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The movie Dream Scenario has…well, a dream scenario—a great premise that promises a great story: Nicolas Cage plays a college professor fading into middle age who never realized the heights for his life that he hoped for and feels he deserves.

But when he begins starring in the dreams of random people around the globe, he becomes an overnight celebrity. Finally he gets the attention he always wanted, doing interviews for TV print and online outlets and becoming a star. His formerly sparsely attended classes are suddenly packed with enthusiastic students eager to talk to him, he’s approached by a slick ad agency that dangles high-profile product endorsements and a coveted publishing contract, and even his teenage daughters suddenly think he’s cool.

But after he makes a questionable moral choice that undermines a foundational trust in his personal life, suddenly people’s dreams turn radically dark, with Cage’s character now appearing as their murderer, rapist, or terrifying pursuer, and his fame is canceled as fast as it formed. He becomes a worldwide pariah in danger of losing everything he now realizes he values most.

Brilliant, right? I mean, I wish I thought of it. It’s an intriguing premise that has viewers hooked from the beginning, wondering why this is happening and what will happen next, and the actors do a bang-up job, with Cage particularly turning in one of his top performances.

And yet our entire group who went to see it were left feeling underwhelmed when the credits rolled. Why? What went wrong with such a strong setup and initially potent execution?

Where Story Can Fail

Regular readers know that I tout the value of analyzing other storytellers’ work as the best way to improve your own. Let’s see what we can learn about storytelling based on why I felt this movie ultimately fell flat despite its many strengths.

Deliver on the Promises You Make to Readers

First is that magnificent “why” the story plants in viewers from the very beginning. The question was a strong hook and kept me fully engaged in the story as I tried to puzzle out the answer.

But around midway through the film I realized the screenwriter wasn’t going to answer it…and my investment started to flag.

Writer/director’ Kristoffer Borgli’s intention doesn’t seem to have been to tell that story—of why this was happening. He was focusing on the effects of Cage’s appearance in others’ dreams and its impact on the character’s life, not on the phenomenon itself.

That’s valid. With some story premises, especially in magical realism, the reader or viewer doesn’t need to understand the mechanism by which the character has their journey; they just accept it with Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief.”

But even if we don’t find out the empirical “why” to explain unexplained events, what makes a story effective and cohesive, in my view, is that those events at least tie into something directly related to the character arc.

We don’t need to know the exact physics of how all these people are dreaming about Cage, but we do want to know why it’s happening to this protagonist, and why now, and what it might mean relative to his character journey—and that was the promise I felt was left unfulfilled.

Every author should tell the story they envision—but effective, satisfying stories also deliver on the promises they make. To me this story felt as if a promise had been made at the beginning that was not only not delivered upon, but ignored. It left me disappointed and feeling let-down.

Character Should Drive the Story (Not the Other Way Around)

The second main stumble for me was also related to character arc—no surprise, as I consider character to be the foundation of story. Cage does go on a journey in the story, not only externally—with events turning him into a celebrity and then a pariah—but we also see how those events impact him: delighting him when he is popular and distressing him when he is not.

But he’s only reacting to events. He isn’t driving the action of the story. 

In many stories the protagonist is not the architect of the events they must navigate over the course of the story, but it’s the action they take in reaction to those events that constitutes the story, for instance as with every superhero or action movie ever made. 

In other stories, the protag’s passivity is a defining feature of their character and their arc. But those journeys are often about the character learning to claim agency in their own lives, ultimately taking the reins, and it’s still their initial inaction that’s responsible for driving the story, as with Starr Carter in The Hate U Give, whose fear of testifying against the police for the killing of her friend Khalil is what propels the plot and her arc until she finally takes action.

And often the character’s inability or unwillingness to take action is what gives the story its meaning as we see what that ultimately costs them. (I’m looking at you, Oedipus…even though you can’t look back at me because you gouged your own eyes out when your inaction on the prophecy of the oracle at Delphi led you to kill your father and marry your mother. The Greeks knew from tragedy—and how to drive a story with inaction.)

