Sometimes, write flat characters

While I’m on the subject of flat characters and Darth Vader, let’s pop over to the key influence behind Star Wars: Akira Kurosawa. Oh, how I love this man. His movies are sublime. And often his characters are as flat as the screen they are projected on.

And the movies are better for it. Why? Because he tells fairy tales. The characters of a fairy tale cannot be fully realized human beings. They must be archetypes: The Princess, The Thief, The Samurai… A fairy tale is not about the complex inner workings of particular people. It’s about universal human experiences, big life questions, parables. In other words, a fairy tale is not about the characters but about us, the audience.

George Lucas understood this when he made the first Star Wars. The characters were archetypes: The Farmboy, The Wizard, The Gunslinger, The Princess… But in the prequels, he turned his fairy tale into a character study, giving Anakin far more background and depth than Luke received.

And the prequels suffer for it. The story was better when the characters were flat.

Truffaut spoke to Hitchcock about the difficulty of writing a big plot with a big character. He wanted to see a movie that could be both an adventure and a character study.

C. S. Lewis, writing years before, felt just the opposite. He believed the more plot and fantasy a story has, the less character it should have. The story can’t hold the weight of exciting events and exciting people.