Movies Where The Hero Isn't Who You Thought It Would Be

In the original "Star Trek" TV series, it was easy to tell who were the heroes and who were the background characters. The main characters were clearly Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), while the extras conveniently wore the color red.

When it comes to some films, however, the line between "main character" and "supporting character" isn't as clear-cut. In fact, certain movies can be quite misleading if you're trying to guess who the protagonist is. It turns out that the hero isn't always the first character you see, nor are they always the person featured most prominently in the trailers. Sometimes filmmakers can spend half the movie following a character who isn't even the protagonist.

How do filmmakers fool their audience about something as fundamental as the main character? One way to do this is to deliberately present a fake protagonist so they can rip the rug out from underneath the viewers when that character dies. Alternatively, they can have the true hero slowly emerge over the course of the movie, even as the audience realizes it was this character's story all along. For each of the films below, the hero is actually not who you thought it would be.

Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" is a classic example of a movie that completely changes halfway – and the hero of the movie changes with it. Needless to say, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is not the heroine; she dies halfway through the movie in the unforgettable shower scene. Although Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) doesn't appear until almost one-quarter of the film's runtime has passed, he is actually central to the story. He is, after all, the titular "psycho."

Although Bates is a cold-blooded killer, the movie tricks us into empathizing with him. When Marion first meets him, he just seems like a lonely young man who doesn't want to disappoint his mother. Hitchcock does this on purpose: he explained in an interview with Francois Truffaut (via Writing for Film), "I was directing the viewers. You might say I was playing them, like an organ."

Even after we see Bates commit murder, some of that empathy still remains. After all, we still care about Marion even though she steals $40,000, so Hitchcock challenges us to consider: why can't we also see the humanity in Norman? We feel his panic as he hurries to get rid of the evidence, his discomfort when Arbogast (Martin Balsam) interrogates him. The movie even tricks viewers into thinking that maybe Norman is a victim himself, pushed to the brink by his controlling mother. In short, "Psycho" is a horror movie from the perspective of the killer, which makes Norman Bates the indisputable protagonist.

Fans know right away that "Death Proof" is a horror movie, so naturally they expect a high body count. But we suspect most viewers figure at least one character will make it out alive, especially since the movie spends so long developing Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito). Arlene is not quite like the other girls: she's a bit of an outcast, and the first to notice that something is horribly wrong. In other words, Arlene pretty much screams "Final Girl," and in fact director Quentin Tarantino deliberately wrote her that way. 

"I've been giving subconscious hints that she's gonna be okay, which to me makes it all the more exciting [when she dies]," Tarantino told Sight and Sound (via the BFI). Rather than picking off the girls one by one, the villain, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), runs them over with his car, killing all of them at once in a jarring twist. Once Arlene dies, Tarantino told Sight and Sound, viewers will "know now that [the director is] not to be trusted."

After a time skip, the movie picks up with an entirely new cast, another group of girls targeted by Stuntman Mike. This time, however, Stuntman Mike gets his just desserts — not at the hands of the Final Girl, but by three women working together. This ending deconstructs the Final Girl trope and asks why only one girl needs to survive in a horror movie. These three girls do more than just survive – they get things done.

At first it seems obvious that Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) is the hero of "1917." After all, he is the soldier summoned by the general (Colin Firth) for a mission, and it is Blake's brother who will die if he fails this mission. In fact, Blake is the first one we see in the opening shot, so naturally we assume he's the main character. Meanwhile, Schofield (George MacKay) seems more like a sidekick, the reluctant partner whom Blake chooses to accompany him on his mission.

But then, in a jarring plot twist, Blake is mortally wounded. As Blake lies dying, he makes Schofield promise to finish the job in his place. The torch passes to Schofield, who we realize was actually the protagonist all along. Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns explained to Collider, "In a way, after Blake dies, [Schofield] takes Blake on. Blake becomes a part of him." She added, "So when he goes through all that second half of the film, he's more like Blake than ever before." Schofield becomes more daring, more willing to risk everything to fulfill his friend's dying wish. It is Schofield, not Blake, who undergoes the most dramatic transformation.

Observant viewers will notice that this is foreshadowed right from the opening scene. Blake may be the first one viewers see, but once the shot widens to include Schofield, you'll notice that Schofield takes up most of the foreground — a hint that this was always his story.

Anybody can tell you who the villain is in "No Country for Old Men." It's Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), the ruthless hitman with an off-putting haircut. But who's the hero of the film? You would think it's Llewlyn (Josh Brolin), since most of the movie follows Llewlyn after he makes the stupid decision to steal a suitcase full of money. It doesn't hurt that Llewlyn looks like the hero of a traditional Western, complete with a Southern drawl and a cowboy hat. However, "No Country for Old Men" is anything but a traditional Western.

Three-quarters of the way into the movie, Llewlyn gets killed, and it's not even the villain who kills him. Instead, he's gunned down by some random background characters. There's no final showdown for Llewlyn, no dying words — just a brutal, senseless death. By this point, most viewers are probably wondering why the movie is still going if Llewlyn is dead. That's because the movie is actually about Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The story only truly ends after the Sheriff gives up trying to catch the killer and retires, as he finally begins to accept that he can't fix the whole world.

This twist doesn't come completely out of left field. Those who are paying attention will notice that Bell is actually narrating the opening scene, so he is actually the first character the audience meets, and he's the last character they see before the end credits.

Despite what the film's title suggests, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) is not the star of Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby," not least because he dies before the movie is over. Although many of DiCaprio's most iconic roles are as a leading man, here he takes a backseat to Tobey Maguire, who plays the real hero of the film: Gatsby's neighbor Nick Carraway. Nick may be a witness to Gatsby's story, but he has a story arc of his own, and arguably that narrative is more important.

For much of the film, Gatsby is a bit of an enigma to Nick. The carefully-constructed persona that he displays at parties is fake; he fabricates a glamorous history for himself. At first it's hard to tell what makes Gatsby tick, which makes him a compelling supporting character but not very much of a protagonist.

On the other hand, "The Great Gatsby" gives us an intimate look inside Nick's head. The film explores his reactions to the rumors circulating about the other characters and his disillusionment with the wealthy crowd that Gatsby wants so desperately to accept him. Much like "Fargo," it's the most sensible and down-to-earth character who anchors us in the story, even as the rest of the cast is entangled in a mad scramble for money and power.

Normally it's a pretty safe assumption that the star of a movie is going to return in any potential sequels. Not so for "G.I. Joe." When "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," came out, fans understandably thought that the hero would be Duke (Channing Tatum), since he was the protagonist of the first film. Instead, Duke is killed off in the first 10 minutes, and Dwayne Johnson's Roadblock steps up to take the character's place.

Tatum told Vanity Fair that he had no regrets about leaving the franchise and didn't enjoy working on the first movie, saying, "The first one, I passed on seven times." In an interview with Howard Stern, Tatum explained that he'd loved G.I. Joe as a kid and wouldn't have minded portraying the character — until he saw the movie's script. "The script wasn't any good," he said, adding that he only wanted to participate in a film that did the character justice. In any event, Tatum felt it would have been much cooler to play Snake Eyes, but the studio insisted that he play Duke.

Of course, it didn't really matter what Tatum wanted to do, because he had signed a three-picture deal with Paramount and was contractually obligated to star in "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra." According to Tatum, the studio basically told him, "You're doing this, or we're gonna sue you." Luckily, Tatum managed to convince Paramount to kill off his character at the beginning of the sequel, letting Roadblock take over.