The darkest scene from the James Bond franchise was a perfect addition to the series, but it should’ve been included in a different movie. There are plenty of grim, violent, unsettling sequences in the Bond films, from 007 being tortured on a seatless chair in Casino Royale to 007 kicking a car full of people over the edge of a cliff in For Your Eyes Only. Arguably the darkest Bond film of all is Licence to Kill. It’s the only Bond movie to be rated 15 in the UK, and it proved to be so controversial that it cost Timothy Dalton the role of 007.
Licence to Kill is a straightforward revenge thriller in which Bond seeks vengeance against drug lord Franz Sanchez for maiming his friend Felix Leiter and killing Leiter’s wife. Licence to Kill is one of the few Bond movies to acknowledge past events from the canon. Bond is so determined to avenge Leiter and his bride because he knows what it’s like when a marriage is tragically cut short; his own wife, Tracy Bond, was killed in a drive-by shooting on the way to their honeymoon in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Licence to Kill is a great Bond film, but its most shocking scene should’ve been in a different entry.
Licence To Kill’s Dark Shark Scene Was In A Different Bond Story
The darkest scene in Licence to Kill sees Leiter being mauled by a shark. Sanchez and his crew bring Leiter to an aquarium and lower him into a tank containing a tiger shark. The shark doesn’t kill him, but it does seriously injure him in what is easily the Bond franchise’s most gruesome moment. Licence to Kill isn’t based on any particular Bond novel – it’s a mostly original story – but it does borrow elements from the short story “The Hildebrand Rarity” and the novel version of Live and Let Die. The shark attack sequence was taken from Live and Let Die.
In the book version of Live and Let Die, Leiter loses an arm and a leg in a shark attack. Bond swims through shark-infested waters to get to the villainous Mr. Big’s island, and in the grand finale, Mr. Big is eaten alive in a feeding frenzy by all the sharks and barracuda in the area. Since the sharks were left out of the movie adaptation of Live and Let Die, they were included in Licence to Kill – but they arguably should’ve been kept in Live and Let Die.
How Keeping The Shark Scene In Live and Let Die Would Change Bond
If Leiter was ravaged by sharks and Mr. Big was eaten by them in the movie adaptation of Live and Let Die, then the Roger Moore era of the James Bond franchise would’ve been instantly established as less campy. Similarly, if the shark attack sequence was left out of Licence to Kill, then the Dalton era would’ve been less dark and gory, which would’ve mitigated the controversy. Between the alligator-hopping and the exploding villain, Moore’s Live and Let Die movie could’ve used a bit of darkness, while Licence to Kill was a bit too dark.
