Frost/Nixon

Great drama is among the most advanced and challenging forms of storytelling. Sadly the glory days of drama in worldwide entertainment are long gone. Witness the highly acclaimed Frost/Nixon, the latest example of “much ado about nothing” in the drama form.

Frost/Nixon seems to have many of the elements that make up an excellent dramatic script, most especially the relationship between the hero and the main opponent. From the title itself, we can tell that writer Peter Morgan understands one of the first rules of great storytelling, which is that the hero is only as good as the person he fights. The opposition here between Frost and Nixon promises to be a heavyweight fight, between the charming, media-savvy English interviewer and the lying, bitter, anti-media American ex-President.

In fact, what we get is the most hollow, limp opposition I can remember. Sure there’s plenty of conflict. Frost has to fight not only Nixon and his chief handler, but also his own teammates who push him to be harder on the ex-President.

So why does this drama disappear into thin air when you try to engage it? The reason has to do with what’s really at stake in a drama. Good drama explores a moral issue in depth. And this moral issue has to be important, meaning that it has to affect people’s lives deeply.

At first glance, Frost/Nixon seems to deal with a huge moral issue: the most powerful man in the world abuses his power, attacks the Constitution and then creates an elaborate cover-up to hide his crimes and retain power. That would be the moral issue at stake if the film tracked Nixon and the events of the Watergate scandal.

But this film is about Nixon talking about Watergate. Which is why we get so much fake drama about how Frost has his own money on the line, how he has a reputation as a lightweight, how Nixon is a big, bad wolf, how Frost and Nixon are both trying to make a comeback and only one of them can succeed, etc. This is all puff and nonsense.

Break the film down structurally and you realize that Frost/Nixon is a film with 90 minutes of smoke-and-mirrors set-up for 5 minutes of payoff. And what is the payoff? Nixon admits he made a mistake and let down the American people. Whoa. What a revelation. Look all you want for a deep exploration of a major moral issue. You won’t find one.

The only reason this is surprising is that the actual Frost/Nixon interviews happened so long ago. Looking back at when the interviews were shown on television, I recall I watched them sporadically. And why was I not engrossed by this supposedly momentous landmark of television history? Because it was a long, crashing bore, endless hours of bloviating for the 5 minutes of payoff we get at the end of this film.

One reviewer has called this film “Ron Howard’s most mature work to date.” Please. That’s wrong on at least two counts. First, it’s another example of the sheer idiocy of the auteur theory. Ron Howard has relatively little to do with the success or failure of this drama. It’s all about the script, the play, the workings of the drama from the inside. Second, this is not good drama. It’s what is sometimes referred to, disparagingly, as the “well-made play.” Looks good on the gloss. But it’s hollow drama in the theater. And it’s hollow on film.

Which begs the question, why all the acclaim? We could blame it on the old excuse: you can fool all of the people some of the time. But the real reason for the hoopla is the virtual disappearance of the drama form in Hollywood film. Movies like Frost/Nixon, Doubt, and Revolutionary Road come out at the end of the year, at awards time, and because they have the audacity to address adult issues, reviewers, who are used to watching cartoons, are so shocked they call these films brilliant.

Sure we might all want to have the success of these dramatists. But don’t be fooled. If you want to write drama, a dying form, you can’t get away with smoke and mirrors. You have to have real substance. And you have to know how express that substance through a building conflict between two virtually equal sides. Master that and reviewers will call you brilliant too. And you’ll earn it.

Slumdog Millionaire

All the praise for Slumdog Millionaire has been focused on Danny Boyle for his energetic and colorful direction. No question Boyle's direction is terrific. But the real key to the film's success is the script by Simon Beaufoy. Using a unique story structure and scene weave, Beaufoy combines the myth and love genres with some advanced screenwriting techniques to build his story to a stunning climax.

