Decoy Protagonist / Live-Action Films

Decoy Protagonists in Live-Action Films.

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• 10 Things I Hate About You: The film kicks off with new student, Cameron James, trying to fit in at Padua High School, while also trying to get the attention of popular girl, Bianca Stratford. However in order to do so, he must make a secret deal with Jerk Jock Joey Donner to hire Aussie bad-boy Patrick Verona in dating Bianca's sister, Kat. Once Kat and Patrick hook up, more of the film focuses on them, effectively delegating Cameron and Bianca into a Beta Couple.
• 1917: Blake is set up as the hero - he has the personal stakes of rescuing his brother from the trap set up by the retreating Germans. He's the one chosen for the mission to call off the planned British attack, thanks to his good pathfinding skills, and he picks Schofield as a partner, who conversely gets his hand pierced by barb wire and is nearly crushed to death by a cave-in early on. Despite all the narrative conventions, Blake still dies halfway through, and Schofield is left to finish the mission alone.
• 28 Weeks Later: Don Harris is set up as the hero after he manages to escape from a huge horde of the Infected, but at the cost of having to abandon his wife. After he finds out his wife is alive, however, he kisses her, unaware that she's actually a carrier of the Rage Virus, resulting in him becoming infected and killing his wife. The focus then switches to his 2 children trying to escape from the Infected who are now being led by their infected father.
• In the original Alien movie, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley was not played as the main protagonist. For the first half of the movie, the presumptive lead was Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) AKA Victim #3. In fact, Sigourney Weaver was probably the least famous actor in the cast. John Hurt, the most established actor, dies first in the iconic Chest Burster scene.
• Aziz in An American Carol. He doesn't die, but it is Michael who is the actual hero. Interestingly, Aziz is portrayed as a Villain Protagonist. Michael effectively replaces him, but is portrayed as a well-meaning, dim-witted Action Survivor.
• In Annabelle: Creation, it looks like the movie focuses on Janice. Until she gets possessed by the demon at the end of the first half of the film, becoming the antagonist, and the movie goes on to focus on Linda instead.
• At the Devil's Door initially follows a lonely real estate agent who is tasked with selling a foreclosed home inhabited by an evil demon, which seeks to impregnate a young woman with a spawn. When it's revealed that the agent is infertile and she comes face to face with the entity, she is killed off and her younger (fertile) sister becomes the protagonist when the demon picks her to carry its offspring.
• Bad Black: It seems like Swaaz will be the hero of the story, but he dies at the end of the first scene and is not even mentioned again until the end.
• Bad Day at Black Rock has Jon Hamm at the start of the movie but he doesn't survive long
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: If you didn't already know that the film is an Anthology Film, you'd be forgiven for assuming that Buster Scruggs is the protagonist since his name is in the title and he spends the whole first chapter introducing himself. But he's killed at the end of his chapter, and the film goes through five more chapters with their own casts.
• In Blindness, it might appear at first the movie's main character would be the Japanese man or the Doctor, but after a while, it is made clear that the Doctor's Wife is the real main character of the story.
• In Boar, Ken is the central character for about 45 minutes, and it looks like he is going to be the one to track down and kill the boar. Then the boar kills him, and the focus shifts to Debbie and Bernie, who have been peripheral characters up to this point.
• Paul Taylor in The Blob (1988) is the likable jock dating the heroine Meg while Brian Flagg is a James Dean-like anti-authority dude with more than a few run-ins with the Man. Then Paul becomes the Blob's second victim, and Flagg takes over the Hero role.
• Bordello of Blood seems to start off with a teenager name Caleb going to the titular Bordello since more of story's opening proper starts with him and his friend. His friend is swiftly killed by Lilith and Caleb does notice the strange bite marks on the hooker he's with. Just as he starts to question it though, Lilith arrives and offers a three way which he gladly accepts before the screen goes to black as she lets out a low purr. After which we see his sister Catherine at a police station trying to file a missing report on him and Rafe taking the case to look for him. Not surprising, when Caleb appears again, he's been turned into a vampire and helping Lilith.
• During the first half-hour of The Boys from Brazil's 1978 adaptation, it seems pretty clear that Barry (Steve Guttenberg) is the main character. Then he has a run-in with some Nazis...
• Unless you had seen the poster or trailer for the first Bring It On movie, the opening sequence would lead you to believe that Big Red is the main character. Then, mid-song, the focus shifts to Torrance. Granted, Torrance is there in the first part of the song too, but she's off to the side or in the background. No one dies, but it otherwise fits this trope.
• A political example in spaghetti western A Bullet for the General in Bill Tate. The only American in the movie, he’s set up as our point of view character travelling into a foreign and uncivilised Mexico. By the end of the movie he’s shifted to being both antagonist and foreigner, and the real protagonist, nascent revolutionary bandit Chuncho, kills him as character development.
• In By the Sword, in the first half, we seem to focus more on students Erin Clavelli and Jim Trebor and their romance at the fencing school. About halfway through, they become more background characters and shown as differences in teaching styles between the real main characters, Max Suba and Alexander Villard.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Much like the source material, Charlie is The Hero, being a poor, destitute kid who's luck turns to fortune when he finds the last golden ticket by chance and ultimately wins the competition. However as the film progresses, Willy Wonka emerges more and more as front and center of the story, as his backstory is revealed and he ultimately undergoes Character Development through his encounter with Charlie (Charlie on the other hand doesn't show much further characterization besides Incorruptible Pure Pureness).
