Honestly, you should stop fantasizing about James and just let him go. This is truly JJ's role, and it was also tailored to him. In the novel, Nakhon didn't push Phop off the boat. And if the cast hadn't changed, we don't know which scenes would have been added and which we would never have seen. In any case, everything worked out the way it did, and we're seeing the right version, the only one possible at this point.