 Us Bond fans love to celebrate the 007 franchise. Talk about everything cool that Bond does, drive the fast cars, getting the beautiful girls, saving the world from countless megalomaniac villains, using awesome gadgets, kissing all the girls, blow the bad guys away, and we're happy that the franchise often made great decisions. Not casting Sean Connery in Die Not A Day as the older James Bond that Lee Tamahori was lobbying for, for example. My goodness that would have been terrible and opened up the horrendous code name theory Can of Worms. But they did make some decisions that we perhaps would have liked to have seen taken differently. That's what we're looking at today in no particular order, five missed opportunities in the Bond franchise, in my opinion. Number 1 Sean Connery in On Her Majesty's Secret Service Those who are familiar with my channel are probably aware of this opinion. But in short, I feel this is a huge missed opportunity in the franchise. Sean Connery was the one and only James Bond from 1962's Doctor No to the fifth Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967. Bill knew he grew more bored with the role later on in his tenure and felt the producers didn't treat him fairly anymore around that time. So the biggest argument against this is Connery would have not been motivated, or Connery wouldn't have been convincing in the love scenes. I disagree with both statements. Connery has always stated that he wanted to do a more serious character-driven Bond film and disliked the larger focus on the hardware, as he put it that the films ended up taking. Majesties would have been right up his alley and seeing his Bond fall in love after a large tenure of, well, not doing so, now seeing a woman who does win his heart, only for him to lose her at the ending scene would have been that much more powerful. It's a real shame. I'm not saying Lazenby was terrible, by the way, I love the dude himself, but he wasn't an actor and I feel Connery definitely had the range to nail this movie. Even if we did get to see him in a more bored state, he would still have nailed it. I go into much more detail in my What If video I did on this topic recently. Check that one out if you want to see me go deeper into this. Number 2, Diamonds of Forever should have been a revenge movie. Speaking of the ending of Majesties, this heartbreaking pivotal moment in Bond's life is never mentioned in its successor, Diamonds of Forever. Why? It is suggested in the pre-title sequence that Bond is looking for Blofeld to get revenge for this, but it's never mentioned by anyone in this movie, nor does Bond have any grief for her in this film. The events are completely ignored. What about Irma Boons, who is directly responsible for her death? She just got to walk off, really? Why the Diamonds have to go with a Blofeld in drag, crappy special effects, a mousetrap in Bond's pocket and all the other tacky stuff instead? To me, this still is arguably the biggest missed opportunity in the Bond series and instead of an awesome revenge story, we got what I feel to be the worst Bond film in return. Number 3, Timothy Dalton's third Bond movie. Timothy Dalton only got the star in two Bond films, The Living Daylights and License to Kill. These were made for a third and heck yes, even a fourth Timothy Dalton film, as screenplays for both these films were written. Check out Mark Adlitz's The Lost Adventures of James Bond book to learn much more about this stuff, but in short, Dalton was a fantastic James Bond and if it wasn't for the lawsuits and legal troubles that Eon Productions went through in the early 90s, we would have likely had this film release in 1991. And yes, I also did a detailed video on this subject, not so long ago, if you want to know exactly what this movie would have been like. First opportunity number 4, Bringing Back Past Bond Girls. Ok, so technically this is a bit of a cheat because obviously Leia Seidu as Madeline Swan got to be the first main Bond girl to star in the same role twice, so maybe the phrasing of this should be bringing back past Bond girls in the past or something. My point is, up until no time to die, the franchise never brought back a main Bond girl to star in a Bond film again. Yes, there have been actresses starring in different roles of course and yes, Eunice Gason did star as Sylvia Trent in both Doctor No and From Russia With Love. I am just saying an actual main Bond girl returning in the past Bond films. How great would it have been to see some beloved Bond girls return? In A Few to a Kill, Bond runs into a Russian KGB agent. We've never seen this character before, but it's clear that Bond knows her from his past. How great would it have been if this was the actual KGB agent we know he met in the past, Anya Omasafa agent XXX, played by Barbara Buck. Immediately, this scene would have lightened up much more had this been her. I do know the filmmakers were trying to get her and she was unavailable, but still, man what a missed opportunity. What about that other time that Bond runs into a former flame in the form of Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies? We know zero about their history together. All we know is… Wouldn't it have been cool had this been Natalya Semyonova from GoldenEye, who we actually saw in Brosnan's Bond's previous adventure. We would have known how the pair fell for each other. We would have known about their great playful chemistry together. How the pair ended up happily at the end of the film and, inevitably, they went their separate ways. Natalya's brains and computer skills may have interested Carver as a media bearish and the pair would end up together. She would have still been mad at Bond for leaving her after her GoldenEye adventure, with the words I'll be right back, but she would still help him. This way, the whole role would have been much more interesting. Seeing Natalya being killed in that hotel room would have really ignited much more of a feeling lifting up the stakes because we actually know her. We know she already survived incredible things in the previous movie. We know Bond clearly cares about this girl. Now we definitely want Bond to take down Carver. You see my point? The same holds for Wei Lin, who was planned to return in Dainara Day during the Hong Kong sequences. He is another beloved Bond girl. I think everybody would be psyched to see return, even if just for a cameo. I am still happy they finally ended up doing this with Madeline Swan recently, but still, there were definitely missed opportunities here. And number 5, Quantum of Solace should have been centered around Vesper more. Much like Diamond's Arthur, ever, Quantum of Solace had great potential to be a masterful sequel to one of the best Bond movies ever made, but in my opinion that played out much differently. In fairness to Quantum though, the film does at the very least reference Vesper a few times during the film and the pain that Bond is dealing with trying to find his Solace. But the main focus isn't on this aspect as much as I think it could have been. Instead it takes a lot of detours focusing on oil, watering Bolivia, an uninteresting villain, some stuff about a general and his history with a Bolivian family. I really want to see more of Bond peeling back the layers of the organization that Vesper was part of because in the beginning we learned that it's a really mysterious group of people. They even have people working inside of MI6 and they clearly must be powerful to be able to blackmail Vesper into working for them. But in the end, we don't find out anything more about them than we did in the beginning of the film. We just found Bond has now gone through a phase of being an uncontrollable projectile to becoming the secret agent we know in the end. But as the exact same character arc he goes through in Casino Royale, he's reckless in the beginning, falls in love, learns that Vesper was part of a shadowy organization, Bond tracks down one of its most prominent members and now has become the 007 we know. Now we can continue to actually learn about these guys. But no, instead it's the exact same thing again in Quantum, only played out much more confusingly and with a lot more crazy editing. It's a real shame because sequels are not common in the Bond franchise and I think both Diamonds of Forever and Quantum could have really been so much more. These were 5 of the missed opportunities in the Bond franchise. Do you agree or disagree with some of these? Or do any other missed opportunities pop into your minds? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Don't forget to like and subscribe and if you want to go the extra mile by supporting the channel, please also take a look at my Patreon page and find great perks in return for helping the channel out. Thanks a lot and see you guys in the next video.