Character Arcs

"A character's want is the surface level goal driving them.  Their need is the lesson they gradually learn over the course of their story."  (A Closer Look)  "That lesson is almost always to learn how misguided their initial want is."

While I would use different vocabulary to approach this concept, the idea itself is perfect.  A character is a narrative element that has motivation that is driving it.  Rey is looking for a place to belong, Rey is looking for a way to unlock the potential inside her that will allow her to do good and therefore justify her belonging.  Rey has to find her own path to realize that potential rather than relying on some outside force.

Where this breaks down, however, is when we have a character with no motivation.  Fin, for example, is running from a life of  brutality and violence.  Fin is trying to find a new life with the Resistance that is opposing the violent First Order.   Fin likes to follow Rey around.

You see how in this progression, Fin starts out with a motivation and is successful.  But in the second film, Fin begins to falter in his motivation.  By the third story, Fin has no motivation whatsoever, and is merely a presence on screen.

The second vocabulary change is in The Lesson.  Closer's Boseley suggests that the lesson is to learn how misguided the initial want is.  I think about this in terms of a character's Arc.  It's not a straight line, but it is a trajectory, a pathway that takes that person from their initial motivation to a place of resolution.  As suggested, that final resolution may not be what the character initially envisioned.  But in order for an arc to have taken place, the character must resolve the initial tension with which they begin the story.

The Force Awakens - Rey: initial tension:   waiting for someone to return and make her life better but she understands that something is wrong.  Progression:  realizing that the person she's waiting for is not coming back.  Resolution:  Accepting that she can no longer wait on Jakku, and instead will be happier struggling for something larger and better than herself.  Rey follows a classic arc in that she starts with initial tension, undergoes a transition that both brings enlightenment and starts her on a different pathway, finally resolving the tension and placing her in a new and more powerful situation.

Now, how can a character fail?   The obvious situation is that they fail to undergo any of the elements of a character arc. They are the same at the end as at the beginning.

But the failure can be more subtle as well.  For example, a character seems to have an arc and goes through transition, but ultimately ends up where they started.  Similarly a character describes an arc that doesn't end up resolving the central tension that they started with.  Yes they end up in a different place, but the central tension remains.   

So in Rise of Skywalker (RoS), the Emperor offers Rey unlimited power as an inducement to undergo his ritual transformation.  But since Rey has never expressed any interest in unlimited power, the audience doesn't see any tension in this offer:  of course Rey will refuse it.  What he's offering is not even a choice for her; it doesn't offer Rey anything that she wants.  But if this choice is devoid of tension, then the scene is also devoid of tension.  It's merely spectacle.  It's like the Bond villain gloating over his plan, leaving Rey and the audience feeling powerless.

More subtly, the character appears to change over the course of the story, but the audience doesn't understand why the changes are happening:  the changes appear un-earned.  We see the changes but we don't follow the arc that led the character to their new perspective.  

Scenes.  We've discussed that Characters have arcs where the tension of their unresolved wants are slowly resolved.  Scenes also have a similar trajectory.  Scenes exist so that story elements can take place within them.  We sometimes call these story elements "beats.":  Characters can have beats just as scenes can.  A beat is the important thing that is happening in the scene that  leads the narrative toward its final goal.  Beats are often moments of tension that resolve in a particular direction, and through their resolution create a new framework in which the story takes place.

For example:  in SW: ANH, in the scene where Han and Luke are preparing for the impending arrival of the Death Star, Luke is dismayed that Han is running away from the battle.  The tension in this scene is that Luke has higher expectations for Han's character.  The story beat is that Han is simply out for himself and has no allegiance to any greater good or higher calling.  We need to lay down this beat here, so that we can resolve the tension in a later scene where Han returns to the battle to clear Luke for his attack run. 

At the beginning, show how the character is stuck in some way.  The characters are doing something, but it's not a fulfilling existence.

The outer motivation:  the visible goal

the inner journey:   how the character needs to change 

typically a character is caught between these two desires:  the outer, visible, obvious goal, and the inner state of things that is preventing the outer goal from being realized.  They are stuck in this exterior dilemma because of their unwillingness to abandon the safe status quo of their inner state.  this is the Inner Conflict.  Put simply, in order to resolve their outer problem, they need to work through their inner conflict.

Stage 1:  the setup  establishing who the characters are and we see the full realization of the character's inner identity. 

