The All-or-None Ending

This blog entry might contain spoilers.

I got reacquainted with the Whodunnit comedy film Clue earlier this week. In case you're unfamiliar with that movie, it's adapted from the classic Parker Brothers board game (back in the days when movies based on board games were clever and memorable) and was originally released in theatres in three different versions, each with its own unique ending. Each version can be viewed on the DVD, either with all three resolutions shown one after the other at the film's end or with just one resolution that the DVD randomly chooses.

The three endings go as follows: In Ending 1, one of the six suspects turns out to be the murderer, who also had some help from an accomplice before adding them to the body count. In Ending 2, another suspect who worked entirely alone turns out to be the murderer. In Ending 3, every suspect turns out to have killed one person each over the course of the film. While none of these endings makes total sense, I've always liked the version where everyone is guilty the best. Not only does it take the film's over-the-top-confusion motif to the maximum, but it also feels truer to the original board game, where every suspect has been the killer at some point.

This brings me to today's topic, something I like to call an "All-or-None" ending. This is a type of narrative outcome, specifically in stories containing a competitive element, that either combines or dismisses every option that the story originally presented. In murder mysteries like Clue, the usual assumption going in is that just one of the suspects is the culprit, so an ending where everyone's a culprit is far more surprising because it shows that we were right to be suspicious of every character the whole time. In Clue's case, the "everyone's a culprit" ending also makes the overall story and ensemble cast of characters feel more unified and balanced since it doesn't suddenly pick one suspect to focus on at the end.

In contrast, another Whodunnit comedy film called Murder by Death plays with our murder mystery expectations by revealing that there was never really a murder at all -- maybe. That's another confusing one. Either way, none of the detectives involved ever wins their host's contest by solving the case and identifying a culprit. In both It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Rat Race, none of the parties chasing after the cash prize ends up winning it. These resolutions again create unification and balance in their overall stories and ensemble casts by not suddenly favoring one character over the rest.

All-or-None endings are also popular in "Versus" movies. The assumption going into a film called Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus is that one of the over-sized sea monsters will defeat the other by the end, much like how a boxing match has a clear winner and loser in the final round. Instead, Mega Shark and Giant Octopus kill each other at the same time and there's no winner at all. Pokémon: The First Movie builds up to a huge throw-down between Mew and Mewtwo, but both characters end up deciding to call it a draw because they're too evenly matched for one to defeat the other. This could be a case of a fight having either no winner or two winners, depending on how you want to look at it.

Even when films like this do pick a victor, they don't always commit to it. Films like Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator, and a large number of  Godzilla movies end with a last-minute hint that the loser is or could be a threat still. This seems to be a trend for two reasons: 1) It leaves the film open for sequels, and 2) it keeps the film from totally disappointing and alienating fans of the defeated character. While this may be a more cynical view of All-or-None endings, these movies are still aware that both of their titular combatants are equally important.

So what am I getting at with all this rambling? Mainly that the All-or-None ending has a place in storytelling even if it may seem indecisive at first. It's always important to have a clear hierarchy of importance in mind for your characters when you write, and in cases where all of your major players are of equal importance, suddenly shifting most of the attention to one of them at the end can feel a bit out of nowhere and arbitrary.

If you properly set one character apart from the rest throughout the story, perhaps by telling it from their point of view or by giving them the most emphasis in each scene, then making them the focus of the ending would feel a lot more natural. That's not to say that this rule can never be broken, but it's usually best to clearly set something up before paying it off. Otherwise, a lot more stories might come with multiple, interchangeable endings that don't always add up -- and that doesn't fare well outside of comedy.

What Is the Difference Between Villains and Antagonists?

Well, it's December. Normally I would spend this time of year rambling about the new Hobbit movie (and trust me, that time will come), but I thought of trying something a little different this year. I sort of had a fanfiction-themed month back in April, and since that lent itself to a few interesting literary topics, I figured why not do another theme month? That's why I'm officially declaring this December my Villain Month.

Discussions about writing villains, lectures on the elements of villains, case-studies on famous villains from fiction -- I'm going to cover as much as I can before the end of the year. There's a lot to blog about, and seeing how we're already a week into December, let's dive in! I'll start with a fairly basic question that's been in my head for a while:

What is the difference between villains and antagonists?

We all know essentially what both of those terms mean, and they're often used interchangeably when discussing movies, books, and other storytelling mediums. The thing is though, there are certain instances where the term "villain" doesn't seem appropriate to say. People don't normally refer to the tornado in Twister or the asteroid in Armageddon as the "villains" of those films, despite both being the things that the heroes have to overcome in order to resolve the conflicts in their stories. The same goes for the iceberg in Titanic, the lava in Volcano, or the dilemma-causing element in any other given disaster movie.

But why is that? A common explanation is that the word "villain" refers to an individual character; it's a title specifically given to a personified living being who competes with the hero of a story. By that logic, things like icebergs and tornadoes can't be called villains because they don't have personalities and are not alive. They can instead be called antagonists, which many people consider to be the more generalized term for opposing forces in a story.

Another explanation can be found right in Webster's Dictionary. That book defines the word "villain" as "a cruelly malicious person," and the word "antagonist," in terms of drama and literature, as "the opponent of the hero or protagonist." Much like in the first explanation, it seems here that the difference between the terms is that "antagonist" is more general while "villain" refers to a specific type of antagonist. Every villain is an antagonist, but not every antagonist is a villain. To sum up, natural disasters are also not villains because they lack that defining "cruelly malicious" quality.

That leads to another issue though. If cruelty and malice are what determine whether an opposing force is a villain or a general antagonist, then it really all comes down to the motivation behind that opposition's actions. The idea of all personified living characters automatically being villains suddenly doesn't hold together anymore.

Take the shark in Jaws for instance. He doesn't kill people because he wants to cause pain and suffering. He kills people because he's hungry. He gives dogs, boats, and compressed air tanks the same treatment because as far as his simple shark brain is concerned, these things are all the same. There is nothing personal behind it when he attacks humans. In fact, the only reason he pursues the main characters at all is because they keep luring him to their boat with gallons of chopped-up bloody fish. He would just as soon leave them alone if another, more plentiful food source presented itself to him.

This is also the case for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and the titular creatures in the Alien series. It doesn't matter that they were cloned from fossils or bred on another planet. At their cores, they're both basic predatory animals fulfilling their needs, and therefore they're incapable of malice.

An antagonist who is capable of malice is the hunter from Predator. He's clearly shown to be a sentient being with a sense of morality who is deliberately carrying out his actions with the knowledge that he's hurting other sentient beings -- and in extremely cruel ways, no less. He may have a sense of honor at times, like when he refrains from killing people who are unarmed and discards his armor to fight the protagonist hand-to-hand, but that doesn't stop him from cackling maniacally when he thinks he's going to take the protagonist down with him at the end by activating a bomb. He only spares someone's life because a rule somewhere decrees that he has to spare them for that time being. As soon as he determines that the person can adequately defend themselves again, he goes right back to attacking them. There is meditation and an intention to inflict personal harm behind his actions. The Predator and every antagonist like him is a villain.

I started Villain Month with this topic because it's important to understand what villains really are before you can properly discuss them. It's the reason for their behavior more so than the behavior itself that creates them, and what that reason is will determine how good, bad, likeable, despicable, or mystifying they can be. But that's another blog entry for another day. Welcome to Villain Month, folks!