12 Movie Franchises That Ruined Their Iconic Character

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Leatherface)

Leatherface is a quintessential horror icon and with damn good reason: Tobe Hooper's original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre terrified millions with its chainsaw-wielding cannibal antagonist who wore a face made of human skin.

Unfortunately the various sequels, spin-offs and prequels largely jettisoned that primal horror in favour of more outlandish narrative detours.

The very first sequel wasted no time venturing into camp territory, before 1994's fourth film re-imagined Leatherface as a transvestite - with a distinct air of transphobia in the bargain - and a 2003 remake needlessly revealed his origins while kick-starting a trend of attempting to humanise him.

This carried through to 2013's atrocious Texas Chainsaw, which hilariously re-imagined Leatherface as an anti-hero, and last year's largely-unseen prequel Leatherface, which once again tinkered with the antagonist's origin story.

The savage ambiguity is what made Leatherface so utterly horrifying in the first place, but in the pursuit of a nuanced mythos, the series has given audiences too much to stew on, while the attempts to force the viewer to empathise with him are just absurd.