Speaker 1: Lock. In. It's time for movie night. This is the final confrontation from Sam Raimi's 1995 western, The Quick and the Dead. Spoilers. Gene Hackman is playing John Herod. Herod is an opulent Wild West warlord who rules over the town with an iron fist. Every year he invites his enemies to challenge him in a dueling tournament, and every year he wins. Sharon Stone's character is named The Lady. Well, technically her name is Ellen, but in the movie she's consistently just The Lady, and it's much cooler, so I'm gonna go with that. And here at the climax of the film, Lady and Herod are squared off in a final duel that will decide the fate of the town. Who wins, who loses, and why? This video is about the subtle craft of implementing violence in storytelling. I'm gonna be talking about how violence can be used to create satisfying payoffs, and how it can undermine everything if you're not careful. Hi. I'm Michael. It's dark down here. I'm plugged into his machine. You have to hea- It's funny, because a while ago I released that little video where I made up a hypothetical MS Paint gunfight to illustrate my theory on story logic, and then not a week later, a guy I worked with said, hey, movie night, and he showed me The Quick and the Dead, which has actual scripted gunfights that illustrate that theory and tie so many of my other theories together. I knew I had to use it. See, my very first video was about story violence, except it was really underbaked and my analogies were all over the place, so I took it down. I said that I would properly address the topic later down the line, and that's what I'm doing now. That's kind of what this video is. I'm very excited. Okay, so, final showdown, Herod vs. Lady. Spoilers, Lady wins. But again, the question is why. Well, she's better at shooting, because how else do you win a shooting contest? So, that's it. This is a movie about getting good at shooting. Skill is the deciding variable in this fight. How could I forget the montage of Lady training and building up her skills so that she could defeat Herod? Truly a power escalation tale for the ages. Except, none of that actually happened. This isn't a story about getting better at a thing so you can beat a guy who's really good at that thing. Nobody trains, nobody talks about technique. If it's that kind of story, it certainly doesn't show it. So then why does Lady win? Oh, I get it. Because Herod killed her father, kind of. So she has the moral high ground, and that's why she wins. Right makes might. The skill variable is actually linked to the who's a better person variable, which is why Herod is able to outmatch dozens of honest and upstanding people. Wait, no, that doesn't work either. This guy killed his own teenage son in a duel. So it's not being morally good that determines the outcome of a gunfight. And even if it were, Lady has always been justified in hating him. She's always been the righteous party. If the final battle were determined by whom morally deserved the victory, then there would be no way to give her an arc, because she's always been good. But if we go a level deeper, we see the actual thematic framework at play. Herod has been ruling over the town through fear. He built his empire by killing and intimidating the people around him. Lady had a chance to stand up to him at the midpoint when he invited her to dinner, but she was paralyzed by fear. She couldn't do it, and he knew, and he got off on it. That's his whole thing. But at the end of the story, when the town, and more specifically Lady, overcome their fear of him, Herod loses his power, and so Lady is able to beat him in a duel. It's revealed that Herod's supernatural speed was mental, and not just some power stat. Like, yeah, he was good with a gun, that was a trait he had, I guess, but it didn't matter. That wasn't the deciding variable. The ending of The Quick and the Dead ultimately hinges on Lady overcoming her fear. That's it. It's the perfect way to give deeper meaning to what could have easily been cheap, baseless, oh, who's gonna be faster gunfight tension. Now, I'm sure some of you are tugging on your collars right now, like, hey, there's nothing wrong with power stats, I think they're really entertaining, and, you know, sure, you're entitled to that. But if you don't tie fighting ability to a mental variable, you are essentially just bashing action figures together. And if your story up until that point has been about friendship and loyalty, then resolving the story by bashing action figures together and arbitrarily deciding who's more stronger is going to contradict the variables you've been using until then, and there's gonna be a disconnect. Now, I never talk about comic book movies on this channel, because I've learned that when you do, the Funko Pop people will come out of the woodwork and start trying to have movie good, movie bad debates with you like it's fucking 2018. But since I wasn't gonna wait for another perfect case study to