I'm here to complete her mi--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The God Killer.
That is not the God Killer.
You are.
Remember this guy?
Yeah, it'd be pretty easy to argue
that he's the worst part of this movie, and in some ways,
just completely sucks the life out
of Wonder Woman's third act.
When was the last time a superhero movie had
a reasonably good third act?
It doesn't take much thought to realize that, in general,
these third acts don't work.
Over the last 20 years, the superhero narrative
has replaced the Western as the enduringly
iconic representation of American life in some ways.
And yet despite a varied and diverse set of characters,
all these films suffer from a tangible sense of homogeneity.
Simply put, the third acts of a lot of these films are bad.
And if you turn back the clock, you
can start to get a better understanding of the context
surrounding that reality.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
After the initial superhero comic book
boom in the late 1930s, galvanized
by the publication of Jerry Siegel
and Joe Shuster's Superman, a raft of film adaptations
materialized.
More often than not, these were not literal feature films.
They were what is referred to as serials or cliffhangers.
10 to 12 part continuing stories,
but the character is going up against a villain or a threat,
getting into trouble, and more often than not,
looking like they died at the end of each installment,
only to narrowly escape the next week.
And these serials were shown weekly at local movie theaters.
Fast forward a bit more, and the next major turning point
comes in 1978 with the release of Superman the motion picture.
Directed by Richard Donner, this film, in many ways,
set the template for feature film adaptations
for comic book characters.
It treated the source material with respect,
but kept it emotionally grounded.
This film, in concert with Batman, released in 1989,
would spark the next 20 years of would be adaptations.
The Punisher, The Rocketeer, Dick Tracy, The Phantom,
and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the Movie, all
released throughout the '80s and '90s.
And it looked as if the superhero genre was
going to finally meet its end, until to the setup of Blade,
and the one, two punch of Bryan Singer's X-Men,
and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man launched a new Renaissance,
which evolved into the competing juggernauts of the MCU and DCEU
that we have today.
So here we are, having had almost half a century
of superhero movies, and almost a solid 100 years of superhero
comics being published, and yet the same problem still exists.
Many believe all stories can and should
be divided into a three act structure,
popularized in a seminal text screenplay, The Foundations
of Screenwriting.
Writer, Syd Field, argues that story
must be split into three acts.
Most superhero movies do utilize that basic structure.
First act, set up.
Second act, confrontation.
And third act, resolution.
The first act is when we meet our character.
It's when we learn about their life,
when we see their troubles, learn about their personality,
and establish a theme for our story.
So around that 1/3 mark of the film,
or approximately 25 pages into a screenplay,
the inciting incident happens.
Life presents our main character with a challenge, or a tragedy,
or a mission that will be the journey we must go on
for the rest of the story.
And this inciting incident will force our character
to undertake something they are not quite prepared for,
and hopefully cause them to grow.
In Wonder Woman, this is Diana agreeing to go to Man's World
with Steve Trevor.
You're a man.
Don't I look like one?
Diana is about to be the fish out of water.
She's going to help Steve Trevor return home and go toe
to toe with Ares, breaking the Amazon's isolationist
approach to life.
This is the stuff in the movie that works relatively well.
Gal Gadot and Chris Pine have chemistry,
the characters are clearly defined.
And we understand instantly that the movie
is going to be about Diana learning
about the outside world assimilating,
and changing as a result.
Act two is when our characters are pushed and challenged
in a way they weren't expecting.
This is basically the things get worse,
there's almost no point in going on section of the movie, where
our characters have to decide to venture forth,
pushing on to the inevitable conclusion,
despite how bad things are.
In Wonder Woman, it's Diana realizing
that Steve lied to her in order to get her
to go on a mission with him.
It's her being brought to the realization
that everything isn't black and white,
that humanity's mercurial nature and morally gray compass
are inextricably linked to the real world.
And act three is where it all comes to a head.
The character is tested, they grow or change
in order to have met the moment, and their character arc
is complete.
