Story Snafus: Plot Armor

One of the unfortunate side effects of learning how to write is that some of those lessons stick and bleed into how you view media.  These range from the mundane (sentence structure, slight character or plot inconsistencies), the moderate (flat characters, overuse of cliches), and the extreme (deus ex machina, unlikable protagonists).  It drags you out of the story when you run out of eyebrows to quirk at the issues you see, especially if you then spend the next week-plus seething over how you could have done it better.  The one that frustrates me the most?  Egregious use of plot armor.

For those with too much sense to spend their time delving into story mechanics, plot armor is “when a main character’s life and health are safeguarded by the fact that he or she is the one person (or one of several) who can’t be removed from the story.”  When you need a character to accomplish something later in the story, you can’t very well kill them off in the beginning.  On the other hand, if you don’t have them face any challenges along the way, they are boring enough that there’s no point in following their journey.  Thus, plot armor.  Every character has it, to an extent—so long as the author needs that character to do something, they have to be able to perform that task.  Where the issue lies is when that authorial protection becomes grossly apparent.

Like for many things, the worst recent example I can think of comes from the last three main Star Wars movies (episodes seven, eight, and nine).  You have several examples to pick from, but my haterade flavor of choice is Rey in The Force Awakens.  Up to the start of the movie, Rey spent her entire life scavenging scrap and hitting people with a stick.  By the end of the movie (which we have no reason to think took longer than a few days), she flies multiple spacecraft she’s never seen before, escapes captivity multiple times utilizing abilities she’s had no training in, and wins a lightsaber duel against someone with years of experience while never having touched one herself.  This dips into Mary Sue territory (another trope for another Wandering), but the two feed off each other in a story-killing form of parasitic symbiosis.

Why does it matter if the main character succeeds?  That’s the wrong question.  What matters is how that character succeeds.  Because Rey consistently shows she can overcome any obstacles with zero training or explanation, nothing the story throws at her matters.  This leaves the audience in a perpetual state of disbelief because the writers put no effort into making the challenges against her appear formidable or realistic when matched up against her plot armor.  Why would I let myself feel any suspense or care for the character when I know that she’ll just manifest whatever power she needs to win at the exact time she needs it?  There’s a reason most video games with cheat codes turn off achievements if you use them—at that point, you haven’t earned anything.

* * * Spoilers ahead for The Rings of Power * * *

All of that brings me to episode six of The Rings of Power.  My rage tanks were full of righteous indignation as I watched a bunch of peasant farmers and a single elf somehow take down an entire company of battle-hardened orcs.  The fury came to a crescendo as somehow the injured child of the town healer not only holds his own against multiple armored combatants, but triumphs over them.  I prepared to roll my eyes hard enough to give myself whiplash when the writers revealed their clever little trick.  Turns out the peasant farmers weren’t wildly successful against orcs—they just managed to slaughter a bunch of other peasant farmers being led by a few orcs. 

Not only does this scene convey a palpable sense of the characters’ horror at killing yesterday’s neighbors, it leads perfectly into the realistic outcome.  The good guys got lucky with their trap at the tower, but when it’s the orcs’ turn, they crush the good guys.  And of course they do!  That’s what you’d expect when a battle-tested, armored force goes against people who’ve never fought before in their lives.  Granted, there’s still plenty of plot armor to go around (assuming that shoulder wound doesn’t get infected), but at least this conveys a sense of consequence.  It’s all well and good to stand up and fight against evil, but if there’s no believable reason why you should succeed, then the right answer is that you don’t.  Otherwise we end up with the last Star Wars trilogy, and no one wants another one of those.