"Story is king" is a quote that goes around a lot when it comes to film making. Pixar is the studio perhaps most connected to the quote, and they've been praised for it since their beginning. But what if I told you that story should in fact not be king, that it should abdicate?
I'm not saying that story isn't important, but the one thing that is truly important is characters. You can have a fantastic story on your hands, where the wildest things happen in the coolest way you can imagine, but no one will truly care if they don't care about the characters.
It's hard to find films as examples, as most are stand-alones where you go in not knowing the characters (at least they used to be), but in television it is clear. Did people really keep watching House M.D. because of the medical drama? No, they watched because they wanted to see what House would do next. What the episode itself was about wasn't really of any concern, most of the cases were exactly the same, and House came to the solution exactly the same way. It was a formula show when it came to story, but House was a fresh character when the show came around. He was outrageous, he did things no one expected a doctor to do, and people wanted to know why. They kept watching House because he was an interesting character.
It was the same with the Harry Potter books, no one sat around waiting to find out what stuff was going to happen next, people sat around waiting to find out what Harry was going to do next.
I would rather watch a film with "no" story, but with good characters than a film with a good story, but with flat characters. There's a film I like to bring up when discussing story versus character, The Man from Earth. It is eighty nine minutes of a group of people sitting around reacting to their common friend telling the incredible tale of his life. It's the sort of thing you see in Life of Pi to an extent, the main character shares extraordinary events from his life, but there is a big difference. In most films, like in Life of Pi, we get to see the story. In The Man from Earth all we see is the people in the room, the story is told in its entirety on camera from the character's mouth. I think it's impossible to make a film without a story, but this is pretty close. It relays completely on the characters, their faces, their questions, their answers and their ideas.
There is of course a story in the film, I'll grant you that, John Oldman (the main character) tells a story, that is the film. But the story isn't what is important, it's how his friends react, how you yourself react.
If this film didn't have well-planned out characters, with meaning, with thoughts, fully fleshed-out beings, I believe it would've just perished as one of the most boring films of the decade.
Now let's take a look at a film with little to no characters, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Sam has barely managed to gain characterhood through his two previous films, we know who he is, he's a quirky, lovable guy whose best friends are giant robots from space. But there is one character in this film who was so non-existing that I can barely remember any scenes she was in. Carly (as IMDb "reminded" me, not even when I hear that name does it ring a bell), the Fox-replacement, the new hottie for Sammy. I think I remember a scene where she was in distress, that some other giant robots from space tried to kill her, but I can't really remember. I cared so little about her that I couldn't care less if she died or not. I was never screaming: "Noooo! Save her, Sam!". I was never thinking: "How good for her that she made it out alright of that situation.". Whenever she was on screen I just wanted to fast-forward to a scene without her (which is hard to do at a cinema).
The thing is, though, this film had a pretty great story, but through the non-existence of some characters I was not able to enjoy it. I wanted it to be over with. Characters kill films.
I wanted to write something clever for a conclusion, but I can't really think of anything. All I want you to do, is think more about the characters if or when you write a story. Characters are hard to do, much harder than story, but if you manage to create not just a character, but a human being, you are much further along than if you write a hundred-page script about no one.
If you create the characters well enough, you won't write the story, you will witness them live it.
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