Anatomy of the Action Picture

Anatomy of the Action Picture

January 2007

For a long time Kristin Thompson and I have been interested in how films tell stories. We’re fascinated by the principles that govern different storytelling traditions. For the sake of simplicity, we’ve called the principles norms.

The term implies a standard of craft competence, along with a dimension of collective decision-making. Norms are preferred alternatives within a tradition. A norm isn’t a single and inflexible law; it’s best seen as a roughly bounded set of options. Within any cluster of norms, there are always different ways to do anything.

Film scholars are often more interested in a concept’s connotations than in its substantive content, so we occasionally hear objections to the term norm. Doesn’t the term suggest that we want to celebrate the normal and consign the non- or abnormal to some sort of lower status? But we’re not suggesting that. Both Thompson and I have studied and praised filmmakers who do things differently. As historians we’re simply studying principles of storytelling, as they’ve crystallized in norms that shape certain filmmaking trends. A researcher who studies norms of height in a population isn’t implying that unusually tall or short people are second-class citizens.

Sometimes norms are just tacit, left to filmmakers to learn by example and intuition. My studies of art cinema and Hong Kong cinema provide examples of such cases. But sometimes filmmakers act in awareness of norms. More than other national cinemas, Hollywood has developed some fairly explicit rules for how stories can be told effectively. Moreover, a lot of Hollywood’s storytelling rules aim at achieving a satisfying unity—the kind of plot we consider “tightly woven.” This isn’t to say that the rules are detailed or rigorous; sometimes they’re loose and vague. And some principles at work seem never to be spelled out as rules.

You can get the full account of this research program in The ClassicalHollywoodCinema, StorytellingintheNewHollywood, TheWayHollywoodTellsIt, and various articles (a few of them on this site). Here are some of the questions that guide us.

* Does actual Hollywood filmmaking follow the rules?
* By examining the films, can we make vague guidelines more precise?
* What other principles, even though they’re not stated explicitly, contribute to Hollywood storymaking?
* What are the variations within norms, the alternatives permitted or encouraged within a preferred set of practices?

Over the years, we’ve seen that our answers have occasionally been confirmed by practicing filmmakers. Some manuals of screenwriting have picked up on principles we’ve detected, turning them into explicit rules.1

Still, not all film scholars agree with our conclusions. A common objection is that U.S. mainstream movies aren’t as tightly unified as the rules, or as our books, suggest. In particular, some scholars believe that the norms governing the contemporary action film don’t aim at unity. Action movies, many suggest, are loose assemblies of chases, fights, explosions, stunts, and CGI effects, with little narrative coherence.

Granted, unity will always be a more-or-less quality; some plots are more tightly woven than others. Yet in TheWay (pp. 104–114) I argue that if we analyze action-adventure films, we find more unity than we might expect. Hollywood action pictures are more tightly woven than they need to be, if all the makers or the audience cared about was splashy spectacle. (I contrasted U.S. films with Hong Kong ones, which favor much looser plotting.)

I didn’t have the space in TheWay to undertake a full analysis of any one action film, but thanks to the Internets I offer a case study here, centering on Mission:Impossible:III. When I saw it last summer, it struck me as a fairly tight action picture, and rewatching it the other day, I started to count the ways.

Some norms

Here are five principles of storytelling that Thompson and I consider crucial to most Hollywood films.

1.  Goal orientation.
The primary characters, protagonist and antagonist, both want something, or several somethings. The story progression is driven by characters’ efforts to attain goals and the way circumstances alter those goals.
At the same time, characters’ efforts to achieve goals create changes in the people themselves. Sometimes they realize that they’re pursuing the wrong goal, or that they must become worthy of the goal. In Storytelling, Kristin discusses such possibilities in relation to GroundhogDay.

2.  The double plotline.
Typically the goals govern least two lines of action, and at least one of these involves heterosexual romantic love. A common pattern is a work/love pairing, where job problems affect and are affected by romantic relationships. Recent examples: TheDevil Wears Prada, TheGood Shepherd, ThePrestige. In some cases one plotline is subordinate to the other, but both are very often present.
Here’s a case of a norm that hasn’t, so far as I know, been articulated by the filmmakers themselves. It seems simply to be taken for granted.

