The Megahit Movies

by Richard Stefanik

  In the climax scene the following questions are resolved: What happens to the primary objective? Who obtains the unique object? What is the outcome of the battle between the protagonist and the antagonist?

  Below are descriptions of the climax scenes found in the megahit movies. These scenes should all be studied by the writer in order to understand how to design a scene in which “the audience gets what they want, but in an unexpected way.” This means that the audience gets an emotionally satisfying experience by watching the protagonist triumph over the antagonist, but in a surprising way.

  Titanic

  The climax occurs when Rose throws the jewel, “the heart of the ocean” back into the water above the sunken Titanic. She then rejoins Jack in her dreams (or after her death) on the top of the stairway beneath the clock in the Titanic.

  Star Wars

  The climax occurs when Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader fight with each other and the Death Star is finally destroyed.

  E.T.

  The climax occurs when E.T. and Elliott fly over the road blockade constructed by the agents of the U.S. Government.

  Phantom Menace

  The climax occurs when Anakin Skywalker destroys the control vessel making the warrior droids inoperative, thereby winning the battle for Naboo.

  Spider-Man

  Spider-Man battles the Green Goblin at the bridge over Roosevelt Island and must save both the love interest, MJ, and the children in the cable car. It is a fight for control of NYC.

  Lord of the Rings-Return of the King

  Frodo struggles with Gollum, and the Ring is destroyed in the lava river inside Mount Doom. The Eye of the Dark Lord Sauron collapses from the tower and is destroyed. The armies of Mordor flee and the people of Middle-Earth prevail.

  Jurassic Park

  The climax occurs when the T-REX destroys the raptors just as they are about to attack Dr. Grant, Ellie, and the children. The humans survive, but in an unexpected way.

  Forrest Gump

  Forrest meets his son and discovers that he has produced a normal child. Jenny tells him she is dying. Forrest offers to marry her and take care of her and the child. Jenny finally accepts his offer.

  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

  Harry Potter fights with Prof. Quirell (and Voldemort) for possession of the sorcerer’s stone.

  Lord of the Rings-The Fellowship of the Ring

  The Fellowship battle the Orcs in the mines of Moria. Gandalf falls into the depths while fighting with the fiery Balrog. Frodo survives, but loses his mentor.

  The Lion King

  The climax occurs when Simba defeats Scar in the battle for the Pride Lands.

  Lord of the Rings-The Two Towers

  The Fellowship confronts the forces gathered by the Dark Lord Sauron and the wizard Saruman in the battle of Helm’s Deep. Gandalf and the Fellowship prevail.

  Return of the Jedi

  Luke Skywalker fights both Darth Vader and the Emperor. At the final moment when it appears that the Emperor will kill Luke, Darth switches sides, picks up the Emperor, and throws him to his death down the abyss in the center of the Death Star.

  Independence Day

  The climax occurs when the human pilots engage the aliens in an air battle, and the alien spacecraft is finally destroyed.

  Star Wars-Attack of the Clones

  Lord Dooku duels with Anakin and Obie-Wan Kenobi, and cuts off Anakin’s arm. Lord Dooku then fights Jedi Master Yoda. He escapes because Yoda must protect Anakin and Obie-Wan Kenobi from the falling generator tower.

  Sixth Sense

  Cole Sears accepts that he can see dead people. He also understands that they do not want to terrorize him but need his help. The climax occurs when Dr. Malcolm Crowe realizes that he is dead, but since he helped Cole, he can now accept his death.

  Empire Strikes Back

  Luke Skywalker fights Darth Vader. Darth reveals that he is Luke’s father, and pleads with Luke to join him, for together they could defeat the Emperor and put an end to the conflict. Luke refuses, and falls down into the abyss at the center of the spaceship.

  Home Alone

  The climax occurs when Kevin engages the two burglars in the battle for his home. Although the burglars capture Kevin at the end of the sequence, the old man saves Kevin by hitting the burglars with a shovel.

