The Hero
If the answer to the acid test question is that the audience does not care a great deal, then the problem either lies in the nature of the main character or in his objective. Either the hero is not sufficiently heroic or his quest is not truly a worthy quest — one that the audience sees as valid and is eager to participate in. Or it could be a bit of both. You have to determine this and then attack the problem.
If the problem is with the hero, it is most often because he does not establish himself early on as being of truly heroic proportions. Entire books have been written on what makes a hero a true hero. The best of these are by the scholar Joseph Campbell. Every first time director would be advised to have read Campbell's definitive The Hero with a Thousand Faces before taking on the task of rewriting the script for his breakthrough film. The defining quality of a true hero is self-sacrifice and selflessness. All the heroes of all the Capra movies did the right thing at the crucial moment, in spite of the fact that by so doing they had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Somebody who does something rash or risky when the bad guy has a gun to his head is being brave, but nowhere nearly as brave or heroic as somebody who puts his life on the line in a situation where he could walk away with his head held high. This is the key to the heroism of the final moment of Saving Private Ryan.
Neither Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) nor Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) has to defend that bridge. In fact, by defending it, they are both disobeying orders. Likewise, at the end of Casablanca, Rick, the Humphrey Bogart character, could use the letters of transit and fly off with lisa, the Ingrid Bergman character, and we know that they would be happily in love for the rest of their days on this earth. Rick has spent the entire movie obsessed about having lost lisa, and desiring nothing but to get her back. But when he has the chance, he walks away from it, surrendering lisa to Victor Laszlo for the good of mankind. Described in those terms it seems implausible and corny. True cynics would say it is. But 99 % of the human populace who have seen that film are moved to tears (or have to fight them back) when they witness Rick's act of selflessness.
These examples of heroic action are taken from the conclusion of two classic films. It is best if, early on in the film, the hero performs such a selfless act. This will initiate the process by which the audience identifies with the main character. The more selfless this initial act of heroism, the better. If the audience themselves wants everything that the hero is giving up, then they will know in their heart of hearts that they would never be so selfless, so strong, and so heroic to sacrifice what he is sacrificing. This intensifies their admiration for the main character. The more intense their admiration, the more complete their identification. This is the process by which the audience is transported out of themselves and into the action of the film.
One of best the examples of such a defining moment early on in a film can be found in The Godfather. It comes after the Tattaglia family has tried, unsuccessfully, to assassinate Vito Corleone. Vito lies mortally wounded in the hospital. Sonny, played by James Caan, and the capos of the Corleone family are plotting how best to strike back at the Tattaglias. They want to stage a hit on two key players: Captain McCluskey and Sollozzo, known as the Turk. McCluskey is the crooked NYPD captain protecting the Tattaglias. Sollozzo, a heroin importer, is pushing the Tattaglias into a turf war with the Corleones. He obviously put out the hit on Vito Corleone. Sonny and his capos are trying to figure out who in their family is so trusted by the Tattaglias that he could get close enough to Sollozzo and McCluskey to put a bullet in their heads.
Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, volunteers to do the hit. Nobody can believe it. Sonny even starts baiting Michael, asking him, “Whaddya gonna do, nice college boy, huh?….You think this is the army where you shoot them from a mile away? You gotta get ‘em up close. BUDDABING! You blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit..”
No one in the family would ever think of Michael as a candidate to do this hit. Why? Because Michael is the only Corleone who is clean. He has never sullied himself in the family business. He has an Ivy League education. He is a war hero. He has lovely Diane Keaton waiting to marry him, move to New Hampshire, raise a family, and lead the clean version of the American dream. But he turns his back on it all. He volunteers to give it all up and commit a murder. Why? Out of loyalty and love. He is a member of the Corleone family first, and an individual second. The extent of this selfless act makes him a gigantic hero. This is his peak. It is one of the defining moments of the Godfather trilogy. When ordered in a linear chronology, unlike the films themselves, everything from this moment on until the end of The Godfather: Part III is about the fall of this hero.
I would advise every first time director to compare the main character of his breakthrough film to Michael Corleone. Ask yourself if your protagonist does something early on in the script that proves that he has the strength to make such a sacrifice. If not, your script needs a rewrite. Your main character does not have what it takes to get the audience rooting for him to the extent that they can enter the action of the film.
You must bear in mind that there are heroes, like Michael Corleone, who act out their heroism, and there are anti-heroes, like Rick in Casablanca, who are as strong and self-sacrificing as a Michael Corleone, but either deny it, like Rick, or are unaware of it, like Marty McFly. Rick claims that he “sticks his neck out for no one.” But the script makes it clear that this is a pose. The audience can tell from early on in the film that underneath Rick's cynical, alcoholic, Euro-trash façade beats the heart of a lion. In the opening scenes we learn that Rick ran guns to the Ethiopians defending their country from the Axis invasion. Then Rick hides Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre, from the Gestapo. It would seem he has an ulterior motive for doing so: This is how he gets his hands on precious letters of transit out of Casablanca, which become the MacGuffin of the film. But when he tells the bandleader to play La Marseillaise so as to drown out the Nazi's beer hall anthem, we know that he has the heroic capacity for self-sacrifice of a Michael Corleone…he just has to get back in touch with it.
At the beginning of Back to the Future, Marty is on the verge of being screwed up by his screwed-up parents. Like all teenagers, he knows that his parents are geeks. His purpose in life is to somehow become the antithesis of everything they are. Everything in Marty's existence seems to be conspiring against him and working to turn him into as big a loser as his Dad. Everything except Doc Brown. So Marty sneaks out in the middle of the night to the Twin Pines Mall to bear witness to the unveiling of Doc Brown's time machine. Then, by a series of freak accidents, Marty ends up getting sent back into the past in the time machine.
There is little self-sacrifice in hanging out with Doc Brown. At this stage, Marty is not very heroic. But the target under-30 audience, and for that matter, anyone who can remember being a teenager, can clearly see the outlines of a true hero in the making underneath Marty's slightly callow, wise-cracking, self-deprecating exterior. For Marty to have both the good sense to recognize his parents' deficiencies and the intense need (it could even be called courage) to defy them, makes him extremely sympathetic — if not heroic — in the eyes of the target audience.
When putting his main character to the acid test of heroism, the first time director must keep in mind the size and the scope of the target audience for his breakthrough film. Some audiences will never be able to care intensely about the fate of a specific main character because that character is from a world that is completely alien to them. The hero of Trainspotting, Retten, is a heroin addict. The hero of Boys Don't Cry, Brandon Teena, is a lesbian who crossdresses as a man. These movies are not for everyone. They were made for a younger, urban audience that is acquainted with, if not accepting of, heroin addiction and/or gender bending.
The studios prefer to make movies aimed at a wide audience because there is a greater risk involved in making an edgy movie with a morally ambiguous hero. For that reason, such movies are usually made by independent companies who are looking for their audience outside of the boundaries proscribed by studio films. This audience, along with the critics, will embrace a film that takes these