Xenia Onatopp
Xenia Sergeyevna Onatopp is a character in the James Bond film GoldenEye, played by actress Famke Janssen. She was a fighter pilot and an assassin with a trademark thigh-grip, working for the renegade agent Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean).
| Xenia Onatopp | |
|---|---|
| James Bond character | |
 Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp | |
| First appearance | GoldenEye (1995) |
| Portrayed by | Famke Janssen (1995) |
| Voiced by | Jenya Lano (GoldenEye: Rogue Agent) Kate Magowan (GoldenEye 007) |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Affiliation | ex-Soviet Air Force Janus |
| Classification | Bond girl / Henchwoman |
Onatopp has appeared in a number of James Bond video games as a playable multiplayer character.
In the film
Xenia, born in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, is a former officer and fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she joins the crime syndicate Janus, led by renegade MI6 agent Alec Trevelyan. Early in the movie, Bond (Pierce Brosnan) gets into a car chase with her, meets her at a casino, and places her under surveillance.
She lures a Canadian admiral, Chuck Farrell (Billy J. Mitchell), onto a yacht moored off Monte Carlo and kills him during sex revealing that she's a sadistic lust murderer. Meanwhile, fellow operative General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov (Gottfried John) steals his NATO ID, granting them access to a Eurocopter Tiger aboard a French warship anchored off Monte Carlo.
Onatopp then hijacks the prototype Eurocopter Tiger by killing the two pilots. Later, she and turncoat Russian General Arkady Ourumov use the hijacked Tiger in an attack on the Severnaya satellite control center in central Siberia, where they steal the controller for the GoldenEye satellite weapon. During the attack, she fires an AKS-74U carbine around the control room, murdering all the military personnel and civilian technicians present. She then appears as Bond's link to the Janus group. In a meeting arranged by Bond's dealings with Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane), a Russian arms dealer and former KGB agent, Onatopp arrives to meet Bond as he swims lengths in the Turkish Baths of his hotel – The St. Petersburg Grand. Initially sneaking around the pool, Bond discovers her presence and hurls her into the steam room. Onatopp attempts to seduce Bond, forcefully kissing him and coercing the agent to set down his weapon, before biting his lip, causing him to hurl her at the wall. Following a period of violent foreplay where Onatopp crushes Bond between her thighs, Bond finally draws his weapon on her and demands to be taken to Janus.
In her final encounter with Bond in Cuba, she ambushes him and Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco) by rappeling from a helicopter and begins torturing him between her legs. However, he is able to connect the rope she rappelled down to her safety harness, grabs her AK-74 rifle, and shoots down the helicopter with it. The result pulls her off him and sends her flying, screaming, into the crotch of a tree, with her safety harness crushing her to death.
In video games
Her first appearance in a video game was in the 1997 video game adaptation of GoldenEye, GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64. She is with Trevelyan on the train stage of the game. If the player quickly shoots her after eliminating Ourumov, she will yell to Trevelyan that she is wounded and to wait up for her; this buys the player more time to escape from the train. She later reappears in the jungle stage. Similar to the film, she is killed in the jungles of Cuba in a firefight with Bond. Killing Onatopp is the only way for the player to dual-wield two different guns in the game without a complex series of button presses; she uses an RC-P90 and a grenade launcher at the same time.
In the James Bond game Nightfire, Onatopp also appears as a multiplayer character. She can be unlocked by a cheat on the cheats menu as Janus, the organization she works for in the movie.
She appeared in the spinoff Bond game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent where she works for Dr. Julius No and is Agent GoldenEye's alluring opponent. She is commander of Dr. No's army, which has taken over the Hoover Dam. She is killed after being thrown off of the Hoover Dam while fighting Goldeneye. In the game, her likeness was based on Famke Janssen but was voiced by actress Jenya Lano.
She appears in the GoldenEye remake as a former Russian general who served under Ouromov during the Russian invasion of Georgia. Her plot arc is significantly changed for the remake. She appears in the Nightclub level (where Bond first meets her) disguised as a waitress, and assassinates Valentin Zukovsky after he gives vital information about Janus to Bond - the man is framed for the murder of Zukovsky. She betrays and assassinates General Ouromov in the train level in which she appears. During her final confrontation with Bond, she is lowered down to him from a helicopter and proceeds to engage in hand-to-hand combat with him; she is defeated when Bond launches a missile at her helicopter while she is strangling him, the helicopter crashing into a nearby gorge and dragging her down with it. She is voiced by and modeled after Kate Magowan.
Reception
Xenia Onatopp has appeared in several lists of the top ten Bond Girls, including by Entertainment Weekly.[1] Yahoo! Movies had her name included in the list of the best Bond girl names, even while calling it a "slightly-too-obvious pun."[2] In 2015, The Telegraph suggested that "in the stolid Brosnan years, former Soviet fighter pilot Onatopp was a breath of fresh air."[3]
Anna Katherine Amacker and Donna Ashley Moore suggest that Onatopp is a "direct throwback to the earlier style of Bond girl, complete with an innuendo-laden name and a blatant sexuality."[4] Robert A. Saunders suggests that she "personifies the hypersexualized archetype of the post-Soviet Russian woman."[5]
References
- Rich, Joshua (30 March 2007). "The 10 Best Bond Girls". Entertainment Weekly. New York City: Meredith Corporation. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
- James Bond at 50: the best Bond Girl names | Movie Editor's Blog - Yahoo! Movies UK
- "Five Bond characters who should make a comeback". The Daily Telegraph. London, England: Telegraph Media Group. 28 May 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
- Amacker, Anna Katherine; Moore, Donna Ashley (2012). ""The Bitch is Dead": Anti-feminist Rhetoric in Casino Royale". James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough. Newcastle Upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 151. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
- Saunders, Robert A. (2011). "Brand Interrupted: The Impact of Alternative Narrators on Nation Branding in the Former Second World". Branding Post-Communist Nations: Marketizing National Identities in the "New" Europe. London, England: Routledge. p. 53. ISBN 978-0415882750. Retrieved 25 July 2015.