The Great Character Arc Controversy

Hey guys,

Well, I can see that lips are flapping over my article called “The Case AGAINST Character Arcs” in the latest issue of Script Magazine. I’ve been told of a few debates on message boards, like here and here.

But nothing prepared me for the flood of e-mails in my inbox. So I shall try to address common questions and responses. I have no problem at all with people disagreeing or putting my feet to the fire to test whether what I said is true. I think that’s a good thing.

Hope you enjoy it.

-MM

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Uhh, who the hell is Joshua James?
Well, you could’ve looked him up on the IMDB. He’s also here where you can also view his library of full length plays. He also has scripts posted periodically at his profile on TriggerStreet.

McKee never said that every character must change.
I never once mentioned Robert McKee in my article. I was mostly talking about industry-wide attitudes about arcs. But I was alluding to McKee because I approached arcs in terms of changes to the inner nature, which McKee preaches. He wrote, “The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes [to] that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.” That’s bullshit. I suppose if you want to get real nitpicky with me about McKee’s quote, you could argue that he was not saying that you CAN’T have character arcs. He was merely saying that only the finest writing showcases an arc, an inner change in the protagonist. That’s STILL bullshit.

But that’s true. Stories with arcs are better.
No, that’s not true, and this is one of my points. You cannot apply the same “principles” to all genres. This is why listening to the gurus has been an intellectual step backwards to the art of storytelling because they take one principle, like character arcs, and apply it across the board to every story in every genre. Each genre has its own unique requirements and parameters. It would be incorrect to say, for example, that a mystery story would be better if you had an arc in the protagonist-investigator. It just wouldn’t. The point of these stories is the mystery itself and the investigation’s usually led by a dynamic character. To go with that character on the journey of solving the mystery can be such great fun. That’s the point! Can you imagine Sherlock Holmes having an arc in every single mystery? One could argue that an arc in Holmes in every story would detract too much from the mystery. Now, that’s not to say that you can’t have an arc or that you shouldn’t have an arc. The bigger point is, you shouldn’t REQUIRE AN ARC in mysteries. Or stick your nose up because a writer didn’t force an arc in the protag in a mystery.

But people aren’t making mystery films anymore.
Everything is cyclical.

Ghandi changed. He started out as a guy who was content within the existing system until it was demonstrated to him how unjust it was. He went from passive to becoming a fighter against injustice.
That’s not true. Beforehand, Ghandi was a lawyer fighting for what he thought was right before he switched to civil disobedience. While his reaction to the system changed, he never changed who he was.

You said that Ghandi matured and Clarice became wiser. Isn’t that an arc? Isn’t growth an arc?
Only if a change of some kind occurs. “Growth” is a wonderful thing for a character in a story, but it’s also a very broad term. A character changing from intolerant to tolerant could be viewed as “growth” as much as an arc. But an arc is a curve in the line, a change of some kind. But sometimes growth is a straight line. Sometimes a character endures an experience without changing. Say something happens. A protag must go on a path to correct something and meet a goal. He encounters obstacles and finally meets his goal. The character becomes wiser about the path, certainly, but does he change just by going down that path? Not necessarily. Sometimes a great story is a character staying true to oneself and not compromising, not changing, while going down a difficult path. There is growth in being tested and passing the test because the character will be stronger when tested again. But that doesn’t mean they changed who they are.

3:10 to Yuma fell apart in the third act, so that’s not really a good example, especially considering Crowe's character's totally unnatural personality transplant.
Even though Ebert gave it 4-stars, I personally never felt it was a perfect 4-star film. The original is a classic, though. And the author of the short story upon which the film was based, Elmore Leonard, had characters in his westerns who didn’t have backstories, psychological motivations, or sometimes, arcs. They were who they were. And they did what they did. There was a great article about that very thing in The New York Times. Terrence Rafferty wrote, “what’s striking about it is how little explanation Mr. Leonard feels compelled to offer for his hero’s grit and competence, and how little too the reader misses it.” With respect to Russell Crowe's character, I have to agree. It would've been better had he NOT had an arc. Hehehe...

Indiana Jones -- probably. But Raiders ended with a deus ex machina, anyway. Not only did Jones not change, he wasn't even crucial to the resolution (whether or not he was there, the Nazis would have opened the Ark and died). So there, I'd submit, the script was faulty despite the rip-roaring great ride of the movie.
Was it really faulty? You didn’t think so BEFORE your mind was warped by gurus and their ideas about arcs. Hehehe…

Indiana Jones doesn't believe in the POWER OF GOD in the beginning of the movie but he sure as hell believes in it by the end of the movie... LOL.
But did he change as a result? The sequels prove he doesn’t.

Indiana Jones has an arc. He goes from only caring about artifacts to caring about a human being -- Marion Ravenwood. At first she's only a means to an end, but by the end he cares about her for herself.
Look at that last scene again, as he and Marion are walking down those steps after the meeting with the government boys who assured him about “top men.” Indy keeps looking back. He can’t stop thinking about the Ark. And poor Marion has to pull his hat up and redirect his attention back to her. Does he really change?

Unk: Butch and Sundance go out fighting in the end... Did they have a choice? We don't know. Could they have come out with their hands up? Maybe -- maybe not. We watch them run away and outsmart everyone throughout the movie... Their change TO ME, is a change in venue along with no more running.
I respectfully disagree. They went out fighting because they were still running and they were cornered and had no other way out. They would’ve kept on running and being crooks forever. They would’ve had an arc only if they walked out with their hands up. That would’ve meant, “We are stopping and running no more.”

You have a very narrow definition of arcs.
I really don’t. I’m only referencing the ideas of narrow-minded gurus who have created an industry of narrow-thinking formula freaks.

I've always read the Hero's Journey as some kind of Jungian initiation where the hero discovers her/his inner strength/true self etc. Like in Star Wars where Luke finds "the force" in himself and becomes a Jedi. But I guess you can interpret it more literally, like when hero returns with some "elixir" and saves the day, but remains the same herself.
A lot of great action films are about heroes who are heroes without changing to become a hero. They just are. They just do it. It's who they are. It's in their blood. And the action genre evolved when the definition of “hero” evolved and how the new hero is different from the others. What is a hero in today's society? Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the hero’s arc. But should every action film require one? Not at all. I'd argue that more important than an arc is character depth.

There is, though, a certain tendency among beginners (at anything) to think they can be the exceptions without ever having followed the rules.
Here, here. Newbies should master the basics. However, if a newbie wants to write mysteries, the industry should be wise enough to know that mysteries don’t require arcs in the protagonists. The industry needs to quit being so damn ignorant. This isn’t about breaking the rules. This is about the rules being wrong. This is about everyone not knowing the unique rules for each genre.

I’d like to close with this. I got a fabulous e-mail that I really loved from a guy named Salvador Rubio:

For me, there are three kinds of character:

1-The one who changes (Let's call him the Hero): A character is shown having a flaw which he has to overcome after great difficulties and reluctance. Paul Newman in The Veredict is a great example.

