Understanding Your Protagonist and Antagonist
Creating Bold Heros and Villans to Make Your Movie Great
Jun 4, 2009
"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." (The Princess Bride)
Life may be pain, but movies are all about conflict. If you don't have conflict built into your story, you are going to have a hard time convincing people to care about what's happening on the screen. In order to create great conflict you need to have a good grasp on your two main characters- the Protagonist and the Antagonist- because they will be the ones 'modeling' the conflict for the audience.
The Antagonist
In simple terms, the Antagonist is the force that your main character struggles against during your movie. The simplest and most common Antagonist is the villan, which must be overcome during the course of your story. Although this character is extremely important (because it gives your Protagonist something to struggle against), it is important to understand that the Antagonist doesn't always have to be another human character, nor does the Antagonist always have to be 'evil.' For example, a Protagonist can struggle against 'the coming storm on the horizon,' or can struggle against 'his girlfriend's father who doesn't want them to get married.'
The Protagonist
Often called the 'hero' of the story, it is more accurate to say that the Protagonist is the main character- the one that your audience will be following for the majority of your movie. At it's core, the Protagonist is the one with the obstacle to overcome. Unlike the Antagonist, in film the Protagonist is only rarely a 'thing;' the vast majority of the time your Protagonist will be a person, or (on occasion) a group of people.
The reason that you have less 'flexibility' with your Protagonist is that because you will be following him (or her) around for two hours, your audience will need to be able to identify with them. Note that this is different than needing to have your audience like your Protagonist... A Protagonist may be completely unlikable (an anti-hero, if you will), but the audience will still need to be able to identify with the Protagonist on a basic level.
Putting it All Together
The goal of any good story is to make something interesting enough that the audience will stick around to see what happens. Whether your story will be big and epic, or small and intimate, the key to holding an audiences attention can be found in the relationship between the Protagonist and the Antagonist.
Your job is to balance the Protagonist's need to overcome the Antagonist with the Antagonist's ability to prevent the Protagonist from achieving that goal. Often when a movie doesn't 'work' for an audience, it is in this relationship. If this critical relationship needs some fine-tuning, start by asking these questions about your story:
- Is the goal my Protagonist is after so insignificant or inconsequential that the audience won't care if he or she succeeds?
- Is my Antagonist so powerful that my Protagonist would not be able to overcome the obstacle in a plausible way?
- Is my Protagonist so accomplished that the Antagonist provides nothing to struggle against?
- Is my Antagonist so weak that the Protagonist would be able to overcome the obstacle without any effort at all.
As you may have noticed, these questions are simply different sides of two coins... Protagonist Balance, and Antagonist Balance. Before you even begin writing your screenplay, the best thing you can do for your story is to develop your characters so that there will be doubt about the Protagonist's ability to overcome the Antagonist, while at the same time developing the Antagonist so that they are just powerful enough to create that doubt in the audience's mind without being so powerful that there is no way the Protagonist could actually succeed. If you can get this balance right, your story will 'ring true,' and will keep the audiences attention for the entire movie.
