Well, this could be a very long list....
I agree completely with Lewis Collins non-casting being a mistake. He would've made any of the 80's Bond movies infinitely better. i think it was Eon's most cynical hour in it's failure to re-cast Moore in OP, let alone AVTAK.
But that's a mistake i think Barbara went out of her way to make up for by hounding Craig to enlist; not necessarily because she'd wanted Collins (though, who knows?), but because she was aware that Eon had missed opportunities to refresh the franchise in the 80s, trying to play it safe instead - the ultimate returns of which are an increasingly indifferent audience. Maybe choosing the wrong Bond is better than simply regurgitating mo(o)re of the same.
With an equally focused team effort as has since been applied to the 'reboot', Lewis Collin's Bond would have been equally as refreshing and successful. All that 'hard to work with' crap is just that, i imagine - no one on The Professionals set was in any rush to recast him, apart from Shaw, but his reasons may have been bias by seeing his trained acting skills eclipsed by the charisma of Collins.
The other big thing they could've done better was writing and crewing up for their new Bond, Dalton. Having the same writers, director etc. from the previous 3 Bond movies pick up where they left off for their new Bond was naive, lazy and probably cheap.
If their new Bond was in the same comedic vein as Moore, then this may have made a little more sense, but they cast a serious actor, sold it to him and us as a move back to Fleming's source material and then saddled him with the same old crew and a vary convoluted, mediocre script that feigned a more serious tone, but was in truth totally uncommitted to that tone. The result was neither humorous, nor gritty, but somewhere in the middle - in the doldrums.
Using the Director and crew of the previous 3 'Carry On Bond' movies of which the public were tiring (i remember, i was one them), is a very difficult move to justify, except, i imagine in budgetary terms. Well they got what they paid for! There could be no surprise that the resulting movie didn't really fizz with the public, or the critics, or Dalton?
Sure they tried to remedy that a little with LTK, but this just makes my point, that although Eon may have wanted to give us a grittier, more thrilling Bond, they put the same writers and crew to work on it. The results were very frustrating - a 15 certificate for something that's not really that gritty. Some shark munching, a popping head, a mincer and plenty of tomato ketchup. Gore was never really Fleming's thing - it's more about devient motivation and ruthless people, not tomato ketchup.
Those poor guys who'd been writing and shooting Bond for decades were struggling to reinvent. They surrounded Bond with the movie cliches of the time in a Miami Vice/Scarface/Friday The 13th drugs'n gore version of Fleming's Bond. That Bond team should've been moved on in the early 80s to new pastures with an array of medals for sterling work, instead of having to flog a dead horse time and again.
Maibaum was no longer with us when they wrote GE, so maybe they'd have re-hired him, but he was obviously tiring of ideas for the franchise having written so many of it's best scripts for so many years. Also Glen had more or less stopped making movies by the time of GE, so who knows if he was asked to direct GE. I doubt it - i'm guessing the changed talent for GE, bringing in Feirstein, Campbell, Serra was a conscious decision not to make the same mistake they made in the 80s.
Edited by Odd Jobbies, 04 February 2015 - 12:57 PM.
