10 Movie Characters That Sequels Totally Forgot

Star today. Extra tomorrow.

By Jack Kingston /

The movie franchise business is a fickle one. One moment you could find yourself at the heart of the movie, the viewpoint character or the hero's love interest, then the sequel comes around and you're almost nowhere to be seen.

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Did they just forget about you? Certainly your presence in the background of a just a couple of scenes feels more like an afterthought than a role that's integral to the plot. Your character is only there briefly out of a sense of obligation from the previous movie rather than anything to do with this one.

Welcome to the world of sequel demotion. These ten characters weren't completely left out of their follow-up movies, but it seems like they may well have been forgotten until the last minute such is their drastic drop in screen time.

Note: All ten characters did make it onto the screen for the sequel, even if you could blink and miss them, so there will be no "put on a bus to Antarctica", Hellboy's Agent Myers-style, here. These are people who fulfilled their contractual obligation to show up in a sequel, the directors just didn't have anything for them to do.

10. Michael Corvin - Underworld: Awakening

In the realm of Underworld's early 2000s gothy reimagining of Romeo And Juliet against the backdrop of an endless vampires versus werewolves war, Michael Corvin was the Juliet.

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Kate Beckinsale's Selene may have been the star of Underworld, but Scott Speedman's Corvin was the one that drove the plot. The first movie was all about Corvin being pursued by both factions and the reveal that his DNA allows him to become a vampire-werewolf hybrid, not to mention prompting Selene's turn from cold-hearted killer to heroic saviour.

Corvin remained at the heart of the sequel, Underworld: Evolution, in which Selene went into hiding and on the run with him and found out about how he was descended from the father of all vamps and lycans. Even seeming death couldn't stop him playing a major role in the final battle.

After being a key player in the first two parts of the series, though, Underworld kind of forgot about Michael. After a largely unrelated prequel for the third film, Beckinsale returned to star as Selene in Underworld: Awakening. Here, however, Corvin's role was reduced to a brief flashback (Speedman only appearing via archive footage) and the sight of him cryogenically frozen.

He died (again) off screen between then and the fifth and final movie, an ignominious end for what was once a lead role.

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