10 Sequels That Stupidly Changed The Main Character

The Original: Hannibal Lecter is certainly the most striking part of The Silence Of The Lambs - chianti, face mask, friend for dinner - but as any trivia-lover who hasn't actually seen the film exhaustedly points out, he's not in that much. The story instead belongs to Clarice Starling's, and the film itself is as bothered with her suffocating fight against underlying oppression as it is extreme gore. She one of the screen's strongest female heroes, made all the more interesting thanks to her ambiguous link to Hannibal.

The Sequel: A follow-up to Silence was in development for so long that Jodie Foster dropped out and had to be replaced by Julianne Moore, although the biggest change from the previous film was the bumping of Lecter up to top billing. He drove the plot this time, with everything circling around him and Ridley Scott taking a lot more joy out of the violence than Jonathan Demme ever dared. Perhaps losing Foster motivated that somewhat, but it seems that Scott (and writer Thomas Harris) just got too caught up in the Hannibal hype.

Hannibal was followed up by prequel Red Dragon, which put the focus back on an FBI agent questioning the doctor (this time the doctor's captor, Will Graham), but that didn't stop Brett Ratner from massively expanding Hannibal's limited role.