Why Modern Movies Suck Pt. 1: Inversion Failure

Change Is the Only Constant

We humans have simple tastes. Maybe all we want from our entertainment is a good hero inversion.

But letting movie characters “flip” in response to obstacles became passé around 2015, which accounts for some of Hollywood’s recurring struggles.

The Tried And True Hero Inversion Formula:

The formula is simple: A protagonist begins their story in one state. By the end, they’re in the opposite state.

Hero inversion is the norm in feel-good stories with mass appeal — not art house fare. If it has heroes, intrigue, romance, and adventure, it probably features at least one hero inversion. This is achieved through growth, or at least change.

Growth is deeply rooted in the human psyche. We like watching children transform from self-centered, emotion-driven beings into skilled adults capable of looking beyond themselves. We balk when victories come too easily to fictional characters. If our heroes don’t need to change, they seem fake. Make them struggle and “invert,” and you’ll have our interest.

Examine beloved novels and movies and you’ll see the inversion formula everywhere.

Classic Hero Inversion

The Hobbit:

Before: Bilbo is pampered, cowardly, doubted by the dwarves, and fairly helpless.

After: Biblo is adventurous, brave, beloved by the dwarves, and resourceful.

War and Peace

Before: Pierre Bezukhov is an unhappy, lonely misfit who’s isolated from his culture and eager to prove himself.

After: Bezukhov discovers that happiness doesn’t stem from fame and accomplishment, but from service to others. He marries his true love and finds meaning in family life.

The Godfather:

Before: Michael Corleone wants nothing to do with his family’s crime syndicate, preferring a normal, law-abiding American life.

After: Michael takes over the family business, becoming more ruthless and manipulative than his father ever was.

75% of Romantic Comedies:

Before: The man is a playboy who won’t settle down. The woman is a busy lawyer with no time for love.

After: The man is eager to settle down and proposes marriage. The woman gives up her workaholic ways and makes room for love.

The Christmas Carol:

Before: Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas, hoards money, and is cruel to Cratchit.

After: Scrooge loves Christmas, generously disperses his money, and treats Cratchit well.

Pride and Prejudice:

Before: Darcy explains that, “As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.”

After: Darcy tempers his patrician arrogance, puts aside disdain for the riff-raff, and marries Elizabeth, family warts and all.

Terminator 1 & 2:

Before: Sarah Connor is an overwhelmed waitress unprepared for the killer machine that comes hunting her.

After: Sarah is a hardened and skilled survivalist capable of protecting her son.

Modern Inversion Failure:

“Stagnant” is how I’d describe the heroes of Hollywood’s recent bombs. They don’t grow. They don’t change. They usually don’t need to.

Star Wars:

The “Sequel Trilogy” (Episodes VII, VIII, and IX) was a massive box office success, so you might argue my criticism doesn’t have a leg to stand on. But most moviegoers admit something was missing from these movies, even if they loved the spectacle and nostalgia.

Hero inversion was one of the missing components.

Rey:

The problem with Rey, the main protagonist, is that she doesn’t need to learn, overcome, or to grow in any way. She doesn’t need training and mentors, like Luke Skywalker found in Obiwan and Yoda in the original trilogy. She’s simply a self-sufficient badass who barely tries and never struggles.

The setbacks Rey faces aren’t significant. Luke struggled to grow in the original trilogy and often got the shit kicked out of him. He fails to fully master the force in Empire Strikes Back while training with Yoda. He goes off half-cocked and gets his hand cut off, barely surviving. Every victory is hard-fought and barely achieved.

Rey’s antagonist is Kylo Ren. He’s petulant rather than menacing. Characters insult him to his face without repercussion, which Darth Vader would never allow. At no point does Ren seem an insurmountable obstacle for Rey, so she doesn’t need to grow to beat him.

Inversion Regression:

The sequel trilogy also twisted established characters into regressions that leave viewers with a bad taste in their mouths. This is probably so that Rey’s effortless perfection can show them the error of their ways.

Luke Skywalker:

A New Hope: An inexperienced and nieve farm boy in way over his head.

Return of the Jedi: A principled Jedi master who saves his father’s soul through self-disciplined restraint. He frees the galaxy from tyranny, never gives up, and will do anything for his friends and family.

