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Groundhog Day (1993)

Featured In

DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling

How do you keep an audience watching a character everyone in the film hates?

AI✦Breaks down how stating a character’s flaw upfront--not hiding it--flips the audience question from “what’s wrong with him?” to “how will he ever change?” The engine that makes us root for the unredeemable.✦

⏱ 1h 20m

30 MAR 2014

Character · Structure · Audience

Listen if you want to make audiences care about deeply flawed protagonists!

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Stu and Chas tackle the first 20 pages of HOT FUZZ, AS GOOD AS IT GETS and GROUNDHOG DAY and try to work out what stops these a-holes protoganist from pushing the audience out of the movie… →

Films: Hot Fuzz (2007) , As Good as It Gets (1997) , Groundhog Day (1993) , Gran Torino (2008) , Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Character: Character Flaw , Character Wound

Structure: Dramatic Questions

Audience: Audience Sympathy

"The only thing that I can point to is that they do make it really clear and emphasise continually that this is Phil’s version of hell..."

— chas | DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling

Referenced In

DZ-5

Shifting audience point of view and heightened emotions

⏱ 1h 29m

APR 2014