To appreciate Beaufoy's accomplishment, we first have to look at is challenge. This is the story of a "slumdog" orphan boy who grows up in Mumbai with his older brother and ends up competing for the big prize on the game show, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Here are just some of the difficulties inherent in the premise: a boy as main character, a story that covers ten years, a mix of myth and love story forms - two genres that are notoriously tough to put together - and keeping the hero's desire for the girl believable and strong. In the Great Screenwriting Class I spend a lot of time on specific techniques for developing the premise, since this is where 99% of writers fail. To win the premise game, you first have to identify the structural problems buried in the idea, then come up with structural solutions to solve them. And you have to be able to do this before you write the script.

Beaufoy's solution to the daunting challenges of his premise is a triple cross-cut framing device. In this advanced technique (see the Advanced Screenwriting Class and the Blockbuster story software for details), the writer cuts between the hero, Jamal, being tortured by the cops who suspect he has been cheating, his performance on the game show, and the story of his life. This is a classic example of how a non-chronological structure is often the right one for a story. But it is very risky, because this much cross-cutting can suck out all the narrative drive.

So why does it work here? One of the big problems of telling a myth story that covers many years in a character's life is that it becomes extremely episodic, meaning that individual events stand out and don't build in a single, narrative whole. A storytelling framing device literally puts brackets around these events. They are told from the mind of the hero, so they gain a unity they would not have if told chronologically from an omniscient narrator.

Using a child as the main character poses all kinds of problems. A child has limited awareness, he is usually a victim and the audience senses that the most dramatic elements will come near the end of the depicted life. That's why Beaufoy uses the other two cross-cut lines. By beginning with the boy grown-up, being tortured, then cutting quickly to his performance on the game show, Beaufoy brings the most dramatic element of this boy's life story to the front of the tale. Structurally, he has taken the battle step - one of the seven major structure steps that usually occurs at the end of the story - and cut it into pieces. The audience is constantly reminded of the most dramatic moment of the story, and it too builds slowly and steadily as the hero moves closer to winning the big prize.

This also allows Beaufoy to connect the game show questions to the key events of the boy's life, a technique that not only undercuts the episodic quality of the story but also makes the thematic point that any life is a combination of chance, freedom and necessity.

The torture and game show lines solve another problem inherent in the premise: they are the primary way Beaufoy connects the myth form to the love story. Myth usually covers vast time and space. Love is compact, driven by white-hot passion that tends to dissipate if the story travels. The torture and game show frame allows Beaufoy to establish Jamal's love desire at the very beginning of the story, even though chronologically the hero encounters the girl of his dreams when he is a little boy and then doesn't see her for long stretches of his life. This makes the love story the primary genre, which is a much more unified form than myth.

The writer was also fortunate that the writer of the original novel, Vikas Swarup, chose the picaresque tale as the basis of the original story. A picaresque tale is a kind of comic myth in which the hero is a rogue-trickster character from the lower class who succeeds by his wits and in so doing highlights the corruption of the society. This sub-genre is the basis of such classics as Tom Jones, Oliver Twist, and Huckleberry Finn. In the "greatest techniques" section of the Blockbuster software, I talk about this rogue-trickster character as possibly the single important element in blockbuster films. From the very beginning this boy is a schemer, able to succeed and even escape death through his quick mind. Faced with terrible poverty and corruption, he nonetheless survives and flourishes. There is even an Indian version of Oliver Twist when a man saves the brothers from their poverty only to force them into his society of beggars.

This film is worth careful study by any writer hoping to master advanced storytelling techniques, as well as to learn how to bring together genre forms in unique combinations.

Changeling

Changeling is a harrowing story of one woman’s nightmare when she tries to find her missing son. For screenwriters it shows the benefits, but also the difficulty, of combining the thriller with the social drama.

Drama is one of the great storytelling forms, but it has become rare in a Hollywood that requires all its movies to have blockbuster potential. Most writers of classic drama have moved to television where the level of writing has never been higher. But to get a drama made in film, you have to combine it with a more sensational genre that can pull in the big audience. Enter the thriller.

At first glance, this marriage of forms looks like a good idea. Social drama lets you explore human nature and social conflict in depth, while the thriller gives the story excitement, jeopardy and narrative drive. But these same qualities dictate virtually opposite story movements. Drama wants to slow down and dig deep, find the underlying causes and explore the subtleties of human character. Thriller wants to charge ahead, to find out who is attacking the hero. No subtlety here; it’s yes or no, he did it or he didn’t.

