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Hot Fuzz (2007)

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DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling

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

AI✦Breaks down why stating a character’s flaw upfront actually creates the dramatic question that keeps audiences watching--and how that shift changes everything about likability.✦

⏱ 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

"What’s really clever is here, and the other scripts do this as well, is normally in drama you wouldn’t have the flaw stated so early and in such obvious terms. Often if it comes at all, it’s like at the end of the second act, you know. And here they tell the audience and they tell the character what their flaw is, but they show them oblivious to it... And then this actually leads me to think... it actually sets up a dramatic question for the audience, right? You’re told what is wrong with this guy. And so the question becomes: when will he realize? or how will he realize? It’s a subtle question, but I think it is in there. And then part of what you’re compelled to do is watch to see, because you’re not trying to work out who this character is, you’re actually wanting to see how they will ultimately change."

— stu | DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling