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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Notice that the behavior of such characters tends not to be efficient in pursuit of the nominal goal. Exceptions like the Terminator (a robot) prove the rule. But it’s not inefficient either. It is just distorted somehow in a characteristic/signature way. Hence strong characters.
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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 tweet
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My 3 laws of How/Why
1. An optimal How cancels a rational Why resulting in ∅ and insanity
2. A How is tasteful in proportion to the Why being irrational, ie misaligned with visible incentives
3. An activity is stably meaningful if tastefulness(How)*irrationality(Why) ≥ h/2π
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This is also what I was getting at here.
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Hedonism+prowess orientation is a clear indicator of how-why decoupling in thinking about life. It means your How is prowess for its own sake, and your why is on a treadmill. Both lead to nihilism. Only by coupling the two can you orbit the void instead of lurching into it.
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And finally, this is what I was getting at here as well.
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It seems odd to accept high certainty answers on how to live from people who don’t have good thoughts on why to live. I suspect there’s a how-why uncertainty principle.
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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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