Stage 2:  the opportunity.  this is the chance that the character receives to begin working toward a different state.  Something happens to the character that forces them into Stage 2 is a new situation.  and in stage 2, the primary goal of the character is to figure out what's going on.  In stage 2 the character gets a glimpse of what living in his new inner identity might be like.  He sees a vision of a better world, though he isn't able to grab it yet.  and just as importantly, the audience sees that same vision.

At the end of stage 2, another event happens that drives the character to making a change towards this new vision.  Taking the first steps to achieve it.

Emotion grows out of conflict, so the more difficult the obstacles to overcome, the more invested and more interested the audience will be.   another example is empathy.  We feel sympathy for the obstacles the character has faced in the past.  Putting a character in jeopardy makes us feel empathy for what a character might f ace in the future.

Stage 3 is Progress. where the character formulates a plan and starts going after that goal.  They face obstacles, which start to multiply, but they appear to be "making progress" toward the external goal

On the inside, on the inner journey,  the inner state begins to hinder their progress.  They begin to be confronted by the things about the inner state that have always kept them "stuck" in the past.  Contemplating changing the inner state is terrifying, however.  In this stage, the hero will vacillate between changing to a new inner state, and running back to the old one.  They will advance along their inner journey and then retreat, causing problems for the external goal.  Each advance will take them incrementally further.

At some point in this oscillation, the character will progress the internal transition to a point of no return.  Their interior journey will continue to a new state, where they can no longer retreat back to their original status, and they face a crisis.  something will happen to demand or lead the character to make a deeper commitment to the goal. 

Moments of Dramatic Impasse:   a dramatic moment where two characters are striving against each other but neither can gain the upper hand in the current conflict.  They must find another way to achieve their objective

Moments of Dramatic Synthesis:The moment when characters who were previously at odds find a common goal or common ground, so they are no longer in conflict, at least for the present.  they can move forward together with a better sense of understanding.

Interiority:  the emotional and psychological space that they occupy at the moment.

Spinning Plates:  When the story begins to layer a number of elements of  tension on top of each other.  The danger isn't coming from just one direction, but from multiple threats.  There could be a physical threat, an emotional threat, and a psychological threat.

Out of the Frying Pan...  Escaping one predicament only to land in a greater one.

Stacking the Odds:  Escalating the danger the protagonists are in.

Character Foil:  A character in circumstances similar to the hero, presented with the same moral choices, makes different and less optimal decisions.  Used to demonstrate how badly things could have gone if our hero lacked moral character.

The Ending is Earned:   good payoffs come from good setups.  Action that is foreshadowed, action that is prefigured is always more satisfying.

What's the thing the characters could do at the end of the movie, that they couldn't do at the beginning?

Just because we know the ending does not mean this can't be a good movie, but we have to care about the people.  "We had characters with emotional stakes and different motivations that conflict with each other. What's interesting is having different characters with different motivations that play off each other and show their humanity.  Watching someone go to a place to get a thing that you know they are going to get is not interesting."

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: a new direction

The Rise of Skywalker was released in December of 2019, a little over six months ago, bringing to a close the first Star Wars trilogy under the patronage of Disney.  Since then, the Star Wars franchise has been relatively silent, while the undercurrent of disappointed fans has continued to churn and shows no sign of abating.  It's time to look at the current state of Star Wars and see where we can go from here.

Disney's financial reality

Two things have happened in the last six months to the Star Wars franchise under Disney management.  The Mandalorian was a modest success with all fans back in November/December of 2019, and the limited final season of Clone Wars was released earlier this year, without controversy but also without particular acclaim.  Neither of these are situated in the Sequel Era, and in fact, nothing of note has come out of Star Wars in the Sequel Trilogy era at all.  No movies on the horizon, no TV shows in production, one book, few toys or collectables.  It's been basically silence.

The second thing is that rumors have begun to circulate that Disney is thinking about stepping back from the Sequel Trilogy because it is too divisive.  Disney is not about being edgy and divisive, and Star Wars is not about being edgy and divisive. For another franchise, this tension might have been a marketing boon, but not for the family-oriented, feel-good Star Wars saga.   And Disney, an entertainment company that requires the audience to fill theaters and amusement parks, has been especially hard hit over the past four months with the covid social distancing rules.  They need to start generating money and do it quickly.

Disney's new streaming service has a whole channel dedicated to Star Wars and the Sequels are featured prominently but, again, there's been nothing new there since a handful of Clone Wars episodes dropped.  Season 2 of Mandalorian is set for the  late Fall and a confirmed Obi-wan Kenobi series is supposed to be filming this summer, but with the current public health situation there is the possibility of a delay in the release until at least early 2021.  What this means is that Disney has very little to generate interest, and therefore revenue, on one of the cornerstones of its streaming service.

The bottom line is that the Sequel Trilogy has effectively killed the Star Wars franchise and Disney needs to bring it back to life.  Disney didn't acquire Star Wars to break even or to make a modest profit from a few films and then move on.  They needed the franchise to be another major pillar of their licensed properties, reliably delivering one or two tentpole films every year for the next several decades in much the same way that Marvel has done for them.  They were investing in another consistent revenue stream that would throw off not just movies, but merchandise, theme park tie-ins, video games, and all manner of income generating activities including content for its fledgling streaming service.

Star Wars as Creative Content

The reality is that Lucasfilm has not lived up to the expectations of their corporate overlords.  The Sequels are at present generating nothing; neither revenue, nor, and perhaps more importantly, the intellectual creativity that will carry the stories forward.  And this last is perhaps more damaging to the property as a whole.

The Sequels needed to generate intellectual property.  The Original Trilogy was overflowing with creative content including strong characters like R2-D2,  Princess Leia and even Anakin Skywalker, and iconic images such as the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon, and the AT-AT walkers.  It is this intellectual property that not only produces revenue but also drives the next round of storytelling.  So, while RoS has distinct characters in the form of Rey and Fin, most of the visual content is derived from previous trilogies, and all of the storylines are narrative dead ends. Side characters are particularly weak and few in number.  Lucasfilm finds itself in a narrative wasteland having generated no content that any of its fans were interested in, including broom boy.

What's more,  the current round of movies effectively crushed the existing intellectual property of the franchise by tarnishing the images of Luke, Han, and Leia. By foreclosing on Luke's story and leaving his final memory of a green-milk recluse, these films have limited the marketability of his character.  By making Han a deadbeat dad who left his wife and son and in his senility lost his car in the Walmart parking lot, Lucasfilm has diminished his status as a hyper-competent hero.  Our last images of Princess Leia are as a failed general who was unable to hold together the rebellion she started and ultimately let down all those who followed her.

Disney can't use the young, heroic Luke on posters or future content of any kind without also calling to mind his ignoble ending.  The same is true for Han and Leia, but also by extension every other Original era character.  All the intellectual property that Disney paid $4 billion for has been tossed onto the trash.  And this makes sense from a certain point of view.  Disney/Lucasfilm didn't want to be forever tied to the past, and possibly felt they needed to clean the slate so they could move on.  The problem is that the Sequels didn't seem to move on to any thing new.  They didn't generate the numerous potential plot arcs and concepts that could, themselves, spawn new stories.  This is the real disappointment of the new trilogy - the creative bankruptcy that both killed the old concepts and failed to replace them with story elements of equal potential.

 We aren't, for example, putting together a story with Rose Tico and Poe Dameron, or tracking the revenge/redemption arc of Cpt. Phasma.  I'd be interested to find out what Maz Kanata was up to (one of the few new and innovative characters of Force Awakens) but Zori Bliss or Jannah were given little more than flashes of screen time, not nearly enough to create intrigue or even recognition of any kind. 

This brings Lucasfilm to the predicament they are in now;  instead of launching a new era of Star Wars movies under Disney, the drive to "end the Skywalker saga" has actually killed the Disney era just as it was beginning. Disney is in a financial crisis where they need to draw on their properties to sustain them.  Lucasfilm has only a very few active revenue streams (ex. their streaming service) and the have little new creative content in the pipeline.  What they do have in development builds on George Lucas era material.  Their own trilogy did not fill the creative air with possibilities.


Speculation has it that one-third of the fanbase enjoyed the Sequels, one-third hated them, and one-third were ambivalent.  This cannot be true, however, based on Disney's response to the sequels, which has been to ignore them, and go with Original Trilogy content.  If 2/3rds of their audience either strongly or moderately approved of the Sequels, they would be doubling down on that content and they simply aren't.  If the haters were merely a small vocal minority, Disney would be ignoring the haters instead of ignoring the Sequels as they are actually doing.

Instead, we have creative silence from the story factory, and rumors of finding a way to rewind the Sequels.   Disney must make changes that will re-gain the fans without losing the ones they have retained.  But more importantly, they must find a way to move the story forward creatively.  And they must find a way to move Forward  with the saga.  Looking back to the Old Republic era, or the inter-trilogy era, as they are doing now is fine for a while.

