Xenia Zaragevna Onatopp (russian: Ксения Сергеевна Онатопп, Kseniya Sergeevna Onatopp) is a fictional character and
Bond girl in the
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors hav ...
film ''
GoldenEye'', played by actress
Famke Janssen. She is a fighter pilot and assassin who crushes her enemies with her thighs, working for the renegade
MI6 agent
Alec Trevelyan
Alec Trevelyan (006) is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1995 James Bond film '' GoldenEye'', the first film to feature actor Pierce Brosnan as Bond. Trevelyan is portrayed by actor Sean Bean. The likeness of Bean as Ale ...
(
Sean Bean
Sean Bean (born Shaun Mark Bean on 17 April 1959) is an English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a theatre production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' in 1983. Retaining his Yorkshire ac ...
).
Onatopp has appeared in a number of
James Bond video games
The '' James Bond'' video game franchise is a series centering on Ian Fleming's fictional British MI6 agent, James Bond. Games of the series have been predominantly shooter games, with some games of other genres including role-playing and adve ...
as a playable multiplayer character.
In the film
Onatopp, born in the
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
The Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (Georgian SSR; ka, საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკა, tr; russian: Грузинская Советская Соц� ...
, is a former officer and fighter pilot in the
Soviet Air Force
The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...
. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she joins the crime syndicate Janus, led by traitorous
MI6 agent Alec Trevelyan. Early in the movie, Bond (
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brendan Brosnan (; born 16 May 1953) is an Irish actor and film producer. He is best known as the fifth actor to play secret agent James Bond in the Bond film series, starring in four films from 1995 to 2002 ('' GoldenEye'', '' Tomorro ...
) gets into a car chase with her, meets her at
a casino, and places her under surveillance.
She lures a
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
admiral
Admiral is one of the highest ranks in some navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force, and is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet ...
, Chuck Farrell (
Billy J. Mitchell
Billy J. Mitchell (June 16, 1942 – 9 March 1999) was an American character actor based in the United Kingdom. He was known for portraying North American characters in British-based productions like ''Superman'' (1978), ''Top Secret!'' (1984), an ...
), onto a yacht moored off
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...
and kills him during
sex by crushing his
ribs with her thighs, achieving
orgasm
Orgasm (from Greek , ; "excitement, swelling") or sexual climax is the sudden discharge of accumulated sexual excitement during the sexual response cycle, resulting in rhythmic, involuntary muscular contractions in the pelvic region chara ...
in the process. Meanwhile, Trevelyan's henchman General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov (
Gottfried John
Gottfried John (; 29 August 1942 – 1 September 2014) was a German stage, screen, and voice actor. A long-time collaborator of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John appeared in nine of the filmmaker's projects between 1975 and 1981, the year befor ...
) steals the dead admiral's
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...
ID, granting him and Onatopp access to a prototype EMP-hardened
Eurocopter Tiger
The Eurocopter Tiger is a four-blade, twin-engine attack helicopter which first entered service in 2003. It is manufactured by Airbus Helicopters (formerly Eurocopter), which arose from the merger of Aérospatiale's and DASA's respective helic ...
aboard a French warship anchored off Monte Carlo.
Onatopp then hijacks the helicopter by killing the two pilots. Later, she and Ourumov use the hijacked Tiger in an attack on the Severnaya satellite control center in central
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
, where they steal the controller for the GoldenEye satellite weapon. During the attack, she kills all the military personnel and civilian technicians present and is visibly aroused by the killing. 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 in a
Turkish Bath
A hammam ( ar, حمّام, translit=ḥammām, tr, hamam) or Turkish bath is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited ...
. The two indulge in aggressive foreplay where Onatopp attempts to crush Bond between her thighs, he finally draws his weapon on her and demands to be taken to Janus.
In her final encounter with Bond in
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribb ...