2-The one who can't change (The Tragic characters). A character whose own personality doesn't let him change, no matter how hard he tries or how much he know he has to change. Is the preferred character for tv-shows (picture Dr. House and his inability to be show his feelings and be humane, although it is repeatedly shown that he would like to do it). As for movies, characters of this type sometimes they prefer to stick with their flaws and keep living no matter how badly they have to change. There are plenty, but let's say Kane in Citizen Kane.

3-The one that doesn't really need to change: James Bond, Indiana Jones, etc. There's a second variety to this, in which the character needs to change but doesn't do it because he doesn't realize his flaws, although everyone does: Don Quixote and his derivates.

As every theory, this is not perfect, but works for me in most cases.

The Case AGAINST Character Arcs

Let us put an end once and for all to the current madness about inner character arcs, which finds its origins in the Grand Poobah of screenwriting gurus, Mr. Robert McKee, who penned in his (now infamous, err, famous) book, Story: “The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes to that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.”

That is a two-faced lie.

I suppose if you want to get real nitpicky with me about McKee’s quote, you could argue that he was not saying that you CAN’T have character arcs. He was merely saying that only the finest writing showcases an arc, aka an inner change in the protagonist.

That is STILL a two-faced lie.

Friends, this lie has pervaded every area of Hollywood from gurus to screenwriting professors to pro consultants to pro readers, etc, so that all new writers (and many working pros) encounter a thought police on this particular subject the likes of which we haven’t seen since the pre-wall days of East Germany. And the simple truth is that this does not hold up against the record of cinema history. (Need I remind everyone that the Academy just handed the highest yearly artistic award for cinematic achievement, the Best Film of 2007, to No Country for Old Men, a film that, as noted in Anthony Lane’s review “charts no moral shift in Chigurh, or indeed in the men around him; all of them are set in stone from the beginning.”) The fact is great films have been made with great characters that do not change who they are at their core. It isn’t that the writing is a lower quality because the protagonists don’t change, it's that this principle about arcs has been wrong since the very beginning.

Now let me be clear about the fact that there’s nothing wrong with character arcs. I love character arcs. I love watching the downfall arc of a flawed protagonist as we saw in Citizen Kane, or Michael Corleone in the Godfather films, or most recently, Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. And I love the hero’s arc, too, as we saw in the much-loved Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, or Neo in the Matrix, or most comic book hero origin films. Plus, I love the kind of transformational arcs we saw in Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, or Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in The Lives of Others.

But to say that every protagonist in every story must have a character arc is madness, my friends. It's a two-faced lie from the pits of hell.

So let’s look at this subject from a variety of categories. This first category is probably most dear to my heart, stories in which protagonists do not change but they create change in others.

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Protagonists That Create Change in Others:

Gandhi – This film certainly chronicles his maturity and the many ways in which he was tested as a man, but he never once changed who he was at his core. I loved what Ebert wrote: “The movie begins in the early years of the century, in South Africa. Gandhi moved there from India in 1893, when he was twenty-three. He already had a law degree, but, degree or not, he was a target of South Africa's system of racial segregation, in which Indians (even though they are Caucasian, and thus should "qualify") are denied full citizenship and manhood. Gandhi's reaction to the system is, at first, almost naive; an early scene on a train doesn't quite work only because we can't believe the adult Gandhi would still be so ill-informed about the racial code of South Africa. But Gandhi's response sets the tone of the film. He is nonviolent but firm. He is sure where the right lies in every situation, and he will uphold it in total disregard for the possible consequences to himself.” (For that matter, how about Jesus in Passion of the Christ?)

The Seven Samurai – One of the most influential films of all time, and my question to you is how did the Samurai change? All they did was accept the task at hand of protecting the village. They did their jobs living by their codes, and they either survived the battle or not. The villagers certainly changed in that they became stronger individuals due to the influence of the Samurai.

Chance the Gardner – Being There is a 4-star satirical masterpiece. It’s 97% on the critics TomatoMeter and one of Ebert’s Great Films. Here was a man who was, frankly, mentally challenged and cared solely about gardening, TV, and food. He never changed. He couldn’t change. And yet, everyone thought he was something other than what he was and he evoked monumental, life-altering changes in everyone around him inside the home of a certain millionaire. His simplistic isms (“Spring is a time for planting”) turned Chance into a media darling because his words could be easily condensed into simple sound-bytes. Ultimately, they talked of him becoming a presidential candidate. (And while we’re talking about a protag causing change in a household without personally changing, how about Mary Poppins?)

3:10 to Yuma – To quote James Berardinelli: “Two things of significance occur during 3:10 to Yuma, and both revolve around Dan. As a character, he doesn't change. Instead, he's the instigator of change in those around him. Dan is the same at the end as at the beginning: devoted to what is right. Justice is his master. He will not kill because it is expedient. He will not turn his back even though he stands to earn a fortune. Dan's obdurateness makes him a wall against which others crash and break. One of those is his son, who starts out the film viewing him with contempt but grows to respect him. The other is Ben who, suffering from something akin to Stockholm Syndrome, forms a grudging respect for the man who rejects his bribes and stays true to his course.” Exactly. Is there anything wrong with that? No.

Patton & Hawkeye Pierce – How did either of these men change? Patton was a big character with a big ego who influenced the military, the enemy, and all of World War II. But he never changed who he was at his core. He was only sad that the war ended. Hawkeye Pierce with his anti-war, anti-establishment, and anti-military attitude had a bigger impact on the M*A*S*H camp than the camp ever had on him. The dramatic emphasis on both of these characters was not their arcs but their depth so we could enjoy the different sides of their characters.

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Characters That Transform Without Changing Who They Are:

I came across an article at StoryFanatic by James Hull, an animator, about William Wallace in Braveheart and Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. James wrote, “Both Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford’s characters have a character arc - both grow in their resolve as they hold out for the oppressive situations around them to alter. Mel fights the subjugation of his people by the King of England while Harrison holds out against the obvious reality that he’s the only suspect in his wife’s murder.” I agree and disagree. They certainly grew in their resolve, but these guys did not have arcs in the sense that there were changes to their inner nature for better or worse. They were in positions where they felt they had to fight back on their own. What kind of arc is there for Kimble after he proved who the murderer was? How was he different? There is no question he would be affected or perhaps emotionally damaged by that kind of upheaval in his life but was there a change to his inner nature? No. He certainly didn’t transform into a criminal or anything less respectable than what he was before the murder. He transformed into a different version of himself because of these circumstances, but he never changed who he was at his core.

The article also had this to say: “What most story people don’t realize is that when they talk about character arc they are referring to what Dramatica calls the Main Character’s Growth. Growth is all about whether or not the character is moving towards something or away from something - not whether or not they change. You can grow as a person and still hold on to your beliefs - they just get stronger.” Wrong. I should acknowledge that gurus and theorists have different interpretations about arcs. But growth is not an arc, and James is giving Dramatica too much credit in terms of influence on writers. When people in the biz talk about character arcs, they are talking about a change to the inner nature as defined by the Grand Poobah of gurus whose obscenely invasive influence all throughout HW spans well over a decade now. Right or wrong, love it or hate it, we have to go by Robert McKee’s definition, unfortunately.

