20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Living Daylights (1987)
19. “Stuff My Orders!”
Intending to have a significantly younger James Bond, screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson originally wrote The Living Daylights as a prequel to Dr. No (1962).
A much younger, unrefined James Bond would have fought Chinese warlord, Kwang alongside the-then Double-0 Seven, Burton Trevor, who died aiding Bond's escape. After killing Kwang, Bond became the new Double-0 Seven and the closing scene was his briefing for Dr. No.
“We decided that it might be interesting to have a story about James Bond’s first mission and how he became the great Double-0 Seven," Maibaum recounted. “....However, [Cubby] Broccoli, who has an uncanny appreciation of what audiences want, among his other great talents, liked it but he said the audience wasn’t interested in Bond as an amateur - as a man learning his trade... There was a lot of stuff in it that we regretted losing - the whole business about James Bond as a young naval officer, a wild one that couldn’t be disciplined, who was reminded by his grandfather that the family motto is ‘The World Is Not Enough’. Through a friend of the grandfather, [M,] he gets a chance to redeem himself as a subagent.”