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"For Carver...and Kaufman... I owe you an unpleasant death, Mr. Bond!"
― Stamper while fighting Bond.[src]

Richard Stamper was the right-hand man and head of security to media baron, Elliot Carver, and the former protégé of his personal assassin, Dr. Kaufman. A secondary antagonist portrayed by German actor, Götz Otto, the character first appeared in the 1997 James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, and would later be re-imagined for Raymond Benson's accompanying novelization. Otto subsequently provided his likeness for the 1999 video game of the same name where he was voiced by British actor, Andrew Bicknell.

Biography[]

Attacking the British ship[]

Sending the British HMS Devonshire into Chinese waters by use of a GPS encoder, a stealth ship led by Stamper creates tension when two Chinese fighting jets arrive, stating that they will fire if the ship does not leave their waters. Believing themselves to be in international waters, the ship replies that they will defend themselves against all hostile actions. While awaiting the jets to fly over the ship again to launch a torpedo and make it seem that the jets fired it, Stamper reports to Carver at Hamburg, telling him that they are about to launch. When the torpedo is fired, and the ship goes down, Stamper calls Carver again. Carver tells him that if there are any survivors left, he will need the exact number and also tells Stamper to use the right kind of ammunition. After having been told that there are survivors in the water, Stamper goes to the outer parts of the stealth boat and begins shooting at the survivors with Chinese ammunition.

Satellite launch[]

StamperWatchesChaos

Stamper finds the mess James Bond left

At the event for Carver's satellite launch, Carver meets James Bond, who more than once implies that Carver had a hand in the destruction of the Devonshire. Sensing that Bond means trouble, Carver uses a pretext to leave Bond and tells Stamper to take care of Bond. Stamper sends his henchmen to lure Bond into a room behind the stage under the pretext of a phone call. Once he enters the room he is immediately attacked by the men. When Bond is on the ground, one of the men calls Stamper, who tells them to rough him up and that he will be there in a few moments. However, before Stamper can join them, Bond takes out all the henchmen, and after the last one is defeated, enters the control room and switches off the power, thereby disrupting Carver's presentation, making him the laughingstock of the worldwide media.

When Stamper arrives in the room where Bond was held, he finds all of his men unconscious, with no trace of Bond. Stamper is very angry that Bond has escaped and beaten his men leaving a big mess.

Losing his mentor[]

StamperRooftop

Stamper attempting to reach Dr. Kaufman

After Carver has decided to execute his wife Paris and leave her at Bond's hotel room, Stamper is posted on the rooftop of a building nearby. He watches Bond drive his car into the hotel's parking garage. When Bond is in the hotel, he sends his men to get Gupta's GPS encoder out of Bond's car. Meanwhile, Bond is held at gunpoint at his hotel room by assassin and torturer Dr. Kaufman. When Bond's car proves to be too equipped to break into, Stamper calls Kaufman to make Bond tell him how the car can be opened. Bond uses this to make Dr. Kaufman taser himself with Bond's phone and shoots the assassin. Unable to leave by the front door, Bond climbs off the balcony. When Stamper sees Bond leave, he calls Dr. Kaufman but gets no response unaware Bond has killed his mentor.

Capturing Bond[]

StamperBoat

Stamper catches James Bond and Wai Lin

When 007 and his Chinese counterpart Wai Lin find the wreckage of the HMS Devonshire, they find that one of its cruise missiles is missing. They swim back to the surface, where Wai Lin has her men waiting in a boat. When Lin calls at one of them to help them out of the water, the man gets shot with a harpoon. Stamper then walks to the railing, revealing that Carver's men have taken over the boat. They capture Bond and Lin and bring them to Carver's skyscraper at Saigon.

There, Carver welcomes the two agents while writing their obituaries. Having a meeting with General Chang, Carver tells them that he will leave them in the hands of Stamper, who will use Chakra torture on them. Revealing that he was Dr. Kaufman's former student and thought of him like a father, Stamper tells them that he will make sure to keep them alive as long as possible. After Bond insults Carver, Carver points at an especially nasty looking device, telling him to save it for the end. However, before Stamper can start his torture, Bond and Wai Lin attack the guard holding them and grab their machine guns. When Stamper tries to get Carver to safety, the MI6 agent grabs one of his torture devices and lunges it at Stamper. The device thrusts into Stamper's leg, leaving him injured and angry.

