20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Living Daylights (1987)
9. Over The Edge
After dropping the bomb on the Soviet forces pursuing Kamran Shah’s men and discovering the fuel shortage onboard the Lockheed Hercules C-130, James Bond would have tried to land the cargo plane on an American aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
However, the aircraft carrier’s captain initially refused permission to land and even tried to shoot the Hercules down, believing it to be an enemy aircraft, until M and Miss Moneypenny (Caroline Bliss) confirmed Double-0 Seven’s credentials.
Although the captain eventually yielded, Bond overshot the landing deck, sending the Hercules toppling over the side into the ocean; he and Kara would have clung onto a cargo net dangling from the ship to avoid drowning.
However, the movie’s budget and delays in the filming schedule meant that the dramatic scene had to be scrapped. It was quickly replaced with Bond and Kara parachuting out of the doomed aircraft inside a Jeep against John Richardson’s stunning footage of the opium-carrying plane nose-diving into a mountain range.