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Get in late, leave early
A satisfying story begins at the end. Or at the very least, it shows us a glimpse of what that ending looks like. In psychology, there is a theory called the spoiler paradox; Various experiments have shown that readers enjoy a story more when the ending is revealed up front. Scientists believe this is because by knowing how a story will end, the audience has more time to take in the details, consider the characters, the situations, what they would do etc. In other words, they can learn more from the story when they already know how it is going to end. And let’s be honest, in most movies, after about fifteen minutes or so, you have a pretty decent idea what will happen anyways! Who will end up with whom, who will die, who will save whom etc.
But besides pleasing your audience, there are other reasons why we want to begin by hinting at the end: character- and theme development. Before we have met our Protagonist we are already working on revealing their character. And what does every character ever want? To reach Heaven On Earth. This Heaven on Earth is the achievement (X) from THE Theme.
THE Theme: To reach Heaven on Earth, our Protagonist should do Y, not Z.
Heaven on Earth is your Protagonist’s Happy Place. It is the world how they want it to be. It is “happily ever after”. It is where your Protagonist can be Happy, or Free, or Safe, or whatever it is that they truly want. But, oftentimes, at the start of a film, the main characters don’t really know what they truly want. But, as the writer, you should reveal this ultimate desire to the audience as soon as possible. Albeit a little hidden.
When the Pixar film Ratatouille ends, Remy is the best chef in Paris and has his own restaurant where he can live and work with his family of rats and his human friends. You knew, before Remy even knew he wanted to be a chef, that this was how the movie would end. Why? Because the very first scene of the movie shows us the great successes of Chef Gusteau; the best, happiest and most inclusive chef in Paris. ("Anyone can Cook") In this world, doesn’t everybody want to be Chef Gusteau? Before any character in this movie knows what is about to happen, we get offered a pretty good idea; a glimpse into the future. The very first scene shows us that in this film, the highest achievement is to be considered the greatest chef in France.
In Training Day, we open on Jake (Ethan Hawke) waking up with his perfect little family; a beautiful supportive wife and a baby, who is not even crying. Talk about Heaven on Earth! You will see that her first wails are the starter pistol for everything that happens after. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, there is a whole montage of Pete and Sarah as the happiest couple on the planet. The title and the opening scenes almost hit us over the head with “how this story will end”: with everybody happier than ever, even if it is not with Sarah. But heaven doesn’t have to be this on the nose. Even a subtle, much more morally ambiguous movie like Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, which drops us almost immediately into the action, gives us a Slice of Heaven: when Mildred (Frances McDormand) finds a bug flipped on its back in the windowsill, she gently turns it over and sends it on its way. Yes, this serves to show us the character’s soft side, before she violently takes on an entire town, but it also serves as a subtle bit of foreshadowing, because by the end of the movie, she and her mortal enemy Dixon (Sam Rockwell) help each other on their feet after they’ve both been flailing on their backs for two hours.
Or consider Kate Macer, Emily Blunt’s character in Sicario. In the opening scene, she leads a SWAT team on a raid into a house full of murderous drug-cartel gunmen. She is determined, she is ruthless and she kicks ass. Even while other policemen are puking their guts out from fear and anxiety, she shrugs it off; she is utterly fearless. She spends the rest of the film trying to end the drug war once and for all. We are with her all the way. We want to bring down this evil too! About ten minutes in, we know exactly what Kate’s Heaven on Earth is: a world where everyone can be as fearless as her - because there will be nothing to fear anymore. Unfortunately for Kate, Sicario is a tragedy, and the opposite happens: she ends the movie scared and insecure. She probably won’t ever pull the trigger of her gun again.
If we look at THE Theme again-
THE Theme: To reach Heaven on Earth, our Protagonist should do Y, not Z.
-we can now see that Remy made it to his Heaven on Earth, so he must have done Y, while Kate died (metaphorically) before she could get there. So she must have done Z.
But before we dive into Y and Z and the difference between them let's be specific and define exactly what a Protagonist really is.
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