10 Movie Sequels That Lost The Main Characters

4. xXx: State Of The Union

Who Disappeared? Xander Cage (Vin Diesel)

As well as initially turning his back on Dom Toretto (before going back on it), Vin Diesel also turned his back on another of his franchises - xXx - handing over main duties to Ice Cube, who played the delightfully named Darius Stone.

He was introduced as a bad-ass replacement to Xander Cage, who was killed off-screen, who was imprisoned for Not Playing By The Rules and whose approach to life appeared to be to growl at everything possible.

Why He Didn't Return

Both this and the Fast & Furious bail happened around the same time and both were partly influenced by The Chronicles Of Riddick. That awful film was what Diesel chose to do as his one sequel of the period and he apparently dropped out of State Of The Union - according to Variety at least - because he had no desire to shoot two sequels in a row.

So in the end, Cage was killed off in a short film called The Final Chapter: The Death of Xander Cage that was included as a DVD Extra and starred Diesel's stunt double, spliced into archive footage. That was supposed to offer closure, but they all just ignored it to bring Diesel back for the third xXx movie anyway.