High and Low was made in 1963 - don't you think its possible that Hollywood has moved on in the last 53 years ? Also Akira Kurosawa was already well known as a director and screenwriter when he did High and Low (and likewise Ed Mcbain was already a well known author when he wrote Kings ransom (1959) the book on which high and low is loosely based) as we've discussed before there is more leeway for an acknowledged professional than there is for an unknown
In this example they write and print a false news story. They send forged notes. and later... They follow the villain cruising around for drugs. They watch and wait. Third act of a thriller? Of course in your version, we aren't seeing much of this, as its from the villain's perspective. So the villain is unwittingly falling into this manipulation, unaware of the threat, going about their own pace, and then BAM they're caught, tons of cops swarm in, the movie is over. Wow now I'm really on the edge of my seat.
High and Low is a police procedure story. Kurosawa was able to do a lot of things his way because he was the 'one', a national treasure. If you want to emulate what others did in the past, you need to study why they did those things. Tarantino writes and makes horrible films based on memories others have of seeing those types of movies. Even though he is a big shot in film making, He doesn't understand why certain things were done in the past. Hell, he doesn't even understand that when you fake worn out film, it cannot be in a pattern. Hell x2, he doesn't even understand that in the 70s if the nudity or violence was missing (so worn out it was removed) the theater would have a riot on it's hands. (On top of all that, I can't watch things made by some guy obsessed with Emilio Estevez.
Switching protagonists is not all that unusual. Nearly any multi-generational novel has to do it. Consider the Star Wars saga. What you do need is a unifying element to pull it all together. In Star Wars, there are several, but one of them is R2D2 and C3PO, who are both observers and participants throughout. In a novel I'm working on, there are two essentially immortal protagonists. The first is lost to an accident partway through the book, but his daughter is born months later, and is also apparently immortal. The familial connection is the main unifying factor, along with the mortal, but extraordinary in other respects, woman whom they had in common. For other examples, see novelists like James Michener, who is famous for multi-generational stories. Also see Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. And look for the unifying elements.
Rape is his unifying element and this won't be getting a sequel of any kind. So it's different from multi generational stories as those protagonists get their own films.
Maybe he could make his third act a rape procedural. How about it? Write forty pages of rape, from the assailant's point of view, that make it seem like it's somehow OK. That's what you want to do, so do it. Then burn it, blowtorch your hard drive, and start over with something that won't get you on a watchlist.
Okay then, what if I show it from both the villain's and the protagonist's who is setting the villain up. Then you see the protagonist manipulating the villain and surveying him as he sends the villain into a panic and tricks him into falling into a trap. Is that better, if I show it from the protagonist's point of view too?
Typically you show the manipulation, and the villain falling into the trap, but no, that doesn't result in the arrest, of the main enemy, maybe only his subordinates or the lesser villains. The main villain one ups the police and escapes the trap, putting other lives in danger. With his well laid plans shoved up his well laid ass, the hero then chases after the villain in a macho showdown where it's all about guts and asskicking. Things become much less "ordered"
I haven't read the entire rest of the thread, because it seems to have started dealing with your story itself, rather than the question you originally asked, which is about switching protagonists partway through a story. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article on the definition of a protagonist: The article also mentions the idea that a protagonist initiates action, makes decisions and has to live with the consequence of these actions and decisions. (In other words, a protagonist is NOT somebody who just sits on the sidelines and observes. This is a person who is active within the story ...or at least whose actions or inactions drive the story. It's the person who changes the most. Or, interestingly, has a chance to change and doesn't take it, leaving him/her in the same situation as they started,—either sadder and wiser, or foolish as hell.) I don't think there is any reason why you can't switch, as long as you don't actually DROP your initial protagonist without revealing and resolving their story issue. However, from what you've said, it sounds as if you're switching focus to your antagonist, rather than a second protagonist. You might be skating on slightly thin ice with this approach. Your initial protagonist will be on the minds of your readers, and if you suddenly switch and don't switch back, they might end up feeling cut off or cut short. It might feel to them as if you have written two different stories. So tread carefully. There is nothing wrong with showing the activities and getting inside the head of your antagonist, but if his issues start to become more important than the issues you raised with your original protagonist at the start of the story, you might get yourself in a bit of trouble. I don't know what stage you're at, but I would advise you to carry on as you want to and get it all written. Lay it aside and give yourself a rest from it. Then go back and read it fresh. Maybe then the character whose story this actually is ...the person who changes the most as a result of events in the story ...will become clearer. You can then tweak the writing to make it fit. ........ Apropos of nothing much, I really dislike the use of the word 'villain' rather than 'antagonist' when it comes to writing. A villain is a melodramatic 'baddie' in a comic-booky way. An antagonist is somebody whose point of view or goal interferes with or blocks the protagonist in some way. An antagonist doesn't necessarily end up cackling evilly like the Emperor in Star Wars or the Wicked Witch in Snow White. A villain often does. A villain is NOT the same thing as an antagonist, although, in a melodramatic plot, they can serve that purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antagonist
I have a feeling this would really end with the two macho men trying to rape each other (I could see it working in a stylized 50s crap movie fight way.), then fall to the floor in a spent heap, then somehow cleaned up and back in order before the rest of the cops show. This could work to introduce a sequel- the fight/double rape was filmed, and then blackmail starts all over a gain with the criminal in prison holding the video over the head of the cop and forcing him to carry on raping and killing so nobody knows he had sex with a man.
