THE VILLAIN OBSTRUCTS THE HERO’S INTENTION Once the Alien is aboard the Nostromo, once the Great White Shark has appeared in the waters off Amity, once the War of the Worlds Tripods have burst from the earth in New Jersey, keep them front and center. The scarier the monster, the deeper the jeopardy, and the deeper the jeopardy, the more emotion will be produced in the hearts of the audience. This works for abstract villains too, like the looming market crash in Margin Call. Once this monster has been introduced, the filmmakers go back to it again and again and every time the story gets tauter and the audience gets sucked in deeper. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, p. 76 It may be an external villain like Doc Ock or Darth Vader. It may be a societal villain like racism in Precious or homophobia in Dallas Buyers Club. Or it may be an internal villain that exists entirely within the hero’s head, as in Silver Linings Playbook. But whichever form the villain takes, he impedes and frustrates at every turn the hero’s efforts to achieve his or her intention.

All true wisdom and all true faith are clearly expressed in the same moral law.

All the world is subject to one law, and all thinking beings have the same basic intellect.

Therefore, all wise men share the same idea of perfection.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

The more I dedicate my time to two things, the more they fill my life with ever-increasing pleasure.

The first is the sky above me, and the second is the moral law within me.

—IMMANUEL KANT

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

—MATTHEW 7:12

Moral law is so obvious and clear that even people who do not know the law have no excuse for violating it.

They have only one recourse: to deny their intellect, which they do.