  Shrek

  Lord Farquaad needs to marry the Princess to become Lord of the Kingdom. Shrek confronts him at the wedding ceremony and fights for Princess Fiona.

  Jaws

  The climax occurs when Capt. Brody finally kills the great shark. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

  Harry Potter fights with Tom Riddle (Voldemort) in the Chamber of Secrets.

  Monsters, Inc.

  Sulley and the human child Boo are chased by Randall. Sulley and Mike trick Mr. Waternoose to reveal his evil intent in the simulation room. tBoo is saved!

  How the Grinch Stole Christmas

  The climax occurs when the Grinch saves Cindy’s life and holds the sleigh up over his head. Her love has transformed the Grinch and made him into a good person. The “evil” Grinch has been destroyed. The Grinch then returns the Christmas presents to Whoville and apologizes to the Whos. His apology is accepted, and he is integrated back into the Who community.

  Batman

  The climax occurs when Batman and the Joker fight on the top of the Cathedral. The weight of the gargoyle finally pulls the Joker off the helicopter rope-ladder and causes him to plunge to his death.

  Men in Black

  The climax occurs when the Edgar-Bug is destroyed by J, K, and Dr. Laurel Weaver. They gain possession of “the Galaxy on Orion’s Belt” and save the earth from destruction.

  Pirates of the Caribbean

  The climax occurs when Liz, Will, and Jack together kill Barbossa. Liz forces Barbossa to point his gun at her, Jack shoots him, and Will drops his bloody coins into the Aztec chest. This makes Barbossa mortal again so that he can die from the gunshot wound.

  Finding Nemo

  The climax occurs when Nemo escapes from the Fish Tank and avoids being taken home by Darla.

  Matrix Reloaded

  The climax occurs when the Neo decides to save Trinity instead of saving Zion.

  Writing Assignment: Write a climax scene for your story that includes a unique object, protagonist, antagonist, and love interest. The protagonist and the love interest survive the battle. The antagonist is destroyed but in an unexpected way.

  PLOTTING FOR AUDIENCE EMOTIONAL RESPONSES

  The psychology of the audience

  Understanding audience empathy and enmity THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AUDIENCE The screenwriter who wants to create popular movies must get the audience to love the protagonist and hate the antagonist as soon as these characters are first shown on the screen. Audience empathy for the protagonist must be created as early in the story as possible. This is necessary so that the audience will care about the hero, his dreams, and his primary objective. The audience must also feel terror and hatred toward the villain because of the things they see this character do when he first appears on the screen.

  The writer needs to understand the psychology of the audience. This means understanding the emotional reactions that members of the audience will have to the characters, actions, events, and situations that they see on the screen. The members of the audience have come to watch the characters on the screen in order to fulfill their own fantasies. They want the characters to do the things that they themselves have always dreamed of doing. The characters in popular films must both be bigger than life, yet, still emotionally accessible to the audience. This is accomplished by revealing the protagonist’s dreams; dreams with which the audience can identify. But the writer must also show how far the character is from achieving these dreams. In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s dream of finding a place where there aren’t any problems, “somewhere over the rainbow,” is the most obvious example. Each scene should be written in terms of the emotional
effect that the scene has on the audience. The audience’s emotional reactions to the characters in situations of jeopardy should be the prime consideration of the writer. The writer should always be aware of how a specific action will increase, decrease, or modify the audience’s empathy or enmity for a character.

  People in the audience will care about characters with which they can identify and with whom they share some human concern. One way to accomplish this is to show the protagonist when he is weak. Write a scene showing him in his moment of weakness, when all hope is gone, and he is his most vulnerable. It is easier to generate empathy for a character when he is helpless than when he is powerful. That is why the antagonist must be more powerful than the protagonist in the beginning of the story. This also explains why stories about underdogs who eventually prevail over their opposition are very popular.

