James Bond...always to the mission, never to his friend

Alec Trevelyan was everything that you'd want in a bond villain; cocky, vain, loved to hear himself talk, and prone to making baffling mistakes. In the storied history of the Bond franchise, Trevelyan surely ranks near the top. But what makes Trevelyan truly stand out is just how deep his character was.

To the average layman, the story is simple. Trevelyan betrays his country and Bond for his own personal and financial gain. But to say that would be a simplification at best, and a complete fallacy at worst. Trevelyan is, perhaps, one of Sean Bean's most misunderstood characters, a man who's motives and beliefs run deeper than what we can see easily on the surface.

We begin with the opening scene of the movie. Trevelyan and Bond infiltrate the facility (I can't remember the names of the actual places, so I'll call them by their video game level names). The mission is to blow up some gas tanks or something, and before getting to that point, Trevelyan makes it clear that Bond must set the timers to 6 minutes.

Remember, these two are best friends, they trust each other with their lives, and, in theory, should be willing to give up their life for the other, even if it is in vain. Mind you, at this point, Trevelyan already has his scheme made up, and while he is "betraying" Bond, Bond doesn't know that and, of course, would never have known that if he would have been willing to die for his friend.

But of course, Bond only cares about the mission and saving his own behind. He sets the timer for 3 minutes, and in the process, blows up Trevelyan's face. Bond should not have done that. Trevelyan made it clear that he had to set it for six minutes, and if Bond was a friend, and not some lap dog for MI6, he would've listened and not have disobeyed and betrayed his friend.

That's right, I say Bond betrayed Trevelyan. "You were supposed to die for me," Trevelyan says in one scene. He's not saying it like the way other Bond villains say it. Usually, what they are saying is that Bond was supposed to die. But Trevelyan is different. He's talking about how Bond was supposed to die for him. Bond was supposed to be a sacrifice, and Bond was supposed to be willing to sacrifice himself because that's what friends do.

We must also address Trevelyan's main motive for his actions, which was revenge against MI6 for the British betrayal of his parents. Trevelyan's parents had defected to Britain following the end of the Second World War. The British, however, refused to take his parents in, leaving them in Russia. While his parents survived the execution squads, his father, ashamed at having survived, killed himself and Trevelyan's mother. That'd be bad enough if it all ended there, but then MI6 adopted Trevelyan, and raised him to be a double 0, and brainwashed him into not remembering his true origins. It's the ultimate slap in the face for Trevelyan. It's no surprise that he'd want revenge against the people that caused his parents death and raised him to work for those very same people.

Remember, Sean Bean is the master of the justifying speech. When he speaks, people tend to listen, and if you take the time to truly feel what he's saying, you'll start to agree with him, and even feel sorry for him.



Listen to his speech above and try to really feel his pain. He's a man who's been betrayed by a country, and betrayed by a friend. He's a man who just wanted to make things right. You can feel his pain at knowing that he never truly had a friend in Bond.

"I did think of asking you to join my little scheme," Trevelyan says, "but somehow I knew, 007's loyalty was always to the mission, never to his friend."

Perhaps the most telling part about Trevelyan is his failure to kill Bond. Now, some attribute it to incompetence. But I see it differently. I see his failure to kill Bond as a sign of man still trying to keep a friendship alive. It's not that he couldn't kill Bond, its that he couldn't get himself to kill Bond. There were multiple times in the movie when Trevelyan could have simply shot Bond in the face. But he didn't do that. He placed Bond in easily escapable timed traps, simply because the friend in him couldn't bear to kill his friend, even though Bond had betrayed him.

And how does Bond repay his friendship? He drops Trevelyan off of a satellite tower. After everything Trevelyan had done, after all the times Trevelyan couldn't bear to kill his friend, Bond's cold heart simply ignored their years of friendship, and dropped him, just like that.

James Bond. Always to the mission. Never to his friend. Remember that when you watch this film again. Then tell me how Trevelyan is so bad. All I see is a man yearning for friendship. A man who wants to make things right. And a man that was betrayed and left broken by his best friend. That's all I see.