10 Movie Sequels That Lost The Main Characters

3. Transformers: Age Of Extinction

Who Disappeared? Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf)

When Michael Bay kicked off the Transformers franchise, he focused on human lead Sam Witwicky as the audience's in-point rather than just one of the robots and it worked to the tune of several billion dollars. But then when Transformers: Age Of Extinction came around, he was nowhere to be seen and everyone seemed to be on a gagging order not to mention him.

We eventually found out that he was killed off-screen in a drawn-out sequence in The Last Knight when Laura Haddock's Vivian confirms she is the last surviving Witwiccan heir to Merlin. For Age Of Extinction, he was replaced by Mark Wahlberg as Texan inventor (!!) Cade Yaeger, which is definitely not a real name.

Why He Didn't Return

Initially, LaBeouf was diplomatic about his exit saying he didn't think there was anywhere to take Sam:

"I've learned a great deal from Michael, as a person, as an actor, as a person on set. And it's not that I don't enjoy working with Michael. I love working with Michael. I would do any movie Michael wants to do. I just don't think there's anywhere to take it with Sam."

Then later, when suggesting that he no longer wanted to be famous any more (which came before he started work on his own biopic), he revealed the real reason he didn't go back:

"My hang-up with those films was that they felt irrelevant. They felt dated as f*ck ... You come up on these stories about Easy Rider and Raging Bull and De Niro and Scorsese and Hopper, and you find value in what they do. Meanwhile, you’re chasing energon crystals. It’s very hard to keep doing what you’re doing when you feel like it’s the antithesis of your purpose on this planet."