Scarlett O’Hara – Gone With the Wind is a sensational film, one of my favorites. It is also the highest ranking movie on AFI’s Top 100 list that has a protagonist that does not change. Scarlett was, as Rhett told her, “selfish to the very end.” She did change in the sense that she adapted to her new circumstances. She went from a spoiled society girl to a devastated southerner and then back into a self-made business woman, but she never once changed who she was at her core. When she returned to Tara and found it in ruins and her mother dead, she went out to the fields and cried out to the heavens, “As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill, as God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.” That is certainly a defining moment for Scarlett in that she found the zeal to overcome her devastation, but let it be said that her speech was more a declaration of true character than anything else. She will overcome this tragedy but she will not change who she is. Ever. She will continue to be the bad girl she has always been. She will stoop to any low to rise again, and that’s exactly what she did in the second half of that movie. She lied. She stole. She cheated, and she killed. In the end, she finally saw Ashley for what he really was (a spineless wimp). She realized how good she had it with Rhett. And she realized the significance of Tara in her life. And these kinds of realizations can certainly prompt some change, but whether she does, we don’t really know. Personally, I find it hard to believe she’ll be any different after she returns to Tara. Those realizations just aren’t enough in my book to prompt real change in a person.

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Bad, Bad Boys:

Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid – Written by one of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time, William Goldman, the only thing to be said about these two characters beyond the fact that they were crooks to the very end, is that their story was unique only in the way that it revealed true character. They were cool and hip when they were stealing from the big railroad company, but when a special posse of experts is after them, they take off for Bolivia. They were not the hipsters we thought they were – they were chicken shits.

Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, & Thirteen – Over the course of these films, we can chart the growth of characters as con men but they never depart from their true natures. It’s always the way they toy with character arcs that they fool audiences, because when we think that a particular guy is perhaps betraying the group or going his own way, we become the fools, because that was part of the deception all along and we fell for it. These stories are always about the job, the heist, the multi-layered deceptions at play, some of which we know about and some turn into surprises and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. If any of these guys “quit,” we won’t believe them, and in time, we will be proven correct. Question - when alcoholics quit drinking, does that mean they are no longer alcoholics? The same can be said for con artists, right?

The Wild Bunch - It was, in fact, the inability to change and adapt to modern times that brought Pike and his gang to their downfall. Not only that, the man who led the crusade against Pike and his gang, Thornton, a guy who was once a member of the gang himself but now forced to capture them or go to jail, sat outside the gates of the compound after it was all over and while he was thinking, he observed the formation of a new gang looking for jobs. He smiles wryly and joins them. Even Thornton couldn’t change who he really was.

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Mysteries:

Since when did Sherlock Holmes have an arc? Or Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple? There may have been isolated occurrences, but mostly – they didn’t. Mysteries are more plot-driven than character-driven, and there’s nothing wrong with that, because the fun comes from trying to solve the mystery. The investigation is usually led by a dynamic character. So is it truly essential that Holmes or Poirot have arcs in every story? I’ve heard it argued, “Well, those are franchises, so they don’t count.” They’re stories, aren’t they? People love those characters, do they not? Whether we have 1 or 50 stories about Holmes, the emphasis will always be on the plot and the mystery, and an arc in the protagonist shouldn’t be required. In fact, shouldn’t the emphasis be on depth instead of an arc because the more sides to the protagonist and the more games the protagonist can play on the other characters, the more entertaining the story, right?

I love crime noirs and the books of Dashell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, and I miss the days when we would go see a film simply because the protagonist was cool and we wanted to be more like him. We watched Sam Spade because we admired the way he handled his own affairs. We loved watching him deal with and outsmart the bad guys. I love what Anthony Burgess said about protags, “The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with extraordinary qualities.” Although Sam Spade made us wonder if he was actually bad with the questionable deals he was making with other characters, the Act III climax always reinforced that he was one step ahead of the bad guys (and us) and that he was, in fact, still good. Anything wrong with that? The Maltese Falcon is Number 31 on AFI’s Top 100 list.

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Action Films:

Indiana Jones – Friends, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the golden boy of action adventure films and one of AFI’s Top 100 films, gave us a protagonist who was very much the same in the end as he was in the beginning. He had one external goal, that is, to obtain the Ark of the Covenant, which was eventually realized, although he lost it again in the end paralleling the opening sequence, a kind of running gag. Sometimes a great story is about a character with a goal and either he reaches that goal or he doesn’t. (See also, for example, the character with no name played by Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.) Indy’s relationship with Marion, I think, would fall under Linda Seger's definition of a “hidden inner need.” He sees her again for the sake of his mission, falls in love with her all over again, which could be an inner need he didn't realize he had, and winds up with her in the end. That doesn’t mean he changed. A hidden need was realized, and apparently, it wasn’t that big of a need as they were no longer together in the sequel. Doom gave us a change in motivation, selfless reasons, in fact, for going after the Sankara Stones, which was simply an illumination of a different side of his character. In Last Crusade, he had an external goal to get the Holy Grail, of course, and he had inner needs with respect to his relationship with his father, which were satisfied by the big hug and the words of affection from Henry Sr. after he thought Indy had died. But does that mean Indy changed as a result? It means that a need was met. Period. However, I will throw out there what seemed to me to be only two hints of a change in Indy in Last Crusade: 1) When Indy took the leap of faith to walk across the hidden bridge, but we saw no indication he was changed in any way by this, and 2) When his father said, “Indiana... let it go.” I wonder, is this not a one-time exception to Indiana's usual nature or was this the beginning of a change in his ways?

James Bond – One of the most iconic figures of the spy genre, and with a few exceptions, such as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Casino Royale, Bond rarely had an arc. We never wanted him to change. We loved him as he was. He got the job done and he did it with great style. Can you imagine how different he’d be today if he had a change to his inner nature in every single film? Bond proves the point that when it comes to franchises, arcs are not a requirement for satisfaction or longevity. (For that matter, John McClane hardly changed after the first Die Hard film. Dirty Harry never arc'd either.)

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Horror:

Clarice Starling – My good friend Joshua James made the most important point I've heard about this character in an email to me (also wrote about this subject here) and that point is about emotional content: “…it's not about the arc for characters. It's more about, are they emotionally motivated for what they do? If I can offer anything from my experiences as an actor and director that the thing to look for when crafting characters is emotional connection. Connect them personally to the story and explain, to yourself, what their motivation is. Basic acting - what's my motivation? What drives them to make the choices they do, does it make sense for them emotionally, is it logical EMOTIONALLY... people aren't logical, but they are emotionally logical - they're doing things that conform to their world emotional view. Clarice from Silence of the Lambs: I argued she's not transformed by her movie. She's wiser and learned more, certainly, but she's not a different person. More important, and this is what makes the character work, why does she put herself in danger, why put herself through what she does to save a girl she doesn't know. The movie gives it to us. To save a lost lamb that was crying. She sees that and her mission, throughout life, became to help those in peril, like the lamb. She didn't even know it until Lector pointed it out to her. But if you trace her actions, every choice she made was linked to that emotional logic of her character. What is Lector, what does he do? He FEEDS. Not only on food, but on interesting people, he finds her fascinating and she feeds his intellectual appetite.”

As Josh always says: WHAT plus WHY equals WHO.

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Comedies:

(Chief) Inspector Jacques Clouseau – Let it finally be said that it is not required for protagonists to have a character arc in slapstick comedies. I’ve written about this before, but the most you can hope for in slapstick comedies like these are characters who have “blind obsessions,” individuals who fail to see their own flaws or the dangers of their own ridiculous fixations. Got that? Blind obsessions. Ridiculous fixations. Moliere’s life-long career in the theatre was built on that one fundamental, lampooning the ridiculous fixations of the social elite. (And the actors would always play those characters seriously, as if they had no clue they were being ridiculous, and that had us rolling in the aisles.) Consider the comedy-gold combination of the money-fixated Max Bialystock and the producer-fixated Leopold Bloom. Or Oscar Madison living with the germ-obsessed Felix Ungar. Or the war-fixated General “Buck” Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove. Or the sex-obsessed teens in countless movies. Or any of a number of Woody Allen characters. And yes, Inspector Clouseau was obsessed about being the greatest detective in the world but it never occurred to him that he was always the dumbest man in the room. He fumbled his way into foiling the plans of countless bad guys without ever realizing what actually happened. Then he’d get decorated with honors for his brilliance, and that, my friends, was the big cosmic joke. The moment truth gets revealed, the moment Clouseau realizes he has flaws in his personality and that he needs to change (thereby giving his character an “arc”) will be the very same moment the comedy will die. And this is the reason I felt that the latest incarnation of Pink Panther with Steve Martin failed, because Inspector Clouseau gets outed in the media as the bumbling idiot he always was, he actually REALIZES that he IS a bumbling idiot, he APOLOGIZES to different people if he made them look silly, and then he SOLVES the big case thereby proving to the world that he is, in fact, a brilliant detective. Blasphemous. Completely blasphemous.

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I can hear someone argue, “Well, Mystery Man, you only showed us one-offs and rare exceptions.” Did I really? It only takes ONE EXCEPTION to invalidate this stupid rule.

-MM

Art of STORY!

Indiana Jones 4 Articles

Advice on Characters

Elements of Suspense

On Breaking Structure

A Look at The Dark Knight Script

The Exposition of Rear Window

A Screenwriting State of Emergency!

Where Do I Put My Characters?

Your Movie Sucks!

Wall*E & The Robot Protagonist

Fatal Flaws in Screenwriting

Breathing Room in Films

Formula Freaks

The Question of Exposition

Minghella on the Page

The Nature of Today's Storytelling Debate

The Case AGAINST Character Arcs

Screenwriting Meditations

Internet's Impact on Cinema

Locations, Locations, Locations

100 Movie Cliches

The Ending for "No Country"

Diabolical Don G

The Power of Cinema's Images

Write the Shots!

Secondary Headings

"The Fountain" Analysis

Away From Her

Close-ups, Baby!

The Lives of Others

Youth Without Youth

Style & Writing for Existing Franchises

Book Review – Ann Wesley Hardin’s “Out of This World”

Play Review – Joshua James’ Tallboy Walkin’

Character Depth & Cast Design

Visual Storytelling, Part III

Visual Storytelling, Part II

The Art of Visual Storytelling

Rog Ager's Analysis of Films

Ager's Analysis of "The Exorcist"

Ager's Analysis of Scorsese's "Cape Fear"

Ager's Analysis of "Alien"

Satire & the Protag Serial Killer

Cinema Europe - The Complete Series

Character Arcs

Ager's Analysis of "Psycho"

Cinematic Storytelling

Rob Ager's "2001" Analysis

Disney's "Frog Princess"

A Long Time Ago... (for the Star Wars Blog-a-thon)

The "Psycho" Shower Scene!

"A Clockwork Orange" Analysis

Creative Inspiration

Kubrick Analysis & Tribute

Inner Conflict

"2001" Analysis

Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket"

The Godfather (for the blog-a-thon)

The Great Ones That Failed (for the blog-a-thon)

The Shining Analysis

15,000 Useful Phrases

Character Goals

Backstory

Character Development Sheet

John Milius Interview

Chinatown Analysis

The Reverse Arc

The Politics of Page Numbers

Gone with the Wind

Melodrama

The Queen

Altman

The Great Voice Over Debate

On Character Arcs

Characters as Individuals

Mahler's Script-Beat Calculator

Weak Characters in Comedies

Screenwriting News & Shout-Outs!

It's called A Tale of How. It's pretty. Yet exceedingly odd.

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New Scripts:

Casino Royale
(Thought you might enjoy this, Mickey Lee.)

Black Snake Moan

Lost in Translation
(Sofia, honey, I adore you, but we’ve stopped writing “Cut To” in between each scene since, what, 1986?)

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Around Scribosphere:

My Transformers Script Review is still popular and we’ve recently received a couple of hilarious comments from one of the writers, John Rogers. Which I fear may have inspired his recent and damn insightful post on Arbitration Letters. Not against me. Against Transformers.

I thought my Character Development Sheet series would be really cool and Unk coincidentally started his won Transformational Character Arc series here and here. It’s really great, actually. Bastard.

MaryAn Batchellor on Scene Continuity
“(1) Sequence your scenes - This comes from Linda Seger but I don't know which book. She says to group your scenes in sequences toward the development of separate climactic moments in order to get a better connection between scenes. Kind of like clustering. Probably, many of us do this in our outlines anyway - we just don't call it "sequencing".

Danny Stack on Pacing Your Script
“Sometimes, there is too much talk about structure. In open-discussions, private seminars and debates down the pub, it’s discussed like it holds the answers to struggling screenplays everywhere. There is no denying that structure is the essential concrete of a script’s story but there is another equally important consideration that is never given as much weight or consideration: Pace. Structure’s little sister.”

The latest in Carl Salminen’s Script to Screen Series
“When the script came to me, it had three stories. Actually, it had an opening tale that never actually got fully resolved, so let's say it had 3.5 stories. The script was in rough shape but showed promise. The ideas were not bad but the technical presentation was where it needed work. The author opted to drop the project. But hey, we all have to put stuff on the scales, pick and choose what's important and balance our lives. So, someone had to step in.”

Also newsworthy - Emily Blake’s got a Cute Ass
Her post is not only about kissing her ass and contains a picture of said ass, but the post is also about her concerns shooting a sex scene starring her writing partner. Blogging doesn’t get much more entertaining than that.