There is no rape in the third act of my story, only earlier. However, the protagonist is not just sitting on his ass or anything, he is the one driving the action cause he has to manipulate the villain to fall into a trap. Even if the villain doesn't fall for first trap, the protagonist still has to initiate a second trap, for the villain to fall for, in order to for the protagonist to make it about guts and asskicking. In order to kick the villain's ass in the end, the protagonist still has to find the villains, and in order to do that, he still has to manipulate them into a trap, in order to find them still, before the asskicking can begin. Does the failed trap, and the asskicking trap that follows, both have to be in the last third though? Cause the asskicking trap will still take a while to implement to get all the villains in the same place, at the same time for the asskicking to begin, so do they both need to be in the last third?
There is no asskicking trap. The villain puts the hero into a trap if anything. Look at the famous thriller, SPEED for an example of what I'm talking about. Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and the other police lay a trap for Dennis Hopper, who gets away and takes a hostage, leading Keanu to chase him underground into the subway. The hero is at a disadvantage when the trap fails to catch the main villain. He isn't laying yet another trap to then kick the villains ass. You shouldn't have the hero in control throughout the 3rd act. He needs to actually struggle.
Okay thanks. The hero is still being challenged setting the trap, as it's still an intellectual challenge for him or so I thought. Well basically in order to go after the villains and kill them, the hero still needs probable cause to make an arrest. I wrote it so that in the second act, the villain gets away with things by the end of the second act. Then in the third act, the hero needs to get more probable cause again to make the arrest, but the villains also need a reason to all be in the same place, at the same time. The villains are not going to do this on their own, cause they are busy laying low, in case the police are onto them now. So the villains need to be sent into a panic, to all meet up, cause they think that someone is out to harm them, in this case the hero. So for the villains to all meet up in the same place, at the same time, they have to believe that their lives are being threatened by the hero, as a reason to get together. But this would mean that the hero is in more control though. Before the third act, though, the villains have already gotten away with their crimes, and escaped a previous trap the second act. Do they really need to escape another trap in the third act, for the villains to escape from before the hero gets them? Isn't escaping the trap in the second act, enough? The way the third act is written so far though, is that the reason why the villains all get together is because they believe the hero is out to get them, and they get together to defend themselves as a group. So isn't that acceptable enough for suspense, and the hero doesn't need have his trap fail, especially since he already had one fail in the second act?
Look, all I'm trying to tell you is you need a final boss for your hero to fight. If his plan rounds up all the villains and they're all arrested and then the credits roll, that will be anticlimactic.
Well yeah that's an easy fix. In your example of Speed, the villain didn't really escape the trap. He fell into the trap and was fooled. He only got about a few hundred feet away before the hero caught up to him and took him down. So I don't really consider that to be much of an escape. I guess for my third act idea, I want a cat and mouse game, but I want the hero to be the cat for once and not sure why that's so bad. How about this. The hero uses his trap to get all the villains in the same place at the same time to arrest them, after tricking them into giving up evidence. He then is going to make the arrest, along with other cops, but the villains are more prepared for an attack then the police anticipated, and they end up killing all the other cops, as the other cops kill most of them. The two main villains are left alive for the hero to arrest, and the hero manages to over power them, while back up arrives. The hero feels guilty cause his desperate and risky trap got a bunch of cops killed. Is this better at all?