  A hero’s humanity is best shown in his private moments, when he lets down his defenses and reveals himself. If the antagonist then invades this privacy and humiliates the protagonist, tremendous sympathy for the protagonist and hatred for the antagonist will be generated. A prime example of this technique is found in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy has been captured by the Wicked Witch of the West. The sand is running through the hourglass, and time is running out. Dorothy, in her moment of total helplessness and desperation, cries out for help from her Auntie Em, whose image then appears in the crystal ball. This image transforms into the cackling, mocking face of the Wicked Witch of the West, who then mocks Dorothy and ridicules her desperation. At this moment, the audience becomes emotionally locked into empathy for Dorothy and hatred for theWitch. Another example can be found in Raiders of the Lost Ark, in the scene where Indiana Jones must run for his life while being pursued by natives intent on killing him. His enemy, Belloc, laughs with glee at Indiana’s desperate situation.

  One way to make the audience care about the protagonist is to show other characters unjustly mistreating him. Showing an injustice done to the protagonist by the antagonist is the surest way to establish the appropriate audience reactions. If the depicted injustice is accompanied by brutality, the scene will create sympathy for the victim and hatred for his antagonist. The first scene in which we see the antagonist of Star Wars, Darth Vader, shows him grabbing a rebel soldier by the neck, lifting him up off the floor, and choking him to death.

  Abandonment or desertion also will generate audience empathy for a character, especially if the character is perceived to be small or weak and abandoned to a strange and hostile world. This technique is found in many popular films, including E.T. and Wizard of Oz.

  A situation in which a character is trying to tell the world some important truth, and the audience knows that he is telling the truth, yet he is not believed by the other characters in the story, and perhaps even ridiculed by them, will create empathy for the character. Elliott is in this situation in the movie, E.T., Molly in the movie Ghost, David Levinson in Independence Day, and Cole Sears in Sixth Sense.

  The writer should make the people in the audience believe that what is happening to the characters in the story could happen to them. In crisis situations, show the characters having the emotions that the audience would have if the same thing were happening to them.

  A protagonist displaying self-doubt will generate empathy in the audience. Make the protagonist fallible. Show the character reaching rock bottom, at his lowest point. Reveal his suffering and desperation. Show the character’s vulnerability. All human beings tend to feel vulnerable at different times in their lives. Show what the protagonist fears most in the world. This fear makes the hero more human and easier for the audience to identify with. Use this fear in the story as the final obstacle that the protagonist must overcome before he can obtain his objective. This will help create more empathy for the protagonist in the audience.

  In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jones’ fear of snakes is used in this way. In the opening sequence, he appears fearless as he overcomes every obstacle in his path and escapes certain death. It’s only as the plane takes off that he reveals his humanity in his terror of snakes. The payoff to this setup comes later in the story when Jones has to overcome his fear of snakes as he descends into the Well of Souls to obtain his primary objective, the Lost Ark.

  In Titanic, Rose must overcome her fear of disappointing her mother before she can be with Jack. In Jaws, Brody must overcome his fear of water before he can search for the great white shark.

  The audience’s emotions intensify to their highest pitch when the lives of the characters they most care about are endangered. Danger increases excitement in the audience that identifies with this character. It is in these situations that the audience becomes most involved with the protagonist and the story.

  The audience also loves a character with a sense of humor. They will want to see more of a character that makes them laugh because his actions create joy and gives them pleasure. They will also become sad and angry if this character is harmed. The protagonist or the protagonist supporter should always have the best comic lines so that the audience will have greatest empathy for him. This is not true in Batman, where the antagonist, the Joker, was the source of most of the humor. Besides creating empathy and enmity scenes for the protagonist and antagonist in the beginning of the story, many of the most successful films also have another major empathy scene. This is to ensure that the audience will emotionally bond with the protagonist and hate the antagonist before the final battle. The audience should hate the antagonist to such a great extent that they want to see him destroyed. Examples of this is the cackling witch mocking Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz; Bruce Wayne remembering the murder of his mother and father by the young Joker, before he engages with the Joker at the Gotham celebration, and the second humiliation of the Grinch by the Mayor who gives him an electric razor at the Whobilation Ceremony in the movie, The Grinch.

