Metamorphosis and Movies

“In the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn’t a story.”

At a fundamental level, stories are about change. Events change, circumstances change, locations change, time changes. But perhaps the single most important change in a movie is this: metamorphosis.

Joseph Campbell said that at some level, the entire point of the Hero’s Journey is metamorphosis [he used the term “transformation”]. Whose metamorphosis? The Hero, of course, a character screenwriters refer to as the Protagonist.

As author Malcolm Crowley wrote, “In the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn’t a story.”

When writing a script, we need to consider the dual nature of the screenplay universe: There is the physical journey the characters go through in the External World [Plotline], but that is accompanied by the psychological journey in the Internal World [Themeline].

We can ask these questions as we craft a screenplay:

• Where does the Protagonist begin their psychological journey?
• Where does the Protagonist end their psychological journey?
• What stages of development do they go through from beginning to end?

In the screenplay for Pixar’s Up, the Protagonist Carl Fredricksen begins the story in a profound state of Disunity:

• He is an old man living alone.
• He struggles with a body that works against him [e.g., bad back, needs to use a cane to walk, must ride an escalating seat up and down the stairs].
• He wakes in the morning, eats his bran cereal, ties his bow tie, walks out the front door, then proceeds to plop onto a seat on the front porch, nowhere to go, nowhere to be.
• Even his house exists in a state of Disunity, surrounded on all sides by mammoth skyscrapers, the last vestige of the past amidst the pull of the future.

But of course, the single most significant aspect of Carl’s Disunity is the fact he is a widower. His beloved wife of many years Ellie has died. In my interview with Mary Coleman, head of the Pixar story department, she described Carl’s circumstance this way: “Carl has been living the past, not even living, just biding his time until he dies and joins Ellie. He stopped living when she died.”

He stopped living when she died. This is an apt description of where Carl begins his psychological journey, a deep, dark state of Disunity.

Once Russell intervenes in his life and the narrative shifts to South America, Carl goes through a process of Deconstruction. Between the boy, Kevin and Dug, and finding himself forced to drag his floating house all the way across the other side of the valley to reach Paradise Falls, Carl’s old ways — beliefs and behaviors — get knocked about and pushed around.

• His ingrained behavior is to be alone, but Russell, Kevin and Dug won’t let him.
• He habit is to be a curmudgeonly old man, but Russell’s boundless enthusiasm for exploration, Dug’s immediate and unconditional love, and Kevin’s tricks constantly assault his ability to wear his gruff mask.
• Even his old body is forced to accommodate itself to new circumstances, oftentimes setting aside his walker, even running albeit trying to escape Kevin and Doug [to no avail].

At a psychological level what is happening is this: Russell, Kevin, Doug and his hero’s journey poke holes in Carl’s defenses, opening the way… to his heart.

This is the core of what transpires in the next stage: Reconstruction. If we track the course of Carl’s subplot relationships in the second half of Act Two, we find:

• Carl listening to Russell talk about his favorite memory of his now absent father [sitting outside the ice cream parlor counting cars].
• Carl promising Russell they will help Kevin get back to her babies.
• Carl begrudgingly accepting Dug as a companion.

What happens here is an ad hoc family is forming, one that becomes a surrogate for Carl’s relationship with Ellie with the potential to fill that void he feels inside.

In Act Three, once Carl has achieved his original goal — get the house to Paradise falls to fulfill his promise to Ellie — he has a choice: Accept the fact he has accomplished what he set out to do or take on a new goal by going after Russell and trying to save Kevin from Muntz’s clutches. In the end, of course, the Good Guys win the day. And if you want a snapshot of a pivotal moment in Carl’s metamorphosis, there is this moment:

A house which symbolized Ellie so much, Carl used to talk to it as if speaking to his wife. Now after all is said and done, it’s just a house.

That signifies metamorphosis. And with the denouement when Carl shows up at Russell’s merit badge award ceremony to give him the Ellie Badge [the grape soda pin Ellie gave Carl when they were kids], then the pair sit outside Fenton’s Ice Cream Parlor counting cars with Dug [“Grey one”], we see Carl in a state of Unity, a new family to replace his old one, a man who had stopped living transformed into one who has embraced life again.

Almost every single movie has some sort of metamorphosis going on. Positive metamorphosis, negative metamorphosis, resistance to metamorphosis, Protagonists who change, Protagonists who change others. Whatever the specifics, a screenwriter has to be attuned to the Protagonist and their metamorphosis arc.