To Make Your Characters 10x Stronger, Add or Remove Parents
Inspirations from my favorite movies
Parents, adoptive guardians, and mentors have a huge impact on our movie heroes. Writers who weave this powerful relationship into their stories produced many memorable science fiction and fantasy characters.
We want to see our movie heroes win. But first, we want to see them die crawling on the deepest underworld realm so they can come out reborn as better versions of themselves.
Here are my favorites from fairly recent movies for your inspiration.
Absent parents turn ordinary into extraordinary
Parents who pass away, or go AWOL on trips never to come back, give their kids a huge handicap early on. Orphans struggle growing up. They become strong the hard way.
Batman Begins, 2005. Bruce Wayne transformed his anger from the murder of his parents and became the vengeful superhero, Batman. In other movies and DC Comics history, the Dark Knight is one of the smartest vigilante capable of defeating groups of supervillains and superheroes alike.
The Lion King, 1994. The lion cub Simba blamed himself for his father’s murder. He was a nobody who grieved in exile, before finding his way back with the help of a warthog and a meerkat. When he became king of the pride, he came back fully maned and fought his treacherous uncle for the throne.
Frozen, 2013. Growth happens to siblings too. Few can say they have relationships as nurturing as the sisters Elsa and Anna’s.
The death of the king and queen pushed the princesses further apart. When they learned to love each other again, magic is restored, and the kingdom saved.
Harry Potter, 2001–2011. I never watched enough to know the parents who died protecting our favorite young wizard. I’m almost sure there’s something for you to pick up here. Almost.
Adoptive parents point to the north star
Biological parents may serve bigger thematic purposes to dramatic effects, like secretly being villains themselves. In these situations, adoptive parents can be the ones pointing our heroes in the right direction.
Spider-Man Trilogy, 2002–2007. It was Aunt May’s support that our hero Peter Parker relied on when things got tough. And it was Uncle Ben’s famous quote about power and responsibility that guided Peter’s principles on crime-fighting.
Superman: Man of Steel, 2013. Goodness wasn’t one of Superman’s natural-born powers from planet Krypton. Rather, being a good human being is a trait that came from his Earthly foster parents. The Kents took him in as their own, and Superman grew up to embody humanity’s best values.
Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, 2015–2019. The last Jedi Master Luke Skywalker did not live up as the parent figure Rey was longing for. When they met, the reluctant master had nothing to teach but failure. He trembled in fear as he preemptively acted on Ben Solo’s conversion to the Dark Side. But it was Luke’s blunders that showed Rey what not to do.
Godly lineage gives our heroes a chance to be different
When characters have a godly bloodline, we pay attention to how they use their birthright. What makes them different from their royal parents?
Wonder Woman, 2017. The Amazons are female warriors who vowed not to meddle in the affairs of man. Diana, the Amazonian princess, distinguished herself by leaving their island home Themyscira. She became the symbol of feminine virtues in the outside world.
Thor: Ragnarok, 2017. The wise warrior-king Odin ruled over and expanded his territory across multiple realms. He overcame enemies both from within and outside. But unlike him, his son Thor was either defeated or ran away from battles. Thor’s rule was pyrrhic. In the end, he herded a handful of people in a measly ship.
Parents who don’t let go become the obstacle
When parents don’t let go, they become the obstacles for our protagonists. Our heroes’ growth is born out of asserting their viewpoints against their parents. Here, conflict is interesting because both sides hold opposing but equally valid opinions.
How to Train your Dragon, 2010. Hiccup’s love for technology and dragons caused the relationship with his Viking dad to suffer. Brawn was highly admired by the clan, and dragons their sworn enemy. Hiccup, however, saved the day with a pet dragon (who doesn’t want to!) and also preferred intellect over muscles. Self-confidence was what Hiccup needed to learn.
Brave, 2012. Princess Merida, our heroine, and her mom, the queen, held opposing views on how a princess should behave. Merida wanted to be free, wild, and independent. She learned first-hand about the heavy consequences of her actions when she accidentally turned her mom into a primitive wild bear. The rest of her journey became that of learning to undo past mistakes.
The tribe as surrogate-parent
A tribe raises a child, and the child becomes their executioner, a nameless authority.
James Bond, 2006–2015. James Bond’s hidden origins made him a spoiled adopted child of the country. His hands were dirty exercising his license to kill. He stole loveless women wherever. He had a penchant for wasting tax money. And as the foremost spy of his time, he always got the job done.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian, 2019. The protagonist was raised by the Mandalorians who rescued him. He looked up to the tribal credo as the rulebook to live life as a fighter. No surprise that the galaxy respected his reputation as a bounty hunter.
Untold beginnings give characters an aura of mystery. Where do they come from and for whom are they working for? We’re free to imagine.
They are the good, bad guys we fancy to be.
Villain protagonists are an entirely different character type. They are truly evil and malicious. Designing this character revolves around making their fall to darkness relatable.
Bad parenting helps make villain protagonists relatable
The fall to darkness is reasonable when the fallen inherit a weak and broken worldview. Being an orphan isn’t bad enough. Imagine the helplessness of having grown up malformed, years thrust towards the wrong path.
Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, 1999–2005. The Jedi Knight, Anakin Skywalker, had the cards stacked against him since birth. The murder of his mom, his inexperienced teacher, and the stresses of the Clone Wars to name a few, made him unstable. Slowly, his Jedi family abandoned him. He was their Chosen One, but he was alone. No wonder he turned to the Dark Side.
Joker, 2019. An honest heart can’t blame Arthur for becoming a criminal psychopath. The entire city was down for one-upping him any chance they got. His delusions came from being an adopted son of a mentally ill lady and her abusive partner. No matter how Arthur cared for his job, for his mom, and for making people smile, Arthur just wasn’t good enough. He survived by fighting back.
Such potential goodness, lost. A tragic character is a stinging memory.
The immense loss is proportionate only to the strongest character power-up discovered in recent decades.
“Mother is God in the eyes of a child.” — Rose, Silent Hill, 2006
Female characters are elevated from legendary to divine when they take on powerful maternal roles.
Aliens, 1986. It’s become a trope in science fiction for strong female protagonists to be the sole disaster survivors.
Set in the spaceship U.S.S. Sulaco, Ripley lived through a killing-spree. She became the ultimate kick-ass mom-figure when she protected a girl by exterminating the deadly Xenomorph. The final fight inside the hangar was made iconic by her flushing of the monster out to deep space.
Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015. Furiosa defied the tyrant, Immortan Joe. She stole his war rig truck and escaped with all five of his wives. After a series of bracing car chase across dystopia, desert, storm, and bandit land, she killed Joe and took over The Citadel. Rising from slavery, she returned the hero of the people.
Silent Hill, 2006. Rose did everything to help her adopted daughter cope with trauma. They traveled to a haunted, quiet town. Each night, awful memories mutated into monsters that ate people alive. In this horror story, nobody escaped death, but even in hell, a mom’s love prevailed.
Parenting — a wellspring for powerful character arc ideas.
Have fun.
