In a screenwriting class I took, we learned that all modern “Hollywood” movies fit into a very specific structure. You can say “Napoleon” is an offbeat film, and doesn’t fit the Hollywood “mold,” but it’s far too big a movie to have escaped. It’s offbeat in the Hollywood way of looking rebellious while under the blessing of major studio. If it didn’t really fir the mold, it’s a big deal, and it’s the only modern movie I’m aware of.
Anyway, here are some things ‘all’ Hollywood movies are suppose to have:
[ul]
[li]For the main plot, there is one protagonist. The protagonist is the person who changes as a result of the main story.[/li][li]The antagonist is the person who drives the protagonist to change.[/li][li]There are three acts to the main story.[/li][li]The point-of-attack is the reversal that ends Act I.[/li][li]The biggest reversal in the film occurs in the middle of Act II.[/li][li]The reversal the ends Act II is a major decision by the protagonist that changes him/her forever and leads to either success or failure, but resolves the crisis that drives the story.[/li][li]There is a scene at the end that confirms that the protagonist has changed forever.[/li][/ul]
For most movies, you can’t help but notice these things. But in Napoleon Dynamite, either they’re missing or I’m missing something.
Who’s the protagonist?
It seems like there are lots of candidates for antagonist - they all challenge each other, but the end of the movie shows them all unchanged as people - Uncle Rio gets his woman back, but he’s the same guy. Napoleon and Deb seem to be beginning a romance, but they’re both unchanged. Kip changed, but he’s too minor a character and is long gone by the end. Is Pedro? He changed in a very superficial way, but doesn’t seem ‘changed.’
I have a weak idea of what it’s supposed to be, but I want to hear other input.
I guess it depends which definition of “Protagonist” you’re going with. I’ve usually taken it to mean “Main Character”, which would be Napoleon, IMHO.
I’ve also heard it mean “Person Driving The Story Forward”, which would be Uncle Rico, again IMHO, as he’s one of the few people in the film that actually does anything (buying the Time Machine off the 'net to try and travel back to 1982, starting the door-to-door sales thing and roping Kip into it whilst invoking Napoleon’s name to get an “in” with some of the kids at the school) instead of merely reacting to things in their environment as they happen.
The only person who really “changes” in the film (and thus fits in with your definition), IMHO, is Kip, after he meets LaFawnduh and becomes the most “hip” person in Preston- but he’s so far ahead of everyone else that he still manages to come across as a dork.
Pedro doesn’t really change or learn anything (except that you aren’t supposed to make Pinatas of actual people and hit them with sticks in the US), and in the end nothing has really changed from the start of the film except the implication Napoleon and Deb are beginning an awkward teenage romance and Pedro is one of the “cool” kids at the school as a result of his successful run for Class President.
Summer Wheatley is probably the closest thing to an Antagonist, IMHO, representing as she does the “Popular Kids” and their higher social position over Napoleon and Deb and Pedro- thus spurring Pedro’s bid for Class President, in an effort to oust them. Or because it’s something to do. Depends how you look at it
That’s one of the things I like about the film- no-one learns anything, no-one grows as a person, and at the end… nothing has really happened. It makes a nice change from the usual formulaic stuff you see nowadays.
Napoleon Dynamite reminds of a Vonnegut story. Vonnegut stories never really had “good guys” or “bad guys”, just the main character and what happens to him.
Yeah, the definitions of ‘protagonist’ and ‘antagonist’ I’m using are completely divorced from good guy and bad guy. In many movies, the antagonist is a ‘good guy’ - Ferris Buehler, or Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poet’s Society, for instance. And the protagonist is not necessarily the main character.
Even in really stupid comedies you can find this formula, though - I remember reading an interview with the people who wrote “Wayne’s World” about how they were forced to put changes in their script to show that characters had changed at the end - they did it as parody, with lines like “look how we’ve changed!” But it was still there.
Many critics often said that Seinfeld was a “show about nothing” (a term the series itself picked up to self-satirize). When I first saw Napoleon Dynamite, it struck me that it could be easily called “a film about nothing.” Much like many episodes of Seinfeld, there is no character development and no plot, per se- the focus is on a group of unusual characters and their everyday life. But in both cases, the characters are so quirky and well-developed that it remains entertaining.
Napoleon Dynamite was actually an indie filmed on a budget of $400,000 in Idaho. It was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures- the indie arm of 20th Century Fox- who was able to turn it into a hit with by offering trinkets to theatergoers and adding a new post-credits scene halfway through the run to encourage repeat viewings.