3.  Discrete part-structure.
The action revolves around goals: defining them, modifying them, and achieving or not achieving them. Hollywood films map the process onto several parts, each running 25–35 minutes (although climax sections tend to be shorter). The running times of these parts don’t count credit sequences unless they carry story information, so the final crawl credits are typically not reckoned into the screen time of the film’s narrative.
Since the mid-1970s, screenwriters have talked a lot about the idea of the three-act structure. In Storytelling in the New Hollywood (1999), Thompson refined this cluster of rules. She suggested that we can analyze films more precisely by acknowledging that not all films have three acts. In features running around two hours, we typically find a four-part structure: Setup, Complicating Action, Development, and Climax. Usually there’s a brief epilogue tacked on. Filmmakers working in the three-act paradigm in effect split the second act into two stretches around a midpoint.
Interestingly, Thompson’s four-part structure is made explicit not only in manuals written after her book, but in the very architecture of Shane Black’s KissKiss BangBang (2005). The plot is split into four days, each given a title and each corresponding to one of the parts she identifies. Black’s film ends with several epilogues; this convention is mocked in Harry’s voice-over commentary, and one scene is labeled, “Epilogue.”

4.  Planting causes for future effects.
Chekhov is said to have remarked that in a play the gun on the wall in ActI should go off in ActIII. Likewise, Hollywood script carpentry lays in conditions that will prove important later. But it’s not simply props that point forward: more common are what we call dangling causes. An unresolved action is presented near the end of one section that is picked up and pushed further in a later section. Every scene will tend to contain unresolved issues that demand settling further along.

5.  Deadlines.
It’s surprising how often films in all genres set deadlines for the resolution of the plot. Screenwriters call it the “tickingclock,” the time pressure that can rule any portion of the film but that is virtually mandatory at the Climax.

In TheWay Hollywood TellsIt, I trace these and other norms in detail through a particular example, Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire. What happens, though, when the talented Mr. Cruise makes a full-throttle action picture?

To analyze a film, I have to assume you’ve seen it, so beware: what follows is strewn with spoilers. Timings come from the 2-disc DVD release.

Mission: Impossible: III
The Setup (00:32–31:34)

A prologue establishes that the villain Owen Davian has captured Ethan Hunt and a woman we’ll later realize is Ethan’s wife Julia. Davian demands to know where the Rabbit’s Foot is, and he threatens to shoot Julia if Ethan doesn’t say. As he fires, a brief title credit bursts up, and the rest of the film unfolds as an extended flashback.

You could argue that, given director J.J. Abrams’ roots in TV, this prologue functions in the manner of the teaser that samples a later part of tonight’s episode. But today many films employ an enframed flashback structure. The plot begins at a point of crisis and then whisks us back to show how things got to this pass. The resolution of the opening scene is postponed until the Climax. This strategy can be found at various points in the history of Hollywood, notably in the 1940s. I talk about this trend in ourblog.

After the title credits, our protagonist Ethan is quickly assigned two goals. First, during an engagement party, we learn that he and Julia Meade are planning to be married. He seems to have happily settled into an Agency desk job, concealed as a boring post in the Transportation Department.

Then he’s yanked out of his home by a request from his colleague John Musgrave. Musgrave asks Ethan to lead a covert team to find Lindsey Farris, a young agent whom Ethan has mentored. She’s disappeared, and master criminal Owen Davian is thought to be responsible.

So the characteristic double plotline is established. Ethan wants a normal life with the woman he loves. “Family’s everything,” Musgrave remarks dryly. But Ethan also feels obliged to save Lindsey, whom he had trained for combat and released for duty, perhaps prematurely. So he’s forced to lie to Julia and pretend to go to a professional convention. This sets up the work/romance tension we find so often in Hollywood films.

