The best movies tend to have a growth arc for the main character. In the end, they have often somehow become better versions of themselves, as well as having solved some big problem in their world. This means they have to start the movie as the “not best version of themselves”. And this is where many scripts I read run into a problem.
If the “not best version” of your main character is a selfish jerk who hurts others in some way, readers will tend to not bond with them enough to want to stay with the script. And I believe the single most important factor for audience engagement is forming that connection with the main character. I also think that’s the primary function of the first ten pages — to start that process, then really cement it when the “Catalyst” happens, in mid-Act One.
In search of a suitable character “flaw”, however, many writers start their main character pretty unlikable in terms of their treatment of (and caring about) other people. Then by the end of the movie, the idea is that they will care about others and treat them better — so that they have a satisfying character arc.
I believe this almost always undermines readers’ ability to care enough about the main character to want to stay with the story. There’s a reason why the title of Blake Snyder’s famous book focuses on the main character needing to do something selfless to make the audience care about them, in the opening pages — such as “save a cat”. Because it’s how characters treat others (usually people) that most determine how much the audience bonds with them.
This tends to not be as necessary (but is often still helpful) in movies where the main character faces huge life-and-death stakes right away, and/or is heroic. We can forgive a lot in those cases. But if their problems are something less than that, and/or they are not heroic, we tend to not want to follow them if they are basically a “jerk”. We’re much more interested in following relatable underdogs.
It’s true that there are a rare handful of movies where the whole point is that a “jerk” becomes a better person. A great example of this is Liar Liar. The main character is purposefully presented as someone who is not particularly good to other people, because the whole point of the film is that a magic spell will force him to tell the truth and be “better”. That’s the one time where you can get away with the “jerk” opening.
But even there, you’ll notice that he’s actually really good to his kid, when he shows up. His problem is just that he’s unreliable and evades the truth. But when present, he’s a great, loving dad — right from the opening pages. So even in this movie about a “jerk who stops being a jerk”, the filmmakers go out of their way to give him some positive qualities from the outset, in how he interacts with and loves his son.
Also, this character is REALLY entertaining to watch, which helps — the movie is hilarious from page one. And, importantly, he gets completely beaten up by life, for most of the movie. They aren’t life-and-death stakes, but he’s being punished for almost the entire film. We can forgive bad behavior more when the main character is punished for it in a big way, pretty much constantly.
This is often done with womanizer characters, like Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers. He’s unrepentant in how he uses women, but he gets taken to task for it, almost from start to finish. His happy success at this is only evident in the opening montage. The rest of the time, he’s paying a big price for it. He’s also not the main character. Unrepentant womanizers usually aren’t. The main character, played by Owen Wilson, has more of a conscience, and is focused on a particular woman who we’re led to feel could be a true love connection. (Where his interactions with her have heart — like when he helps her with her toast at the wedding.)
My point here is that the main character’s “flaw” should not be that they hurt others in some way, out of selfishness, almost ever. Instead, I like to think of the flaw as the way the main character “gets in their own way” — usually through limited thinking about what’s possible for them. This flaw might have a side effect of giving people around them a less-good life than if this character was fully self-actualized, but they are not directly hurting others in a way that we see on screen and blame them for. Instead, they are living a compromised version of what their life could be, because they somehow haven’t risen up to face the internal blocks that are keeping them stuck — which is what the big challenge of the movie will force them to do. But they’re not jerks!
Why must a protagonist have a character arc? The protagonist can simply have a goal. E.G. Pro. can simply want to see justice done etc.
Sincerely Glen
I don’t think they have to have one. And certainly in some movies the main character doesn’t really change, though they often influence others to change. (Like FORREST GUMP.) The arc usually there to give the movie deeper meaning, resonance and universal themes that might be lacking in a simple plot that’s just about one thing, like seeing justice done. But sometimes that’s all you need if it’s done really well and other elements are strong…
I completely agree with you on this. It seems that we as people have a hard time identifying ourselves as the “bad guy” in situations, whether we really are or not. We know our own intentions, so it’s easy to justify our actions to ourselves. But when others do something we don’t agree with, we often can’t see what their intentions are, and are much less likely to trust them. But when we see the intentions of a protagonist’s actions, we can trust them and we become more emotionally attached to the story because it reminds us of how we see ourselves.
Thank you for this insight. It will be very valuable in my writing.
Thank you Erik for being so gracious with your knowledge.
It would be interesting to hear your take on the likability of the two lead characters (STEVEN and PERCIVAL) in The Suicide Theory, a new film which has been getting good reviews from film critics and screenwriters. I have trouble liking either character, but their story hooked me even though it’s cartoonish, overly violent, and the writing is mundane. Is this a film where “high stakes” trumps the need for a sympathetic protagonist?
I haven’t seen it, but it sounds like it. Life and death stakes that are evident from the beginning can make a lot of other things forgivable…
Not sure if this works for Don Draper, one of the most popular characters in TV history. As I recall, Draper doesn’t show a thread of humanity until the last minute or two of the critically acclaimed pilot episode.
Let’s break down the day we first meet Don. We open with Don cheating with his Greenwich Village mistress. Back at the ad agency, he tells his new secretary to wake him from his morning on the job nap, get him his coffee, and try to find some alka seltzer.
Next Don insults the female PhD who runs the agency’s research department, tossing her report on the surgeon general’s smoking warnings in his waste basket. At eleven am, he insults a brand new Jewish client, saying he’s not going to take that kind of talk from “a woman.”
Later Don hits it out of the park when he suggests to their cigarette company clients they can turn the health risk issue to their advantage by advertising their brand isn’t toxic, “it’s toasted.”
Of course throughout the day we first meet Don Draper, he drinks and smokes non-stop, including on the long commuter train ride back to his beautiful neglected suburban Westchester wife and children.
Fifty-nine minutes into his debut, Don has his only grace moment. He opens a door and looks lovingly in on his sleeping daughter. That’s all folks. The swelling tune “On the Street Where You Live” plays out over the closing credits ending one of the greatest shows in television history.
In my book, Don Draper is more magnetic than all the movie goody two-shoes put together. I don’t miss any of them once I leave the theater. But, I’ll miss Don every day for the rest of my life.
Don’s not a good guy. He’s a real guy. We don’t need to like him. We just recognize our self in him, both good AND bad. And that makes him lodge deeper in our hearts and our memories than most exemplary movie characters who don’t ring true.
My take on this is that TV is a different animal than feature films. Movies generally present one main character that we have to invest in for two hours. Series present a world of characters and situations that we come back to again and again, and they typically have several characters who get stories of their own and thus are their own “main character” in any given episode, including in pilots.
While I agree that it’s hard to care too much about whether Don gets the cigarette ad right in the MAD MEN pilot, we have another character in Peggy who is wholly sympathetic as our “way in” to this exotic environment, and I think it’s her story in the pilot that draws the audience in emotionally, whereas Don is more intriguing than “rootable”.
I don’t think it is necessary for a character to be rootable or good in order to be intriguing. I don’t think film characters have to be all good either but that’s the thinking of studios these days.
Personally I prefer dark, flawed characters…because that’s what most of us are underneath our cover…
People are drawn to stories because they get to do things we can’t do in real life…how many people get to be in the mafia and kill their enemies and run drugs without going to prison for it…these characters get away with things that we can’t. They don’t have to live under the respectable façade that we all do to have a job, etc. They can live without fear or immediate repercussions. I really think that is the draw for characters like this… they live in a world us “real” people have not experienced.