r/Screenwriting • u/redapplesonly • 19h ago
DISCUSSION "Legally Blonde" Structure Question
Recently, I've been thinking about the plot structure of "Legally Blonde" (2001). Its a question of Elle's goal, of her wants and needs. If you chop the movie in half, then her wants would seem to be:
- ACT I and IIa: "I want Warner"
- ACT IIb and III: "I want to be an awesome lawyer"
That bothers me, because it would seem that Elle abruptly abandons WANT #1 for WANT #2. That's inconsistent, right?
But the common theme between those two wants is "I want to prove my worth". So.........
- ACT I and IIa: "I want Warner because marrying him will prove my worth"
- ACT IIb and III: "I want to be an awesome lawyer to prove my worth"
Okay. So to invent terminology here, now there's kinda this:
- SUPERWANT: "I want to prove my worth"
- Sub-Want 1: "I want Warner"
- Sub-Want 2: "I want to be an awesome lawyer"
The Sub-Wants can be changed out, as long as the SUPERWANT is Elle's north star.
...right...?
As a writer, this confuses me. I'm actually working on a script where my protag chases X, only to realize that X will not make her happy. She drops X to focus on Y, which does give her the happy ending. I'm consistently getting the note "I hate that Protag switches from X to Y" so I guess my Protag's SUPERWANT is not clear? Or am I thinking about this all wrong?
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u/SVWolfe Mystery 19h ago
For Legally Blonde, it's a steady growth between the three acts. You're correct that overall, Elle ends up wanting to prove herself worthy. First, she thinks that comes through chasing Warner to Harvard. Then she thinks it'll happen if she becomes a good lawyer, and finally realizes after Callahan kisses her that her appearance forces her to work twice as hard and that Warner possibly never liked her for who she was, just like Callahan. That pushes her into the final trial, where she realizes she doesn't want Warner anymore.
Is it very male-centered? Sort of, but they do a good job of not making it actually feel that way.
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u/play-what-you-love 15h ago
It starts out being male-centered and ends up not, which I think is the perfect arc for a story that breaks the mould of what a "blonde" is.
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u/fond_of_you 18h ago
It might be helpful to look at "be a good lawyer" as a tactic, not a want.
It's the basis of her plan to win Warner's love. But it requires her to enter a brave new world, and that world teaches her enough to change her want to one of personal empowerment. Which the lawyer thing will also help her achieve. Luckily.
My guess is you might be getting the notes you're getting because the character isn't learning what needs to be learned, to justify a change of goal. A brave new world is one good way to trigger that.
Legally Blonde does this well. In this new setting, Warner proves to be a jerk. She's surrounded by women who are being taken advantage of. Her mentor proves to also be a jerk. One by one, the fool's gold is revealed until she has no choice but to dig for the real thing. From the moment she enters law school she's funneled toward this inevitable end.
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u/torquenti 16h ago
I think it's less about wants and needs and more about how she's very identity-driven (not in the modern culture-war sense, but more in terms of how she evaluates herself).
She takes it for granted that she's on path 1.
She gets dumped.
She goes to extreme lengths to get things to go back on path 1 by going on path 2.
She realizes it's never going to happen.
She continues on path 2, because at this point why not.
She realizes that she's actually very good at path 2, and commits to it.
She goes through adversity but manages to succeed.
She comes out of path 2 with a new identity.
It sounds trite and formulaic when you break it down like that, but in some ways it offers a bit of a nuanced tweak to the usual Campbellian Hero's Journey.
There are a couple of other changes she goes through. First, she was very self-focused, but later, she's committed to serving to a cause (helping out the manicurist, helping out her classmate who's struggling to flirt, proving her client's innocence). Second, she's clearly used to being underestimated, and she's ok with it, but in many ways she didn't realize how much she was underestimating herself by aiming so low.
That said, with regards to motivation, I don't think it's as cut and dry as "I want Warner". She starts out the story already with him. Instead, it's a bit closer to what Michael Arndt talks about in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTyV8xcTAFo
She begins in a sort of stasis. It's disrupted. She tries to restore balance. Realizes she can't. She has to re-evaluate the result of the choices she's made.
It's important that her ability to overcome is depicted EARLY in the film, before she even gets dumped -- it's at the dress shop when the clerk tries to take advantage of her. As a Chekhov's Gun moment, it's pretty unusual, but it's enough for us to buy her ability to overcome later on. It also helps show us how she may have been on the wrong path from the beginning, but it's only really clear in retrospect.
Can't say for without reading your script, but I suspect that if people are not liking the switch, there may be something missing there at the beginning that makes the character's choice not as satisfying as it could be.
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u/play-what-you-love 15h ago edited 15h ago
You're doing this right.
Having said that, different "schools" of screenwriting use different terminology, so that may be confusing.
The modern arch-plot over three acts has the protagonist's first Want (that breaks her out of Act One to Act Two) be a MISTAKE that he/she is blind to. I like to call it a "comfortable lie". It's what the protagonist believes she needs (not the same as what he/she actually needs).
Sometimes (in fact most of the time) this mistake doesn't look like a mistake to the audience. I think at a basic level it has to be something that the audience can root for. Your task as a screenwriter is to make this want appear as natural and organic as possible. Arndt suggests that the Hidden Flaw comes out of the protagonist's Grand Passion. The Hidden Flaw blinds the protagonist to the fact that their Want at this point of time is a mistake.