You better come up with a super compelling reason why the 'hero' has not been a 'hero', and why he all of a sudden becomes a 'hero', Mhm. They just meet in the middle of an empty warehouse and open fire on each other. If these guys are so bad ass that they can keep a police department at bay, this POS cop would not be making any decisions. Street cops don't do these operations, unless that is the only option. If there are enough cops to die and not put a strain on policing, they are in a big city that has a specialized unit to handle this, and they don't just get shot. What evidence would people kept in the dark about a crime ring would they have? Mhm. How? How does one trick hardened rapists/killers/serial killers into giving up evidence? Especially when the 2 'main' villains are right there. Wouldn't one of them just shoot the person/people that are about to talk? For an operation that would take many man hours and many, many dollars to keep running, that is held together with secrets only privy to one; how are they so dumb? On top of that, the 'leader' would never come out of hiding if he had an army of serial killers doing his bidding. Why not just send the lackeys after the cop and kill him? If the 'hero' is never the 'cat', and always the 'mouse', it would be simple. In fact, it looks more and more to me that the cop has some serious issues, which would make it easy to manipulate him. You know when you watch movies where the police are put in a bad light, like this one, the police cars never look right? All red lights? Or all blue lights? No normal identifying markings? This is because of laws. In order to get approval to use 'real' police equipment you have to show the police in a good light. Works exactly the same for military. And I am sure you will com back with something about 'well they did it in Die Hard #whatever. Yes, they did, but the police were not portrayed as imbeciles, they were simply outsmarted before they knew they needed to be smarter, and they do their job throughout, they are not buffoons.
Basically the evidence I talked about before, where the protagonist cop, tricks the leader villain into leading him to his leverage videos he has on the the members is evidence. The leader thinks he has a reason to go get one of the leverage videos on one of the members, and does so, based on the P manipulating him into doing so. The villain leads the P to the other leverage evidence, and the P sends this other evidence to the police, and the police recognize the suspects faces in the videos. So they now have their probable cause to arrest them, and go after them since the P was following them and knows where they are all at. So the police go after them and arrest them. The police do not have to all get shot if that's better, I was just spitballing ideas, since I was told I need something more climatic. The specialized unit can handle it, if that's better. However, the villains are not going to be together for very long, which is why the P rounds up the cops that he can. But if the specialized unit should be available right then and there, I can write it that way, if it's better. And the gang could go after the cop to kill him but they do not know where he is. That's why they are unsuccessful, with that option. But why is tricking the villains into giving up evidence such a dumb idea? You see this in fiction all the time. It's done in Breaking Bad, High and Low, Dial M for Murder. It's done all the time, and has been done in real life. Tricking villains into incriminating themselves, to get evidence and probable cause, is a classic method, so what's wrong with using it? Also, the police are portrayed in negative light all the time in many movies. Since when do they have to be portrayed positively to get cooperation, when you seen in movies, they are portrayed negatively, often?
In real life the MC would sit back and let a SWAT team handle it. But real life has no mandate to be entertaining or satisfying to watch. A movie does. So the MC has to get in there somehow. This story has already taken massive liberties with realism in having all these rapists meet and co-operate, so do what you must to be exciting. Don't bother too much about it being realistic.
Well the MC does have a motive to come along. He was one of the victims of the gang, and it's his plan, so he wants to make sure it goes down as best as it can. One movie that shows the killer overpowering the police, when the police come to arrest him is Manhunter, where the killer manages to gun down two cops, and almost a third one, before finally the MC overpowering him. So is that more climatic than just having a simple arrest, or will that work, especially since it's a whole group, and not just one killer?
Slight topic change but this always annoys me, no matter what the media. The MC has the benifit of plot armour, fair enough but it someone turns his companions/colleagues into target practise for the bad guy. They have similar training, methods and all that but are only good for getting mowed down.
Once again, learn why this was done. Read the script for Dial M for Murder, It is extremely obvious that the setup is the movie. Yes, it is used, but never happens in a room full of criminals, like you want. Once again, pay attention to what the police cars look like. If they are 'real', the police are not buffoons. The police are behind, not stupid, the criminal(s) got the jump on them, they continue to do their jobs. they work together, they work together with other agencies, and most important of all....they win in the end. Why? Because they kept their nose to the grindstone and used cooperation through every single bad thing that came their way. They stuck together and persevered. Man vs Man. Man vs Nature. Man vs Self. Won. Won. Won. Bad guy locked up/dead. Done.
Okay thanks. But the leader villain does not incriminate himself in a room full of other criminals. He incriminates himself and the others through manipulation before going to meet the others. The police arrest him and the others later on though. So it doesn't happen like you are saying, he incriminates himself BEFORE. Also when you say that in Dial M for Murder, the set up being the movie, what's your point? Are you saying my set up doesn't take up enough of my script's time? I can write so that the police do not loose and are successful if that's better. I only suggested the police loosing cause of Phil Mitchell's suggestion, that having the villains start to overpower the MC, before loosing, was more dramatic.
