Having discussed so extensively why certain actors are cast in Hollywood (in terms of popularity, race or gender, and sex appeal), it is time that we discuss how characters are developed within scripts, and how this relates to the audience's psychology. The first and foremost responsibility of any piece of narrative is to make the audience care. If audience members don't have a stake in the plot's events, then there is no incentive to follow it to the end. The primary way to make audiences care is to write characters that are realistic and relatable. Even if all the actions taken by a character are evil, it can be written in such a way that the character itself does not seem evil. The audience must be able to root for the protagonist, or they will not care about the piece, regardless of how interesting the story is. In order to ensure that we can root for the protagonist, most modern films have three elements in common:
The Flawed Hero
The Three Act Structure
Redemption
To demonstrate how the psychology of character development applies in every film, we analyze the character development of Simba...a lion cub. In spite of it being about lions, Disney's The Lion King(1994) is widely regarded as one of the most incredible animated films of all time. Not only does it have fantastic character development. It manages to combine elements of Hamlet, nature, animals, and music all into a package that appeals to children and adults alike. Before moving on to our analysis, check out the trailer below.