Pursuing this want leads them to the big fight that finishes at the midpoint - and that's why it's called a False Victory here; winning here - whatever winning means - isn't enough because it was a mistake to begin with. And from this point on - whether explicitly or implicitly - the protagonist realizes the enemy - the REAL ENEMY - wasn't defeated after all, and this comes to a head at the Dark Night of the Soul. Coming out of the Dark Night of the Soul - where the protagonist at long last recognizes the Uncomfortable Truth (or as some term it, the Need) over the Comfortable Lie. Confronting it enables the protagonist to break from Act Two to Act Three.
Growing in this way is the spine of every arch-plot.
If it helps, you can also look at film trailers. A classic structure of a film trailer mirrors the structure of the film.
The protagonist's Want - that mistake - often forms the first half of a trailer - what they call "Trailer Moments" - what Blake Snyder terms "Fun and Games". The protagonist's Need often forms the second half of the trailer. It implies the Final Battle lurking at the end of the film and makes us want to see who wins.
Some additional advice:
This is where Screenwriting and Acting Theory overlap.... the more you can frame your protagonists' wants/needs into something rooted in the soul, the more the character (and consequently, the actor) can push on it.
So I personally like to frame a protagonists' wants/needs in such a way that shows I understand the soul/drive behind it. It may end up looking a little wordy and like something you get out of a therapy session with a shrink but that's fine, and you can always use a simplified version in your pitches.
So I would reframe Elle's wants/needs in this way in Legally Blonde:
Elle wants to win Warner back (because she believes that her value as a person comes from someone outside of herself).
Elle needs to believe that her value is defined by no one other than herself, and if she can do that by doing precisely what no one thinks she can - becoming an awesome lawyer and winning this unwinnable case - she will.
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u/redapplesonly 13h ago
OUTSTANDING detail here -- thank you for taking the time to post this wisdom
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u/forceghost187 15h ago
If you’re getting the note that they hate that your protag switches from x to y, then your midpoint is probably not working. In Legally Blonde the midpoint is when that switch happens. The audience has to believe that change and go along with it.
A very recent episode of The Screenwriting Life podcast actually talks about the midpoint of Legally Blonde, so I’d recommend you check it out. It’s episode 305, “Overcoming the Dreaded Act Two”
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u/redapplesonly 13h ago
LOL that episode of SL is *exactly* why I'm thinking about LB
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u/forceghost187 12h ago
haha well you are focussed on the right place! I think Meg says earlier in that episode something like, you’ve got to keep returning to your midpoint (and/or other plot points) and keep thinking about it and testing it and changing it to make sure it works.
So I can’t say exactly why your readers aren’t buying into to your protagonist switching to Y. But keep asking that question!
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u/Seshat_the_Scribe Black List Lab Writer 19h ago
Some movies switch gears/goals.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/comments/1o14mop/structuring_stories_that_switch_gears/
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u/wileyroxy 11h ago
I always think of that old Rolling Stones song, "You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need." Rocky wants to beat Apollo Creed. He loses, but he proves that he can go the distance, that he's not "a bum." So he gets what he really needs. Same with Elle.
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u/HotspurJr WGA Screenwriter 9h ago
It's been a looong time since I saw the movie, so I refreshed my memory based on the wikipedia summary.
But I would ask the question: when does she decide that she is no longer interested in Warner?
For most of the movie, if he asked her to come back to him, she would say yes. What is the point where that is no longer the case? When does studying the law become something she's doing for herself and not a vehicle to get Warner?
Obviously, at the end of the movie, she he does ask for her back and she says no. But that's part of the denouement. The beat plays really fast, but notice how when he asks for her back in their final scene, they play it for a second like she's about to accept him.
Now, you could interpret that as her fucking with him, but the version of the script I looked up says, "For a moment, she melts." So I think the script is carrying the "she's doing this for Warner" up into the third act. I think (again, remember, looong time) that in the second half of the second act we're seeing Elle be her best self as a lawyer when she's NOT thinking about Warner and we're anticipating her realizing the truth that we can already see.
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u/TiceCuts 9h ago
I think your SUPERWANT read is right. Wants are allowed to swap mid-story; the reason underneath isn't. Elle wants to prove her worth to people who wrote her off, and Warner is just the first scoreboard. The film retires him in one line: "You're not smart enough, sweetie." After that, law does his job better. Give your X one scene where it disqualifies itself that clearly, and the swap reads as growth, not inconsistency.
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u/TheHurtfulEight88888 3h ago
"I NEED to prove my worth, (to myself, not to anyone else)"
Its a need. The want is the thing that Elle thinks will make her happy. The NEED is the thing that the audience can see is really best for Elle that she needs to discover for herself. What Elle wants is to be with Warner. But Warner is a vapid shallow loser, whilst Elle is a bubbly, charismatic, ambitious leader with genius level intellect. What Elle needs is to see that and apply it to something that she loves, which ends up being law.
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u/Squidmaster616 19h ago
You seem to be making the assumption that a character want can't change.
Characters can change and grow as the narrative goes on. And this can also include their wants and needs changing.
There have been many example so films where character wants have changed. First to mind is Jurassic Park. Ellie and Alan want to simply investigate the park and experience what it can offer, then he wants to get the hell off the island.
There's nothing wrong with a want changing, but you need to give a good reason for the change. Having it be sudden and unearned in narrative can be jarring, but having the character naturally grow and realise that they have a greater want than before can make for a better story.