, she ambushes him and Severnaya programmer
Natalya Simonova
Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova (russian: Наталья Фёдоровна Семёнова) is a fictional character and the main Bond girl in the James Bond film ''GoldenEye'', played by actress Izabella Scorupco.
Biography
Natalya Simonova work ...
(
Izabella Scorupco) by rappeling from a helicopter and again attempts to crush him between her legs. Bond uses her assault rifle to damage the helictoper and she is pulled off him, trapped by a tree trunk, and crushed to death herself.
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
The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and ...
. 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
A grenade launcher is a weapon that fires a specially-designed large-caliber projectile, often with an explosive, smoke or gas warhead. Today, the term generally refers to a class of dedicated firearms firing unitary grenade cartridges. The mo ...
at the same time.
In the James Bond game ''
Nightfire
''James Bond 007: Nightfire'' is a 2002 first-person shooter video game published by Electronic Arts for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox (console), Xbox and Microsoft Windows, with additional versions released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003 ...
'', 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 No's army, which has taken over the
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on S ...
. 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
Jenya Wilson Lano (russian: Же́ня Уилсон Ла́но) ( Moscow, 1978) is a Russian-Italian actress and comedian, best known for her recurring role as Inspector Sheridan in ten episodes of the American television series ''Charmed''.
...
.
She appears in the
''GoldenEye'' remake as a former Russian general who served under Ouromov during the Russian invasion of
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
. 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 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.
Analysis
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." Robert A. Saunders suggests that she "personifies the
hypersexualized archetype of the
post-Soviet Russian woman
"Russian Woman" (russian: Русская женщина, Russkaya zhenshchina, stylised in all caps) is a song by Russian-Tajik singer Manizha, independently released as a single on 19 March 2021. The song represented Russia in the Eurovisio ...
."
Helena Bassil-Morosow suggests that Onatopp is "visually
coded as a stereotypical
dominatrix
A dominatrix (; ) or femdom is a woman who takes the dominant role in BDSM activities. A dominatrix can be of any sexual orientation, but this does not necessarily limit the genders of her submissive partners. Dominatrices are known for inflic ...
: dark hair, bright red lipstick, smoky eyeshadow and sharply defined eyebrows,"
while Monica Germanà suggests that "Xenia's glamour encapsulates the sadistic quality of her excessive appetite".
Bassil-Morosow goes on to note that Onatopp "also sees violence as a broadly defined sexual act in which she gets to dominate and ultimately decide people's fates," and argues that she "poses a threat to Bond's status as a dominant male as she consistently outdoes him in all his favourite activities: driving, killing, risk-taking and having sex with multiple partners." In this way, she "has to be eventually killed by him because not only is she ruthless and unstoppable but also metaphorically as a punishment for refusing to admire him." Bassil-Morosow concludes that "Onatopp's character, masculinised, independent, domineering and sexually liberated, can be read as a bitter parody of feminism."
Reception
Xenia Onatopp has appeared in several lists of the top 10
Bond Girls, including by ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular ...
''.
Yahoo! Movies
Yahoo! Movies (formerly Upcoming Movies), provided by the Yahoo! network, is home to a large collection of information on movies, past and new releases, trailers and clips, box office information, and showtimes and movie theater information. Yaho ...
had her name included in the list of the best Bond girl names, even while calling it a "slightly-too-obvious pun." In 2015, ''
The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
'' suggested that "in the stolid Brosnan years, former Soviet fighter pilot Onatopp was a breath of fresh air." Paul Simpson argues that with Onatopp, the
femme fatale
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype o ...
made a "welcome reappearance" after the role had previously fallen out of fashion.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Onatopp, Xenia
Bond girls
Bond villains
Female characters in film
Fictional female assassins
Fictional female martial artists
Film characters introduced in 1995
Fictional henchmen
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional mercenaries
Fictional people from Georgia (country)
Fictional Russian people
Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Fictional Soviet Air Force personnel
GoldenEye
Female film villains
Action film villains
Fictional fighter pilots