Heartbreaking news - Christina Ferguson is Dating Someone
Dammit.

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The Film Bloggers:

David Bordwell on David Mamet’s new book, Bambi vs. Godzilla:
“…is as pungent and eccentric as you’d expect, but also deeply traditional in its storytelling advice. A movie’s characters must have goals, and over the course of three acts they achieve them, or definitively don’t. The Lady Eve is Mamet’s model of this construction. Furthermore, three questions structure every scene: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now? In wide-ranging essays, Mamet pays tribute to the craftsmanship of below-the-line talent and celebrates movies as various as The Diary of Anne Frank and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (whose protagonist is remarkable for “his personification of enigma”).”

On a side note, David Bordwell’s site is worth visiting. I’m still trying to get through his sample chapter from his book, Film Art, as well as his page of essays on films. Ya know, I could get a lot of reading done if I didn’t have to sleep. In any case, I just finished reading his essay on Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. Superb! He spoke of Hitchcock’s use of dual protags in the married couple and how Bob was first active and Jill was passive. But after Bob is captured by the gang, he occupies the passive role, and Jill goes to thwart the assassination. He wrote, “The presence of two protagonists here should remind us that a narrative's hero is less a single character than a functional role that can be filled by one or more characters. (Hitchcock seems fond of this pattern; in Psycho different characters at one point or another occupy the role of the inquiring protagonist.)”

Apparently, The Wizard of Oz has been digitally restored and is returning to the big screen. And so Kevin Maher at TimesOnline offers an interesting analysis of the film:
“The psychologist Carl Jung said that we relate to stories because we identify with themes and characters,” Dr Bunch explains. “And that those characters are all pieces inside our own soul. So the Lion is the warrior, the Scarecrow is the sage, and the Tin Man is the lover. And Dorothy’s heroic quest is to gather these parts within herself, so it’s actually a journey of psychological integration.” The Wizard of Oz works because it tells the most complex, the most simple and the most universal story all at the same time. It’s about growing up and becoming whole. It’s about putting aside childish things (Kansas) and entering a world of danger and emotional responsibility (Oz). It is, says Salman Rushdie in his BFI The Wizard of Oz handbook, a film about “how the weakness of grown-ups forces children to take control of their own destinies, and so, ironically, grow up themselves”.

JJ Murphy posted an excerpt from his book, How Independent Screenplays Work. The chapter opens with THIS provocative quote: “There is no doubt that most of the dullness of our movies is concocted in advance in the so-called heads of the so-called scriptwriters. Not only the dullness: They also perpetuate the standard film constructions, dialogues, plots. They follow closely their textbooks of “good” screenwriting. Shoot all scriptwriters, and we may yet have a rebirth of American cinema.” – Jonas Mekas, Village Voice (November 25, 1959). Then the chapter went on to talk about how Gus Van Sant threw out the screenplay for Elephant and just improvised and shot it using an outline. I fail to see how that explains HOW INDEPENDENT SCREENPLAYS WORK. However, the Table of Contents looks interesting. Part One is all about Problematic Protagonists, such as the Ambivalent Protagonist, the Passive Protagonist, and the Shifting Protagonist. Sounds like your average TriggerStreet review. Screw it. I’m buying the book.

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Other News:

StudioNow Launches New Online Video and Movie-Making Service

Production Company Secures Film Rights to the Autobiography of WCW Pro Wrestling Legend, Nitro

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From MovieBytes:

ASA Announces Quarterfinalists

WBW Interview: Screenwriter Dave Kalstein

Hollywood Nexus Announces Contest Results

Scriptapalooza TV Interviews Pilot Winner

Scriptapalooza TV Interviews 1-Hour Contest Winner

Scriptapalooza TV Interviews Sitcom Winners

Scriptapalooza TV Interviews Reality Contest Winner

Filmmakers.com Announces Contest Winners

PAGE Award Winners in the News

Revolution Media Announces Screenplay Contest Winners

Bare Bones Fest Announces 2007 Screenplay Finalists

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From Slashfilm:

Rumor Killed: Jake Gyllenhaal is NOT Captain Marvel
(Whew! I was worried!)

New Line to Remake Escape From New York

Michael Bay and 2012: The War for Souls
(Apparently, Bay is eyeing sci-fi author Whitley Strieber’s forthcoming novel 2012: The War for Souls. How about the souls of good filmmakers?)

Danny Boyle talks Trainspotting Sequel, titled Porno

Night of the Living Dorks to Invade the US

Escape From New York Remake to Star Gerard Butler
(Apparently, CAA is shopping a remake of John Carpenter’s 1981 action classic Escape From New York with 300 star Gerard Butler attached to star.)

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LA Times:

Screenwriter Scott Frank settles into the director's chair
"JUST wanting to be a screenwriter is like just wanting to be a co-pilot." Attributed to the late John Gregory Dunne, this maxim summarizes not only the ...

Turns out 2007's the year of the writer-director
“Like the stages of grief, there are four steps to accepting one's fate as a top screenwriter. 1. Excitement: You get your first movie made. 2. Validation: You get your movie made by a top director. 3. Frustration-cum-rage: You get a movie made badly and are cut out of the process. 4. Liberation: You opt to direct your own movie.”

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From Variety:

Miramax, Buchman attempting 'Coup'
Writer in final talks to adapt 'Wonga'

Disney wins rights for 'Surrogates'
Mostow to direct robot tale

New Line picks 'Path'
Jones to write 'Black' script

Q&A with Tarantino...when he was Mr. Green
A 1991 interview with the 'Reservoir Dogs' helmer

How to create some pulp friction
Directors, Supporting Actor & Actress of the Year: Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez, Freddy Rodriguez & Rosario Dawson

LaBeouf says movies rock, reality sucks
ShoWest Male Star of Tomorrow: Shia LaBeouf

Inside Move: Writer opts for no options
Novelist has new idea for Hollywood

Modest films may fly above tentpoles
Soaring out of left field

'Easter' egg in the Park
Hollywood after Christian projects

Tarantino starts biker pic engine
Bishop rides again in 'Hell'

DreamWorks going 3-D in 2009
Studio to produce two versions of 'Aliens'

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And now, The Making Of The Tale of How:

Part III – Kasdan’s “Clash”

----------------------------------

Hey guys,

I apologize for the delay in posting this review. I was never satisfied with this article until I just gave up and started over from scratch.

-MM

----------------------------------


Not sure how to describe Larry Kasdan’s revision except to say that Kasdan merely redecorated the house that Beacham built, which had always been fundamentally unsound. The overall structure and design is intact, which is not a good thing. However, Kasdan certainly made the individual rooms more pleasant, colorful, and appear lived-in by real human beings. In fact, some of those rooms are quite stirring to see. But when I step back and take in the house as a whole, I have to ask myself “Okay, how does this make me feel?” I can only conclude that it is still a cold, hollow, uninviting eyesore that should be completely demolished and rebuilt from the ground up.

