John McLane’s arc in “Die Hard”

One of the reasons the movie works so well is the Protagonist’s arc.

In a recent Create a Compelling Protagonist class I teach, one of the topics we discussed is that a good story not only has a Physical Journey, whatever happens in the External World (Plotline), but also a Psychological Journey, the emotional ins and outs of characters in their Internal World (Themeline). The interplay of the two is where we see characters — and most notably — the Protagonist go through a transformation.