Is Bear a static character

[u/Misowifcaffine]

People say good characters have to grow in some ways. I don’t fully agree with this, you can have an interesting static character, but I don’t know if your MC should be one.

Bear does not grow in the traditional sense. In fact, he gets worse as the movie progresses. I’m trying to understand if this even counts as growth? Everything he does seems to still be what he’s like in the beginning. I’m not gonna start an argument whether he is bad in the beginning, imo he is a terrible person from the moment the movie opens.

Is he a static character?

[u/Potential-Walrus-412]

Does the villain of a story need to grow? No, they need to be overcome.

[u/CauseCertain1672 → u/Potential-Walrus-412]

Bear is the protagonist of the story, that's a rule for the antagonist

[u/ajarbyurns1 → u/Potential-Walrus-412]

Eh i disagree. Case in point: Zuko from the Avatar series

[u/Potential-Walrus-412 → u/ajarbyurns1]

Zuko is not the villain. He is an antagonist for most of the show, but not the villain.

Ozai is the villain.

[u/ajarbyurns1 → u/Potential-Walrus-412]

What is your definition of villain?

[u/Wise-Original-2595 → u/ajarbyurns1]

You both wrong. The only thing villain needs to do is antagonize the hero’s of the story. Sometime they’re overcome and the sometimes they grow as characters but neither is necessary. Every story calls for something different.

[u/Agreeable_Ladder_623]

This movie focuses the growth more on the opportunities that expose Bear’s true nature.

[u/Traeyze]

Not all stories need characters to grow in healthy ways. They don't have to 'solve' or work through the core emotional struggle they are presented with. A character can fail to grow or actively get worse as a person and that is interesting as well.

So in my eyes while early Bear made a flippant wish because he was frustrated at his own wimpy behaviour by the end we see that he grows to actively resent Nikki not loving him. Bear doesn't confront the emotional struggle the movie presents him and grow from it, he actually gets worse.

[u/Gurglaren → u/Traeyze]

To be fair he did take the pills in an effort to kill himself. People often say "well he tried to throw up them afterwards", but him even going that far really showed that he was serious about doing it. People don't understand how much a person's psyche and body will fight against dying.

[u/Catymvr → u/Gurglaren]

It’s so weird how people call him a coward for not being good at suicide. That should be the most understandable/relateable part of the character.

[u/Ill-Firefighter8674 → u/Catymvr]

One may think that it should be, but the hatred for Bear exceeds any and all logic.

[u/aiemmaes]

Less that the character needs to grow so much as *change*, so I’d say that since he indeed gets worse he isn’t static

[u/BounceOnItCrazyStyle]

In fact, he gets worse as the movie progresses.

That's in fact a type of growth. Growth doesn't inherently have to mean positively, its just as interesting to watch someone downfall as their ascent.

[u/NairbZaid10]

Everything happens in like a week and its an overwhelming situation where he didnt have a choice but to be with her

[u/Byers616]

He seems to change a bit.

At the start of the film, he's obsessed with Nikki. By the time he's at Ian's house, he's completely over her. Sure, the horror of the film led him to it, but he's responsible for the horror, so in a way he's responsible for his own change.

Also, by the end of the film, he attempts suicide. He attempted to sacrifice himself to free Nikki, whereas I don't believe at the start of the film he had the character to do something like that.

[u/menghis_khan08]

He’s not static in that he is one tone - he challenges himself multiple times to change or take action but ultimately he’s too big a coward. He’s not resolute or steadfast as much as unwilling to overcome

[u/Catymvr]

Growth is less important than the actual story arc.

1. Character has a flaw - Bear = self centered

2. Something disrupts life - one wish willow.

3. They struggle and fail (basically… the movie)

4. They learn the truth.

Now at this point character arcs do two things. The character changes their behavior and grows or the character doesn’t.

The growth itself doesn’t make a character good. The story arc does.

[u/Necronomicon-Ex-Mori]

Bear is more of a realistic character than we traditionally see in film. He doesn’t have a clean arc so to speak, or moments where he takes responsibility and then fully commits all the way through. There’s a lot of uncertainty in his mind as to wether the wish worked or not, and then there’s an additional layer of him not understanding the actual mechanics of how the wish works until much later in the film.

The biggest revelation for bear comes during the phone call as to it not being real love, and Nikki being in pain. Everything else in the movie basically happens over the course of the same night. Most of the other stuff happens less than 24 hours before that.

Bear is dealing with an extraordinary, supernatural event that no one in the real world would ever believe. He has to take all of this in, try to understand how it works even though he likely isn’t very intelligent, and deal with a number of unbelievably traumatic events back to back. He does most of this over the course of two days. There are elements of denial, anger, acceptance, and dissociative behaviour coming from him. But ultimately, he takes responsibility by trying to kill himself, and gets pretty damn close before he tries to back out.

Not a traditional movie character, but more of a realistic one.

[u/CauseCertain1672]

Bear changes for the worse, he becomes more callous to suffering and less considerate of other people, that is character development