In fact, it makes me want to take another tour of the house that Beverley Cross built. Because you want to admire again his wonderful craftsmanship, the sound structure, the elegance in its simplicity, the focus on the journey supported by the clear functionality of every room, the way he provided a point and reason to every tiny detail, and you also appreciate something new - the fact that he had the discipline to avoid building a lot of unnecessary additions to his house that would’ve made you lose sight of the heart and soul of his creation.

I wonder if this was a case of studio insecurity. Perhaps the writers were pressured to deliver something like 300 with big war scenes, because they were so influenced by the amount of money 300 made. Perhaps the studio wanted big war scenes in Clash because they knew they’d be going up against War of the Gods in 2010, a story Variety describes as “a mythological tale set in war-torn ancient Greece, as the young warrior prince Theseus leads his men in a battle against evil that will see the gods fighting with soldiers against demons and titans.” But then again, perhaps not. Perhaps this was just a case of weak screenwriting, of a new writer wanting to impress the studio with something big but lacked the discipline to focus on the characters and Perseus, in particular. You have to know what your story is and have the courage of conviction to tell it. Clash has always been a romantic adventure story. It’s a waste to try to turn it into something it has never ever been.

Too many non-essential things are going on in the plot. You have a war between gods and man. You have so much thought put into how this war happened and how it effects both sides. You have the debates amongst the gods (and private conspiracies), as well as the debates amongst the leaders of man, and the negotiation for peace. You have discussions about faith vs. science & self-reliance, and pre-destination of the gods vs. the free-will of man. And none of these things satisfy me because there’s no emotional core behind any of these discussions. There’s too much emphasis on the intellectual over the emotional, and there must be an emotional center to a story before you can get anyone involved in an intellectual discussion. And this settlement for peace, this forced marriage between Perseus and Andromeda, is a bad move. They don’t connect. They DON’T fall in love because they’re both so annoyed about being in a forced marriage. Thus, you’ve robbed Perseus of ANY emotional motivation whatsoever to go on this adventure to save Andromeda. He’s just doing what everyone says he’s pre-destined to do. What does Perseus want?


I’m not even a third into this script and I want to put it down and do a complete revision of the entire story. It’s a mess. It’s a total mess, and they’ve lost all focus on the story. Because there’s been so much thought about everything else in the story, what gets lost is Perseus, as a character, and his journey. Who is he? What’s his emotional logic for going on this adventure? Why am I supporting him? Am I supposed to support him just because he’s a believer in self-reliance? Are you kidding me? So what? Why should I care? Why should HE care? What’s personally at stake FOR HIM in all of this? Do you even know what you want him to be – a scientist, rebel, or hero?

There is nothing more annoying than a weak, passive, unmotivated HERO protagonist. Even while they are on the adventure, Perseus is terribly passive. Do you remember the scene I described in the last article about how the team of men JUST SO HAPPEN to come upon a bunch of Pegassi and for fun, coax Perseus into mounting one? He fails. Then a dragon appears. This dragon was sent by a very bad god to eat Perseus. At this point, I’m sure all the fanboys are thinking, “Oh cool! A dragon! I love this script!” But me, I’m shaking my head because Perseus fails to step up to be the hero. Everyone else on his team fights the dragon and defeats it. Perseus does so very little, and after it’s over, he gets roundly condemned for it. He’s “too important” to risk his life like that because “the hopes of multitudes” reside with him. Doesn’t that mean he should be acting like a fucking hero by fighting the fucking dragon? Isn’t that what heroes do? In my notes, I wrote, “What’s so bad about this scene is that everyone else does damage to the dragon except Perseus. This could’ve been his chance to prove himself to the team. He could’ve tamed a Pegasus, used the animal to kill the dragon to the stunned looks of everyone. He could’ve earned their respect and spot as rightful leader of the expedition. Plus, this would’ve introduced a REASON to have Pegasus in the story in the first place. Better yet, Perseus should’ve been the one to insist that they try to tame these animals so they could fly to the witches to save time.”

Even anti-heroes make decisions that push a plot forward. Toward the end of the story, a goddess named Vidalia tells Perseus, “A hero. They’re waiting for you, Perseus.” I wrote in my notes, “Yeah, I’m waiting for Perseus to be a hero, too.”


Everything in this story, all this bloated extraneous shit about a war and all these discussions about things unrelated to the story should be stripped away and the focus should be on Perseus and HIS JOURNEY. Nothing else matters. If you can’t get an audience behind your own hero protagonist with an emotional core to his story, then everything else you do is a complete waste of time and money.

I’m not done. This Medusa scene is shit. Kasdan only marginally improved upon Beacham’s efforts by raising tension slightly. Not only that, Medusa is still stripped of the bow & arrow and the acid for blood. The men, again, enter the temple with blindfolds and the only thing Medusa does is slither around them, untie their blindfolds, and try to get them to look at her. (My friend, Eric, suggested that, every time she takes off a blindfold, she screams, “BOO!” Hehehe…) Come on, guys. There’s so much that could be done with Medusa to make it GREAT. The reason everyone is going to pay to see this movie is for the Medusa scene, and you have to make Medusa BIGGER and BETTER than the original and make the scene MORE TENSE, not less.


Another notable change Kasdan made was to have Perseus’ human father tag along on this expedition, because, I guess, this character was a waste in Beacham’s draft. But I wasn’t sure what the dramatic point of bringing him along would be. Well, his father enters Medusa’s temple WITH Perseus. I thought, “Ohhhh, Larry’s going to change the dynamics of this scene. I’ll bet his father gets nailed by Medusa, which really sets off Perseus and his drive to behead her.” But no, that doesn’t happen. Perseus AND his father leave the temple together with Medusa’s head. Oy vey… And again, because other soldiers from his team are standing outside the temple, we’re robbed of the iconic image of Perseus holding up Medusa’s head in victory.

You guys are making Clash of the Titans, right?


Please, cut the soldiers fighting the centaurs while Perseus is with Medusa. It doesn’t work because there’s no tension. It’s action for action’s sake without any point. We don’t feel any tension because A) the centaurs are blind, so it shouldn’t be THAT difficult to kill them, and B) Perseus is ALREADY in the temple. If they were fighting to get IN the temple, then that’s different. The only reason to have an action scene like this while Perseus is in the temple is to RAISE TENSION for the audience. Like, say, the centaurs kill all the soldiers and we’re worried about Perseus stepping out of the temple, because he’s going to be attacked by the centaurs. See? TENSION. Thus, you should not make them blind so that, as a twist, when they charge to attack Perseus as he leaves he can hold up her head to kill them.

Are you guys even thinking in terms of tension & suspense?


