Recently I blogged about the Story Grid method of analyzing and understanding story structure. I plan on applying this method to some of my favorite books and films and posting them here about once a month. I'll do a macro first, and follow up by applying the same method to a single scene. My kids reminded me how much we all enjoy the original 1997 film Men In Black, so that's what I'm choosing to analyze this time.
If you don't feel like clicking away to my previous post to see what this is all about, you can get the gist by reading the infographic on the 5 Commandments below.
Gentle reminder there are no right or wrong answers in this process. I encourage you to join the discussion by leaving your opinions in the comments - especially if you disagree! Heck, I even disagree with myself sometimes when I'm poring over this stuff.
To recap the film: In pursuit of a rather unusual perpetrator, a New York City policemen discovers a secret world of law enforcement exists to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats. Initially, Officer Edwards is skeptical. But when the secret group, known as the Men In Black, convince him that aliens are real, he decides saving the world is more important than anything he's got going on in his daily life. He and his mentor, Agent K, embark on a mission to track down the current alien threat and prevent the destruction of the planet.
The scenes I have settled on above were not my first choices. I usually like to identify the climax scene and work backwards from there. One might argue I sorta cheated with the very nebulous and general description of what I consider the climax of the film. My description basically includes every scene from the end of the beginning hook to the end of the film.
It was tempting to choose the literal climax scene of the film when Agents K and J defeat the hideous giant alien cockroach. And reverse-engineering the other three commandment scenes preceding the climax, one could also argue they happen later in the film, after Officer Edwards opts into the MiB. So for example the Inciting Incident might be when the alien crash-lands at the Maine farm; and the Turning Point/Complication could be when the MiB discover the cockroach alien has killed an important member of another alien species that could spark an intergalactic war.
But when I decided the Inciting Incident was when Officer Edwards runs down the alien perp, the other scenes were less dependent on the external story and moreso on his internal arc. That's my opinion, and I'm stickin' to it.
Oh, and if you haven't seen Men in Black, I strongly encourage you to check it out. It's filled with many storytelling gems ripe for ripping off/learning from. I'll discuss that more next time when I dissect a single scene for this exercise.
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