But the most powerful stories can only be written when the creators have a free hand.   When they aren't constrained by endpoints predefined by existing canon.  We already know what happens between Episodes III and IV, so the Obi-wan series can be meaningful but it can't really break new ground.  These side stories won't be the engine that drives the space opera; that requires stories of a grander scale and scope.  This is where the Disney Star Wars era must go now.

Rise of Skywalker - lingering questions

Positives

•  To someone who hated the previous episode, this movie seemed like a total repudiation of everything that happened in The Last Jedi.  All of the decisions that went wrong in that film were put right.
• Specifically, Rey was trained, albeit by Leia.  Rey was finally given an origin story and has parents and ancestors. Rey struggles with the discipline necessary to become a Jedi.  She was, in fact, totally defeated by Kylo Ren until Leia interrupted  Ben's concentration.  At last we see how Kylo represented the dark side ascendant.

Negatives

• Still never fully communicated the state of the Galaxy.  Was the First Order  truly dominating the galaxy, or were they just a limited power.  Had they taken over all of the old Empire holdings, was there anything of the New Republic left?  To me, this seemed like an essential piece of world building that was simply neglected.  In contrast, this is handled very satisfactorily in The Mandalorian. 
•  So, what happened to the First Order?  At the very end, when the emperor was again defeated, what happened to First Order ships scattered around the core worlds busily dominating planets?  Do they collapse, presumably without the cohesion provided by Kylo Ren.  This seems like a very unfinished victory.
• And while we're talking about it, we see Kylo firmly in command of the First Order, when the film opens.  What happened between the death of Snoke and the beginning of this episode?  where was Hux?
• 
  

Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child. S1 E1-4

Synopsis:  Two teachers, Ian and Barbara, discuss one of their pupils who seems to be highly unusual.  She is particularly intelligent and eager to learn; and while she is advanced in some areas of study, is less familiar with more local subjects such as the British monetary system.  Barbara had decided to check on Susan at home but when she went to the address given there was nothing there but a junkyard.  Concerned for Susan's welfare, she enlists the help of Ian to try again and find out where Susan lives.

The teachers track Susan back to the same abandoned lot but this time they meet her grandfather, the Doctor, a contentious old man who only wants to be left alone and will answer no questions about Susan or himself.  When Susan appears, the Doctor allows Ian and Barbara inside the Tardis whereupon he activates the transmat and dematerializes the Tardis.  The Doctor has, in effect, kidnapped the two teachers and has no intention of returning them to London. Ian and Barbara are immediately struck with the impossibility of the interior of the Tardis, being "bigger on the inside." Ian has a particularly difficult time wrapping his head around things that contradict the science he knows to be true.

Because he decided to leave in a hurry, the Doctor didn't adequately calibrate their destination, and he has no control of where they will end up.  In fact, they materialize in a desert wasteland and when they leave the Tardis to explore the surrounding area, the Doctor is taken prisoner.  His captors are the local paleolithic community whose main concerns are finding enough meat to eat and discovering the secret of fire to sustain them through the coming winter.

Leadership of the tribe depends on providing those things, and one aspirant kidnapped the Doctor to provide fire for the tribe and claim leadership in the ongoing struggle between Kal and Za.  The recalcitrant Doctor refuses and is about to be attacked by the tribe when Ian and Barbara intervene.  The whole group is confined to the Cave of Skulls while the tribe determines their fate.  An elder woman of the tribe is convinced that fire will only cause conflict within the tribe and she sets the party free.

The tribal leader discovers the escape and, urged by his wife, pursues them.  In the forest, however, he is wounded in an attack by a wild animal, and Ian and Barbara come to his aid.  However in doing so, they allow the tribe to catch them and bring them back to the Cave of Skulls.  At that point, Ian makes fire for the tribe in hopes of being released. The leader Za refuses, hoping they will join his tribe.  Eventually the group sets up the spectacle of burning skulls on sticks and makes a break for the Tardis, narrowly escaping the pursuing tribe.

