-winning Christopher Walken) is a French industrialist with a plot to seize the burgeoning world of technology through his own brand of ruthless determination and original thinking — or as he calls it, “intuitive improvisation”.
Perfectly embodied by actor-singer-performance artist Grace Jones, May Day is Zorin’s bodyguard, karate instructor and lover, blessed with a killer instinct. Together, they make perfect partners in crime, sharing super-strength, animalistic passion, and a complete lack of feeling for human life.
With his mother part of a programme to create a generation of “super children” through injections of steroids, Zorin grew up to be extremely intelligent but the side effects from the steroids also added a psychotic thirst for murder. This fascination with steroids plays into his obsession with horse racing, using electronically triggered steroids to increase performance and guarantee victory.
Wealthy and successful, Zorin uses his debonair charm and acumen as a cover to mask his secret identity as a KGB operative, providing the Russians with state-of-the-art technology, all the while forming a microchip production and distribution cartel. A highly trained enforcer with the strength to lift KGB agents over her head, May Day will stop at nothing to help Zorin achieve his goals, be it garrotting Bond’s associates or leaping from the Eiffel Tower to evade 007.
Ultimately, Zorin severs all ties with the KGB and launches his master plan, dubbed Project Main Strike. His plot involves engineering a massive double earthquake that will flood the entire San Francisco Bay Area, wiping out all the computer companies in Silicon Valley, and leaving the Zorin Microchip Cartel to become the global market leader.
As Project Main Strike swings into action, Zorin becomes even more crazed, manically killing his own workers with a machine gun. To suit his ends, Zorin betrays May Day, prematurely flooding the mine, his former bodyguard swept away by the gushing flood water.
Incensed by Zorin’s betrayal, May Day switches allegiance to 007, using her power to extricate the bomb and helping Bond to load it on a mine cart. When the device gets stuck on the track, she sacrifices herself, shouting back to Bond: “Get Zorin for me!” Emerging into the daylight, she shares a moment with Zorin as he escapes in his airship, defiantly staring at her former lover as she foils his plan.
As Zorin’s airship takes off, Bond grabs hold of a mooring rope and is flown above San Francisco skyscrapers and out toward the Golden Gate Bridge. When 007 ties the mooring rope to the bridge, bringing the airship to a halt, Zorin emerges from the cabin and attacks Bond with a fire axe. During the hand-to-hand combat, Zorin loses his grip on the framework and plummets to the sea below, Bond making good on May Day’s final words.
