‘Similar But Different’ (Part 5: Psychological Journey)
In the first three parts of this series — here, here, and here — we explored Hollywood’s default business strategy of ‘similar but different’ from the vantage point of movie studios. In the fourth post here, we shifted the perspective to the writer’s side of things by considering powerful tools available to writers — archetypes — how they can be used to transform a ‘similar but different’ story into its own unique and compelling narrative.
But that’s only part of the story. Character archetypes and narrative archetypes do not exist in a vacuum. Properly understood, they serve a story’s central organizing principle: its psychological journey.
In any script, there are the events that transpire in the External World, the domain of what the reader can see (Action) and hear (Dialogue). I call this the Plotline.
There are also a related movements that occur in the Internal World, the domain of what the reader can sense (Intention) and interpret (Subtext). I call this the Themeline.
The Plotline and Themeline comprise the two realms of the Screenplay Universe.
Throughout the course of a story, events in the External World impact characters. They process and assimilate what happens which causes a change in their attitude in the Internal World. In turn that shift in perspective gets reflected in how they act back in the External World.
So throughout a story, there is this recurring dynamic — action, reaction, action, reaction — that plays out like a dance between Plotline and Themeline.
The result of that is the Psychological Journey. A character begins the story in one Psyche State and over time through a series of actions and reactions ends up in quite another Psyche State.
[Almost all movies feature a Protagonist going through some sort of metamorphosis].
To the degree we as writers create a compelling psychological journey [or set of psychological journeys] in a story, the more likely we are to entice the reader into our story universe. Furthermore a ‘similar but different’ story can evolve into a compelling experience for a reader. In other words, the specifics of a character’s psychological journey can transform a familiar narrative into a unique one.
Yesterday we looked at the Coen brothers’ remake True Grit to explore that story’s use of character and narrative archetypes. Today let’s examine another remake — the most obvious example of the ‘similar but different’ mentality — with the script we have been analyzing this week: The Thing.
In the 1951 original (The Thing From Another World), the story’s psychological journey was focused on the group of men and women banding together to successfully defeat an alien force. The psychological journey of the remake is substantially different:
* Unlike the original, the remake’s take on the Thing is that the alien has the capability to enter into a human’s body and transform itself into an imitative version of its host. This sets into motion the primary component of the story’s psychological journey for its characters: Paranoia. Who has been ‘infected’? Who is for us? Who is against us? Have I been infected? Is my or their behavior a sign of the infection?
* Instead of a more typical Hero’s Journey as reflected in the 1951 version of the movie, where the crew defeats the Thing, the remake is a much darker affair: alien kills humans, humans kill humans, humans kill alien. Eventually as witness in the story’s denouement, what is left is two human beings [MacReady and Childs] playing a game of chess, awaiting their eventual death either due to Antarctica’s unrelenting winter or the emergence of the alien presence in one or both of the characters.
In effect, every character in The Thing plays a Trickster — at points they are allies, at other points enemies — until eventually their real nature is revealed.
In terms of narrative archetypes — the tribe versus outsider, underdog, Hero’s Journey, metamorphosis [with an alien twist] — each of these dynamics serve the story’s psychological journey, the devastating impact of paranoia and inevitable decline into violence. In other words the remake of The Thing is a transformed movie experience precisely because of its radically different psychological journey.
To sum up our own journey through this series of posits this week, while we may be inclined to look at Hollywood’s fixation on ‘similar but different’ movies as a negative, I would encourage us to keep in mind movies like True Grit and The Thing, remakes which use elements — character archetypes, narrative archetypes, psychological journey — that demonstrate how writers have the opportunity with any story to transform that which is familiar into that which is unique.
As writers, we have the tools to do this. All that’s required is an understanding of those tools, careful use of them, creativity, and the passion to create distinctive stories.
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