A shame Jack Lord was recast for Goldfinger but Jack would have quickly rivaled Connery as the main attraction of the series. Turning Felix into a schlubbier, older character was probably the only way the 1960s films could have avoided becoming the James and Felix Show. That said, yeah, they didn't even try to make them consistent although the Thunderball Leiter clearly took his visual cues from Jack Lord and Terence Young's Leiters were younger and more slim than Guy Hamilton's Leiters.
Then you have Joe Don Baker in Goldeneye and Michael Madsen in Die Another Day as Leiter-substitutes. I always assumed that they didn’t want to either have a crippled Leiter or to ignore the events of LTK & so it was simpler just to have new American spies for Bond to deal with. I think I remember Madsen in particular saying that he hoped to have a recurring role, but once Brosnan was recast & the series was rebooted, that was that.
Felix might have ended up in A View to a Kill but the creators realized they needed a sacrificial lamb from the CIA to die at the hands of Mayday so they came up with the character of Chuck Lee(David Yip). Still, it would have been nice if when Lee introduced himself to Bond in San Francisco he said: "Felix Leiter told me a lot of interesting things about you. It's a pleasure to be working with 007."
When my best friend finally saw THUNDERBALL two years ago, he hated Felix's ''everything looks good on you'' line.
Rik Van Nutter was another case of aiming in the right general direction, but not quite hitting the mark. I was surprised to learn that he was a smidgen older than Connery, because in demeanor he came off like Bond's kid sidekick.
Jack Lord Lite. "Fine way to treat the CIA!" I could totally see Jack Lord's Felix blurting that out but in Lord's deeper voice.
It's kind of a shame that Jack Lord never got to play Leiter again, but then again if he'd started to break out as a movie star, we may never have gotten Hawaii Five-O. So I guess in the grand scheme of things, it worked out.
Moneypenny? God I hated Madsen in DAD, he just felt wrong. In contrast much as Joe Don Baker isn't a great villain in the Bond pantheon, I always really liked Jack Wade and thought he and Brosnan had great chemistry. It's a shame he didn't come back for DAD but I guess they needed a higher ranking CIA guy.
I don’t see why not; although he’s never been as regular a fixture as M, Moneypenny or Q, I would still expect to see him at some stage in a new setup. They brought him into the Craigverse after being mutilated in LTK, after all.
Even the new Moneypenny in The Living Daylights left more of an impression than that movie's Felix Leiter. And that's saying something. And she was THE worst MI-6 regular in the entire EON franchise.
If I had to throw extra Felixes off a crowded sailboat, I'm afraid I'd dispose of GOLDFINGER's and even David Hedison If that's ageist, that's not my intention. Hedison reminds me of Regis Philbin. At least Wayne Newton never was Felix. Joe Don Baker, superb in CAPE FEAR, is technically a main villain, but the emphasis is mostly on Koskov. When Baker returned twice in the series, I felt it was way too soon. I like John Terry as Leiter, and I like him much more in Gary Sinise's OF MICE AND MEN as the most likable authority figure in the group. It's rather Bondian, isn't it? But Leiter did it first, and often. Serious question about the NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN tango scene. When Connery and Basinger talk/dance, does anybody NOT think of the Leslie Nielsen/Priscilla Presley version? The similarities are striking now!
Again I think the constant recasting of Felix Leiter was to avoid him becoming a rival to James Bond in popularity and hogging too much attention in the movies. Jack Lord could quickly have become half the reason audiences wanted to see a Bond film and Broccoli and Saltzman couldn't have that.
I don’t have a link to hand but I think I read somewhere that the recasting of Hedison in LTK (rather than just bringing back Terry from the immediately previous film) was simply down to Cubby bumping into him one day & inviting him to appear in the film.
Yeah, by 1988 they were cool with bringing another actor back and by then it was just Cubby left from the original two-man production team. And I'm glad because it was nice to get at least one Felix in the original EON continuity who looked the same in at least two films.
I thought they'd wanted Hedison because he was a more famous Felix? He certainly plays more of a part in LALD than Terry does in TLD.
I've heard both explanations. That Cubby asked him for the favor and also that he wanted to bring back a previous Felix Leiter so that Bond would have more of a connection with the character than just showing up as the best man at his wedding.