10 Sequels That Stupidly Changed The Main Character

The Original: The Muppets is just brilliant. Yes, it's a near pitch-perfect legacy-quel, but taking away love for part-mop part-puppets it's still one of the greatest musicals of the past decade and an alternatively hilarious and affecting film. A critic recently used it as an example of why Rotten Tomatoes is unreliable, to which I say "Mahna Mahna!" What makes it so universal is its accessible characters; Muppet fans Gary (Jason Segel) and Walter (Walter the Muppet) are the purest audience avatars imaginable.

The Sequel: Almost immediately Jason Segel chose to leave the franchise, deciding that after so successfully bringing it back from the brink his job was done, although he's not the character I'm talking about.

The Muppets was all about fanboy Walter becoming a proper member of the gang, but when we got to Muppets Most Wanted, set mere seconds after the original, he was already an established part and focus had shifted to new villains, Kermit and Sam the Eagle. All fair enough, but it snapped the franchise back to the murk it had been in before James Bobin's reboot; the film wasn't up to much and talk of a third is muted.

This is a common problem for long running franchises with eclectic casts; once-leads will end up a background part of the ensemble after a while for no clear reason (see Jessie in Toy Story 3).