Scripts/Films where the antagonist isn't a person

Ted Spencer

Ted Spencer

Veteran
A short film script I wrote recently has no human antagonist, just a situation that drives the protagonist over the edge (a second death of a wife). While certainly not unheard of, I've been trying to think of other well regarded/successful scripts/films in which the 'villain', in effect, is a situation rather than a character. The King's Speech is one (primary antagonist = King's stammer). But I'm having a hard time coming up with many others. Can anyone name a few?

Thanks!
 
Silver Linings Playbook comes to mind, although you could say the human antagonist is himself.
 
Batutta said:
Also Rainman, Being There, Forrest Gump.
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Right, yes, like King's Speech, where the 'antagonist' is the protagonist's internal physical and/or mental problem. My story's 'virtual antagonist' is an external event/situation though. Trying to think of others like that...

Ok here's one: "Castaway"
 
Trying to remember if "Z" had a specific human antagonist or just a faceless repressive 'government'. It would probably fit the description if the latter's the case...
 
Most rites of passage films do have an antagonist: usually a bully, authority figure or object of desire often also functionally the last threshold guardian (which is the whole point of these films). It might not always be as central as Hans Gruber but will keep the dogs snapping at the heels like Edward Rooney and provide the complications, if not directly opposing the resolution.


Probably a subcategory of survival films: a medical problem - Lorenzo's Oil, A Beautiful Mind

Some journey films/road movies are a series of encounters without callbacks from previous encounters. Although the bonding pair could be considering weak partial antagonists for each other, providing the drama: Monsters, Thelma and Louise (they are pursued but they are actually running from the certainty of their lives and social restrictions)

I'd argue that Close Encounters has no real antagonist...their journey to the mountain is opposed by faceless government agency more than the individuals within it, both sides have the same goal and once brought together offer no resistance to the climax.

Cube had a bad guy but was he the antagonist or was it the facility?

Can't remember if The Indian had a human antagonist. I remember there was some opposition on the salt flats but I'd call that an obstacle and as I recall it was quite short lived. I would liken it to Moby Dick, the antagonist is obsession.

Zombie movies? At least when they don't do the 'your fellow survivor turns out to be the biggest threat' thing. I suppose on the same token some war films where the enemy remains faceless could count...in Saving Private Ryan noone is specifically opposing their mission, the enemy is simply in the way. Their own doubts within the group provide more resistance than the germans. These examples are getting some ways away from what you were looking for though, I think...

EDIT: ah, got me back...you already had Saving Private Ryan :)
 
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There's a million of 'em. Here's a masterpiece - talked about and watched to this day (just saw it again a few weeks ago at the Cinefamily on Fairfax) and something that established a career... absolutely brilliant, and something you (i.e. anyone) can learn a ton from: Repulsion. I've seen it at least 30 times (6 times in a theater) and I'm still learning from it. You're welcome :)
 
OldCorpse said:
absolutely brilliant, and something you (i.e. anyone) can learn a ton from: Repulsion. I've seen it at least 30 times (6 times in a theater) and I'm still learning from it. You're welcome :)
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Great example! Add films like "Stalker" and a lot of italian political movies (Damiani, Rosi) where the antagonist is a situation more than a character. One of my all time favourites "Il Divo" - but you could call that an antagonists movie where the protagonist in a way is completely missing....
 
My 2 cents: In my current view, most all "hero" journey stories are centered around the internal character flaw within the hero. This flaw happens to be the ultimate villian, much more so then the visible external villain we often see. A hero's story is about becoming a complete human through tapping into and accessing our higher potential by removing the internal stuff that keeps us from what we want. These are morality lessons that instruct us on how to live better and is essentially what attracts us to Story time and time again. On the other hand, a tragedy is about how external forces or the character flaws that reduce the average guy, or even the best among us to a bitter end. They are morality stories that remind us about the powerful circumstances we are handed in this too often ugly complex reality. In either story the main character/hero either defeats the flaw or circumstance, or succumbs.

When we see the villain, we see on screen a negative embodiment of the virtue in question. It's the catalyst for bringing the character flaw forward into a "do or die" final conflict. Will sheer determination win the day or will fate have its ugly way? Villains are part of the question a story proposes. In the end we find the answer and it either confirms what we already know or it enlightens us to a new understanding on how life works and how to live it well.
 
I took McKee's seminar many years ago and he posed this question to the audience, and they threw out many examples, and he was able to identify a human antagonist in every one of them, except one. He said the only example he could think of (at that time) where an actual human antagonist wasn't involved in causing the difficulties of the protagonist, was Apollo 13.
 
Being a sci-fi guy, that genre has a lot of non-human antagonists (I don't mean just aliens or robots as specifically non-human).

HAL in 2001. Yes, HAL is a character, but also feels like a force of nature, a god-like being in the sense that he is the "mind" of the ship.

The xenomorph in Alien/Aliens. An animal, a force of nature (outer space wildlife I guess). Although both films have a secondary villain in the android Ash and corporate slimeball Burke. Those kinds of secondary antagonists work well in these types of films where you don't have a standard primary villain. Compare with Night of the Living Dead, another siege horror scenario not unlike the second act of Aliens. The cast is trapped or hunkered down inside a fortification while the monsters (zombies/xenomorphs) try to wiggle their way inside. Both films benefit from including some sort of internal group conflicts and a secondary antagonist.

In Night of the Living Dead, there is the growing conflict between the black man and the white guy whose family was hiding in the basement. In Aliens it was corporate sleaze Burke who tries to get Ripley and Newt impregnated with alien embryos.

There are also other mini-conflicts in both "siege" films, specifically during the second act. Night of the Living Dead has the group trying to figure out how to get out of the house and away from the farm. They hatch a plan to send someone out to gas up a pickup truck and then swing back and pick up the others. In Aliens there is the character of Hudson unraveling and causing distraction, as well as the beginning of the ticking time bomb of the atmosphere processor's reactor beginning a meltdown cycle, eventually reaching critical mass and causing a nuclear explosion. Just as in Night of the Living Dead, the team has to figure out how to get the heck outta there. It is funny that all this is going on, when the star antagonists, the zombies or the aliens are kinda sitting it out for large portions of the second act.

How about Star Trek? In the fourth film the antagonist is a giant space probe that wants humpback whales, or else! Or Star Trek: The Motion Picture which has its cosmic villain V'ger. These are again, like forces of nature or god-like entities. Even if the hero and their allies can communicate with such strange entities, I think those types of antagonists/villains are unconventional enough that it seems wise to bring in one or more secondary antagonists into the narrative equation.
 
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