This is incredible. Someone on tiktok recommended this and I’m so glad you wrote this and that I was lucky enough to see it!!

Above and beyond what everyone else is saying, you are clearly a natural teacher. Your presentation is perfect and there is a wealth of information that can readily be understood and put into practice. Thank you, Michael.

Wow. What an absolute goldmine for aspiring writers.

Someone gotta say it and I'm kinda tickled that, at only 67 views (11/17/21), that someone is me: *this is Insanely Great.* This channel (lol, 42 subscribers) and particularly this video - a book's worth of invaluable information for ANY writer - will blow up soon enough. Merci mille fois, monsieur Arndt

This is an Insanely Great masterclass.

This is one of those lectures that's gonna go down in history as being one of the best ever delivered on the craft. I can already see agents and managers politely forcing their clients to watch this. Epic content.

I love the many visuals with this breakdown. Examples like this are so helpful. Specific and concrete advice.

Omg 20 minutes in and I can’t believe how much knowledge has been packed. This is a goldmine.

This is one of the most valuable videos I've ever found on KZfaq. Thanks for making this, and thanks for writing Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3!

OMG!!!! Where has this video been until now???? This is the golden part of a Gold nugget!! Thank you su much Michael!!!

This is simply a treasure that cannot be overestimated! Thank you!

Finally someone putting A and B together for me , many thanks from Romania!!

You've done a great service to writers. Thank you, you're a good man!

Why this video has so few views and this channel has so few followers is beyond me. Excellent content and presentation, Michael. Thank you for sharing the knowledge.

This is an insanely great video essay. I’ve been pouring over it weekly, soaking in more learning with each viewing. Thank you for sharing these valuable lessons you learned. At the end you note the Luke, Benjamin and Olive are all innocent characters (not flawed) and thus living in a flawed Universe. I’m curious what in these tools may change if your main characters ARE flawed. Hmmmm….

Man, I thought after watch your video on TS3 it couldn't get any better, but proven wrong. Took me almost 2 days to get through this one and taking all the notes, screengrabs etc. but I'm so glad I did it and I'm sure I got several level-ups during that time. This will come in very handy when fixing my own climax. I might have to go back and fix a lot of little things now throughout my script, but hell, writing is re-writing. Let's pull our sleeves up and get better, and have some fun while doing it =)

This is a great video every writer should watch. I would add that The Graduate's ending is a bit more ambiguous than even this great analysis points out. The very final scene on the bus with 'hello darkness' introduces doubt as to if the right decision was indeed made. For me that elevates it to an _Extremely_ Insanely Great ending.

Great video, very helpful. Michael misreads the ending of The Graduate somewhat, calling it a happy ending, when the last scene on the bus makes it clear the ending is ambiguous and unsettled.

This is gold, and you are the best for sharing it. Thanks from South America, Peru.

This video is LEGENDARY. Thank you !

Gold.

This is absolute gold. Thank you Michael. I know Michael says, "Story can be anything." but this to me is everything for a story about a hero without flaws who is the redeemer of the universe.

I LOVE this video, fantastic work. Especially the part about how there can be different main antagonists for different levels of stakes. Seems obvious like how it's described here, but I never thought of this in that way before. I'll steal your ideas and try to apply them into my next screenplay outline.

I’ve watched a lot of videos about writing, and this is one of the very best. Thanks for sharing so much insight.

I've had your original lecture saved on a thumb drive for the past decade. Super cool to see this animated version!

My only wish is that it was specked-out for long form writing. Novels and the like.

Thank you so much for sharing these on youtube. I think I watched the Vimeo links about thirty times. These videos always keep me sane while I'm writing. Thank you for taking the time to share such great insights.

I love this and share it with anyone who will listen to me. You've made the world a better place. Thank you for this!

Glenn Gers recommended to see your essay. Thank you very much for your deep analysis. I found it very useful and interesting. While watching it I was reminded of the endings of great movies like Modern Times (1936), Matilda (1996), About a Boy (2002), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2006). Greetings from Argentina!

Wow! This is a high quality content!🔥🔥🔥 Thanks for amazing examples and sharing your experience. It's extremely helpful😍

Dude THANK YOU for uploading this!! I went to this very talk several times at AFF.

one of the best screenwriters is giving us free game. That's nuts

Thank you for uploading this (and thank you for co-writing Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes!)

An excellent, excellent lecture. Thank you for this generous sharing of your valuable insights.

Thank you so much for your work and sharing it in this very transparent way. How are there only 1600 views on this??? 🤯 ...OK just finished watching everything on your channel. Again, deep thanks for your work really love the movies that you've been involved in, I really appreciate you sharing it, I know it's only been a month but I'm just baffled how there are more views on this anyway have a great holiday thanks so much

Jeez! This one's even better than the Toy Story 3 fail/success video. Thank you for sharing!!

This was super fun and informative, thank you! ILittle Sunshine is one of my favourite movies, I came here from the TikTok video too. Great job!

I wouldn't necessarily say Luke's internal stakes are the search for greatness. I feel like it was more a search for meaning. That famous yearning scene with the twin sunset, to me, beautifully captures a young person's craving for their life to start. Luke wasn't living his own life yet, he was living his uncle's life. The farm may have been at stake, but that's his uncles stakes. The farm wasn't his future. I feel like that moment perfectly captures what cinema does so well, using image, performance, and music to capture that kind of ineffable feeling better than any other medium. And it does it with so much graceful confidence. I think about movies that try to recapture Star Wars' magic (*cough*John Carter*cough*), and this is what's missing, that simple use of film language to reveal the heart of a character. Most films would try to explain what Luke is feeling here, especially these days. But dialog would only diminish that moment. All you'd get is, "I want to be something greater than a farmer," or "I want to follow my friends and make a difference in the galaxy." But that only diminishes what's said in this scene. Because it can't be said in words. It's not a popular opinion, but I thought the sunset scene in The Last Jedi perfectly bookended this scene, and emphasized what it meant. At the end of his life, Luke isn't looking back proudly at his greatness,, or ashamed of his mistakes, but simply gratefully for the rich, storied life he had yearned for all those years ago. He seemed grateful for all of it, the good and the bad, his triumphs and his follies, the whole enchilada. Sure, it wasn't always a life well lived. It was a life lived thoroughly. And to be grateful for that seems like a pretty solid philosophical triumph. And once again, not a line of dialog to explain it. Just Luke and a twin sunset, and Mark Hamill's excellent performance.

"Apologies to William Shakespear" LOL! Thank you for such a wonderful video

I’ve only gotten a third of the way through and I’ve already been able to solve a problem in one of my screen plays that’s been holding me back for a year.

Fantastic video. Thank you for uploading. I love your work.

The moment of truth. The explosion. The apex of the climax, the story.

Ive successfully sold screenplays a few times in my life... I feel like I learned more in the last 90 minutes than I did in filmschool or my career. Like, I've done this for a living, completly ignorant to what I was even doing holy shit.

Love this! Watched it 50 times. Would love to see how this works in a two-fer movie. Buddy cop, husband/wife... etc

Incredible breakdown. Thank you.

So wonderful, thank you thank you thank you for sharing this with the writers of the world! :-)

Thank you for this! Brilliant!

Thank you, really enjoyed this!

3 climaxes in 45seconds or less ❤

Masterclass. Wow

Thannk you!!!!!! Been struggling wtih rewritting. thanks for putting this out

Been years since I teared up at Star Wars. That ending is so good! Wish we could’ve seen the Michael Arndt Episode 7! 😊

So good! Thank you for sharing ❤️🤩🎉

The other day I watched the film "A Time to Kill" 1996 (Joel Schumacher). This movie shows well the system you're talking about here.

thank you, you are amazing!

31:53 yep, those are definitely the emotional stakes. How do I know this? Because I watched Star Wars with my 5-year-old daughter, and all she wanted to see afterwards was this same scene over and over again. It really moved her and she couldn't get it out of her head.

A home run? 1, outer, 2, inner, 3 philosophical and last but not least, theme.

you had me in the first picture...i am looking forward to learning from you...

Thanku v much 4 that amayzing formula ... jajajajja.

I disagree that the emotional core of Star Wars is Luke's call to greatness, if that was the case then that narrative arc would've ended when he returned with Leia, but it didn't, the arc of that story continued on into Death Star Trench intertwining with the philosophical core of Ben's story, where he becomes the inheritor of Ben's philosophy and the Force. That arc I think is structured in identity, who Luke will become. Is he a child doing his chores? Will he be a farmer? Will he engage in romance with Leia? Will he become a smuggler like Han as per the invite to join him? Will he engage in romance with Leia? Will he become a member of the rebellion? Will he fall to Darth Vader as his father did? That identity and the unresolved tension of it is I think the stronger emotional thread of the story and the core of it. While there is the "call to action" and the usual beats of that, they happen separately from this core identity conflict, which has a much stronger resonance than a superficial desire to leave. That's the difference between Star Wars' emotional core and something like Tangled, a more fundamental emotional core that can't be resolved externally, and that's where the strength of the emotion comes from.

You can't always get what U want, though U might find, U get what U need.

So you just basically described my life to a T. My life is a screenplay. Perhaps a lot of people think this or feel this way but I mean on every level.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!

Came here from Nic WGA screenwriter. And I am not disappointed. 🥲 this is severely underrated.

This is a great resource, would love to see some non-linear stories broken down like this? Can you apply this descriptive framework to something like Gone Girl?

Good video

Thanks!

I would love to hear your thoughts on how this relates to other formats of visual media storytelling (modern tv series, miniseries, anime, etc.). Are seasons morphed into the 100 page gauge? Individual episodes? Multiple problem sets and maybe even multiple sets of stakes throughout the story?

Nic from TikTok sent me here!!

@MichealArndt From having to watch your video beginning to end there are multiple reasons why this should be all applied with bigger budget films and some independent movies. Dialogue is delivered between the attacks of viewpoints, something my professor had explain to me while I was attending film school. I want to get better with this knowledge and apply it to my stories that will make an impact on people's lives. What's the best way to talk to you one-on-one and getting to know each other? I would love to network with you. I'm a Dallas native. Happy holidays!

I LOVE YOU !!!!!

Linda

This is amazing. My only point of contention is when you say the "Little Miss Sunshine'" script is nowhere near as great as "The Graduate" or "Star Wars". It is equally as great.

My guy watches Barton Fink. Awesome.

56:57 Tyler Durden moment.

My favorite movie ending: The Killing (1956)

👏

Awesome, awesome, awesome! I'm guessing it's similar if you are in fact working with a flawed main character at the center?

Would this work with novels?

Fuck It im rewatching star wars tomorrow

37:00 Philosophical

Just disappointed there wasn't even any mention of the end-ending of The Graduate.

I haven’t seen Star Wars in a long time but I’m curious since Vader argues for the force maybe the dark side is using community or others to achieve selfish goals? Just came to mind…

Both of those Star Wars steaks can be spun as selfish or alturistic. Its selfish for Luke not wanting to help his uncle (and go off an adventure he'll enjoy more than farmwork) whos looked after him for his entire life, and alturistic for Luke to stay and help him. Its selfish for Luke not want to help Obie Wan (someone he doesnt know) and the Princess and stick with the life he knows, and alturistic for him to go off and help them. If you ask me staying put and helping those whove helped you is the more aulturistic choice, an adventure is a lot more appealing than a boring life

I'm just curious how many dozen TRIPLE-LATTES did you have before you recorded this?

29:00 42:00 45:50

I have a question here - is it possible at the beginning of the story, for the protagonist to believe in and represent the antagonistic values of the story world? Maybe the supporting characters are the ones who show him otherwise.

Tell the people who think everything is following a formula that their comments are just following a formula.

here from the tiktok!

I am curious about one thing. You said at 1:09:54 in this video : "...You can't use these story ideas to plot forward, they only work in retrospect when you've already had that great moment of inspiration, you've laid down that first draft and now you are just trying to find a way to turn it into the best version of itself." Why is that? because if you follow that pattern first it limits the creativity of the story? Can't this "structure" or "sequence" be compared to your initial outline even before writing first draft to possibly get a better first draft ... first? I don't know if it would really limit or handcuff your creativity, it would I think structure it. But maybe that is just speaking from not enough experience on my part. *** CAN you always make these elements work in any first draft of any kind of story? Have you ever found that a story idea can't be revised to work with these points to make it better?

Arndt, you did it mf!!! You did it

1:14:45

23:59

Darth Vader fired against R2?!?!?!? C'mon... after all R2 did for him?

As a kid seeing Star Wars when it came out was amazing. I think the closest modern equivalent was Captain America summoning Thor's hammer.

Here from Tyler Mowery!

I think Little Miss Sunshine is better than Star Wars

It’s a shame everyone’s attention spans are fucked. Nowadays people just wanna “vibe”. They don’t care about seeing something through to a conclusion. Everyone is afraid of endings. Nothing can end cuz it’s all forever all the time. No real meaning. Emptiness. It’s sad

I feel like you're trying to say there's only one way to tell a story🤔

Star Wars: The Force Awakens would have been far better if you wrote the whole film and the story treatments weren't scrapped, my friend. You were Lucasfilm's last hope...