Theme is paid off, and any of the elements
that were set up narratively, are hopefully resolved.
All the lingering questions should be tied up,
and our characters should be left having grown
and become better and more developed.
In Wonder Woman, it's this guy again.
I am not what you thought I was.
Which brings us back to the question
of why do all superhero stories have questionable third acts?
There's a few answers.
In some ways, a lot of them are just bland.
Joseph Campbell coined the term, the hero of a thousand faces,
to describe the structure of storytelling
that exists across almost every culture on Earth.
And in the current age of wall-to-wall CGI battles,
it's almost like the third act of a thousand faces.
The tropes of the genre have become so well-worn,
they almost feel like plug and play.
Same VFX teams work on all of these climactic fight scenes,
we know the actors are under contract for 14 more movies,
so the characters aren't in any real trouble,
and the stories never really pushed the characters
to new heights.
They just make minor incremental alterations
in an effort to move towards something bigger
in a different film.
They thrive on the illusion of change, something
the comics have been mining for close to their whole existence.
At this point, the our hero has to go up
against an army of goons that's being puppeteered
by our lead villain trope is so ubiquitous
that it's become a little laughable.
It's on display in The Avengers, Justice League,
and countless others.
And the fact that these goons always
stop functioning immediately after the villain is defeated
is just another creation of another trope,
happening for narrative cleanliness,
and no other reason at all.
Now a lot of them are adapting stories from comics,
more often than not, but most superheroes
don't get third acts.
Their individual stories do, but they as characters do not.
They're meant to continue forever.
Most of these comic book characters
we've been discussing have been published consecutively
since 1939.
They've lived hundreds of lives worth of stories,
which are still being published weekly in some cases.
And because of that, they live in a state
of perennial second act.
There literally isn't an ongoing superhero
who's had their third act and then their story has ended.
In some ways, they can't.
Even when they've tried with characters like Barry Allen
or Hawkeye, they just kill them and then
the characters just come back and are given more second act,
essentially.
And the way this manifests in the films
is that their third acts are just kind of emotionally
extended second acts, as opposed to literal third acts.
And because of that necessity, you
have to really distract people with, well, sometimes,
wall-to-wall CGI armies.
Marvel alone puts out four superhero movies a year now.
When you've got competition that ubiquitous,
you have to constantly be chasing
the next visual achievement.
Therefore, character theme and story
often get left by the wayside in exchange for explosions,
lasers, and superhero landings.
Which is why you probably can't remember the last time
you saw a superhero third act that was actually reflective
of some of the themes broached within the rest of the film.
The climax of Wonder Woman is intended
to be a bait and switch, no massive armies, no robots, just
Diana and Ares in this one on one fight,
which is intended to be the climax of Diana's character,
and that she's going to fight a literal god to defend
Man's World.
But the way it's set up feels completely disconnected
from the rest of the story.
It's not thematically linked to anything,
and feels like a twist for the sake of a twist,
or should I say, a perversion of these tropes.
A first and third act should be in conversation
with one another.
They should be in somewhat of a dance.
They should be pushing and pulling the character
through an unspoken challenge.
In nine times out of 10, the super hero third act
just doesn't do that.
It's more concerned with making people feel like things
are happening with carefully choreographed
computer-animated balletics than really pushing characters
to the brink.
When it comes to building a story,
it's important that you understand
the arc of your characters.
And when dealing in a very traditional third act
structure, they do need to overcome some obstacle that
is pertinent and thematically resonant enough
to make that character story feel
whole, the ultimate challenge for whatever that journey is.
And it all should flow from character
to theme, and through the things that
were set up in the first and second active
that traditional three act structure.
Well guys, that's it for today's episode.
Enjoy this one, press the Like button down below.
Also hit subscribe.
Two more episodes on your screen right
now, click on either of those.
Stay right here, and hopefully I'll
see you guys in the next one.
[MUSIC PLAYING]