Here’s Part Two of famous movies with serious character arcs. I point these out not to say that the characters in each of your scripts HAVE to make such journeys, only that you should define the journey. Where does the character arc begin (Point A/ORDER), where does it change (Point P/CHAOS), and where does it end (Point Z-REORDER)?
- Pretty Woman
ORDER:
Richard Gere plays a wheeler-dealer multimillionaire who tires of Vogue models and decides to pick up a streetwalker(I buy that, no problem!) who happens to be Julia Roberts(I buy that too, Julia selling it on a street corner, sure…) What follows has followed since the time of Pompeii and Herculaneum. They go back to his place for martinis, a romp in the mud bath, the cash left on the bed, etcetera. Only…
CHAOS:
There’s a complication. Julia Roberts being Julia Roberts, she’s just so damn quirky, charming, and smoking hot…multimillionaire Gere falls for her! The mixture of bourgeois and proletariat is a strict no-no in Gere’s social circle and Roberts causes quite the commotion at the Polo Club. Her identity is revealed, causing even greater ripples of scandal among the bon-vivant crowd. The idea of Gere actually cavorting with a common prostitute is an outrage. Gere’s lawyer does everything he can to break them apart and appears to succeed. But…
REORDER:
Love triumphs in the end! Julia Roberts being Julia Roberts, no way Gere lets her walk away. The multimillionaire and the prostitute will marry! The chances at the top of the movie(Point A) that Richard Gere ends up with a hooker are not great, yet here we are at the end of the movie(Point Z) and it feels right–to the tune of a 460+ million box office take.
- The Shining
ORDER:
Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, a writer and family man. He takes a job as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, hoping the solitude of the gig will help in his attempt to finish his novel. With him are wife Shelley Duvall and their freckle-faced boy Danny. The family is awed and inspired when they get to the hotel. Staff is leaving, winter is upon them, the snows soon to come.
CHAOS:
Flash forward a month: Jack’s writing is going nowhere. Shelly and son entertain themselves in the shrub maze around the vast grounds. Snow knocks out access to the hotel and the phone lines are down. Also, with the solitude, some flat-out weird shit starts happening at the Overlook Hotel: Jack walks into the somehow populated Gold Room to be told by Grady, the ghost of a previous caretaker, that the joint is located on an old Indian burial site. Danny sees a pair of twin girls who lead him to Room 237 and a crazy woman. Danny’s bruises lead to Shelley thinking Jack has smacked freckled-face Danny around and they argue. Grady tells Jack he’s going to have to discipline his family. Shelley, freaked out, comes down to discover the novel Jack’s been working on for months is page after page of gibberish. Jack, in all-work-and-no-play-makes-Jack-a-dull-boy mode swings his baseball bat at her, she races back to the room to find Danny drawing RED RUM backward in lipstick and…well, life could be better.
REORDER:
Jack’s on the loose with his axe, killing psychic Scatman Crothers, truly becoming the Honey, I’m Home bloody caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, stalking Shelley and Danny, ending up a frozen meatsicle in the maze, a quick glance at an old photo showing he was, truly, always the caretaker at the Overlook.
- Bucket of Blood
ORDER:
Walter Paisley is a busboy at a beatnik cafe. He digs the scene and is a likeable enough fellow. He doesn’t have the artistic pretensions of seemingly everyone around him, and is sometimes the butt of their intellectual jokes. Walter would love to be touched by the muse, but as he goes home for the night, no one would ever confuse him for an artist.
CHAOS:
Walter accidentally kills the landlady’s cat. Trying to cover up his mistake, he finds a leftover supply of plaster and mortar kit, sealing the cat in plaster. He brings his “sculpture” back to cafe, calling it Dead Cat, his first sculpture and artistic statement. It received by the bohemian artists as a powerful first artistic achievement. They hail Walter and welcome into the realm of artists. Walter is trailed back to his apartment by an undercover cop and accidentally kills him too, making him into sculpture two. The bohemians at the cafe are blown away, calling Water a genius, pressing him for now sculptures. Walter has a problem–in order to further his artistic career, he’s got to keep killing people. Walter dispatches a worker in a lumber yard, then kills a blonde model and he makes her sculpture #4. A show of Walter’s art is planned, a celebration of Walter’s transformation into artistic wunderkind.