• In Chronicle, Andrew is the primary character for the first half of the film. However, the focus shifts to Matt when Andrew starts to abuse his powers and go further off the deep-end.
• Citizen Kane is a double subversion. Even though Kane is the title character, he's actually the person we learn about through multiple third-person perspectives of him, since he died at the beginning. The real protagonist is Jerry Thompson, whose goal throughout the film is to find out what "Rosebud" meant. This is a good example of the fact that the protagonist of a story isn't necessarily the same as being the main character.
• The Company You Keep: The film starts out with Sharon Solarz as she's standing by her kitchen sink, after which she goes to get gas, at which time the FBI arrests her. After that, the film focuses on both Nick Sloan, who's also a fugitive for the same reason as Sharon, and Ben Shepherd, the Intrepid Reporter trying to track down Sloan and figuring out what he's up to.
• Ilios from Lucio Fulci's Conquest is The Chosen One, possesses one of the few bows in the film's world, and is on The Quest. He tends to screw up and gets rescued by his sidekick, Maxz. And then the minions of the Big Bad kill him and Maxz takes up his bow, completing the quest.
• Boris in The Cranes Are Flying. He seems to be the protagonist but dies halfway through the movie.
• In The Crazies (1973), David at first seems to be the protagonist. He escapes to find a cure for the epidemic. He is instead captured and it is clear that he was just a Spanner in the Works, making things harder for the true hero, Colonel Peckhem, who is trying to prevent the epidemic from spreading further.
• Alderson in Cube. The beginning of the movie shows him getting up and beginning to explore his surroundings... only to be unexpectedly sliced into cubes moments later. The movie pulls it again by making Quentin look like the heroic protective leader-type within the group before pulling a Face–Heel Turn. Worth, who initially appears to be an Anti-Hero, eventually steps up to be the true protector of the survivors.
• Roger in Dawn of the Dead (1978). While Roger is one of four protagonists who share the spotlight in the film, his SWAT training and abilities, combined with his marksmanship, put him well ahead of the untrained Stephen and Francine and seem to make him a lock to survive the apocalypse. Also, his character serves as a bridge between Peter, and Stephen and Francine and he de-escalates several arguments between them in the early goings, and he seems to have an even cooler head than Peter in some situations due to his easygoing nature. It's therefore a shock to the audience when Roger snaps during the sequence of moving the trucks and as a result of being bitten, dies early in the film's third act. George A. Romero even stated that one of the reasons he chose Scott H. Reiniger for the part was because he gave the character a calm and cool demeanor, and wanted to surprise the audience by making that character be the first one who lost it, as it was a twist they would not be expecting.
• Viggo Mortensen's character in Daylight, an adventurer who becomes the de-facto leader of the survivors, is killed while trying to look for an exit of the collapsed tunnel, coincidentally just as Sylvester Stallone's character arrives.
• Dead Poets Society: Neil is the focus student for much of the film, but after his death, it becomes apparent that the real protagonist is Todd.
• Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father is a 2008 documentary surrounding the murder of one Dr. Andrew Bagby, the heavy suspicion towards his ex-lover, Shirley Turner, and the posthumous birth of their son, the titular Zachary. The documentary was made specifically with Zachary in mind, intended to be just a private film for him to watch when he got older, and the narration addresses him directly. However, increasing focus is instead placed on the ensuing custody battle between Turner and Andrew's parents, David and Kate Bagby, heavily focusing on dealing with just how badly the legal system had screwed them out of caring for Zachary, instead siding with the woman who was strongly believed to be his father's murderer. The shift in focus is fully cemented when the documentary reveals that Zachary was killed by Turner in a murder-suicide in 2003, meaning the narration towards him was delivered strictly in a spiritual sense.
• A rare third-act POV switch in Death Becomes Her: Bruce Willis's character takes over as the protagonist, leaving the previous main characters played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn sidelined until the movie's coda.
• In Deep Blue Sea, the adventurer/executive played by Samuel L. Jackson gets bitten in half by a shark. And later, Saffron Burrows who got billing as the lead character, is the only character on the cover and posters and looking like the presumed Final Girl... gets eaten. It wasn't written that way, but the test audiences felt she shouldn't survive after causing that much death.
• In Detention, Taylor Fisher, who is basically a more obnoxious version of Casey Becker, is the first character to appear on screen, and if the audience didn't know better, they'd assume she was the main character; especially as she is speaking directly to the audience. Naturally, because, you know, this is a slasher film, she only lasts five minutes.
• The Satanic B-movie The Devil's Rain stars William Shatner, but his character gets possessed and turns into a minion halfway through the film.
• Dial M for Murder: When one of the first two characters introduced is a famous and prolific crime drama writer who also has a close relationship with the innocent victim, it's natural to assume (and the plot leads us to suspect) that his knowledge of criminals and crime scenes will ultimately be pivotal to solving the case. Instead - while he does contribute slightly to the police investigation - it's ultimately the chief inspector who cracks the case and tricks the mastermind into incriminating himself.
  Chief Inspector Hubbard: "They talk about flat-footed policemen.... God save us from gifted amateurs!"