I want to talk about Andromeda. In the original film, she wasn’t simply a damsel in distress. She was also headstrong, and wasn’t going to be bossed around. Thus, she informed Perseus and his team that she’s going with them. Here, in the remake, there’s no love between the Andromeda and Perseus. She’s left in Joppa, and we’re given a completely different kind of story about her changing from her spoiled, selfish, sluttish, diva-like indulgences to becoming a good ruler of Joppa. There’s nothing emotionally resonant about that kind of arc, because “becoming a good ruler” is so bland and generic. What does that mean? Look, give yourself multiple solutions to every problem and ask yourself – what’s the most emotionally resonant approach to a subplot? It’s far more emotionally resonant to see her change early but face resistance, because it’s not until we see her fight for things that are important that we’ll care. Instead of her bitching and moaning about her father choosing to let her be sacrificed to save the city, which is contrived and melodramatic, Andromeda could’ve submitted herself to her father to be sacrificed for the sake of her city, but he resists. He can’t go through with it. He cares too much.

Finally, without giving anything away, I’ll say this – cut Vidalia. She’s a terrible idea. She’s uninspiring, completely one-dimensional, and void of any qualities that would make us care about… her subplot.

-MM

A Long Time Ago..

Hey guys,

32 years ago today a little film called Star Wars was released in only 32 theaters. To celebrate, I thought I’d repost a favorite article from a couple of years ago for Ed Copeland’s Star Wars Blog-A-Thon.

Two great lessons about SW that I hold dear to this day:

* The early drafts were so stunningly awful and so unlike the finished film, it’s such a great reminder that any bad script has the potential to reach great heights like Star Wars.

* Lucas had the amazing ability to scrap a script he just wrote and approach the story again from a completely different perspective, which he did repeatedly before settling on Luke and the hero’s arc. We all need this quality. Too many of us get too stuck on what we write and we lack the discipline to start from scratch or even approach our stories from a different perspective just to see how it plays.

Hope you enjoy it.

-MM

--------------------------

Exactly 30 years ago today, Star Wars was released in only 32 theaters.

And subsequently changed the world.

In celebration of not only the 30th anniversary of Star Wars but also the Star Wars Blog-A-Thon, which is being hosted by our very good friend Edward Copeland, I thought I’d have a little fun and talk about the early drafts of Star Wars.

Thus, I tried my very best to read all six drafts - May 1974, July 1974, January 1975, August 1975, January 1976, and February 1977. Yeah, that was a bit much. Each one of those suckers is filled with about 30,000 words.

So I’d like to concentrate on the very first draft, which was titled simply The Star Wars. (Lucas would go on to title later drafts Star Wars: Adventures of the Starkiller, God help us all, but thankfully, he came to his senses and in the end stuck with Star Wars: A New Hope.)

Let it be said, my friends, that the early drafts of Star Wars should be a rich source of encouragement to every aspiring screenwriter the world over - because they royally sucked. They are of the same low, amateurish quality that may be found in many first screenplays written by newbies on TriggerStreet. (Thus, many scripts and new writers have the potential to reach Star Wars heights.) Had Star Wars never happened, had Lucas uploaded his first draft onto TriggerStreet, and had he theoretically asked me to review his script for him, I’m not sure I could’ve even finished reading the darn thing.

His first version only vaguely resembles the final film that we all know and love. There is an Empire. There is a rebellion. There’s a princess. There are themes of tyranny verses democracy, which are mostly verbalized through somewhat preachy dialogue. There are characters who are called Luke, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, etc, but the similarities end there. It is one thing to create from scratch a magnificent fictional universe, and it is quite another to create an effective story that sucks an audience into that world and makes them care about those characters and the conflict.

Let’s compare the opening scenes of the 1974 draft vs. the 1977 draft.

The 1974 draft opens with a shot of space and “the vast blue surface of the planet, Utapau. Five small moons slowly drift into view from the far side of the planet.”

The main titles roll-up:

“Until the recent Great Rebellion, the Jedi Bendu were the most feared warriors in the universe. For one hundred thousand years, generations of Jedi perfected their art as the personal bodyguards of the emperor. They were the chief architects of the invincible Imperial Space Force which expanded the Empire across the galaxy, from the celestial equator to the farthest reaches of the Great Rift.

Now these legendary warriors are all but extinct. One by one they have been hunted down and destroyed as enemies of the New Empire by a ferocious and sinister rival warrior sect, the Knights of Sith.”

And then:

A small silver spacecraft emerges from behind one of the Utapau moons. The deadly little fightercraft speeds past several of the moons, until it finally goes into orbit around the fourth moon.

Now consider the 1977 version:

First, the roll-up:

“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy...”

And then the action:

The awesome yellow planet of Tatooine emerges from a total eclipse, her two moons glowing against the darkness. A tiny silver spacecraft, a Rebel Blockade Runner firing lasers from the back of the ship, races through space. It is pursed by a giant Imperial Stardestroyer. Hundreds of deadly laserbolts streak from the Imperial Stardestroyer, causing the main solar fin of the Rebel craft to disintegrate.

The first is just setting and backstory. And it’s boring. The second is setting, backstory, establishes the conflict, and then we’re thrown right into action with this little spacecraft being chased down by a giant Imperial Stardestroyer. It also sets up better the expectation of the thrills to come and makes a very clear visual statement.

Of this statement, I loved what Barry Toffoli said at Scanners:

“Star Wars" opens with a shot of space and the soft sound of John Williams score, then the shot shifts to a planet. So right away we know we’re in for adventure on foreign soil, in outer space no less. Then a small vessel comes from the top of the screen. This is quickly followed by a series of blasts as the score turns into that famous booming on sound, akin to Gustav Holst’s ‘Mars’ [from "The Planets"]. This is all quickly followed by the enormously famous and copied shot of a behemoth star cruiser coming in from the top of the screen and going on forever. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this story is a tale of good versus evil, the little guy getting bullied by the big guy. Even the planet in the shot plays into the theme, representing a new undiscovered world a new hope for freedom and life. But we know the journey will be hard as the star cruiser looms over everything from the rebel ship to the planet below to the audience watching it in the theatre.

Following the opening sequence (in the first draft), we find ourselves on the wastelands of the fourth moon called Utapau with an 18-year-old Annikin Starkiller (who would eventually become Luke Skywalker). He’s wearing a “breath mask” and “goggles.” He’s surveying something with his “electrobinoculars.” He runs home. We’re introduced to his younger brother, Deak, and his father, Kane Starkiller, who is a master Jedi. The three go out into the wasteland together to investigate a Sith spacecraft that had landed nearby. His father leaves the boys to get a closer look. While he’s gone a “sinister Sith warrior” attacks Annikin and Deak. “Laserswords” are drawn. The Sith kills Deak. And just when Annikin is about to die, he is saved by his father. (All of this business about Jedis and Siths and laserswords was just too much too soon.)

Darth Vader is just a “tall, grim-looking general.” We see the Emperor tell his troops about a forthcoming battle and the Empire’s intent to conquer the Aquilaean System, “the last of the independent systems, and the last refuge of the outlawed, vile sect of the Jedi.” It is a system that will bring them “more scientific wealth than that of any other House in the Tribunal.” They will easily “gain control of the directorship.” Oh. Nice.