Stealth boat attacked and Death[]

Planning to attack the flagships of both the British and Chinese fleets to cause war, Carver and his men board the stealth ship and head towards the fleet. Bond and Lin board the ship, but are detected by Carver via surveillance cameras Carver sends Stamper to deal with them. While Bond and Lin plant explosives on the outer part of the ship Stamper swiftly grabs Lin and drags her inside, leaving her with his men. Telling them to kill her if she movers Stamper walks out again to kill Bond. However, Bond has killed a security guard and when Stamper shoots at him, he drops the guard's corpse into the water, causing Stamper to believe that he's dead. Stamper then calls Carver and tells him that Bond died.

Stamper then brings Lin to the bridge, where Carver is eagerly awaiting the war. However, when Bond destroys the outer hull of the ship, causing it to appear on the radar of the Chinese and British. Furious, Carver tells Stamper to kill Bond and Lin. While their ship is shot by the British, Carver has them drive away, knowing that he has been defeated but still intending to launch his missile. This too is foiled when Lin destroys the engines.

StamperBondFight

Stamper fighting against James Bond

While Stamper and Bond engage in a firefight, the ship is hit by British missiles, causing severe damage. With them the only men remaining, Carver sends Stamper to stop Lin in the engine room. While Lin captures her, Bond faces Carver at the bridge and kills him. However, while trying to defuse the missile he hears Stamper telling him to stop. Turning around, Bond sees that Stamper has chained up Lin and threatens to drop her into the water, thereby drowning her. Lin throws her explosives at Bond and tells him to blow the missile up while it is still on the stealth boat.

Stamper's death

Stamper being blown up and killed

When Bond proceeds to do so, Stamper drops Lin and jumps towards Bond, determined to give him an unpleasant death to avenge Carver and Kaufman. After a fight, Bond pins Stamper's leg to the missile, preventing him from escaping. When Bond tries to jump into the water below to escape the stealth ship and save Lin, Stamper grabs him at the vest, stating that they will die together. However, Bond slips out of his jacket and falls into the water below, leaving Stamper as the only remaining man onboard. When the missile goes off, Stamper's foot is vaporized by the blast before he himself is killed in the ship's explosion.

Alternate Continuities[]

Tomorrow Never Dies (novelisation)[]

To be added

Tomorrow Never Dies (video game)[]

To be added

Personality[]

Stamper was a ruthless, cold-blooded, unscrupulous terrorist who oversaw the tasks assigned by Carver with an enthusiasm that even Carver considered exaggerated, and inspired fear in most of the environments he found himself in, including those around his boss[2]. He was also insensitive to any pain he might experience and took great pleasure in making Carver's enemies suffer, being a sadomasochist. Cold and oppressive, Stamper generally showed no emotion when carrying out his employer's orders. Apart from Carver, the only person the security chief seemed to care about was Dr. Kaufman, who was determined to kill Bond after the torturer's death, even refusing to give up his crusade after Carver's death. Stamper, however, consistently underestimated Bond, a trait that led to his downfall.

Trivia[]

  • When German actor Götz Otto was called in for casting, he was given twenty seconds to introduce himself; his hair had recently been cropped short for a TV role. Saying, "I'm big, I'm bad, and I'm German", he did it in five.[3]
  • In earlier drafts of the script, the Stamper character was named Rendera Sikrahm (also known as Richard Stamper) and was a freelance mercenary. His father was from Nepal - a Ghurka warrior - conscripted by the British government to fight in China during World War II - after which the family settled in Hong Kong, where the young Stamper was treated like a second class citizen by both the Hong Kong Chinese, and local British.[4] In addition, Stamper was to have suffered a brain injury that caused pleasure to be registered as pain (a vice versa). The idea was dropped, but a version of it made it into the subsequent Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999), where the main villain Renard is unable to feel pain.[5]
  • Stamper is sixth influential henchman to Red Grant for being blonde and fifth influential henchman to Oddjob for not feeling pain when is stabbed.
  • Stamper is one of the few Bond henchmen (alongside Tee Hee or Nick Nack) to outlive their bosses.

Gallery[]

Stamper/Gallery

References[]

  1. (1997). Tomorrow Never Dies (Blu-Ray). 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. Event occurs at 00:25:20. "Friday 11, April, 1997 Late Edition"
  2. Benson, Raymond; Bruce Feirstein [6 November 1997]. Tomorrow Never Dies (in English). Kent: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0340707429. 
  3. "Promi-Porträt: Götz Otto", kwick!, 20 October 2007. Retrieved on 6 January 2007. 
  4. Tomorrow Never Dies Script History (1) (English) (Article). MI6-HQ.com (14th December 2007). Retrieved on 2016-04-22.
  5. Trivia - Tomorrow Never Dies (English) (Article). MI6-HQ.com. Retrieved on 2016-04-22.

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