• Dinner In America: The first few scenes focus on Simon and Beth, two misfits who meet while blitzed out of their minds in a drug trial. They're both kicked out on the same day, and she invites him to her home for dinner, promising him a blowjob. This off-kilter Meet Cute gets derailed by some family drama and ends with Simon fleeing, never to see Beth again. The actual female lead, Patty, is introduced thereafter.
• Dollars Trilogy:
  • One may think that Clint Eastwood's Monco is the main protagonist of For a Few Dollars More, just like in A Fistful of Dollars, but it is really more about Colonel Mortimer's personal quest for revenge.
  • While the Man With No Name played a key role in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the film is Tuco's story, not his.
• Dracula (1931) starts with Renfield as the protagonist, arriving at Dracula's Transylvanian castle, but he is soon corrupted into Dracula's henchman, and then the action moves to London, where he meet our new protagonists: Dr. Seward, Harker, and Prof. Van Helsing. This is in contrast to the book, where it's Harker who goes to Dracula's castle at the beginning, and manages to escape, and remains a major character throughout.
  • Horror of Dracula begins the same of the book, with Harker coming to Castle Dracula to discuss the sale of a home in London. Then it's revealed that he's really a vampire hunter sent there to kill Dracula while under the guise of a realtor. However he gets bitten by Dracula's bride and, while he manages to stake her, takes too long to do so to Drac before the sun sets, allowing Dracula to wake who quickly kills and turns him. Van Helsing later comes looking for Harker, finds his undead body and stakes him, effectively taking over as the main protagonist.
  • In The Brides of Dracula, a kind-of sequel to Horror, Marianne looks to be the main character, until about halfway into the film, when Prof. Van Helsing shows up and takes over. Marianne manages to narrowly survive the events of the movie.
  • The 1973 version of Dracula (aka Dan Curtis' Dracula), like most other adaptations, starts with Harker as the protagonist and coming to Castle Dracula. Though unlike Horror of Dracula, he has no ulterior motives and is just an unlucky visitor. He likewise dies in this version (this time by the brides) and comes back as a vampire at the end of the movie. Oddly it's more Arthur Holmwood who's the hero of this movie.
  • In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jonathan Harker appears to be the heroic protagonist for the first quarter until the focus shifts to his fiancee Mina for the rest of the film and Jonathan fades into the background as a supporting character. Mina is even the one who vanquishes Dracula in the end, unlike in the book, where it's Jonathan and Quincy.
  • Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is all over the place with this one. Jonathan is the main character for the first part of the story before being abruptly killed off. Then the focus shifts to Mina, until she summons Van Helsing, who takes over the story and leaves Mina as the Neutral Female.
• Sarge in the Doom movie has a psychotic break and later (for unrelated reasons) turns into a demon. He even lampshades this when he is caught by the demons and shouts out "I'm not supposed to die!", because he assumed he was the main character.
• Dragonheart initially seems to be setting up Prince Einen as the hero, with his mentor Bowen as, well, a mentor. However, once Einen becomes king, he starts acting like an Evil Overlord, and becomes the movie's main villain, with Bowen as the movie's real protagonist.
• Audrey Safranek in Downsizing. Her husband, Paul, is the main protagonist from start to finish, but after she gets cold feet during the downsizing process and later divorces Paul, she is no longer featured and her role as co-protagonist is taken over by Ngoc Lan Tran.
• The first half of Dressed to Kill follows Kate ... until she gets killed.
• Done surprisingly well in Bollywood movie Dum Maaro Dum, where the whole movie focuses on ACP Vishnu Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan)'s attempts to root out the drug traffickers. He suddenly gets killed by a corrupt cop about 3/4th into the movie and supporting character DJ Joki (played by debutante Rana Daggubati) assumes the lead role and ends up foiling the Big Bad's plan.
• Evil Dead:
  • The Evil Dead (1981) clearly sets up Scott to be the likeliest to the survive the story. As the story continues, he's the one who is continuously doing things, trying to save the rest of the group's lives, and eventually decides to go get help, only for the camera's focus to shift to Ash, the character whose defining moment up until this point had been getting trapped under a bookshelf. Scott makes it back...but not in one piece
  • Evil Dead (2013) Reboot sets up David as the group leader and protagonist. He leads the group and takes charge, and seems to be a bit of an expy of Ash in a few ways, with similiar relationships to the other characters. The shift occurs when Mia comes back to life, and David is killed.
• In Exam, White presents himself as a smart and confident Anti-Hero that seems to be able to bring everyone together as he figures out the Exact Words rules that were laid out and the group starts to work together under his leadership. Soon, however, he reveals himself to be the villain of the movie, being a narcissistic psychopath who is even willing to kill others to get the job he wants. Blonde is the closest thing there's to a protagonist by the end of the movie.
• Executive Decision: With Steven Seagal being prominently featured in the trailer, and receiving co-billing alongside his two big co-stars, you would expect that Seagal's character, as usual, is the hero of the film. He dies at the end of the first act.
• The Exorcist: While the film starts off focusing on Merrin and then Chris, it quickly becomes clear that Karras, initially only seen in brief cameos, is the true protagonist the second the film begins to focus on him.
• In Fargo, Jerry Lundegaard seems to be the main character, as would be typical for the Coen brothers' ordinary-schmuck-commits-a-crime-gone-wrong genre, until Marge Gunderson is introduced about a half hour into the film.
• In Fear Street, there's a few examples.
