eli5: What are “acts” in a movie/film and how are people able to figure out where they start/end? Are there always three acts? More? Less? Please explain.
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Alright! I teach an Intro to Film course, so this is right up my alley.
The three-act structure, as others have pointed out, is the general structure that Hollywood films tend to follow, and the three acts roughly equate to the beginning, middle, and end of the story. The first and third acts each take about 25% of the film’s running time, and the second act takes the other 50% (obviously, your mileage will vary, but this is the general rule of thumb).
Now I’m going to blow your mind: the “three-act structure” actually has…four acts!
The “acts” of the three-act structure are each divided by a turning point in the story, and there are three major turning points in the three-act structure: one between acts 1 & 2, and another between acts 2 & 3, but there’s also a third turning point, right in the middle of act 2. As such, we can actually divide act 2 into two parts — we’ll call them act 2a and act 2b — giving us 4 acts of roughly equal length (as an example, [here’s Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright](http://www.screenwritingspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/the-worlds-end-screenplay-development.jpg) with their [script outline for At World’s End](https://www.screenwritingspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/close-up-the-worlds-end.jpg) — you can see their divisions of acts 1, 2a, 2b, and 3).
So let’s look at these four acts, starting with Act 1 (and don’t worry, I’ll give you examples at the end).
Act 1 introduces the setting, major characters, and most important for our purposes, it establishes the main conflict, providing a goal for the protagonist. Act 1 then ends with a “point of attack”: the first turning point, a “point of no return”, an event that marks that the journey has begun.
At this point, we know the protagonist’s goal, and one of two things might happen in act 2:
We may start off, and things are going badly for our heroes. Things keep getting worse and worse, and we seem to be getting further and further away from our goal. Then, right in the middle of the second act, we hit another turning point: the midpoint. The midpoint is typically a reversal of fortune, so if the heroes have been moving away from their goal in act 2a, then in 2b things will turn around and they’ll now seem to be moving closer to their goal (think of detective films where the detectives seem baffled by the case early on, and seem to be getting nowhere in the case, then suddenly, right in the middle of the film, they get a big break, and the case starts to come together).
Alternately, we could get the opposite: Act 2 begins with the protagonists seemingly getting closer and closer to their goal, then at the midpoint, things begin to go badly (think of gangster films where the gangster spends the first half of the film rising in power, then in the latter half, things begin to spiral out of control).
So our first turning point is the decision to go on the journey, or the moment when the hero is now actively pursuing the film’s primary goal, while the second turning point is a reversal of fortune in the pursuit of that goal. So what marks the end of act 2? Believe it or not, the second act ends with the heroes reaching their goal. Our initial conflict from act 1 gets resolved…and yet we still have about a half-hour of movie left!
Act 3 then establishes a new conflict. Usually, it’s not completely out of left field, but rather it’s related to the main conflict, and results from resolving the initial goal. So, for instance, if it’s a murder mystery, and our initial goal was to discover the murderer, then act 2 will end with the hero realizing who the culprit is…but now, in act 3, they have to bring the killer to justice. If it’s a romantic comedy, and our initial goal was for the boy to fall in love with the girl, then the goal of act 3 is to get the boy and girl together (because usually, right when the boy realizes he loves the girl, a new obstacle will conveniently pull them apart to set up the third act conflict).
In [PART TWO](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mktc1g/eli5_what_are_acts_in_a_moviefilm_and_how_are/gticiso?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), I’ll provide some examples, using Star Wars, The Matrix, and Thor: Ragnarok.
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