5. Sean Connery/George Lazenby - James Bond
A controversial choice, perhaps, given that the second big screen James Bond certainly has his fans, but c'mon... to go from Sean Connery to George Lazenby, presumably in the hope that he would reprise the iconic role another four or five times or whatever? This replacement occurred back at a time when I assume people thought that James Bond was supposed to be the same guy, despite him being played by a different actor - is this the best they could come up with? Which is to say, when, in the opening moments of
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, having just gotten into a brawl on a beach, Lazenby looks right into the camera and deadpans, "This didn't happen to the
other guy," I was horrified. Haha, very meta. In retrospect, perhaps, we can look back at Lazenby's performance and admire its subtleties. And perhaps nobody really had that good a shot when it came to taking over from Sean Connery, but as far as replacements go, I don't think we can mark this one down as successful.