CREATING CHARACTERS: The Case AGAINST Character ARCS

Originally published in Script magazine January/February 2009

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It’s funny to me that the biz is filled with individuals who purport themselves to be “open minded”; yet, when it comes to the art of storytelling, they’re the most close-minded formula freaks you’ll ever meet.

And many believe that all protagonists in all stories must have arcs to their inner nature for better or worse. Are you kidding me? This myth has pervaded every area of Hollywood, from gurus to screenwriting professors to pro consultants and just about everyone else, so that all new writers (and many working pros) encounter a thought police on this subject the likes of which we haven’t seen since the pre-wall days of East Germany. Who let this false gospel into our church? Friends, Script readers, fellow writers, and anyone else out there, hear my words and hear them well— this myth about character arcs does not hold up against the record of cinema history. A story is not of a lower quality simply because a protagonist doesn’t “change,” but rather, this principle about character arcs has been wrong since the very beginning.

Need I remind everyone that this time last year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed the highest yearly artistic award for cinematic achievement, the Best Motion Picture of 2007, to No Country for Old Men, a movie that even The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane noted in his review “charts no moral shift in Chigurh, or indeed in the men around him; all of them are set in stone from the beginning.” Not one character had an arc. They all stayed the course they were on.

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 fl awed protagonist as we saw with Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, 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 Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, Neo in Th e Matrix, or most comic-book hero origin stories. Plus, I love the kind of transformational arcs we saw in Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, or Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in The Lives of Others, a fabulous film.

But to say that every protagonist in every story must have an arc is madness, my friends. It’s utter madness. So, let’s look at this subject from a variety of categories.

Gandhi—This film certainly chronicled his maturity and the many ways in which he was tested, but Gandhi never once changed who he was at his core. I loved what Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote: “Th e movie begins in the early years of the century in South Africa. Gandhi moved there from India in 1893 when he was 23. 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 were 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 fi rm. He is sure where the right lies in every situation, and he will uphold it in total disregard for the possible consequences to himself.”

3:10 to Yuma—I’d like to quote another favorite critic of mine, ReelViews.net’s James Berardinelli: “Two things of of significance occur during 3:10 to Yuma, and both revolve around Dan [Evans]. 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 [Dan] with contempt but grows to respect him. The other is Ben [Wade] 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.”

Dr. Richard Kimble—In The Fugitive, Dr. Kimble adapted to the new situation of being a fugitive in order to find the one-armed man, the true murderer of his wife. He certainly maintained his resolve to find him, but he did not have a character arc in the sense that there were changes to his inner nature. What kind of arc is there for a man after he proves who a murderer is? How is he different? There is no question that Kimble would be affected or emotionally wounded by this great upheaval in his life, but was there a change to his inner nature? No. He had goals and he reached those goals. That’s it. He didn’t become a permanent criminal. He was just as good a human being in the end as he was in the beginning. He simply played the hand that was dealt to him, but he never changed who he was at his core. Scarlett O’Hara—Gone With the Wind, a sensational film and one of my favorites, is also the highest ranking movie on AFI’s “100 Years ... 100 Movies” list that has a protagonist who 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 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 nothing more than a declaration of true character. 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 the 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 recognized the significance of Tara in her life. But, come on. Are those realizations enough to prompt real change in Scarlett O’Hara?

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—This Paul Newman-Robert Redford starrer was written by one of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time, William Goldman. Th e one thing to be said about Butch and Sundance, beyond the fact that they were crooks to the end, is that their story was unique only in the way that it revealed true character. They were cool and gutsy 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 gutsy hipsters we thought they were—they were chickenshits. Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen—Over the course of these three films, we can chart the growing skills of the primary characters as con men, but they never depart from their true natures. The writers toy with character arcs to 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 become 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, their inability to change and adapt to modern ways (by abandoning old-fashioned codes about loyalty) that brought Pike and his gang to their downfall. “We gotta start thinking beyond our guns,” Pike says. They never do. Not only that, Thornton, the antagonist who led the posse out to get Pike, was once a member of his gang but he’s now forced to capture them or go to jail. Thornton survived because he did what Pike and the others couldn’t do. He abandoned the code of loyalty long before the story began. After the shootout is over, Thornton sits outside the gates of the compound and observes the formation of a new gang. He smiles wryly and joins them. Even Thornton couldn’t change who he really was.