This is the crux of the problem that Changeling writer, J. Michael Straczynski, had to solve to make this film work. The story begins with the social drama. The hero, Christine Collins, returns home from work to find her son missing. Months later the police bring her a boy they claim is her son, even though she insists he isn’t. Her desire is simple: she wants her son back. But that creates a big structural problem for the writer. She can’t act on her desire. All she can do is repeat it to the corrupt cops. And while this generates anger in the audience at the arrogant injustice of the police who treat her as an incompetent child, it doesn’t drive the story forward.

This early part of the film also highlights another flaw common to the social drama. The hero has no moral need. All immorality is located in the opposition, the corrupt cops. This creates a good vs. evil contrast that is the kiss of death for good social drama, and exacerbates the hero’s position as a victim already established by her reactive desire line.

With the social drama line slowing to a halt, Straczynski introduces the investigation line and the story takes off with a burst of energy that’s palpable. A cop in the same precinct as the corrupt captain follows up on a kid’s claim that he helped a serial killer murder boys. The resulting investigation is not complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. It gives the story a goal with clear action beats. The writer then cross-cuts this line with a thriller line that comes from the corrupt captain sending Christine to an insane asylum for claiming the police gave her the wrong boy.

Does this story have a double desire line, and therefore two spines? You bet. And it does feel like two movies that have been cobbled together. But we also see here a writer making a unique story work on its own terms. Most stories have one or more structural roadblocks built in; they are part of the animal. If, as a professional, you have to make a story work, you pull from your bag of techniques and get the job done. Straczynski knows that neither desire line will support the story on its own. But by cross-cutting them, he creates a track with enough narrative drive to take us to the end of the social drama.

But not without severe costs. The story’s structural flaws prevent this from being a great social drama. Yes, the corrupt captain and chief of police are brought low and the mother is publicly redeemed. But subtlety and an exploration of deeper causes are nowhere to be found.

So what can we learn from Changeling? I’ve already mentioned the importance of making the story work, even if you have to break a few of the rules of good drama. The lesson of never letting perfection get in the way of success is always good for writers to remember. Changeling also shows us the power, and the difficulty, of combining drama with thriller. The key structural element is desire. If possible, try to turn the two desire lines – of drama and thriller – into one. Each line should help solve the other: investigating the crime should lead to deeper layers of the social conflict while the argument about the social issue should lead the hero to new clues about the crime.

Finally, Changeling shows us one of the keys to dramatizing a real-life story: finding the right frame. A true story must hit the same seven major structure steps as a fictional story. But a true story restricts you in how you find those steps, since you can’t just create them from thin air. Instead you have to focus on the frame, where to begin and end the story, and that means you have to start by identifying your battle scene. In Changeling, everything comes to a dramatic head at the trial, actually a cross-cut between the trial of the killer and the trial of the LA police. This battle brings a convergence of the two lines that this real-life drama-thriller desperately needs.

If you are interested in how to tell any story with maximum dramatic power, regardless of genre, look at our 22 Step Great Screenwriting Class. For tips on advanced drama and structuring true stories, check out the Advanced Screenwriting Class.

Life

Life is a 1-hour drama that has been trying to break through after a strike-shortened season last year. I hope it does because it adds a number of fun twists to the police procedural that is the staple of American TV drama.

In the TV Drama Class, I go into all of the structural elements that must be present to construct a successful show. One of these has to do with the genre. Like film, TV requires that you take an existing popular genre or combination of genres and give it a unique twist. Life is a mix of detective, crime and buddy picture, and that’s a pretty strong combination. Yes, we’ve seen cop shows with partners many times before (for example, Law and Order SVU), but they aren’t using the buddy picture techniques. A buddy picture is a kind of action comedy in which the buddies form some kind of odd couple. The buddies love each other in a platonic way, but they act like a married couple, with constant lighthearted bickering.

In Life, the odd couple is Charlie Crews, a cop who was framed for a multiple murder-robbery and sent to jail before gaining his freedom and returning to the force along with $50,000,000 in “We’re sorry” money. He’s gained a Zen sensibility during his twelve years behind bars. And that drives his partner nuts. She’s Dani Reese, a practical, by-the-book cop who also just happens to be drop-dead gorgeous, like any number of other drop-dead gorgeous cops in Hollywood crime shows (for example, Law and Order SVU). Just once I’d love it if a character on one of these shows would ask our investigator if she realizes she’s beautiful enough to be an actress.

The two lead characters play well off each other, and I believe one of the reasons this show hasn’t done better is that the writers have not played this element up even further. One reason might be that the Reese character lacks detail. For a buddy picture to work the buddies must be equal. The writers have given Crews tremendous detail, to such a degree that he is clearly the hero of the show. This imbalance is a big mistake. William Goldman once told me that when they were shooting the early scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Butch has to fight Harvey for leadership of the gang, director George Roy Hill kept Sundance on his horse to visually increase Sundance’s stature relative to Butch. We forget that before the movie came out, Robert Redford was a nobody and Paul Newman was Paul Newman.

This may be why Life’s writers retooled the show this season by giving Reese and Crews a new boss, Captain Tidwell, with whom Reese could get romantically involved. Donal Logue, who plays the boss, is a funny actor and a welcome addition to the show. But while the move has boosted Reese’s importance a bit, the relationship between her and the boss is completely unbelievable. Hopefully the writers will strengthen this line, while also highlighting the more important buddy relationship between Reese and Crews.

Another structural element that determines a successful TV drama is the weave of the desire line. In other words, what gets accomplished in each episode and how are the episode’s goals intercut? Life uses a technique found in most cop shows of combining two main goals, one short-term and one long-term. The short-term goal is to solve the crime of that episode. The long-term goal is Crews’s determination to find the cops who framed him for the murder-robbery. The individual investigations all have a quirky quality that sets them apart from the standard crimes we see on most procedurals. For example, in a recent episode, Crews and Reese had to solve the murder of a mall Santa they find five minutes before the department store opens for holiday rush on Black Friday. They realize too late that the horde of hungry shoppers is going to trample their crime scene, and then discover that the shoppers have apparently taken Santa’s body as well.

The long-term investigation is more problematic. The conspiracy behind the murder-robbery and Crews’ frame-up is full of juicy possibilities, including one suspect who is Reese’s father. The brilliant Zen cop who sits in his mansion trying to unravel the conspiracy that took twelve years of his life is, besides being very un-Zen, great stuff. Which is why it’s been frustrating that the writers have done relatively little with it. I suspect that’s because they realize that once Crews figures out who did it, this line is over. The show’s creator has painted himself into a bit of a corner here. This concept is central to the premise of the show, and probably a good part of the reason Life got on the air in the first place. But it’s a big dead end when it comes to the extendability of the show.

Still, the writers must deal with this line. Giving it one or two scenes a show doesn’t work. Ignoring the line only makes it seem half-baked and unrelated to the main investigation in each episode. If the writers can expand this conspiracy from a single event in the past where Crews was framed to an ongoing, present-day corruption in the LAPD, this buddy picture of a Zen mind-master and his pragmatic, beautiful partner will turn into the hottest show on TV.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Every genre has unique structural elements that make it a challenge to write well. But the most difficult genre of all may be the love story, especially the romantic comedy. The love story turns on two contradictory requirements. On one hand, a love story should take only ten minutes. Two people are attracted to one another, and the rest is negotiation. On the other hand, the story must last a long time for the love to be believable to the audience. The audience can’t just see the two people fall in love. They have to feel it, and that takes a lot of screen time.

These two contradictory elements account for many of the 12 unique story beats that make up the genre. For example, when the two leads first meet, they always fight. Of course, this is completely unrealistic; next time you’re interested in someone, go start a fight with them and see what happens. But starting a love story with a fight makes a lot of structural sense. Remember, you have to create more than ten minutes of story.

