The Pressure Cooker: Writing Compelling Character Arcs
How to make your protagonist their own worst nightmare.
What does it take for someone to change?
It’s the central question of nearly every story. You see, a story is only as good as its characters, and the characters are only as good as their arcs.
Today, we’ll look at one film that really nailed its character arc. It’s a timeless classic that tells the story of a father who, after losing nearly his entire family in a brutal home invasion, sets out on a mission to bring back his only surviving son.
I’m talking, of course, about Finding Nemo.
But we won’t stop at Finding Nemo. We’ll also discuss the unbeloved sequel, Finding Dory, to try to figure out why it falls flat. And at the end, I’ll offer a brief argument for why so many sequels fail to live up to their predecessors.
So hold your breath, gang, as we journey into the deeps.
Finding Nemo
Marlin is a flawed character. After losing (nearly) everything in a vicious barracuda attack that had no right opening a fun children’s movie, he fears the ocean. This leads to him being overprotective of the one thing he didn’t lose: his son Nemo.
After the opening scene, every bad thing that happens to Marlin is caused by this flaw. This is critical to his character arc. Let’s break it down.
Touching the Butt
Here’s a subtle but crucial fact: Nemo wasn’t going to touch the boat. He told his friends no. He backed away from the drop-off. He was doing what his dad wanted…until his dad showed up. Marlin arrives, stirs up a frenzy, and through his utter lack of faith in Nemo, actually inspires his son to take the risk. Nemo swims out to the boat, flicks it, and the rest is history.
In other words, the whole movie occurs as a result of Marlin’s character flaw. This is a simple point, but a very important one. He is responsible for all that follows.
Pescatarian’s Anonymous
A big part of Marlin’s fear of his ocean is his distrust of everything in it. This is put on display when he encounters three sharks who, amazingly, don’t eat fish. Dory, ever trusting, goes along with this. As a result, she gets along with sharks just swimmingly.
Marlin is not so relaxed. He’s freaked out by the situation and so controlling of the SCUBA mask that he accidentally hits Dory in the face with the strap. Her blood floats up to Bruce (who never knew his father), and he does what sharks do.
The point? Marlin’s distrust of the sharks turned them into the very thing he feared.
In the Trenches
How can we elevate Marlin’s flaw even more? How about instead of having to trust sharks (notoriously untrustworthy creatures), he simply has to trust his traveling companion? When Marlin and Dory approach the spooky trench, she warns him that they should go through. She doesn’t remember why she knows this—a school of helpful fish had warned her moments ago—but she’s confident that they should go through.
Marlin doesn’t care. The trench is scary. He knows best. They swim over, and…
Jellyfish. Lots and lots of jellyfish.
Their journey through the sea of jellies ultimately causes Dory to get hurt. Now Marlin is directly responsible for his friend’s injury.
But he still doesn’t get the point.
‘Cha Dude
The sea turtles serve a different purpose in the narrative. Everything Marlin has encountered so far is meant to show him the flaw in his way of thinking; his fear of the ocean leads from bad situation to bad situation. The sea turtles, however, do the opposite. They show an alternate path that Marlin could take.
Crush is extremely trusting of Squirt, letting him rip, roll, and punch his way through the East Australian Current. Marlin disproves of this…until he sees Squirt return back to the current, completely safe and totally wicked.
It’s a glimpse of what his relationship with Nemo could be.
A Whale of a Time
The pieces are all in place, but Marlin still hasn’t changed. What’s it going to take?
Right on cue, Dory asks a whale for directions.
Dory speaking whale is played for a laugh. It’s ridiculous and funny, but it’s also the perfect way to highlight Marlin’s character arc. Of course, he doubts her; he is completely sure that she can’t speak whale. We, the audience, might even agree with him for the first time in the movie.
Unsurprisingly, they get swallowed. Inside the whale’s mouth, Dory is still trusting of the huge animal, while Marlin is sure he’s about to die. In a dramatic moment, he and Dory cling to the whale’s taste buds, fighting with all they’ve got to hang on and not fall into the whale’s belly.
“He says to let go.”
