§ RESOURCES / FILM INDEX

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Featured In

DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling

How do you keep an audience watching a character everyone in the film hates?

AI✦Breaks down why stating a character’s flaw upfront actually creates the dramatic question that keeps audiences watching--and how that shift changes everything about likability.✦

⏱ 1h 20m

31 MAR 2014

Character · Structure · Audience

Listen if you want to make audiences care about deeply flawed protagonists!

▶ More Info

In this episode, Stu and Chas try to work out what stops a-holes protoganists from pushing the audience out of the movie… →

Films: Hot Fuzz (2007) , As Good as It Gets (1997) , Groundhog Day (1993) , Gran Torino (2008) , Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Character: Character Flaw , Character Wound

Structure: Dramatic Questions

Audience: Audience Sympathy

"What’s really clever here, and the other scripts do this as well, is normally in drama you wouldn’t have the flaw stated so early in such obvious terms... Of if it comes at all, it’s at the end of the second act, you know. And here they tell the audience and they tell the character what their flaw is, but they show them oblivious to it."

— stu | DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling