Leatherface (remake)

Leatherface (real name: Thomas Brown Hewitt) is the main villain of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remake timeline.

He first appears in the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003. Its success greenlit a prequel, released in 2006, which delved into the origins of Leatherface and of his family.

Background
In this continuity, Leatherface's real name is Thomas Brown Hewitt; his mother Sloane dies giving birth to him on August 7, 1939 at the Blair Meat Co., a slaughterhouse where she works, and her uncaring boss leaves the infant to die in a dumpster. Luda Mae Hewitt finds him and takes him home to raise him.

Leatherface suffers from a facial disfigurement and a skin disease that caused severe deformities and tumors to his face. Due to this disfigurement, his muteness and mental retardation (carried over from the first series), other children bullied the boy. He wore a small leather mask to cover up his deformity, and worked at the same meat factory where he was born, for the same boss as his mother - the same man who had left him for dead. He also had a tendency toward self-mutilation, and a doctor diagnosed him as suffering from a type of neurodegeneration at age 12.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
In 1969, when the film picks up after showing his birth,  health inspectors shut the factory down when Hewitt's boss and a reluctant co-worker ordered him to leave. When Hewitt didn't, the boss and the co-worker bullied him, calling him a "retard" and a "dumb animal". Acting on a long-burning rage, Hewitt killed his boss with a sledgehammer. He later discovered the chainsaw he used as a weapon after searching the now abandoned factory. When Winston Hoyt, the local sheriff, tried to apprehend him, Thomas' uncle, Charlie Hewitt came to his aid and killed the sheriff with his own gun. Charlie later assumed the sheriff's identity.

Although Leatherface's family still manipulate him in this interpretation, they do show themselves somewhat more caring for him and less abusive than in the original film. Before killing the sheriff, his uncle Charlie even defends him by saying, "He's not retarded, he's misunderstood." The cruelty he suffers at the hands of his peers, in part, inspires his murderous behavior, however it's his uncle, Charlie who encourages his anti-social behaviour and impulses.