To a first approximation, a character in a movie is interesting to the degree their motive is strong without being legible. Think Ahab or Tyler Durden, Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, Andy Dufrese. If there’s a clear motive, it tends to be nominal (whale, anarchy, girl, escape)
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By contrast genre fiction characters efficiently pursue their nominal goals, at least within a formulaic notion of efficiency, tied to a virtue. Liam Neeson’s “particular set of skills” in Taken for example. Genre comedy characters merely flip it to inefficiency.
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Occasionally, such stock genre characters rise above formulaic efficiency via what we tend to call a stylized presence, like John Wick. They go from character to idea.
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A strong character compresses a how+why coupled motivation into an identity. The can’t just win, they have to win in a characteristic way. They can’t just apply their skills to anything, they have to have characteristic goals. Eigencharacters driven by eigenvalues on eigenvectors
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A dead giveaway of a 2d character is a generic goal like “save wife/child” which is not an eigengoal. A more subtle giveaway is a generic skill like martial arts as opposed to Holmes’ unique abductions/deductions. Eigenskills.
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This is the intuition I was trying to capture in my 3 laws of how/why in this rather cryptic tweethttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1011433895697379328?s=21 …
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This is also what I was getting at here.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1011050265082859520?s=21 …
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And finally, this is what I was getting at here as well.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1010939432017408000?s=21 …
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I’ll throw in: deep characters are generally engaged in deep play a la Geertz’ Balinese Cockfight. It’s reaching for an infinite game from inside a finite game, in a way that defines the self as a non-null element. Affirmation rather than annihilation of the self. Anti-mysticism.
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End of conversation
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