REORDER:
The showing of Walter’s sculptures is going wonderfully, until a piece of plaster chips away, showing a human finger. Screams and commotion among the bohemians. Walter has walked home with the girl of his dreams with the bohemians and police in full pursuit. They chase him back to his apartment to find Walter in the place where all serial killers and bad sculptors eventually go. The journey from busboy to wannabe Jackson Pollack, complete.
- The Lawnmover Man
ORDER:
The Wikipedia synopsis is quite good here:
“Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan) works for Virtual Space Industries. His part in “Project 5” involves increasing the intelligence of chimpanzees using drugs and virtual reality. One of the experiment’s chimps escapes using the warfare technology that he was being trained to use. Dr. Angelo is revealed as generally a pacifist, who would much rather explore the intelligence-enhancing potential of his research without having to apply it for military purposes.
Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey) is a local greenskeeper (the “lawnmower man” of the title) who has an unspecified learning disability. He lives in the garden shed owned by the local priest, Father Francis McKeen (Jeremy Slate). McKeen’s brother, Terry (Geoffrey Lewis), is a local landscape gardener and employs Jobe to help him with odd jobs. Father McKeen, who is apparently Jobe’s guardian, takes to punishing the challenged Jobe with a belt when he apparently fails to complete his chores. Their interaction suggests that the abuse is habitual as Jobe requires little prompting from McKeen to remove his shirt to receive lashings on his back.
While Dr. Angelo records audio notes about needing a human subject, Jobe is mowing his lawn. Peter Parkette, the young son of Dr. Angelo’s neighbors, is friends with Jobe. Dr. Angelo invites both Peter and Jobe to play some virtual reality games. Learning more about Jobe, Angelo persuades Jobe to participate in his experiments, telling him that it will make him smarter. Jobe agrees and begins a program of accelerated learning, using neotropic drugs, virtual reality input, and cerebral cortex stimulation. Dr. Angelo makes it a special point to redesign all the intelligence-boosting treatments without the “aggression factors” used in the chimpanzee experiments.”
CHAOS:
“Jobe soon becomes smarter, for example, learning Latin in two hours at the lab one night. Dr. Angelo also starts taking Jobe to his lab at work to use the technology there. Jobe begins to change in other ways as well; he engages in sexual activity with a young rich widow, Marnie (Jenny Wright). However, Jobe starts to have telepathic and hallucinatory experiences as well. He continues with the experiments at the lab, until an accident makes Dr. Angelo call a halt. The project director, Sebastian Timms, employed by a mysterious agency known as The Shop, keeps a secret watch on the progress of the experiment, and soon swaps the scientist’s new medications for the old Project 5 “aggression factors”.
Jobe acquires telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers and takes Marnie to the lab to have sexual intercourse with her in virtual reality; but something goes wrong in the simulation, and Marnie is so traumatized that she is driven insane, laughing endlessly at nothing.
Jobe’s powers and abilities continue to grow, although the treatments also affect his mental stability, and soon he takes revenge on those who abused him when he was “dumb”: Father McKeen is engulfed in flames, a bully named Jake is put into a catatonic state by a mental “lawnmower man” continually mowing his brain, and Jobe directs a lawnmower invention of his to run down Harold, Peter’s abusive father. Jobe uses his telepathic abilities to make the investigating police attribute it all to “bizarre accidents” in front of Dr. Angelo.”
REORDER:
“Jobe believes his final stage of evolution is to become “pure energy” in the VSI computer mainframe. He plans to enter the VSI computer and from there reach into all the systems of the world, and he promises his “birth” will be signaled by every telephone on the planet ringing simultaneously. The Shop sends a team to capture Jobe, but they are ineffective against his abilities as he scatters their molecules. Jobe uses the lab equipment to enter the mainframe computer. Inside the mainframe Jobe abandons his body to become a wholly virtual being. In the process his body becomes a wizened husk.
Meanwhile, Dr. Angelo remotely infects the VSI computer with a virus that encrypts all of the links to the outside world, trapping Jobe in the mainframe. As Jobe frantically searches for an unencrypted network connection, Dr. Angelo primes bombs to destroy the building. Feeling responsible for what has happened to Jobe, Angelo then joins him in virtual reality to try to reason with him. Jobe easily overpowers him and proceeds to crucify him, then continues to search for a network connection. Peter runs into the building; Jobe still cares for him and allows Dr. Angelo to go free in order to rescue Peter. Jobe, in a final act of showing his desire to cause no more death, forces a computer-connected lock to open. This frees Peter and allows him and Dr. Angelo to escape. Jobe finally escapes through a Backdoor as the building is destroyed in multiple explosions.
Back at home with Peter, Dr. Angelo and Peter’s mother Carla (who has implicitly become a romantic interest) are about to leave when their telephone rings, followed by the noise of a second, and then hundreds, all around the globe.”
Stephen King hated this movie and sued to get his name taken off it. I admit it’s a guilty pleasure for me, the look of it kinda reminding me of the first TRON movie. As far as character arc goes, going from 60 IQ to being a God definitely qualifies.
- Deliverance
ORDER:
Again, from Wikipedia:
“Four Atlanta businessmen, named Lewis (Reynolds), Ed (Voight), Bobby (Beatty) and Drew (Cox), decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee River in the remote Georgia wilderness, expecting to have fun and see the glory of nature before the river valley is flooded by the construction of a dam. Lewis, an experienced outdoorsman, is the leader. Ed is also a veteran of several trips but lacks Lewis’ machismo. Bobby and Drew are novices.
The four are clearly the outsiders in this rural location. The crude locals are unimpressed by the “city boys;” it is also implied that some of the locals are inbred. While attempting to secure drivers for their vehicles (to be delivered to the takeout point), Drew briefly connects with a local banjo-playing boy by joining him in an impromptu bluegrass jam. When they finish, however, the boy turns away without saying anything, refusing the effusive Drew’s handshake. The four men exhibit a slightly condescending attitude toward the locals; Bobby, in particular, is very patronizing and even derides the locals to his companions for seeming to display genetic defects.
CHAOS:
The men spend the day canoeing down the river in pairs before camping by the riverside at night. Shortly before they retire for bed, Lewis tells the others to be quiet and disappears into the dark woods to investigate a sound he heard. He returns shortly and says that he did not find anything. When asked whether he heard something or someone, he tells them he does not know. While traveling the next day, the group’s two canoes are separated. Pulling ashore to get their bearings, Bobby and Ed encounter a pair of unkempt hillbillies emerging from the woods, one toothless and carrying a shotgun. After some tense conversation in which the hillbillies appear to be goading the others, Ed speculates that the two locals have a moonshine still hidden in the woods and Bobby amicably offers to buy some. The hillbillies are not moved and Bobby is forced at gunpoint to strip naked. Bobby is next chased, humiliated, ordered to “squeal like a pig” and is then violently sodomized. Ed is unable to help because he has been tied to a tree and is held by the toothless hillbilly.
Meanwhile, Lewis and Drew dock their canoe. Hearing the commotion, Lewis secretly sneaks up and kills the rapist with an arrow from his hunting bow; Ed grabs the shotgun as the other captor quickly vanishes into the woods. Lewis and Drew argue about whether to inform the authorities. Lewis insists that they would not receive a fair trial and that the jury would be composed of the dead man’s friends and relatives. Bobby agrees and does not want the incident of his rape to become public. Lewis tells them that since the entire area would be flooded by a lake soon, the body will never be found and the escaped hillbilly could not inform the authorities since he had participated in the incident. The men vote 3-to-1 to side with Lewis’ recommendation to bury the dead hillbilly’s body and continue as though nothing had happened. During the digging, Drew, the lone dissenting voter, is clearly upset and having trouble coming to terms with the decision.
