15 Sci-fi Movie Characters Who Deserve Their Own Spin-Off

To see what Nineteen Eighty-Four could have been with a big plot and a full cast of characters, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is the place to go. Released just a year after Nineteen Eighty-Four, the film takes the hyper-surveillance, corporate state, mixes in Kafkan bureaucracy, and wraps it around the grubby, claustrophobic visual style that Gilliam and DP Roger Pratt perfected straight out of the gate.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a white-collar state employee who finds his regular-as-clockwork life turned upside down when he uncovers the authorities mistakenly arrested, tortured, and killed a cobbler while hunting a suspected terrorist. And that “terrorist” is rogue engineer Archibald Tuttle, played by none other than Robert De Niro. Now, De Niro is known for gangster parts like Goodfellas and The Godfather, and intense character studies like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, but every once in a while, he breaks type, and nowhere more so than in Brazil.

Tuttle is an ex-state employee who started illegally freelancing for the adventure, and is basically a live-action Mario, with De Niro all but unrecognisable in the role. He repairs Sam's air con and vanishes, only resurfacing once or twice more throughout Brazil. But this bit part is one of the best, most intriguing, and charismatic performances in a film of great character work, and we are left wanting much more.

Tuttle is still out there following the events of Brazil, and both Gilliam and De Niro are still working, so maybe… just maybe.