What is a Protagonist?: Skywalker Vs Darko

Hollywood has always focused on the outsiders to tell their stories. The classic protagonist is often someone who is down on their luck in some way and going through a chaotic time in their lives, perhaps stuck in a dead end job, has personal problems, difficult relationships with friends/family or alienated or disliked by superiors and peers for any reason. By having the every day problems we all experience, the characters are made likable to the audience so we can recognize and identify with them. Archetypes are created so that a characters basic personality can be conveyed quicker and easier. To illustrate I will look at a classic Hollywood blockbuster with traditional archetypes ("Star Wars", 1977) and a more obscure piece but still with similarities (Donnie Darko, 2001). Both films were written and directed by one person (George Lucas and Richard Kelly respectively) and both used Hollywood as a vehicle to release the film.
The perfect blockbuster - great special effects, iconic characters, memorable lines, an old fashioned story and a catchy theme, Star Wars is inspired by ancient myths and legends,

so is rife with the classic archetypes:
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill): the central protagonist; a likable adventurous 19 year old farm boy desperate to leave his home.
Han Solo (Harrison Ford): the rogue; not quite a side-kick, but someone for the hero to share the adventure with. An almost polar opposite to the protagonist, holding fewer morals, causing arguments and humorous situations between the two.
Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher): the damsel; for the protagonists to rescue and possible love interest.
Governor Tarkin (Peter Cushing): The primary antagonist; a cold militaristic leader.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guiness): The guide; a wise beaten soldier, shares a father/teacher-like relationship with the protagonist.
Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones): the muscle; the antagonists right hand man, a towering black clad figure perfect to intimidate enemies.
C-3P0 & R2-D2 (Anthony Daniels & Kenny Baker): the comic relief; the funnier characters, two bickering droids who also serve as the protagonists companions.

These are the basic ingredients to any story that will not want to spend too much time on character development. Luke Skywalker is probably the classic hero in modern motion pictures. We root for him in completing his quest of destroying the evil galactic Empire over a course of three films. It is because he is a likable character who was once just a young farm boy with nothing in his life, all of his friends are gone and are having successful careers while Luke has highly unreachable dreams, not helped by being turned down on every opportunity. I would imagine his counterpart Han Solo however would appeal to a different crowd. While Luke's audience would mainly be children, Han's more pessimistic attitude would identify with older audiences, most likely teenagers. Both protagonists are outsiders, Luke is frustrated with home life and Han must have been once disappointed in work life to turn to an alienated life of crime. The entertainment value comes from the glimmer of hope each gets in the film and them eventually succeeding with everyone applauding. The advantage for Hollywood here is that there are two protagonists, each one to suit a major demographic, pulling in considerably more cinema tickets. While still being an entirely fictitious story, characters like this fill a mainstream audience with inspiration and hope for their lives also, and if not, it still takes them away from their dead end jobs for a couple of hours...

 While Luke and his friends are likable, easily understood and always have a happy ending (it's mainstream after all...) some films outside of the mainstream that find their way into Hollywood are not so friendly. Take "Donnie Darko", a tale of a dangerously disturbed youth who is foretold by a giant rabbit that the world will end in one month. The film was certainly no blockbuster but has since gained a cult audience. Quite a stretch from Star Wars, but lets compare and contrast the central characters.

Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal): the protagonist? we are constantly with the character throughout the narrative but are constantly questioning his actions and motivations.
Gretchen Ross (Jena Malone): Donnie's sympathetic girlfriend.
Rose and Eddie Darko (Mary McDonnell & Holmes Osborne): Donnie's parents.
Elizabeth Darko (Maggie Gyllenhaal): Donnie's sister.
Dr. Lilian Thurman (Katherine Ross): Donnie's psychotherapist
Karen Pomeroy (Drew Barrymore): Donnie's English teacher.
Dr. Kenneth Monnitoff (Noah Wyle): Donnie's Science teacher.
Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze): Motivational speaker at Donnie's school.

As you can see these are no archetypes. While the characters in Star Wars are slightly one dimensional, each character in this film is much more complex and quite vague. They're very detached and distant from the audience, probably because it is our job to figure out the characters rather than have them already there for us. None of them really have an explicit introduction to us, we see the narrative through Donnie's eyes and he obviously already knows these characters. Donnie is a complete weirdo, a disturbed misfit and so of course, an outsider. I suppose the story was far too out there for it to be a success, only having a release because of big star producer Drew Barrymore and some star power with her and Patrick Swayze, but still it has gained a cult audience. Its been identified and understood by someone at least and is now is quite a famous film. So while its not the typical pop corn film and the characters do not fill us with inspiration or hope, Hollywood big shots still recognized something in it, maybe it was the intriguing story or maybe it was Donnie himself, Hollywood and the audience seem to like a rebel, whether it's a good natured farm boy or disturbed freak.



At 0.20, Donnie speaks freely and even proudly about his "emotional problems"