Since when did Sherlock Holmes have a character arc? Or Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple? Th ere 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. The fun comes from trying to solve the mystery, and the investigation is usually led by a dynamic character. So, is it truly essential that Holmes or Poirot have arcs in every single 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 one or 50 stories about Holmes, the emphasis will always be on the plot, and an arc in the protagonist shouldn’t be required. In fact, shouldn’t the emphasis be on the protagonist’s depth of character because the more sides to him and the more games he can play on the other characters, the more entertaining the story, right?

I love crime noirs and the books of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and I miss the days when we would go see a film simply because the protagonist was a man who knew who he was and we wanted to be more like him. I love what Chandler said about protagonists: “The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with extraordinary qualities.” We watched Sam Spade because he was fascinating. He had different sides to his character. And we loved watching him deal with all those bad guys. Although Sam was fl awed and made us wonder if he was truly bad with the questionable deals he was making with those characters, the Act Three climax 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 “100 Years” list.

Indiana Jones—Friends, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the golden boy of action-adventure movies and one of AFI’s “100 Years” 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, a kind of running.

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, and The Ugly.) Indy’s relationship with Marion, I think, falls under script coach Linda Seger’s definition of a “hidden inner need.” He revisits her for the sake of the mission, falls in love with her all over again— which could’ve been 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.

The Temple of Doom showed us a different motivation, selfless reasons, in fact, for going after the Sankara Stones, which simply illuminated a different side of his character. In The Last Crusade, he had an external goal to get the Holy Grail, of course, and he had inner needs with respect to his father which were satisfied by the big hug and the words of affection from Henry Sr. after he thought Indy had died. Does that mean Indy changed as a result? It means that a need was met. Period.

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 don’t want him to change. We love him just the way he is. He gets the job done and he does 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? He’d be a villain now, wouldn’t he? 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.)

Clarice Starling—A great writer friend of mine, Joshua James, who also did some acting and directing in theatre, made the best point I’ve ever heard about Starling’s character. The Silence of the Lambs was not about her arc. It was about revealing her emotional logic. Josh: “If I can offer anything from my experiences as an actor and director, [it ’s] 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. Th ey’re doing things that conform to their emotional worldview. I argued that Clarice from The Silence of the Lambs was 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 this until Lecter 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 Lecter, 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.”

(Chief) Inspector Jacques Clouseau— Let it finally be said that it is not required for protagonists to have a character arc in slapstick comedies. The most you can hope for in slapstick comedies is characters that have blind obsessions, individuals that fail to see their own flaws or the dangers of their own ridiculous fixations. Got that? Blind obsessions. Ridiculous fixations. Consider the comedy-gold combination of the moneyfixated Max Bialystock and the producer fixated Leo Bloom. Or Oscar Madison living with the germ-obsessed Felix Unger. 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. And the big cosmic joke was that he’d always get decorated with honors for his brilliance. Th e moment the truth gets revealed, the moment Clouseau realizes he has flaws in his personality and that he needs to change will be the very same moment that the entire house of Pink Panther comedy will come crashing down. And this is the reason I felt that the latest incarnation of The Pink Panther failed, not because Steve Martin isn’t funny (he is), but because Inspector Clouseau got outed in the media as the bumbling idiot he always was, he actually realized that he is a bumbling idiot, he apologized to different people if he made them look silly, and then he solved the big case thereby proving to the world that he is, in fact, a brilliant detective. That’s blasphemous. That’s completely blasphemous.

I can hear someone argue, “Well, Mystery Man, you only showed us one-off s and rare exceptions.” Did I really? It only takes one exception to invalidate this “principle.” In fact, there are so many exceptions to every “principle” we thought we learned that I have come to one definite conclusion about screenwriting: All stories require individual consideration. All characters may not require an arc.

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