fall into my lap, I'm going to recycle the example I used in the original video and talk about James Gunn's The Suicide Squad. Spoilers. This character is named Peacemaker. PEACEMAKER. He is completely loyal to the US government of A. He thinks that his cause is wholesome and righteous. He clings to that belief because it gives him a sense of security and purpose. This other character is named Rick. At the start of the movie, Rick felt the exact same way as Peacemaker, but he's just discovered that his mission is actually super unethical, and now he's questioning his false belief. In the biz, this is what we call an arc. Rick says, F this, and he rejects the unethical mission, but Peacemaker has a problem with that. Peacemaker says, OBJECTION. You can't have an arc. And he pulls out a gun, and he points it at Rick, and he accuses Rick of being a traitor. What a perfect setup. Can Rick get through to his comrade? Can he convince Peacemaker to abandon the lie that's led them both to this point? Doesn't look like it. Peacemaker isn't bluffing. Rick's life might be on the line. Is he going to chicken out and fall back on his original perspective, or is he gonna stand on his values, even though it means potentially losing his life? Or, better yet, is the ceiling going to collapse and turn this pivotal moment into a chaotic frenzy where Rick and Peacemaker get into an evenly matched fistfight, only for Peacemaker to ultimately win because his hand is within grabbing distance of a sharp thing? God, I wonder what'll happen. I am truly brimming with anticipation. So yeah, it's the last thing in my consulting work. Mark that off your bingo card. I do occasionally see this sort of issue. Where an otherwise thematically rich conflict is resolved by bashing action figures together. It's more rare than some of the other issues I talk about, but it does happen. I grappled with it in one of my own drafts a while back, and the excuse we tell ourselves is always the same. It's fine. It's realistic. Sometimes a situation comes down to a fight, and sometimes a fight comes down to a good fighty fight move. There's still tension. Look, it's fine. Maybe it is for you, but assuming this is all happening on the tail end of a story that was not just about fighty fight moves, you still have all those other variables to pay off. So what are solutions to this? Personally, I prefer action to be as minimal and slim down as possible. Like the fight scenes in Barry just pop, badabop, boop. Pow. That's it. But ultimately, every action sequence can be as big or as small as you want it to be. As long as you can fit the necessary story beats inside, it doesn't matter if it's a space war extravaganza or a three-second Wild West duel. Because the physical action itself is padding, and it's the character work underneath that really matters. So the suicide squad fight could have been stretched out and still worked as long as it didn't end in a coin flip. Just make sure that your immersion and excitement and all of those other audience words don't impede on the actual sauce of the story. I'm not anti-action. I'm just anti-throwing-your-character-arcs-out-the-window because, yuh-huh-huh, battle time. Like, who am I, as a writer, that I get to come in at the eleventh hour and play God and decide whether the bullets land or whether the sharp thing is close enough to stab the other guy with? Like, let the characters handle it. Let their payoffs hinge on their choices. You built them. Take a little pride in your creation, homie. This might be a hot take, but you actually should be able to describe your action as they fight and then write the character beats in between. I'm not saying do that, but it might help you pinpoint what really matters, and then you can build your set piece out from there. Like when I edited True Detective Season 1 into a two-hour movie, the easiest cut I made was shortening the Episode 6 parking lot fistfight into a five-second ordeal. But is it a tad limiting to say that every fight needs to resolve in a climactic character payoff? Yeah, probably. Usually, as long as there's some non-random mechanic that allows one person to get the upper hand in the fight, I'll give it my stamp of approval. Like later on in Suicide Squad, comma, the Idris Elba defeats Peacemaker with a ridiculous tactical advantage, but it's a callback to a gag that was planted at the beginning of a movie. There was a ridiculous line of logic established, and the fight works not because it's absurd, but because it's consistent with the movie's ridiculous movie logic. Remember, it's a movie. Isn't your free pass to treat everything as unimportant, but it is your free pass to decide what's important. To set those variables. Anything can matter in your story, as long as you're consistent about how much it matters. But this moment also works because these two characters would totally try to kill each other in this situation. This character has just gone on a whole Type 8 journey