If we look at Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, by Lorene Scafaria from a novel by Rachel Cohen and David Levithan, we can see writers struggling with the special challenges of the love story. The film relies on textural details, especially music, to make it feel original and fresh. But because the writers never cracked the structural essentials of a good romance, the audience gets little story and no feeling of love.

The key structural mistake in this script has to do with Desire, one of the 7 major structure steps in any story and especially crucial in a romance. The main desire line in a romance, and the spine of the story, is the desire the two characters have for each other. This is why the classic Hollywood love story tracks the man’s quest for the woman. She opposes that desire for most of the story, and they finally get together at the end.

Notice that approach establishes a desire line and conflict for 90 plus minutes, and solves the first big difficulty of the love genre. But notice also that this is essentially the structure of an action story. And while this structure gives the audience plenty of time to feel the love developing between the two characters, most of what the characters are feeling toward each other is not love, but conflict.

The writers of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist wanted to use a different love story structure, one not based on the guy chasing the resisting girl. That’s a great idea in theory. But in practice, they chose to change the primary desire line from a passion between the two characters to an outside desire the characters share, which is to find where an underground band is playing. True, this gave the writers a line that extends for 90 plus minutes, with plenty of time for the two leads to get to know one another and fall in love.

But at what cost? The story is extremely episodic as the leads go from one location to another in search of a band the audience doesn’t care about. Which means that while there are multiple events, there is no plot. And because the driving desire is not between the two leads, this remains a friend story, not a love story.

The screenwriter, apparently realizing the lack of urgency in the main desire line, added a secondary desire where the leads search for a drunken friend who is lost in the big city. But this just adds an unrelated story line (not a true sub-plot). And watching a young woman stumble around drunk for 90 minutes is anything but funny.

We can certainly learn some lessons here. If you want to write a love story that doesn’t rely on the old man-chases-woman schematic, by all means do it. It will set you apart and give you the opportunity to write what I call, in the Love Story Class, a “true love story.” But don’t make the mistake of substituting an outside desire line for the desire that must be the spine of any good and moving love story, which is the craving that each has for the other. Never lose sight of what is really at stake in a love story, and that’s love itself.

If you would like to learn all of the beats of a great love story, along with how to write each of the many sub-genres of love, including romantic comedy, take a look at the Love Story Class and Love Story Software. Very few writers have mastered this tricky form, but it can be done. And the payoff is huge.

The Teen Movie

It’s back to school time, and for many screenwriters that means time to finish the spec script that will be your calling card to the big shots. One of the first rules of success for screenwriters is choosing a story form Hollywood wants to buy. Certainly one of those forms is the teen movie, as popular now as ever, in television as well as in film. To write any story form well, you have to study how it works under the surface, that is, structurally.

The first thing to understand about teen movies is that they aren’t actual genres. They are stories about a major kind of character change. In the Great Screenwriting Class, I talk about the five great character changes in storytelling, and this particular one is known as “coming of age.” Here someone changes from child to adult – not physically, but emotionally and morally.

All fiction asks the basic question: how do adults grow? Teen movies focus on the first stage of becoming an adult, which usually involves learning how to break free of conformity and become an individual.

What’s changed over the years is the nature of that conformity. In the original teen move, Rebel Without A Cause, it was the conformity of the parents’ world, the 9-5 job, the man in the gray flannel suit. The Graduate (essentially a teen movie even though the hero is a college grad) continued this basic contrast, with the parents’ world portrayed as even richer and more morally bankrupt (“plastics”). American Graffiti, probably the best teen movie ever made, was a turning point. Within the strict confines of small town America, the conformity changed to being primarily among the teens themselves.

This opposition of individual vs. conforming teens was then codified in The Breakfast Club, still the model for teen films today. There conformity among the students was pushed so far that even the few differences that existed within the student body were themselves stereotypes and categories: the jock, the nerd, the princess, the bad boy outcast, the bad girl outcast, etc.

Looking at the current teen movie, you might not realize that the form is as old as storytelling, going all the way back to the myth stories of the boy becoming king and the girl becoming queen. Teen movies are always connected to some genre, usually comedy (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Porky’s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, American Pie) or romantic comedy (Superbad, Juno, Clueless, She’s All That, Legally Blond, Risky Business), but also straight drama (Rebel Without A Cause, Romeo and Juliet) and even horror (Carrie) and fantasy (Back to the Future, Harry Potter).

But the deeper foundation of all these teen films – what connects them all – is the fairy tale form. The fairy tale is one of the major variations to organic story structure (see the Great Screenwriting Class for the 10 special story beats of the fairy tale). In the teen movie version, the kingdom is high school. The ball is the prom where the new king and queen are crowned. Because teen movies are about crossing the threshold into adulthood, the prom becomes nothing less than the archetypal rite of passage. Especially for high school girls becoming women, the prom is like a practice wedding, with the dress taking on almost magical, talismanic powers.

Normally we think of high school as that place and organization where the student must learn the intellectual tools that are supposed to prepare him/her for working in the adult world. But teen movies tell us that the real learning in high school is social, and it involves trying to reach the highest status within one’s own gender and “scoring” with the most attractive person from the other gender.

Fairy tales are about extreme success. Applied to the modern life experience of high school, teen fairy tales show that even in a democracy, all people are not created equal. Some students have great beauty, wealth or athletic ability. Most don’t. But the first lesson in teen fairy tales – the hero’s self-revelation – is that while people aren’t created equal in talent, they are equal in rights, including the right to be treated with decency and respect.

The deeper lesson of these stories is how one learns to become a unique and moral individual. This element is easiest to see when the teen movie is done as a romantic comedy. The male hero’s goal is sex, preferably with the prettiest girl in school. But his need is to learn to leave his male friends and their reptilian views of all women behind and form a new community with one woman, who will show him the power and value of intimacy and actually help him find and take pride in his true individuality.

The lead female in teen romantic comedies has usually been the beautiful object of affection for the boy. Or, in a slight variation, she appears to be a nerd but is really a beauty underneath. In true fairy tale form, the ugly duckling turns out to be a princess.

Especially in teen romances of the last ten years, the heroine has erased the classic distinction between the smart outcast and the pretty bimbo. Instead, the outcast and the pretty girl are one and the same. Most prominently in Legally Blond (a teen movie even though it’s set in law school), the lead is both smart and pretty. This girl embraces her great looks and femininity and is proud to use her unique strengths as a woman. She is often opposed by other beautiful teenage girls, but they are petty, jealous, glammed-up and lack the one trait that the lead has always had, compassion.

These teen love stories are often about the difference between true class and false class. False class comes from looks and money. True “class” comes from character. These stories say it is okay to want beauty and money in life and to try to get them, but you have to go after them in a decent way.

If you want to write a coming of age movie, focus on modernizing the fairy tale form. Connect the story to one or two genres to pay the genre dues that Hollywood demands. But above all, transcend the form. As you can see, the teen movie has a long history, so you must tell your story in a unique way to have any chance of standing out from the crowd.

The Dark Knight

Spoiler alert: this breakdown divulges information about the plot of the film.


For anyone who wants to look beneath its action surface, The Dark Knight proves that a movie can be a huge hit because of theme, not in spite of it. The Dark Knight is the closest thing to a fictional exploration of moral philosophy to come out of Hollywood in a long time, and that includes No Country for Old Men. Amazingly, writers Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, and David Goyer create this complex moral expression on the foundation of superhero action crime genre.

The writers begin their elegant construction with the depiction of the main character, Batman, and here they had a tremendous advantage going in. Of all superhero characters, Batman highlights and consistently questions the very concept of the hero and the savior. He is truly a dark knight, concerned with justice but also willing to use illegal and immoral means to achieve it.

He is also deeply aware of the negative effects a savior can have on the general populace. He knows, and probably believes in, the great moral principle of “If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha.” But he is unable to live the principle when faced with so much injustice. And when, in The Dark Knight, the bad guys escalate their evil acts, Batman is dragged into a war of tit for tat that soils everyone. Interestingly, Batman’s garbled voice has a strange resemblance to Clint Eastwood’s, especially in his Dirty Harry films.

In the Blockbuster story development software, we place a lot of emphasis on the “character web,” and The Dark Knight uses this crucial technique to perfection. The first character to be compared to Batman is the main opponent, The Joker. A lot has been written about Heath Ledger’s terrific performance. But we need to look at what he built his performance on, and that is found in the script. Non-writers might think I’m referring to the dialogue, but I’m not. The writers constructed this character to drive two major story elements, the moral argument (theme) and the plot.

The classic crime story is based on a master criminal who believes he is above the law and society itself. The Joker is just such a character, a genius psychopath whose massive intellect is shown not so much in dialogue as in his ability to plot. He accuses Dent and Batman of being schemers. But in fact he is the master schemer, a modern Moriarty, who acts, not out of greed or revenge, but for the game. And he is better at the game than anyone else, so much so that we have the rare example of a story with too much plot.

The Joker is literally the author of Gotham City, constructing criminal plots that will remake the city to express his moral vision. Many have called The Joker a nihilist, a man in love with chaos. But this is a serious misreading. If Batman is the Dark Knight, The Joker is the Dark Philosopher. The entire plot of The Dark Knight is a series of moral conundrums The Joker creates to expose what he believes is the true animal nature of mankind. Tracking the beats of the crime story that goes all the way back to its originator, Crime and Punishment, The Joker creates ever more difficult versions of the genre’s central question: What would you do if you had to choose between two bad options?

First, does Batman expose his true identity or let the Joker kill someone every day? Then does he let Dent take the risk of getting killed to pull The Joker out of hiding? Does he save Rachel, his true love, or Dent, the righteous hope of the city? Does he listen in on the entire city in order to save a few?

For the film’s final choice, the writers use the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, central to game theory and moral philosophy. In Prisoner’s Dilemma, two prisoners suspected of a crime are placed in separate cells. Each is given the following choice: If you both remain silent, you both get only six months in jail. If you both confess, you both get 5 years. If you remain silent but your partner confesses, he goes free and you get 10 years in jail. As you can see, the only real choice each person can make is to confess, since neither can risk the harsh 10-year sentence trusting that his partner will remain silent.

In The Dark Knight, two ships filled with passengers are given the choice of pushing a button to blow up the other ship before a time deadline. If one ship fails to blow up the other, The Joker will destroy them both. This sets up a unique battle in which not only two forces but also two entire moral systems are brought into opposition. The battle is marred only by the fact that the writers don’t play true to the reality about human beings they have carefully crafted throughout the film. In other words, the people on the boats don’t make the believable choice.

Though The Dark Knight has too much plot, resulting in a movie that is at least 20 minutes too long, its plot is worth studying to see masters at work. These writers use a vast array of plot techniques, and a lot of professional writers I know, while bemoaning so many false endings, have said the plotting is what they studied the most. Ironically, one of the main techniques these writers use is character web, proving again that at the deepest level of good storytelling, plot and character are the same. I’ve already mentioned the plotting power the main opponent brings to the story. But plot also comes from the second lead, Harvey Dent, as well as a number of other characters who appear to be friends but are really enemies, or appear to be enemies but are really friends.

Screenwriters and storytellers can learn all kinds of lessons from The Dark Knight. Perhaps the most important is placing all story elements at the service of the larger moral argument, and expressing that argument primarily through the story structure. Using the crime genre as its foundation, The Dark Knight focuses on whether someone can remain a hero when the opposition becomes increasingly ruthless, a question that is central to our world. But as the cop in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil says about how hard it is being a cop, “It's supposed to be (tough)... A policeman's job is only easy in a police state.”

Interestingly, the writers go all the way back to the classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, for their ending. When it turns out the hero of a gunfight didn’t actually kill the bad guy, the newspaperman refuses to print the truth. “When the legend becomes fact,” he says, “print the legend.” Batman decides to let Harvey Dent die a hero, so the people will have hope in justice, while he accepts his role as the scapegoat. With a subtle flip on the ending of Shane, Lieutenant Gordon’s little boy doesn’t say, “Batman, come back.”

The Dark Knight is a writer’s genre movie, even a transcendent one, and screenwriters would do well to study it closely.