What Are The Goals Of A Character In A Movie?

Screenplay is the soul of a movie. It contains the movie's story, dialogues and the descriptions of the scenes. It defines the characters of the movie. Their goals, their conflicts, their actions to achieve the goals, is all a part of the screenplay. The goals that a character tries to achieve are, in most cases, of two kinds: conscious goal and subconscious goal.

The conscious goal is the one that has been talked about since the beginning of the movie. It is the goal that the protagonist is actively trying to achieve since the beginning. For example, in the movie 'Real Steel’, the conscious goal of the character of Hugh Jackman, who is a former boxer, is to win a robot boxing championship to overcome his financial problems.

The subconscious goal is the one that's not directly talked about on screen but is there. It's hidden, trying to push the character in its direction. In 'Real Steel’, Hugh Jackman’s character’s subconscious goal was to follow his passion of being a boxer again, that he had to leave behind because human boxing matches were discontinued (in the plot of the movie). For almost the entire movie, his character is in a form of agitated, irritated and disturbed state, and a number of factors are affecting it. The ones directly shown on screen, are, his financial problems, constantly losing his robots in robot-boxing matches and his issues with his son. Further in the movie we find out that he used to be a boxer few years back, and a passionate one, and he had to leave behind his boxing because the matches were discontinued. So, in the climax, when his robot had to fight a match in shadow mode, that is, it had to copy Hugh’s actions, that time we see him doing his boxing moves, to make his robot fight. In that very shot we see his character genuinely happy for the first time in the movie. That's when we realize he has achieved his subconscious goal, that is, to follow his passion one more time. That's what makes him happy again.

Similarly, in the Bollywood movie 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’, Hritik Roshan's character, Arjun, has the conscious goal of being there in his friend’s bachelor's trip. The subconscious goal that he achieves is (finally) letting go of all the stress he carried about his work and deciding to live his life to the fullest.

This is one of the factors that is worth noticing in movies.