The M:I team is assembled, with the returning Luther Stickell joined by new members Declan and Zhen Lei. They and Ethan assault the Berlin factory where Lindsey is kept prisoner. As she’s rescued, she tells Ethan she has information for him but there’s no time for her to impart it. Deadlines keep the pressure on. Escaping in a helicopter, the team is chased by Damian’s minions, while Ethan discovers that Lindsey’s brain is carrying an explosive capsule. He tries to halt it by stopping her heart and using a defibrillator to bring her back, but they run out of time and she dies.

At home Ethan faces new problems. He’s still in shock from Lindsey’s death, which makes Julia apprehensive.

At work, Ethan’s supervisor Brassel criticizes Musgrave and Ethan, stating that his personal goal is to get Davian and they have thwarted his efforts. The setup winds down when Ethan attends Lindsey’s funeral, haunted by her question at the end of training: “Am I ready?”

Several important items are planted in this opening section. All the major characters are introduced. At the party we learn that Ethan can read lips, that Julia likes adventure (she’s gone skydiving and hung from a helicopter), and that New Zealand’s Lake Wanaka is a memorable place for both of them. The threat of an embedded brain capsule, the idea of letting someone die and be revived, and the fact that Julia works at a hospital will all become important in later parts.

Just as important, the action scene isn’t just a gratuitous set-piece. It’s central to achieving Ethan’s goal, the rescue of Lindsey. The rescue’s outcome—her death—motivates his hatred for Davian and drives a wedge into his relationship with Julia. From now on, as they say, it’s personal.

The Setup runs about 31minutes, with the key action of Lindsey’s death taking place near the 25-minute mark, a sacred point in Hollywood dramaturgy. In addition, first parts often have a turning point about halfway through: here, that’s when Ethan meets his team (at about 13minutes).

Mission: Impossible: III
The Complicating Action (31:34–62:05)

Lindsey’s funeral could simply end the movie. She’s beyond rescue, Davian has escaped, and Ethan is at a dead end. But dangling causes keep things going. We already glimpsed one in the factory assault, the urgent information that Lindsey started to recount to Ethan. Now, at the end of the funeral scene, he gets a call from a post office. A postcard is waiting for him. Dangling causes exemplify the famous linearity of classical construction: one scene hooks into the next.

The Complicating Action section serves to sharpen or alter the goals laid down in the Setup. The postcard remains a dangling cause, because Luther has to decipher the microdot that Lindsey has inserted under the stamp. In the meantime, Ethan learns from the technie Benjy that Davian is seeking something called the Rabbit’s Foot, “real end-of-the-world stuff.” Davian is headed for the Vatican to make deals with arms buyers, and Ethan resolves to pursue him, without telling anyone at the Agency.

Meanwhile, Ethan’s love affair with Julia is in jeopardy. Luther has warned that personal relationships don’t mix with espionage, and his pessimism seems to be vindicated. When Ethan makes new excuses to leave on a trip, Julia worries that he’s hiding something important from her. To reassure her, he marries her in the hospital where she works. Then it’s off to Rome to kidnap Davian, leading to an even more elaborate set-piece. Using the twinning technology established in other M:I movies, Ethan and the others snatch Davian.

Again, the action might seem to be at a standstill. Mission accomplished: The agency boss Brassel congratulates Musgrave on Davian’s capture. But fresh dangling causes emerge.

On the plane, Ethan questions their captive. Davian resists, vowing to make whomever Ethan cares about bleed—confirming Luther’s warning that secret-agent work jeopardizes their loved ones. Further, Davian’s gloating about Lindsey’s death drives Ethan into a rage. Davian’s a tough customer and may not reveal what the Rabbit’s Foot is. What if he should escape? He threatens to kill Ethan’s lover in front of him, and we realize that this is no idle threat: the prologue showed him in exactly this position. Somehow, we know, Davian will escape and turn the tables.

This Complicating Action is another longish section (about 31minutes), with several new plants. Scenes with Julia establish that she’s a doctor and that their relationship still doesn’t rest on full trust. Again, an elaborate action scene contributes to the plot. Not only does it show Ethan achieving his goal, it proves that, despite the death of Lindsey, he’s still a skilful agent. This section also establishes an important minor character, Davian’s female translator.