10 Movie Characters Who Became Total Caricatures In Sequels

What part of "demon ghost of a pedophile who kills you in your sleep" sounds funny?

Freddy Krueger
New Line Cinema

There's been something of a not undue pushback against the reliance of TVtropes as media shorthand in recent years. Which is fair enough, as many phrases (Mary-Sue, for instance) tend to be abused by morons who just want to sound smart by using correct-sounding terminology to "win" twitter arguments.

But some phrases are still very useful, and one of them is Flanderization.

Referring to Ned Flanders from the Simpsons going from the normal person mirror to the insane Homer, who just so happened to also be Christian, to over time becoming the vessel by which the writers can make all of their religion focused humor and nothing else. This trope centers around the slow caricaturing of certain characters over a period of time.

And you'd best believe that this can happen in film as well.

Just like with television, film characters - over the course of several sequels - can devolve into a single character trait that proceeds to completely define them. And we're going to look at the most egregious examples today. These film characters may have started off awesome, but as their film series went on, they became more and more one-dimensional.

10. Drax

Freddy Krueger
Disney

Now, do not misunderstand me, there is no hate for Drax in this dojo. He's easily one of the most entertaining characters in the entire MCU, able to make even the most ardent, anti-Disney Holden Caulfield type laugh from his various antic.

But if you watch the first Guardians Of The Galaxy, you'll notice something a bit different about Drax. Namely that he isn't the comedy relief of every scene. Now granted, he still is for many of them, as pretty much everyone in the GOTG would be the comic relief in any other superhero team. But there's also a notable dignity to him, as well as the baggage about his dead family.

Of course, that fact of his character hasn't been forgotten about, but it seems to have been pushed to the wayside in favor of making him goofier. You could argue that now that Ronan is dead, he's made peace with himself and his family's deaths. But that doesn't change the fact that as he appears more and more, Drax is getting sillier and sillier.

Hopefully now that James Gunn is back in charge of his trilogy, the course will be corrected somewhat next time around.

Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?