The Story Solution. Eric Edson
Wrestling Federation: the bigger, meaner, nastier the brawl, the better.
The opposing force character required to create conflict I’ll call the adversary. This term covers characters ranging from a decent person who needs to stop the hero for perfectly understandable reasons (Dr. Bruner in Rain Man), to a psychotic killer who just enjoys murder (crazed hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men).
Movie conflict is two people pursuing mutually exclusive goals who smash into each other, physically and emotionally.
A hero and adversary collide either while chasing after a single goal that both want but only one can have, as in National Treasure, or while pursuing separate but opposing goals, as in Heat.
Vague resolutions won’t fly. Someone must win and someone must lose.
CONFLICT ON TWO LEVELS
In well-written screenplays, conflict plays out on two dramatic levels at the same time.
The first level of conflict is duked out in the external world, the world of sight and sound and physical action. In Iron Man, genius engineer Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) must stop his adversary Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) from selling Stark’s advanced weapons to terrorists. Physical conflict.
The second level of conflict is emotional, internal, and personal.
It is turmoil within the hero as he struggles to overcome some psychological roadblock that must be surmounted before he will be able to triumph in pursuit of his physical goal.
This second level of emotional conflict plays out simultaneously with the physical conflict so that the two clashes are parallel and weave together to form one strong screenplay.
In Groundhog Day, arrogant weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) finds himself condemned to relive the same horrible day over and over as he attempts to bed the girl he lusts after, Rita (Andie MacDowell). And day after day she rejects him. That is, until Phil learns to grow beyond narcissism and give of himself unselfishly to others. Allowing genuine love to finally enter his heart frees Phil, and he gets the girl and escapes from Groundhog Day at last.
VISIBLE PHYSICAL CONFLICT: Seduce his adversary love interest Rita who refuses all of his advances.
INNER EMOTIONAL CONFLICT: Fight to conquer narcissism and learn to love unselfishly.
In The Matrix, computer hacker Neo (Keanu Reeves) joins a band of rebels to fight Agent Smith and the machines who now rule the world. But there’s no hope of beating the evil Agent Smith until Neo overcomes self-doubt and grows to accept his true destiny as The One who will lead all surviving humans to victory.
VISIBLE PHYSICAL CONFLICT: Defeat Agent Smith and his army before they kill the rebels and enslave what is left of mankind.
INNER EMOTIONAL CONFLICT: Neo must overcome self-doubt and accept that he is The One able to accomplish impossible deeds.
The first level of physical, external conflict remains mandatory for all screen stories. Gotta have it.
The second level of inner emotional struggle is optional — but highly recommended. We’ll explore the inner Character Growth Arc more fully in a later chapter.
In both kinds of conflict not just one but a series of collisions is required. The nature of those repeated smashups must expand as the story advances and conflict grows in ferocity.
Here are the seven basic elements required to make conflict effective for the screen.
1. The conflict must be strong.
The strength of conflict in any movie will always be a major factor in defining commercial success or the lack of it. Strong conflict develops from three sources within a story:
a. The power of the adversary — he should appear unbeatable;
b. How greatly the hero desires to achieve her goal — she should want victory more than anything in the world;
c. How high the stakes are — stakes need to be nothing less than physical or metaphorical life or death.
In the movie Breach, rookie FBI agent Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe) gets assigned as office assistant to veteran agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper). The FBI knows Hanssen has been spying for the Soviets for years, and young hero O’Neill must collect further evidence against his new boss. He copies computer records, tapes conversations with Hanssen, and keeps his adversary boss out of the office so other agents can search Hanssen’s files.
The boss spy plans on retiring very soon. So he risks one last “drop” of secret government information for the Russians. Hanssen gets caught red-handed by other FBI agents and the movie ends.
Chris Cooper’s stunning performance as the Soviet mole Hanssen may yet save Breach from total oblivion.
But there’s something fundamentally off about this story.Conflict between the hero and adversary never grows strong enough to create an effective movie.
By the time O’Neill gets assigned as assistant to adversary Hanssen — the point at which this movie begins — Hanssen is no longer a threat to anyone. Scores of FBI agents hover over his every move. This spy has already been removed from the position he held, where Hanssen actually could do damage to the United States, and soon he’ll retire anyway. The Bureau only wants O’Neill to scrounge up a few final nails for Hanssen’s already closed coffin.
Oh, people shout at each other and get upset in the story, but real stakes don’t exist.
The story of Breach comes from true events, and like many other such films, the plot suffers for being reality-based. It couldn’t be manipulated enough to create the much-needed hero-focused conflict.
Handcuffed by facts, young O’Neill isn’t really responsible for causing the climax of his own movie. The hero isn’t even present at Hanssen’s showdown with FBI agents when the adversary gets arrested. And most of the evidence provided by the hero is redundant.
So core story conflict ends up feeling like the hero isn’t very important or at the center of things.
Also, the stakes for young rookie O’Neill are quite low. He works about eight weeks for the FBI, and then when informed that his first case has been closed (since he’s not personally present for the climax, he must be told), O’Neill realizes he doesn’t much like being an FBI agent after all, so he quits.
What a wuss. The problems in this film are:
a. A weak adversary;
b. A hero who isn’t very committed;
c. Stakes that are relatively low.
Conflict here just isn’t strong enough to create a captivating movie. Breach did not do well at the box office.
If your idea for a new screenplay doesn’t contain a powerful collision of two dynamic characters from the earliest “what if” in your head, then keep pounding on the idea until it does.
2. Conflict must be seen.
That strong, physical outer battle keeps the plot active and cinematically engaging while at the same time it permits the hero’s interior emotional struggle to be brought out into the open through behavior and actions that we can see.
In Romancing the Stone, hero romance writer Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) lives in loneliness because she longs for a perfect man — “Jessie,” who exists only in her books. Then, trying to help her kidnapped sister, Joan is thrown into the Columbian jungle, running for her life alongside sleazy exotic bird smuggler Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) who is everything that’s the opposite of Joan’s perfect guy. In order to survive — and find happiness — Joan must let go of her fantasy and learn to love a flawed but real man. She grows confident in her survival skills, matures emotionally, and lets go of her romantic notions to find happiness at last with Jack.
The physical plot action-line of this