of learning to become a leader and a protector, and that protection extends to her, and Peacemaker's government mission involves killing her, and so this guy has a problem with that, so they have to fight. I've spent a lot of time talking about the outcome of a battle, but the lead-up is equally as important. Why are these characters fighting? If you can't justify them fighting in the first place, then it doesn't matter how logical the scuffle is. Your thing already stinks. So I want to get into a key concept, which is the difference between contrast and conflict. Peacemaker, actually, let me use a fake example. Bloobus is a fundamentally anxious person who deals with his anxiety by seeking to understand everything around him. Bleebus, in contrast, gets her sense of purpose from keeping others happy. She's a caretaker of sorts. Bloobus and Bleebus have been in the same friend group for years, so they wouldn't randomly pick today to start fighting. Like, sure, their motivations might be reflected in their banter and in the way they socialize and present themselves. They certainly have contrast, but just being different is not enough to push two people into an altercation. I mean, you're different from the people around you, but you're not always fighting them unless you're fighting about something. So my philosophy is, don't think of people as being naturally opposed to each other. Instead, think of them as fundamentally different, and then ask, what would bring those differences to a head? Bloobus values the truth. Bleebus values the group's happiness. So we stick these two in the conflict creatinator. We put a quarter in, maybe kick it a couple times because it's old, and oh, oh, there it goes. It's generating a scenario. And look at this. It appears that the ideal situation to make these two characters fight is a dark secret that will make everyone unhappy. Bloobus thinks that the people have to know, regardless of how it affects them. Bleebus doesn't want people to be hurt, and so she thinks they should hide the dark secret. So now they're not just clashing, they're clashing over something. And if your characters have different beliefs, you can find that something for them. The best part is, the something doesn't have to show up immediately, especially in a more episodic story. Your characters can tolerate or even love each other for seasons, plural, until a custom-built situation finally drives a wedge between them and forces them to either reconcile their differences or tear each other apart. Drama, baby. I might actually make the conflict creatinator. I don't know how, but it's kind of a fun idea. So, last thing. Obviously, this is more of a storytelling channel than it is a screenwriting channel. Like, I spend more time building canon than I do writing words. But since we just talked about the mechanics of an action scene and how to build up to one, I wanted to give my thoughts on how I think it should look on the page. This is obviously very stylistic and subjective, but I think most actors, producers, and anyone else who reads a lot of screenplays would probably agree with me. So I'm just gonna throw this out there. I read a lot of fight scenes that look like this. They're kind of just monotonous blurbs. They describe what happens, but they have no rhythm. In fact, if I administer the squint test, yep, yep, there's nothing telling me I'm looking at an action sequence. These words might as well be describing a pile of rice. But if I start hitting enter and I give each beat its own line, ah, see, see, that's better. The punchy, staccato feel of it is easier to read. It's more indicative of fast movement. I can put in sound cues. I can capitalize verbs for impact. I can highlight every moment instead of having them collect dust in a big, boring paragraph. Remember, the point of any screenplay, action or not, is to get the information across quickly and clearly so that the director or producer or whoever doesn't get a headache trying to decode what the hell you're talking about. You don't even need complete sentences. You just need to communicate your vision in easy-to-understand, objective terms. That's it. That's everything. I'm done. I think liking videos is supposed to make them pop off algorithmically. Pfft. I don't even know. Just hearsay. Just grapevine shit. Uh, if you didn't see, I uploaded a character map worksheet to my website. I made it in one night. It's pretty simple. But it's getting a version 2 that's much cleaner and covers a lot more ground. So there's that. And then there's the super video, which I'm very much beginning to see as not the end of the channel, but like the end of an era. Sort of. It's very important to me, which is why it's taking so long. Uh, but yeah, in the meantime, thank you for letting me live in the dark corners of your mind where you dare not look. You're a very gracious host. And thanks for supporting the channel. Keep rocking, keep writing, and I'll see you later, fornicator.