Sequel Trilogy: A bitter old man who forgot his ideals, ran away from his responsibilities when life got slightly hard, and doesn’t care about his family, friends, or the people counting on him.

You could write a script to justify Luke becoming a cynical old man who forgot his ideals, but the new trilogy doesn’t do this. He just randomly crumples into a shell of his former self at the faintest hint of hardship.

Han Solo:

A New Hope: A selfish, cynical, smuggler only out for himself

Return of the Jedi: A resourceful and principled military leader who’ll do anything for his friends and his love, Leia.

Sequel Trilogy: A selfish, cynical smuggler who’s “lost” his beloved ship and abandoned Leia and his son for…reasons? He’s weirdly less experienced and competent than he was in Return of the Jedi. He seems almost helpless.

Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor Movies Till This Point: Thor develops humility and humanity, learns to lead and become worthy of ruling Asgard, and figures out his power doesn’t stem from his magical hammer but something deeper. Many of these movies weren’t strong, but at least there was a semblance of gradual growth.

Love and Thunder: Thor gives up everything he’s learned and earned so he can…joyride around the galaxy? He hands Asgard to a smug and annoying random person who mocks him. He turns his back on the world for no strong reason and forgets he has responsibilities bigger than he is. By the end he hasn’t learned any lessons or changed, but reverted to an infantile version of himself. He’s coasting in a sea of nihilism and happy to dump his responsibilities on anyone who’ll take them. This is a sort of inversion, but not one justified by events.

Wonder Woman 1984:

Wonder Woman is a demigod who theoretically loses her powers when she wishes for the return of her long-lost love, Steve Trevor. This could have “solved” the problem of her overpowered status in a world of mortals. She could get her ass kicked trying to defend a little old lady being mugged on the street, forcing humility on her and making her fight smarter. Instead, the power loss is inconsistent. In some scenes she’s at full strength. In others she’s vulnerable. There’s no rhyme or reason. We sense the writers wanted to have their cake and eat it too. We feel like nothing really matters or has lasting consequences, and no obstacle really challenges Wonder Woman. Her victory is inevitable.

Wonder Woman’s supposed great sacrifice of giving up Trevor to get her powers back is undermined by Trevor having stolen the body of an innocent man with a life of his own. He was never hers to give up. The Antagonist, Maxwell Lord, is a nonentity. His plot is foiled when Wonder Woman asks the world to reverse their wishes…and they just do? No growth. No inversion.

Rebel Moon:

If Star Wars and Seven Samurai had an ugly love child, Rebel Moon would be it.

It’s easiest to explain Rebel Moon’s boring stagnancy by discussing character growth in Seven Samurai, the classic Akira Kurosawa film. Both feature heroes recruited to defend innocent farmers.

Two Growth Examples In Seven Samurai:

Kikuchiyo: His arrogant and disrespectful posturing causes many problems, but then we learn he’s a peasant pretending at noble Samurai ancestry. His arrogance is a bluster shield for his feelings of inadequacy. Because he understands the peasants and their concerns, he’s able to patch over the growing rift between them and the Samurai. In the end he overcomes his faults, heroically killing the bandit leader before falling in battle. We care because we watched him grow.

Yohei: A fearful and weak villager who gradually learns courage. He’s a foil for and friend of Kikuchiyo. Yohei’s courageous death throws Kikuchiyo into a rage because he abandoned the man at their post. We care because we’ve watched him grow.

Stagnant Moon:

Rebel Moon gives us a grab bag of unlikely heroes who stagnate and never draw on their skill sets to achieve anything. The general? He doesn’t display leadership or tactical thinking. The prince? He doesn’t have useful political of strategic insights. The swordswoman? She barely uses her lightsaber ripoffs.

None invert. They don’t grow. They’re cardboard cutouts of heroes that we never get to know. The heroes die in droves, and we don’t care because they never really lived.

The Law: They’ll Be Inert if They Don’t Invert

I would be pleased if these failures were Hollywood’s attempt to try out innovative new character arcs. As far as I can tell, they’ve neglected inversion and replaced it with nothing.

As the philosopher Heraclitus said 2,400 years ago — no man steps into the same river twice. It’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.

The problem is that Hollywood keeps trying to shoehorn lifeless heroes into stagnant rivers.

The result is about what you’d expect.