The armies of Aquilae are led by an old Jedi – General Luke Skywalker. “He is a large man, apparently in his early sixties, but actually much older. Everyone senses the aura of power that radiates from this great warrior. Here is a leader: a Jedi general. He looks weary, but is still a magnificent-looking warrior. His face, cracked and weathered by exotic climates, is set off by a close silver beard, and dark, penetrating eyes.”

Kane and his son just sort of... show up. Kane’s old friends with Skywalker. He begs Skywalker to take Annikin as his Padawan Learner in order to be a complete Jedi, because he is too old to complete his training. Annikin’s already reached “the fifth stage.” Skywalker reluctantly accepts him. And then Kane takes off for “the spaceport at Gordon to visit an old friend, Han Solo, the Ureallian.”

And from here, the story descends into the seventh circle of screenwriting hell.

There’s this business about Skywalker desperately trying to get a “war code” in order to “start the war computers” and send his troops into space to be ready for an imminent attack by the Empire, but he can’t get it until there’s a vote about an alliance treaty. And then they say, “May the force of others be with you all.”

Skywalker learns about a death star, which we never see, but we see “a space fortress.” Maybe they were the same thing. I'm not sure. In any case, they’ll be attacking at sunrise. He sends Starkiller to get Princess Leia to bring her to safety.

And here’s the basic arc of their sordid relationship.

First encounter:

STARKILLER
Forget the cases - we've no time.

LEIA
These are my things. They must...

STARKILLER
I said forget them, and hurry...

LEIA
Just who do you think you are?

Starkiller grabs the princess by the arm, and hauls her to the speeder. Mina and the old women run after them.

LEIA
I will not be treated like this! You bring my things.... My father will have your head... (etc.)

Leia struggles to break away from the young warrior's grasp as he opens the door of the speeder.

STARKILLER
Settle down!

When the door to the speeder is opened, Mina starts in, and Starkiller stops her.

STARKILLER
You must stay. Here, take the Crest.

Starkiller rips the royal crest from the princess' neck, and hands it to the startled handmaiden. The old women gasp in horror. The princess starts hitting Starkiller with little result.

PRINCESS
Mina's not staying...I'm not leaving her. You can't....

Starkiller punches her square on the jaw and knocks her cold. Mina is panic stricken, one of the old women faints, and another starts for Starkiller with a large staff.

STARKILLER
She'll be all right. I'm taking her to safety...as ordered. You will wear the crest and continue as before.

Later as they are flying along in a landspeeder:

PRINCESS
You are such a barbarian. I'll have my father cut you into little pieces when we get back...and I'll take pleasure in feeding you to the Gonthas....a little bit each day. I may save your eyes though. I'll have them petrified and made into a necklace.

STARKILLER
Your sweetness is only surpassed by your beauty. Just try to remember, I'm only following orders.

PRINCESS
... to beat me and abuse me?

STARKILLER
I'm afraid I've only learned one way to treat wild animals.

And then, somehow, they fall in love:

LEIA
Will we make it? Is there any hope? Stay with me... I love you.

Starkiller is slightly shocked at this outburst. The princess starts to cry and clings to him for support.

STARKILLER
No-one is going to die...so stop acting like a child, and start behaving like a queen. What is this silly talk of love? You belong to the people of Aquilae, and my job is to return you to them, nothing more. Now straighten up and get into a lifepod.

She's deeply hurt by his callousness. She breaks away from him and runs down a hallway into a lifepod. He is tired, and angry at the whole incident.

And in the very next scene:

WHITSUN
What's going on with you two?

STARKILLER
We're in love. She loves me, and I just realized... I love her.

Pardon me while I heave.

There were two androids. They were annoying. "Artwo" could speak.

THREEPIO
This is madness; we're going to be destroyed. I'm still not accustomed to space travel.

ARTWO
The external bombardment does appear to be concentrated in this area. The structure has exceeded the normal stress quotient by point four, although there appears to be no immediate danger.

THREEPIO
No immediate danger! You're faulty. This is madness!

Because they’re losing the battle to the Empire, they decide to take the Princess and 33 of the greatest scientific minds to the Ophuchi system to be safe. But they don’t actually take the scientists.

The doctor moves over to a safe-like cabinet guarded by two attendants. The doctor gingerly picks up a small clear vial filled with grey fluid. It has a label which reads: Faubun, Astro-dynamics...In the background the scholar on the operating table is undergoing a form of mechanized brain surgery.

GENERAL
"Bloodory's distillation?"

DOCTOR
Yes. It has been greatly perfected. The brain is condensed into five ounces of fluid. Cloning cell samples are included so that a structural duplicate of the scientist can be reproduced. When the duplicate child reaches the age of six, he or she begins a series of injections of the brain fluid. By the age of ten years, they have received all the knowledge and memory of an experienced scientist: an old mind in a young body. We have prepared a special shock-belt to carry the vials.

I’ll bet that was fashionable.

Here’s the rest of the story, which was woefully inadequate:

- Skywalker, Starkiller and company try to flee with the princess (and scientists floating inside their special shock-belts).

- The escape attempt fails and they crash land on the planet Yavin.

- They lose the princess.

- They’re taken in by “Wookees,” whose colony is run by Chewbacca.

- The Empire captures the princess and takes her to the “space fortress.”

- Skywalker and company teach the “Wookees” how to fly a spacecraft.

- And then the “Wookees” fly the spacecrafts into outer space and attack the “space fortress.” Vader tells Leia, “I'm afraid I have no more time to deal with you. A senseless and futile attack by your friends has forced me to take a rather unpleasant course of action. Your execution will have to be expedited.”

- Skywalker and Starkiller board the “space fortress,” rescue the princess, take her to a spacecraft, and float away with the garbage, while the “Wookees” continue the attack and eventually blow up the “space fortress.”

- There is much celebrating in the end.

Okay, I should make at least one serious point here. Let me ask a question: why should we care about this kid, Annikin Starkiller, who gets pushed off onto General Skywalker? Here, I think we find some of the great lessons in the transformation of Star Wars as a story. It’s not just about special effects and being entertaining and being halfway intelligent (please!) about the relationships between these characters. This is about having a protagonist who has a goal. In this first draft (and second), Annikin is just a young adult who has almost completed his training and seems likely to do so. And then we just watch him in action. Yawn. So what? He’s all set!

But consider the final version in which we’re given a young Luke Skywalker who not only has an inner goal to be a hero Joseph Campbell style, but he’s also disadvantaged because of his circumstances, and they're holding him back from being what he really wants to be. Who couldn’t sympathize with that? When Luke stared at that horizon on Tatooine and those two setting suns and longed for something better, we longed with him and rooted for him to get it. When his parents were murdered we knew he was on a trajectory for a great adventure that we were very ready to go on with him. And so we were introduced to this great universe through Luke and his inner needs, which made all the difference in the world.

By the way, George, I am interested to know what the hell happened to those scientists floating around in those little bottles on Skywalker's shock-belt. I guess they're okay now.

May the force of others be with you all.