I’ve read many books, watched many movies and followed several TV series. What I decided interested me most in all of those is seeing how ordinary people react to extraordinary situations.
Super heroes and others with special abilities are fun to watch or read about. But what happens when Joe the shoe salesman encounters an alien lifeform back in the sports shoe section of the storeroom? When Lana the barista stumbles upon what looks like a shimmering doorway in the middle of the alley on her way home, what does she do? Or Tina comes home from dance class and opens her closet door to find that it leads into a lush jungle?
Well, we can assume that as the adrenaline kicks in to those characters, some type of fight or flight response happens. The flight response can be more than just running away. It could be fainting. It could be standing still, so as not to be seen.
The fight response depends on their personality and/or experiences. Are they curious and attempt to examine the situation closer? Do they rush into the situation without thinking about the consequences? Do they become an active participant by speaking to the alien, throwing something through the doorway or just strolling into the jungle?
This is where the fun begins. Everyone has some skills that they can employ in such a situation. The question is how they adapt those skills. I think about the spider in the bathroom analogy. If they’re the type to find something heavy and squash the spider, what do they do when they see the alien? What if they are the type to find a glass to capture the spider and release it outside? What do they do?
For me, an iconic movie was the first Alien (1979). Take a space ship and staff it with blue collar workers who picked up the gig for some good money. Now have them stalked by a never-before-encountered creature with horrific abilities. The reactions were what I expected. A lot of “How do we save ourselves?” and “What the hell was that?!”
Did you know that the actors in Alien were not quite sure what to expect from the chestburster scene? They read the script and were told some of the mechanics of the scene. But their reaction was genuinely shock and surprise when the Alien baby comes popping up through John’s chest. There were no superheroes in the room that day.
As a character progresses through the plot, they may learn quickly and adapt their behaviors further. This is probably the one thing that bothers me the most, when the character doesn’t learn. I’ve watched some series where the main character seems to encounter something new each episode, but they act as if they had never seen such a thing before. The character doesn’t seem to learn from previous encounters. I’d rather have them say “Oh, look, it’s another zombie” instead of screaming and running away whenever they see one.
But hey, people will be people. 🙂
It’s fun to think about. The next time you’re stuck in traffic and need something to do, think about what you would do if you discovered the alien in the shoe storeroom. Would you scream and run away or try to sell them a pair of extra-wide Asics Novablast 4’s?