The Job is Henchmen... Villainous Henchmen

I was watching a James Bond movie on TV last night. I've seen them all numerous times so I can tell you which one I'm watching after a few seconds of seeing a scene. Last night happened to be "Tomorrow Never Dies". This was Pierce Brosnan's second foray into the role of James Bond and this time he seemed a bit more comfortable in the role he was playing. Since I have seen that one enough number of times, I started paying more attention to the things going on in the background; the curious features of every Bond film that never cease to draw my curiousity. In this case, it has to do with the hundreds of faceless minions who seem to work for every super villain to populate a Bond film.

My first question was how these guys get these jobs. I mean I can understand how one joins the mafia or the mob. This has more or less been documented quite well in movies such as "GoodFellas" or "The Godfather". One starts out doing odd jobs and minor tasks, fetching cannolli, rubbing out hitmen from rival families and over time, you rise to the ranks to become someone. But is it possible for a James Bond henchmen to get somewhere? I was watching "Tomorrow Never Dies" and there's a scene where James Bond and Wai Lin (portrayed by Michelle Yeoh) are fighting in the engine room of the villain's stealth boat.

The engine room is filled with crewmen who are running the boat, doing the maintenance and I would assume, earning a paycheck. Now an ordinary crewman on a ship requires some training, some sort of degree (I would imagine) or at least some sort of qualification. How did they get these jobs? Did they have their resumes posted on Monster? Did human resources over at the headquarters start looking up qualified marine engineers with a bit of a mean streak in them?

"So Clyde, you are a qualified ship's engineer."

"That's correct."

"I see. So let's do a hypothetical situation; you are confronted by a child with a candy bar in his hand. What would you do?"

"Take the chocolate and eat it of course."

"Anything else?"

"Well, I would also laugh maniacially."

"Wonderful! You're hired!"

I could see how this could be part of the process. But I mean it makes me wonder if there truly are that many people out there who are evil enough to want to join a super villain and be among the faceless cronies who have nothing better to do other than to provide fodder for James Bond or any other hero for that matter, to kill, maim or knock unconscious. I wouldn't think it's an appealing position seeing as how these world domination schemes never seem to work. I mean were one to do a bit of research they would quickly realize that the trend has been that these plots fail, and generally when you realize that James Bond is on the case, it's a good bet that you should have your resignation letter ready to go and submitted before the inevitable occurs.

Still, maybe the appeal is that they have a good retirement plan... I guess we may never know.