Thus sayeth Dory to the least trusting fish in the ocean.
This is the moment of truth. Marlin looks at the scar on Dory’s fin from the jellyfish (the last time he didn’t trust her). He swallows his pride. He puts his faith in someone else. He lets go.
And the whale sends them out of its blowhole and right into the Sydney harbor.
She really could speak whale.
Keep the Change
Interestingly, a character arc is typically not completed at the end of the movie, as one might expect. Instead, it is finished at the end of Act II. In this way, the character is now ready to go into Act III and confront whatever conflict awaits them. It’s how they prove that they have truly changed.
What happens in Act III? Marlin is reunited with Nemo, but Dory is caught in a net along with a bunch of other fish. They are slowly reeled to the surface.
But Nemo has learned some tricks from his time in the dentist’s fish tank. He knows how to help. He turns to his dad.
“I’m going in.”
We hold our breath. Did Marlin really change?
Hold it, hold it…
Yes! He supports his son this time, helping him convince the other fish to SWIM DOWN and escape the net.
Finding Marlin
Marlin’s character arc is so effective because his flaw drives the plot every step of the way. He is given so many chances to change, but he doesn’t act on them until he absolutely has to. The plot of the movie is a pressure cooker. Throw Marlin in, and he is forced to change.
Finding Dory
This idea of forcing your protagonist to change is part of what caused Finding Dory to fall flat. Put simply, the movie struggles with Dory’s arc. Let’s look at it critically.
Dory’s flaw is that she doesn’t trust herself. She doesn’t think she can operate on her own because of her short-term memory loss.
Following the lessons from Finding Nemo, we’d expect that this flaw would show itself repeatedly. Dory should constantly be put in situations where she could act independently, but fails to do so out of fear.
This doesn’t happen. She is helped by other characters every step of the way. Crush gets her to California, where she is picked up by some researchers. Hank gets her out of quarantine and across the aquarium. Bailey the Beluga helps her navigate the pipes. Hank gets her back with the other fishes.
There is only one moment when she is actually alone. She gets separated from the other fishes and thrown out into the sea. It’s her first moment of true isolation. What does she do? She swims to the ocean floor, finds a path of shells, and follows them to her parents.
The movie acts like this is a huge resolution of Dory’s arc: she has finally done something on her own!
But…did she? If her parents hadn’t put out all of those shells…
My point is that you can’t trace out Dory’s character arc nearly as cleanly as Marlin’s. She never fully enters the Pressure Cooker. There are certainly lessons that she learns throughout the movie, but by the end, she’s back to traveling the ocean with Marlin and Nemo. There’s not a clear, dramatic change in her character.
Bonus Argument: The Trouble with Doubles
A strong movie must have strong characters, and strong character must have strong character arcs. This may be why it can be so difficult to write a sequel that’s as good as the original. If you have the same protagonist for both movies, you have to come up with a compelling arc that grows off of the first movie, which can be quite challenging. After all, you theoretically just allowed your character to reach their full potential. Where can they go from there?
Or, if you pick a side character for the new protagonist, as with Finding Dory, you run into the problem of having to write a compelling arc for a character you specifically created to aid in the original protagonist’s arc. In Dory’s case, her short-term memory loss and trusting nature were meant to counteract Marlin’s distrust and inability to let go of the past. In a protagonist role, these character traits would have to be treated very carefully in order to write a strong arc. If I may be so bold, it is possible that, considering Dory’s short-term memory loss, she really shouldn’t be by herself in the ocean. The arc was doomed from the start.
Needless to say, good sequels do exist. Perhaps I’ll discuss some in a future newsletter. But that is another topic, and shall be explored another time.
The point of a story is to watch a character undergo change. In this way, the plot of the movie must serve as a pressure cooker, specifically tailored to force the protagonist to come to terms with their flaw and either overcome it or succumb to it. The more the character’s flaw propels the plot forward, the more convincing and compelling the resulting arc is. The worst thing you can do is let your character watch the plot happen from the sidelines while others push things forward.
Hm, no. The WORST thing you can do is mistake a Hedstrom file for a K-flex. Just ask Bloat.