The four make a run for it downriver, cutting their trip short, but soon disaster strikes as the canoes reach a dangerous stretch of rapids. In the lead canoe, Ed repeatedly implores Drew to don his life jacket, but Drew ignores him without a word of explanation. As Drew and Ed reach the rapids, Drew’s head appears to shake and he falls forward into the river.
After Drew disappears into the river, Ed loses control of his canoe and both canoes collide with the rocks, spilling Lewis, Bobby and Ed into the river. Lewis breaks his leg and the others are washed ashore alongside him. The badly-injured Lewis believes the toothless hillbilly shot Drew and is now stalking them. Later that night, under cover of darkness, Ed climbs a nearby rock face in order to dispatch the suspected shooter using his bow, while Bobby stays behind to look after Lewis. Ed reaches the top and hides out until the next morning, when he sees the man for whom he was looking standing on the cliff holding a rifle, looking down into the gorge where Lewis and Bobby are hiding. The man appears to be the hillbilly that escaped through the woods.
Ed, a champion archer who earlier lost his nerve while aiming at a deer, again freezes in spite of his clear shot. The man notices him and fires as the former champion clumsily releases his arrow. Ed falls to the ground in a panic and accidentally stabs himself with another of his arrows. The man reaches the wounded Ed and is about to kill him when he collapses, revealing Ed’s arrow sticking through him. Ed remembers that the hillbilly who tried to assault him had no front teeth, and upon initial examination, the dead man seems to have all his teeth. Ed examines his victim’s dentition more closely and discovers he has a partial, movable plate for his front two missing teeth. Ed lowers the body down the cliff with a rope and climbs down after it. His rope breaks and he falls in the river, but swims to shore and meets with Bobby and Lewis. Bobby asks more than once if Ed is certain the dead man is the same as the one they confronted earlier. Ed, clearly irritated and not completely sure himself, snaps at Bobby and asks him to confirm the man’s identity.
Ed and Bobby weigh the dead hillbilly down with stones and drop him into the river. Later, they come upon Drew’s grotesquely-contorted corpse and after being unable to find any definite gunshot wound, they also weigh it down into the river. Ed points out that they don’t want the authorities examining Drew’s body and possibly discovering a gunshot wound. Ed gives a short eulogy and sinks it in the river to ensure that it will never be found. With Lewis injured and Drew dead, Ed now becomes the leader, trying to ensure their story is consistent, knowing the local authorities will investigate.
REORDER:
When they finally reach their destination, the town of Aintry, which will soon be submerged by the river and is being evacuated, they take the injured Lewis to the local hospital while the sheriff comes to investigate the incident. One of the Deputies, named Arthur Queen, has a missing brother-in-law (ostensibly one of the hillbillies Lewis and Ed killed) and is highly suspicious. Ed and Bobby visit Lewis’ hospital room to make sure Lewis’ version of events is consistent with theirs. They are unsure if the apparently unconscious Lewis understands them, however as the doctors enter, Lewis appears to awaken, gives Ed and Bobby a knowing wink and says he remembers nothing.
Later, as the men prepare to drive home, the sheriff suddenly asks Ed why there were four life jackets when only Lewis, Ed and Bobby came out of the river. Stammering, Bobby suggests there may have been an extra one, then realizes his mistake. But Ed says no, that Drew was not wearing his life jacket and he does not know why. The sheriff remains suspicious, but having no evidence simply tells Ed, “Don’t ever do nothin’ like this again. Don’t come back up here. I’d kinda like to see this town die peaceful,” to which Ed readily agrees. The men vow to keep their story a secret for the rest of their lives, which proves to be psychologically burdensome for Ed; in the final scene, he awakes screaming from a nightmare in which a dead man’s hand rises from the lake.
The four businessmen, at Point A, could never have even imagined this journey, could never have imagined how they would react or how they would conspire at Point Z. The character change is complete.