Review:
For a variety of reasons, this initial episode was a very uncertain start to this very successful franchise.  The season began in 1963, shot in a murky black and white, just three years before Star Trek was released in the US and in technicolor.  While technical sophistication would never be Doctor Who's strong point, in comparison to its contemporaries, the brightly lit Perry Mason or Andy Griffith, it seemed to reflect the styling of something shot 10 years earlier.  I also got the impression that the most effort was spent on the set design of the interior of the Tardis.   The rest of the episode was all styrofoam caves and boulders, with dripping water and wind as background noises.

My intention is not to be needlessly critical, but this seemed to be a very slow start to so auspicious a series.  The greater weakness of the episode was the rather static storytelling of the whole narrative. 

The main story of the plight of the stone age tribe felt rather static and drawn out.  If the story meant to interest us with the struggles between Kal and Za it largely failed.  I'm also unconvinced that this entirely imaginative portrayal of paleolithic life had any historical value at all.  We don't have any idea what a stone age existence looked like so this is all simplistic speculation.  In short, the cave man story was boring.  Our party is made captives, escapes, is kept captive again, and escapes a second time, finally making it to the Tardis.  Neither the Doctor nor Susan contribute anything of import, while Ian passes on a few words of wisdom and Barbara models compassion by saving the injured Za.

The majority of the story concerned the internal politics of this stone age tribe, rather than dealing with our main characters, but in doing so it established one of the basic premises of the show. Most of Doctor Who is about him as an observer of other people's stories.   It isn't about a grand quest that he himself must complete.  He generally doesn't go to these worlds with things that he wants to accomplish.  He largely has no deeds to do, and no where that he has to be.  Instead, he stumbles into a complex situation and spends much of his time figuring out where he is and what is going on.

His position as an outside observer can be a strength, giving a perspective that provides a solution.  This can also be a weakness, however, when the Doctor can be entirely passive, merely watching what is happening as seems to be the case with the cave men.  In the end, it is Ian who give the tribe the fire, and Barbara who goes to help the injured Za. This is a tension that the entire series attempts to balance, and sometimes struggles with; is the Doctor the prime mover in creating the narrative's resolution, or is he simply a passive observer, offering us a window into these unusual science fiction worlds.

The other tension that the story must negotiate is the position of the companions.  At their worst, companions are simple narrative devices that function to ask questions that the audience needs the answers to, (what's that, Doctor?) or as plot devices to get captured, feel confused or frightened, or act irrationally.  In this episode, Barbara is called on to scream, and be overwhelmed with emotions, providing some of those basic functions.  At their  best, companions offer insights into solving the problem, and bring a humanizing element to the often bizarre stories they are thrown into.   Not only can they ask the questions but also provide the answers.  At the least, the audience must sympathize with the companions, because they often don't really understand what the Doctor is feeling.

Throughout this first story, we  aren't sure who we are supposed to identify with.  Is the irascible Doctor a hindrance, or the prime point of contact for the audience?  At least in this episode, we more closely associate with Barbara and Ian.

There is an interesting moment when Ian and the Doctor clash about marching orders and then later when challenged by Za, Ian defers that leadership of his "tribe" belongs to the Doctor.  It's a moment  of development for Ian, where he recognizes the Doctors wisdom.  And I think that also affected the Doctor as well.  Earlier, the cave men were about to kill the Doctor when Ian plunged in to his rescue, and while he only succeeded in getting himself and the others captured along side the Doctor, at least he did forestall the Doctor's execution.  It is the character of Ian who has the most nuanced development here

This first episode had the seeds of the great show that Doctor Who would become.  However, it constantly felt unsure of itself.  My overall rating is 2 stars out of 5.

There is a difference between Superhero comic book characters and the kinds of characters found in more traditional storytelling.  The difference is that comic book characters are infinitely malleable.  There is no limit to the degree to which comic book characters can have things happen to them that may negatively impact their character.  But there is always the possibility, if required by the author, that these negative changes can be reversed. 

Almost everything that is external to the character can change, be destroyed, and subsequently be restored.  This is most obvious in the comic book trope, Not Really Dead, where a character is actually killed in a particular storyline, only to re-appear later and their completely fine.  And it is up to the pleasure of the writer as to whether we get an elaborate explanation of their resurrection or if it is simply passed off without comment.

What cannot change, however, is their style and attitude.  Deadpool or Ironman are both irreverent, wisecracking, anti-authoritarian heroes, and this attitude is as much a part of their character as the more narrative sense in which characters are developed.

Traditional characters are developed through the events that happen to them throughout their lives, and the choices they make when presented with these crises.  For a comic book character, these choices almost don't matter, unless they are necessary to the plot.