  Underlying the classic Hollywood Three-Act Structure is a plotting structure that is used to take the audience on an emotional roller-coaster ride that ends with them having a satisfying emotional experience. Many popular movies begin by hooking the audience with scenes that terrorize them: a beautiful young woman on a moonlit ocean swim being eaten alive by a shark in Jaws; a powerful man being dragged into a metal cage and eaten alive by a raptor in Jurassic Park; a family being mugged in Gotham City in Batman; a librarian being terrorized by a ghost in Ghostbusters; and a little girl with her dog being pursued and terrorized by an unseen villain in Wizard of Oz. These situations “hook” the audience and emotionally engage them. They are also designed to elicit curiosity, since the source of evil behind these fearful moments is usually not revealed.

  The emotional roller-coaster ride can be guaranteed by correctly structuring the relationship between the unique object, the protagonist, the antagonist, and the love interest throughout the three acts. At the end of Act One, the audience sees the protagonist prevail over the antagonist by preventing the antagonist from gaining possession of the unique object and the love interest. This is an emotional high point for the audience: they feel happiness in the belief that the protagonist, for whom they have empathy, will win and obtain his desires. At the end of the second act, the situation is reversed. The antagonist has possession of the love interest and the unique object, and the protagonist’s situation appears to be hopeless. The audience now shares the protagonist’s feelings of desperation and despair, for it appears to them that there is no way the hero will prevail. This is the emotional low point in the rollercoaster ride of the story. Then in the start of the third act, there is another major scene that elicits empathy for the protagonist, like the Wicked Witch in the crystal ball laughing at Dorothy, or Bruce Wayne realizing that the man who murdered his father and mother is Jack Napier, or when Peter Parker visits his Aunt May in the hospital and realizes that the Green Goblin knows he is Spider-Man. The audience shares the protagonist’s pain and wants the antagonist to be destroyed.

  The audience then cheers the protagonist in his battle with the vi
llain in the climax scene, and they become ecstatic when he overcomes impossible odds and finally defeats the antagonist. The hero triumphs but in an unexpected way. The audience joins in with the members of the community in the movie as they celebrate the hero’s victory and union with the love interest. The joy expressed by the people in the resolution scene of the movie is shared by the members of the audience. This is how to create an emotionally satisfying experience in the audience.

  In conclusion, to create empathy in the audience for the protagonist, show situations where the protagonist suffers from jeopardy, terror, neglect, loneliness, unfairness, unkindness, injustice, desertion, abandonment, humiliation, frustration, insecurity, misunderstanding, desperation, or not being believed when he is telling the truth. Empathy scenes found in the megahit movies are described below.

  Titanic : Jack Dawson is framed by Cal’s bodyguard, who places the Heart of the Ocean jewel into Jack’s pocket. Even though Jack proclaims his innocence, he is still taken away in handcuffs.

  Star Wars : The small rebel spaceship is pursued by the gigantic Imperial battleship. Luke feels lonely and isolated because his uncle won’t let him join his friends at college. Imperial Storm Troopers kill Luke’s aunt and uncle, and destroy his home.

  E.T. : E.T. is abandoned on the planet Earth. Elliott is not believed when he tells the truth about seeing a creature in the backyard. Elliott and his family were deserted by his father.

  The Phantom Menace: Anakin Skywalker is a slave. He becomes upset when he has to leave his mother behind after he wins his freedom in the pod race.

  Spider-Man: In the opening scene, we see Peter Parker being forced to run after the school bus while the students and driver in the bus laugh at him. Empathy is created for him when the Green Goblin attacks and terrorizes his aunt, and finally, when the Green Goblin forces SpiderMan to choose between saving the life of the woman he loves, MJ, or a tram filled with children.