The Story Lab – Week 1: Character

I have watched a lot of television and film and even though transmedia has existed in many forms for a while, since the conception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, expanded movie universes have been an obsession for Hollywood. I bring this point up in my first blog post of the semester because I have a feeling I will be discussing the MCU and its impact on story telling across platforms throughout the length of the course. I am well versed in the cinematic universe, having seen every movie and each television show (apart from a few episodes of Agent Carter) and through simply viewing each piece of the Disney/Marvel puzzle, it becomes clear why it has been such a success. The characters.

In his book, In Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting, Robert McKee highlights the importance of audience empathy for the protagonist in films. An engaging story follows a character whose story the viewer can emotionally invest their time and attention to. McKee outlines how to create an empathic character, highlighting the main contributor as the audience recognising the character’s humanity, binding the fictional life with their own which allows them to invest into the story being told. The protagonists in the MCU are superheroes, having powers or lives filled with extravagance from their abilities to their resources which are impossible for movie goers to experience. Yet, their humanity shines through on screen through qualities such as humour or fears creating well rounded characters for real life people to connect with. In a world filled with other worldly beings and all kinds of extraordinary events, audiences keep coming back to the story on whatever medium it is presented on, because the characters have are fully fledged and easy to empathise with.