Lets take an example of a world renowned MARVEL movie, Captain America : The First Avenger, to understand the Story arc, characters and story timeline for the character. The MARVEL universe brought about an evolution in the superhero movie industry and has flourished since the release of the Avengers.
Story arc
1. Exposition: A determined, stubborn and hard working guy, Steve Rogers wants to enlist in the U.S. Army to defend his country in World war 2. Because of his weak stature, he is rejected many times until Dr. Erkskine finds his determination endearing and enlists him for a secret mission dealing with a scientific experiment for the army.
2. Rising action: At the experiment, the Hydra is introduced, which is the organisation on the side of Germany that dealt with such experiments and it stealsthe experiment while Steve is injected with it. From there on Steve tries his search to find his own place in the army. For a brief period he works in show entertainment for army soldiers where he is the super soldier, and after being mocked by the army soldiers at the front, he realises he doesn’t want to do that. There are then a series of events that encourage Steve to take on Schmidt (Hydra) and actually wins a lot of battles.
3. Climax : Confident over his victories over Hydra bases, Steve pushes through to destroy another base and rescue soldiers, which unfortunately is a trap set by Dr. Zola (1 of Schmidt’s minions. Steve manages to win this battle too, but loses his closest friend, Bucky to it. Steve confronts Schmidt, and figures that Hydra has been using the Tesseract (cosmic cube) in their conquest to bomb all the major cities of the world. He and his team infiltrate the base and while Schmidt tries to escape, Steve jumps onto his plane where they have a one on one fight, until Schmidt gets pulled into the Cosmos by the Tesseract.
4. Falling Action : Steve realises he can’t land the plane safely without endagering people and so makes the last minute decision to crashland into the arctic along with the tesseract.
5. Resolution : Steve wakes up in a hospital bed only to realise that he was sleeping in the ice for 70 years.
Character development
Character Breakdown for the Movie: Captain America – The first Avenger
- Protagonist -main character – Steve Rogers
- Antagonist – opposite – villain – General Schmidt
STORY STRUCTURE
To get a better picture of the timeline for the character in this film, I am adopting the 8 step story structure observed by DAN HARMON :
- YOU – Establishing the protagonist
- NEED – Something ain’t quite right
- GO – crossing the threshold
- SEARCH – the road of trials
- FIND – pivot point
- TAKE – control of your destiny
- RETURN – Bringing it home
- CHANGE – life will never be the same
Captain America : The first Avenger released in 2011 with a plot that shook the box office. Then again, like most plots of films, this one too, knowingly or unknowingly follows the 8 step story structure that Dan Harmon listed.
- YOU – This part of the story defines the attributes or personality that the protagonist portrays. The protagonist here is Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a determined, hard working and stubborn person who is bent upon enlisting into the US army as a soldier for the impending 2nd world war. In spite of getting rejected due to his physical appearance, he keeps making the attempts to enlist.
- NEED – This is where Steve realizes his weak and sickly appearance is hindering his goal. His friend passes the screening but he is left behind to make more futile efforts to join the army. Dr. Erskine, the doctor that clears soldiers to join the army, sees young Steve’s determination to serve the country and clears him to join a top secret army project.
- GO – Here is where the plot to make a soldier of Steve thickens. Despite Steve’s weakness during drills, his honor and bravery pushes him to get selected for a scientific experiment that is supposed to make him a super soldier.
- SEARCH – There are a series of trails for Steve as he sets about in his journey to find his place in the U.S. army. He tries to enter the army as soldier but is disregarded as being an experiment and not on his own abilities. Then he finds himself entertaining the army as a show soldier where the army mocks him to know nothing about being a soldier.
- Find – When Stark approaches Steve to carry out a secret mission for the army, He jumps at the chance to be on the front line and that is where he finds his calling.
- Take – Captain America aka Steve Rogers manages to infiltrate a lot of Hydra bases until he hits a tragedy at a base which was a trap set by Dr. Zola, where he loses his best friend. He manages to destroy that base and fights Schmidt off.
- Return : The bases are destroyed, the mastermind is sucked into the Cosmos, but Steve realises he can’t land the plane safely without killing people so last moment decision leads to crash landing into the arctic, taking the tesseract with him, saving the world as a soldier would.
- Change : Steve wakes up to find 70 years have gone by after that crash and life would never be in regard to how it was before.
Shraddha Mithinti 