  • 1994 has Heather, a snarky bookstore employee who is played by Stranger Things star Maya Hawke. She also happens to be the final victim of the Skull Mask Killer and doesn't make it past the first few minutes of the film.
  • In 1978 there's a much bigger example. Given the Framing Device that the events are being described by a 'C. Berman' who survived the events depicted, we are led to believe that Cindy Berman, who meets the standard depiction of a Final Girl in horror movies far more than her sister Ziggy, is C. Berman. However, Cindy ends up being hacked to death by the undead version of the Nightwing killer and it is her sister Ziggy (whose real name is revealed to be Christine) who is in fact telling the story.
• The first Feast movie has the characters named "Hero" (Life Expectancy: Pretty Good. Occupation: Kicking Ass) and "Heroine" (Occupation: Wear tanktops, tote shotgun, save day. LIFE EXPECTANCY: Hopefully Better Than The Last Hero) both end up dying, the former a few minutes after being introduced. The second Heroine (Occupation: Career waitress, single mom. Life Expectancy: Expects nothing from life. upgraded to Occupation: Heroine #2. Life Expectancy: Let's hope for the best) is the one to make it through, even after her son is eaten. Needless to say, this movie loves subverting the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality.
• Feeding Frenzy: The film begins by following a prostitute as she travels to a sleazy motel and meets with a john, but she's killed in the opening scene. Since the character is played by Z-movie scream queen Tina Krause, the only actor with any name recognition in the film, it doubles as Dead Star Walking.
• In the 2017 remake of Flatliners, Elliot Page is the biggest name in the main cast, and his character serves as the leader and catalyst of the flatlining experiments. However, she dies halfway through the film, leading the rest of the cast to figure out how to handle the repercussions of the experiments.
• Fog Over Frisco: It comes as a surprise when Arlene, the Femme Fatale thief who seems to be the central character, disappears barely halfway through and eventually turns out to have been murdered. The main characters after that are her stepsister Val and Val's boyfriend Tony, as they first try to find her and then try to figure out who killed her. The fact that the actress who played Arline, Bette Davis became a much bigger star than anyone else in the movie, makes it even more surprising for a latter-day viewer. (Davis followed this film with her Star-Making Role in Of Human Bondage.)
• Footloose: Ren is certainly the instigator of the conflict when he challenges the local reverend's ban on dancing, but by the end, it becomes clear that the reverend is the true protagonist, and the conflict is resolved when he realizes he's in danger of losing everything he holds dear.
• Friday the 13th franchise:
  • The Friday the 13th (2009) Continuity Reboot has a group of teens slaughtered by Jason in the beginning and then introduces another group of teens including obvious Final Girl Jenna. Jenna is the Decoy Protagonist and is abruptly killed off twenty minutes before the end. The actual Final Girl is Whitney, one of the girls from the first group whom Jason took alive.
  • Rob Dier in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, who we were led to believe was going to be the Big Damn Hero, only for him to die a pretty anticlimactic death.
    Rob: He's killing me! He's killing me! Oh God, he's killing me!
• In Fright Night (2011) Ed is actually the focal character for the first 20 minutes, as he's the only one to realize that Jerry is a vampire and does his best to stop him. Then he gets bitten and turned into a vampire by Jerry, and the film immediately switches all its focus on to Charlie who only appeared briefly in the first act. Anyone who's seen the original film will quickly figure the twist out, especially since the characters have the same names that they do in the remake.
• Rare antagonist example in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. A lot of fans familiar with the mythology expected the Doctor to actually be the Rise of Cobra version of Doctor Mindbender. Only at the end, was it revealed that the Doctor is actually Cobra Commander.
• The Godfather: Marlon Brando had star billing and a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Vito Corleone, but he was gunned down less than forty minutes in and spent a good deal of the rest of the film lying in a hospital bed before eventually dying of a heart attack. His son Michael was the hero of the film. Similarly, the second movie initially appears to be about Vito's character, but once again Michael ends up being more the protagonist and Vito eventually drops out of the narrative.
• Though Joseph Brody is given a lot of development early on in Godzilla (2014), his son is The Hero of the story as far as human characters go.
• Godzilla vs. Kong: The film focuses more on Kong than Godzilla, despite the latter's name being first on the title.
• Grave of the Vampire starts off with a vampire attacking a young couple (killing the man, raping the woman). A police detective, after hearing the woman's story, goes to the cemetery. So far, so good. It doesn't end well for him.
• Quentin Tarantino takes this to the point of having an entire decoy cast in the Grindhouse film Death Proof. Half of the movie focuses on a bunch of characters, and they very distinctly focus on one character in particular who just screams Final Girl, only for her and all of the characters introduced to be killed off all at once. After that, the rest of the movie focuses on a completely different bunch of characters in a completely different area and filmed in a completely different style. It was like watching a sequel to the movie in the middle of the first one!
• The Halloween franchise.
  • Although Jamie is clearly the main protagonist in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, we're led to believe that Rachel will once again be at her side for the duration. She's one of the earliest victims in the film. Then, the annoying girl who you'd expect to die first (Tina) ends up outliving her friends (bar Jamie).
  • Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers: Jamie herself. She is killed very early on in the movie and the focus shifts to Laurie's adoptive family, as well as Laurie's onetime babysitting charge Tommy Doyle.
  • Laurie Strode in Halloween: Resurrection. After being the main protagonist in 3 films, she's the first victim in the final outing.
  • In Halloween (2018) The first half of the film focuses on Aaron Korey and Dana Haines, a pair of true crime podcasters investigating Michael's killing spree in the original, just as much as Laurie Strode and her granddaughter Allison. Then Michael murders them both in a gas station almost immediately after he breaks out to reclaim his mask, and the focus shifts entirely to Laurie and Allison.
• The Hidden Fortress has Tahei and Matashichi as the protagonists of the film, and while they continually drive the film, the focus is on General Makabe and Princess Yuki.
• Hostel primarily focuses on Josh, the nice, shy, virginal guy for most the film before killing him and revealing Paxton, who'd be among the first to die in most horror movies, as the lead and survivor. The second movie does this for Paxton, setting him up to be the protagonist and quite possibly trying to take down the organization after what he suffered in the first movie. Instead, he gets his head chopped off five minutes in.
• In the 1970 Spanish slasher film The House that Screamed, Teresa is the new girl at a boarding school where there are some strange things going on, including girls mysteriously disappearing. Teresa has all the hallmarks of a Final Girl (despite the movie well predating the films that would be the Trope Codifiers of the concept). But about two-thirds of the way through the movie, she is murdered, and the focus shifts to Irene, who had been a villain up to that point. She doesn't survive, either.
• In House of Wax (2005) Wade looks like a prominent character, judging by his status as Carly's boyfriend and being played by Jared Padalecki. But as it turns out, he's the first to die.
• The opening scene of The Hurt Locker focuses on Thompson, played by Guy Pearce, who seems to be the hero until he dies and gets replaced with the real main character.
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus starts with Anton as the protagonist at the film's beginning. Then it's Tony in the middle of the film. The ending makes it clear that the film's protagonist all along was Parnassus himself.
• Interstellar: The off-screen protagonist Mr. Mann (in that he's the focus of their quest) ends up being the antagonist leaving the crew to shift direction.
• Irreconcilable Differences: Casey kicks off the plot by suing her parents, but she's a side character for most of the movie. Most of the focus is on her parents, especially her father.
• Jesus of Montreal starts off with a Show Within a Show (dealing with Jesus, naturally), and we're set up to believe Pascal, the star of the play, whom everyone praises, will be the main character. Then, backstage, Pascal sees Daniel, says, "There's a real actor,", goes to Daniel, and embraces him. Daniel becomes the focus of the story from then on.
• A superhero appears at the beginning of Kick-Ass, prepared to make the dive of a skyscraper. He's hailed by a bad-ass soundtrack and the voice-over about superheroes. He dies from the fall. And the movie moves on. Turns out he was just some random crazy person.
• The Magnificent Seven (2016): Matthew Cullen is a decoy Mauve Shirt; he's introduced as the most good-looking and courageous of the villagers, who intends to find the means to drive off Corrupt Corporate Executive Bartholomew Bogue. He winds up being the first person killed in the film (by Bogue himself) and his wife Emma takes up the task of recruiting the Seven.
• The slasher flick/cop movie Maniac Cop 2 focuses largely on the two survivors of the previous film, who get killed before the film is halfway through.
  • This also happened in the original Maniac Cop. The film largely focuses on Detective Frank McRae, before Cordell kills him two-thirds in and it switches focus towards the aforementioned survivors.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • The Avengers (2012) kicks off with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D experimenting on the Tesseract, only for Loki to emerge from the portal and wreck havoc on S.H.I.E.L.D's New Mexico base. Loki quickly overpowers the agents and brainwashes a good chunk of them (including Clint Barton and Dr. Erik Selvig), forcing Fury to recruit the Avengers as a means to stop him.
  • Avengers: Infinity War splits its focus between nearly every hero ever to have appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—but most of the focus in the first half of the film is, somewhat unexpectedly, on the second-in-command of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora. Due to her personal connection to the Big Bad, Thanos, Gamora pulls much of the film's focus until a little over halfway through, when Thanos is forced to sacrifice her in order to obtain his fourth Infinity Stone. By the end of the film, it's clear who the real protagonist is: Thanos himself.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 makes a case that Star-Lord is not the true central character of the trilogy, despite the first two movies focusing heavily on him — Rocket takes that role, with each film representing a step on his journey, culminating in him becoming Captain of the Guardians of the Galaxy. This is reinforced by a line spoken by Lylla:
    Lylla: This story has been yours all along. You just didn't know it.
    • It's also worth noting that Rocket is the only one of the original members Guardians of the Galaxy that survived in Infinity War and became a member of the Avengers, further establishing that everything regarding the Guardians is his story, not Star-Lord's.
• Mindhunters: Christian Slater's character gets killed first.
• The first character to appear onscreen in Mr. Jones (2019) is George Orwell, but he's actually a minor supporting character and only interacts a couple of times with the true protagonist, Gareth Jones. Of course, that's not much a surprise considering the title (the movie is named Mr Jones, not Mr Orwell)...
• My Cousin Vinny starts with Stan and Bill, showing how they got arrested for murder and armed robbery. Once Vinny and Lisa show up, Stan and Bill are largely pushed to the background.
• Marilyn Monroe gets top billing in Niagara but not only is she the villain, she dies halfway through!
• Happens in a few of A Nightmare on Elm Street films:
  • In the first movie we're introduced to Freddy through Tina Grey's dreams, hearing about Tina's fears in regards to the nightmares, and generally being led to believe that this movie will be about Tina's escape from Freddy. And then Tina becomes Freddy's very first victim, and focus soon shifts to Nancy, the true main character of the film.
  • Part four starts out focusing on Kristen, the protagonist of the previous film, but she is rather quickly killed off and focus completely shifts to her schoolmate Alice. In her debut film, the focus quickly shifts to Nancy, The Hero of the first film. While Nancy does get killed off, it happens at the end of the movie.
  • In Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare the apparent main character confronts Freddy, telling him that he knows that he's his son. He promptly learns, the hard way, that Freddy had a daughter.
  • The 2010 remake employs a use of this trope. Kris is actually the second victim but most of the first twenty minutes focus on her and the actual heroine, though already introduced only becomes important after Kris is killed. This works significantly less well considering the real heroine Nancy shares the same name as the original's heroine.
• No Country for Old Men: Llewelyn Moss gets the attention for the first 2/3rds of the film, then is unceremoniously Killed Offscreen by a group of Mexican bounty hunters who had been treated as little more than cannon fodder previously. Sheriff Bell is the real protagonist and delivers both the opening and closing monologues. The story is about an old man not adapting to the reality of the brutal environment he works in.
• Northwest Passage sets up Towne and Marriner to be the main characters. However, the film actually focuses on Major Rogers, played by Spencer Tracy.
• Contrary to what the advertising for Now You See Me suggests, the Four Horsemen aren't the leads, Agent Dylan Rhodes is, though they (and Thaddeus Bradley, for that matter) are Deuteragonists. Taken to a new level when you learn that Dylan is the fifth Horseman.
• The One starts showing Lawless, played by Jet Li. Naturally, people assume that he's either the hero or the villain, as the trailers claimed that Jet Li is Acting for Two. Lawless is killed by the real villain Yulaw (played by Jet Li) a few minutes into the film, the latest in the long line of doubles he's already killed. The actual protagonist is Gabe Law (also played by Jet Li), the last of said doubles and final one Yulaw needs to kill to obtain effective godhood.
• In One Day, given that the movie, at first, appears to focus primarily on Emma, she appears to be the protagonist. However, with about fifteen minutes of the film to go, she gets hit by a truck and dies, completely transferring the focus to Dexter.
• Detectives Danson and Highsmith in The Other Guys are typical Cowboy Cops and look like they’ll be starring in a cheesy action film, until the focus shifts to Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, the titular Other Guys and they die jumping off a building.
• In Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Jesse is the protagonist at first. The movie opens with him getting a camcorder for his high school graduation present. After he fully gets possessed by the demon, his best friend Hector takes over the protagonist role, and the second half of the film shows him trying to save Jesse from the covenant of witches that 'marked' and chose him.
• In highly realistic Bollywood film Parinda, Karan is the hero who is our introduction into the Crapsack World of Mumbai gangland where his brother is a Mook for the Big Bad. Then, Karan and his wife get murdered brutally and his brother performs a Heel–Face Turn and avenges his death.
• A Perfect Getaway. The seeming main characters are not only not the protagonists, but they also turn out to be the villains. The actual protagonists only show up twenty to thirty minutes into the film.
• In the 2006 remake of The Pink Panther, Officer Jacques Clouseau is basically promoted to serve as this to investigate the high-profile murder of French football coach Yves Gluant. As Chief Inspector Dreyfus doesn’t want to risk becoming a scapegoat if he fails to solve the case or let someone else take credit for solving it, he gives the task to the specifically-promoted Clouseau on the grounds that Clouseau is an incompetent who can publicly get nowhere while Dreyfus assembles a team to tackle the Gluant case himself in a more discreet fashion.
• The Place Beyond the Pines: The film follows Luke for the first hour of the film, until he's killed. The film then follows the police officer who kills him and then Luke's son fifteen years later. There is no real main character.
• The Trope Codifier (if not the Trope Maker) and easily the most famous example is Psycho. Marion Crane is set up as the main character through the first half of the film. Then she takes a shower. She's the reason Hitchcock asked for a "no late admission" policy, as he thought that if people entered the theater late and never saw the star actress Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated. Leigh's agent didn't want her to take the role because of how quickly the screen time ended. Leigh's response was "Ah, but who are they talking about the rest of the film?"
• In Purgatory, it looks like Blackjack and his gang of outlaws are going to be the Villain Protagonists of the movie, and the early scenes focus on them exclusively. However, this all changes once they arrive in Refuge.
• A Quiet Place: The film's marketing strongly emphasized the family patriarch Lee Abbott as the hero of the film, especially given the fact that he is played by the director. Around three quarters in, however, he takes a mortal wound from a monster and sacrifices himself to draw it away from his teenage daughter Regan; it is she who is the true hero of the story, and is the one who figures out how to defeat the monsters.
• Razorback sets up Beth Winters as the main character. At the end of the first act, however, she is killed by the titular monster, then the focus is switched to her husband Carl who is searching for her.
• Watch the first hour of The Return (2003), and it's pretty clear that Ivan is the main character. Watch the final 20 minutes, and it's pretty clear that Andrei has taken over the role. According to Word of God, Andrei was the main character for the entire movie but was metaphorically "hidden in the shadows" up until that point.
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Despite James Franco getting top billing for the movie, the chimpanzee, Caesar, is the true hero of the story, as he had been in the original series' Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. By Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Andy Serkis, who does the motion capture for Caesar, got top billing.
• Runaway Jury starts off following a man who is killed in an event that drives the rest of the plot.
• Saving Private Ryan sets up The Squad in the opening battle at Omaha by cutting between the faces of several men in the landing boat, with Captain Miller shouting out orders and a Rousing Speech. Then to show this isn't one of your dad's classic war films, all of these men save Miller either are immediately riddled with bullets when the door goes down, or they jump over the side and drown because their gear weighs them down. The real squad make appearances during the battle, trying to stay alive - they only get folded together after the battle.
• The horror movie Scarecrow 2 started off with an older farmer telling a flashback story about how the titular monster murdered his father when he was a kid to a reporter. It sets up as if he's (one of) the main protagonist(s), but he's chopped up by the scarecrow to the point of Ludicrous Gibs while handcuffed to a hospital bed within 20 minutes of the opening credits.
• Scream:
  • In another Wes Craven film, the trailer for the first Scream movie had audiences assuming that Drew Barrymore's character Casey was a main character. She's killed in the first ten minutes.
  • Played with in Scream 4. Jill is set up as an Expy of her cousin Sidney, her actions mirroring those of Sidney in the first film, and everything seems to be on the way for her to become the Final Girl. Turns out she's the killer.
• Seven Samurai first focuses on a bunch of peasants before shifting to the samurai. The peasants continue to play an important part, including in fighting and defeating the bandits (and the ones who go out in search of samurai at the beginning are shown to have stories of their own, in particular, Rikichi), and Kambei at the end of the movies states that the peasants are the real winners.
• Silver Tongues opens with Rachel and Alex, a newly married and already fraying young couple on their tense honeymoon. A few minutes in they run into a couple in their 40s and have dinner with them. The older couple turn out to be con artists who trick Rachel and Alex into believing they are swingers, manipulate the frustrations the younger couple have and leave the newlyweds with a seemingly broken marriage. The plot then sticks with the con artists as they run into other people - Rachel and Alex are never seen or mentioned again after the first act.
• In Southland Tales, the final minutes reveal that the character of Boxer Santaros was the false messiah - the primer being the Taverner brothers.
• The President's daughter from Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, whose prologue made the film look like if it was actually about her and her adventures at an amusement park full of wacky CGI rides.
• In Star Trek Into Darkness, it's actually Spock who defeats Khan, not Kirk. The movie focuses on Spock's growth as a character through Kirk's actions. Unlike most cases though, Kirk doesn't stay dead.
• Star Wars:
  • With A New Hope, Luke Skywalker doesn't appear until around 20 minutes in. C-3PO and R2-D2 are the focus of the movie until then.
  • The Phantom Menace has Qui-Gon Jinn as the character who the viewers spend the most time with and is one of the most proactive characters in the film, coordinating the rescue and escape from Naboo, and bringing Anakin Skywalker to Coruscant with them, intent on training him. However he's killed by Darth Maul in the climax, and his apprentice Obi-Wan (from the Original Trilogy) steps up both to defeat Maul and take Anakin under his wing. The decoy is remarkably effective for viewers who didn't watch the original trilogy first.
  • Revenge of the Sith is all about Anakin slowly slipping into the Dark Side and becoming Darth Vader, making Obi-Wan effectively the film's true and final protagonist.
  • In The Force Awakens, Finn is made out to be the de facto hero in trailers and marketing, what with him wielding Anakin's lightsaber and all. While he does get a lot of focus, he ultimately takes on the role of the Deuteragonist, with Rey who is ultimately the Hero. While Finn does use the lightsaber, he's pretty clumsy with it and is nearly killed by Kylo Ren when they duel at the climax of the film, with Rey ultimately felling him. In fact, Maz gave the lightsaber to Finn so he could give it to Rey, as she initially rejected it after a series of terrifying visions which implied that becoming a Jedi was her destiny. It's entirely possible that Finn is Force-sensitive like the marketing implies, though it's never explicitly stated in the film itself that he is.
• Jack Torrance is tasked as the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, and brings his family with him. However, he undergoes Sanity Slippage when the hotel slowly corrupts him, and while he still establishes himself as the central character, his son, Danny, becomes The Hero who uses his "Shining" powers to warn himself and his mother of Jack's (and the Hotel's) threat. And sure enough, Danny is the one who leads his father to his death by tricking him in the maze and successfully escaping with his mother.
• Spring Breakers: Faith receives the most individual characterization of the four main characters in the first half of the film, but then she decides to leave and exits the film. The focus then shifts to Alien.
• Jim Ogilvie in the first of The Stepfather films. He spends most of the film looking for his sister's killer and in the end, when he does finally find the stepfather, he's knifed in the stomach before he can even pull his gun out.
• At the end of Sucker Punch, the protagonist Baby Doll has a revelation that the movie isn't actually her story at all, but actually Sweet Pea's. She sacrifices her own freedom for Sweet Pea once she realizes she was only ever meant to be the catalyst for Sweet Pea's escape from the mental asylum. Unless you view the movie as a nested series of traumatic dissociation within Baby Doll's own mind, in which case all the other girls we see in the Burlesque and High Fantasy scenes are fractured aspects of her consciousness, which kinda changes the entire meaning of the film.
• The Suicide Squad starts with the newest iteration of Task Force X, which features a handful of returning characters from the 2016 film such as Captain Boomerang and Harley Quinn, on their way to storm an island nation. Savant in particular is clearly singled out as the viewpoint character. Most of them get killed before the opening credits start, including Savant dying when he tries to run away, with those who remain are left thinking the mission might be completely shot... then Waller cuts communication with the survivors, and it is revealed that she withheld some critical information from them: they were decoys for a second team that she had far more faith in to actually accomplish the mission. The rest of the film follows the exploits of said group, and Harley, the sole survivor from the first group.
• In S.W.A.T. (2003), Brian Gamble is a Cowboy Cop who doesn't play by the rules and is played by Jeremy Renner, but he is kicked off the force after bungling a hostage situation and becomes the Big Bad, while his by-the-book partner becomes the true hero.
• Terminator:
  • The Terminator:
    • Kyle Reese serves this role for this film and the entire franchise. He is The Hero of the first film, but Sarah is the true protagonist, and Reese dies before Sarah destroys the Terminator in the climax.
    • In the first act, Lt. Ed Traxler of the LAPD seemingly fulfills the role of the tritagonist of the film as the police detective investigating the killings made by the Terminator and trying to warn Sarah for her own protection (the deleted scenes that featured mostly his scenes further helps establishing him to be this). However, after bringing in Sarah and Kyle to the station, his arc ends with the Terminator massacring everyone in the police station and fatally wounding Traxler as Sarah and Kyle escape.
  • Terminator: Dark Fate: John friggin' Connor ends up being this, not just for the film but for the overall future war; in that another T-800 shoots him dead only three years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
• Things Change uses this briefly: the opening credits are mandolin music, and the film opens on a man playing the mandolin. He adjusts the tune, tries it some more, trades the mandolin for another mandolin, plays another tune, and brings it to a cash register to purchase. Along the way, he passes by two mobsters who are spying on the real protagonist. The mandolin player is never seen again.
• A deleted scene from This is Spın̈al Tap has bassist Derek Smalls showing a clip from a cheap Italian action film he acted in. He gets an impressive amount of screen time, playing the sniper in an extended assassination set-up. In the end, he is unceremoniously shot, and he must admit that his killer is the real protagonist.
• Threads: It initially appears that Jimmy and Ruth are going to be the co-protagonists of this British nuclear war film. However, though Ruth survives until the last few minutes (after which the focus shifts to her daughter, Jane) Jimmy disappears from the story after the nuclear attack sequences and is presumed to have died in the blast, and subsequent firestorm, from the bomb which hit Sheffield. ^note Whether he did or not is unknown. All we know is that Ruth believes him to be dead.
• In the Brazilian film The Trace We Leave Behind, João is set up as the main character. At least until about three fourths in, when he's killed off and his wife takes over as the main character.
• Train to Busan: Seok-Woo and his daughter Su-an share the role as The Protagonist, though Seok-Woo gets a lot more focus by comparison — especially as he tries to redeem himself by becoming a better father to the latter. However, he ultimately sacrifices himself by turning into a zombie at the film's climax, leaving Su-an as one of the very few survivors, alongside Seong-kyeong and her unborn child.
• Tucker & Dale vs. Evil initially looks like it's going to be a Hillbilly Horrors movie told from the perspectives of a group of preppy college kids who get on the wrong side of a pair of sinister hillbillies while partying in West Virginia. It then rewinds the first scene to show us how it happened from the point-of-view of the hillbillies, revealing them to be the titular Tucker and Dale, a pair of well-meaning and friendly types merely intending to fix up a dilapidated old shack to use as a holiday home. We then follow the movie from their perspective as the college kids, now revealed to be mostly a bunch of smug jerks still labouring under the mistaken impression that they actually are facing Hillbilly Horrors, end up killing themselves in all sorts of creative ways as a result.
• "Safe Haven" from the anthology V/H/S/2 seems to follow the producer of the film crew until he is killed by the Apocalypse Cult early on, at which point Adam becomes the new POV.
• Vamp!: AJ starts as the lead, with Keith as his sidekick. At the end of the first act, AJ gets bitten by a vampire, and Keith takes the lead as the hero.
• The Vanishing (2018) sets Gerard Butler's character James up as the film's most likable and sympathetic character. He is driven mad by the events of the film and dies at the end having murdered one of the other protagonists.
• in Victim (1961), Boy Barrett seems to be the hero of the story but after his suicide the focus shifts to barrister Farr.
• Lucius Hunt is clearly the protagonist of The Village (2004), right up until he is stabbed viciously and his blind girlfriend Ivy must make the journey to rescue him that takes up the rest of the film. Notably, this is the only plot twist in the film that isn't telegraphed very early on and actually feels twisty as a result.
• What Have You Done to Solange? has Elizabeth as the Final Girl until she gets killed viciously midway through the movie. An especially well-done example of the trope as it comes out of nowhere.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past:
  • Even though Wolverine Publicity is in full effect, Charles is the true protagonist of the film. Wolverine even gets taken out before the climax.
  • Mystique is presented as a villain throughout the movie, but her motivations (to kill the man who tortured and murdered her friends) are heroic, and she's the one who saves the day and stops Magneto at the end.

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