Character Does Action to Achieve Goal

*Spoilers for The Lorax, One Punch Man, Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, and Life*

There is often this argument that there are no original stories anymore, that every story is just following a formula and plugging in the unknowns. If you don't think about it too much, it almost seems to make sense. Every story follows a protagonist, or group, working to overcome an obstacle and complete their goal. Despite the conflict, things work out for our characters in the end. Seems like I've just described every story right? You may even be thinking of tons of movies that fit this exact structure, and I could go on for days listing movies that fit this exact formula, but I could go on just as long talking about the movies that don't fit this structure.

Let's start with the first part, following a protagonist, or group. 'Protagonist' is the name given to the main character of a story, the one who is the main focus of the story and has the main objective of the movie. However, this is often refuted by stories where we follow both sides of the aisle, and neither is clearly the antagonist. "Captain America: Civil War" follows both Tony Stark and Steve Rogers as they work to achieve goals that are in opposition to one another. Neither is painted as the clear villain and so, we can't a protagonist working towards one goal. Or what about "Killing Eve"? A show that religiously splits it's screen time between it's two main characters, Eve and Villanelle, as they both work to kill the other. Villanelle can't be disqualified as a protagonist just because she is evil, so we once again have no clear protagonist.

What about the next part? 'Working to overcome an obstacle and achieve their goal'. This one is the most prolific as it is human nature to set goals, but not all stories feature obstacles to overcome. "One Punch Man" tells the story of Saitama, a hero so strong that nothing is a challenge for him anymore and he can defeat anything in one punch. Nothing throughout the series challenges him and it functions more as a comedy of subverting expectations than anything else. Or my favorite movie, "The Lorax" (The good 1972 one, not the awful 2012 one). The Lorax is about the Once-ler becoming a businessman, and how he had no bad intentions but strips the environment bare anywhere. It's a beautiful story about how we, as humans, never see ourselves as the bad guys despite being detrimental to the environment, and it has no challenge. It's supposed to be analogous to real-life businesses so it requires no conflict to tell its story.

Finally, the classic happy ending. Audiences come to expect some sort of a happy ending in movies, even if things are still left mysterious to set up for a sequel, the ending is somewhat happy. But writers have been producing depressing endings to movies forever. Romeo and Juliet end with Romeo dying in the arms of Juliet, "West Side Story" ends with Tony dying but gunshot while in the arms of Maria, "Life" ends with Calvin making it back to earth and all the astronauts dying, the list goes on and on. A happy ending is merely something that happens in most stories so we expect it in all stories, and that's the main problem with the one-story argument. It seems to think that if most stories fit certain archetypes, all stories fit the archetypes, but that simply isn't true. If there was one confirmed sighting of bigfoot, everyone in the world would believe in bigfoot despite that consistent evidence that it probably isn't real, so why aren't stories the same way. If even a single story betrays the formula, then the formula doesn't work.