In either case we see that what the character does or doesn’t do is the engine of the story, and that lends agency even if you have a passive protagonist.

But Cage’s character never tries to affect or understand what’s happening to him, simply to capitalize on it. He spends the entire story in a reactive mode, and there is no growth toward realizing he must be the captain of his own vessel. We spend two hours watching him get buffeted about by the waves, but never taking the wheel of the ship.

Take the Reader Somewhere

At the end, Cage’s character seems not to have changed at all. We leave him where we found him, craving adulation and acclaim and unhappy not to have it. His character arc is a flat line, and we’re left wondering what was the point of going on this journey with him. 

This is a big part of what we mean when we talk about a satisfying ending. Not just that it wraps up the plot, but that we see how going through the experiences of it affect the protagonist, and what legacy they leave. Without some kind of change effected by the character’s journey along the plot, you don’t have a story, just a series of events.

Without some kind of change effected by the character’s journey along the plot, you don’t have a story, just a series of events.

It’s not always the protagonist who must undergo a change. In some stories, like Romeo and Juliet or Captain America, the characters are the same at the end as at the beginning and don’t seem to have undergone any meaningful change or growth.

But what makes those stories work is that some change has been effected by the character’s actions, or even by their lack of change. Romeo and Juliet’s death brings peace at last to their feuding families; Captain America’s moral constancy saves the world.

In another of Cage’s career-best performances, Leaving Las Vegas, his character is again left at the end essentially where we found him at the beginning: an alcoholic determined to drink himself to death. But even in this bleak film, there is some sliver of hope and grace for the woman he shared an intense relationship with in the last days of his life who offered him unconditional love, so the journey feels satisfying and has meaning.

Dream Scenario doesn’t give us that—I saw no real change or impact for Cage’s character, his wife, his family, the people affected by dreams of him, or the world…and felt a little cheated.

Don’t Confuse Theme with Story

Finally, I found Dream Scenario a bit disappointing because it became a story about theme more than character. The film presents thought-provoking ideas on fame and celebrity, cancel culture, masculinity, success, technology, and more—but it felt to me as if those themes take center stage, rather than the character’s journey.

There’s an argument to be made here regarding artistic intention. Our group wound up having a fair amount of discussion about this movie and what it meant—and perhaps that was the filmmakers’ intention: not to offer answers, but to encourage viewers to ask the questions.

That’s entirely valid, and I am a huge proponent of writing the story you want to write. But a story about a theme may come across as more treatise than tale, and while the movie engendered interesting conversation, ultimately I found it didn’t impact me very deeply.

What Makes a Story Work?

Though ultimately Dream Scenario left me feeling a bit dissatisfied, I did enjoy it. The areas where I felt the storyteller fell short still didn’t make it unwatchable to me (though I’d be unlikely to watch it again).

In analyzing what is and isn’t effective in a story, I’m always mindful that my opinions are only that—my personal impressions (though in an editor’s case, that’s informed by a hopefully broad experience with other stories, and knowledge of the market). Every reader is different—just check out the range of reviews for books like A Confederacy of Dunces or 50 Shades of Gray or Twilight. Creativity is subjective, as is any business based on it.

Illustrating that, my husband thought that the film’s premise ultimately worked, though he also felt ambivalent about the movie. One of our group shared my view of it—watchable but flawed—and our fourth bemoaned the wasted two hours of her life she’d never get back. 😊

Critics’ reviews for Dream Scenario have been good, averaging a 92% on rotten tomatoes. The audience reaction has been a little more tepid, with a score of 70% at the time I wrote this.

Analyzing story isn’t about deciding if it’s good or bad. It’s about learning to see specifically what makes it work effectively and what may not—and it’s one of the best ways I know to learn how to tell effective, impactful stories of your own.

If you want to dig deeper into how to hone your analytical skills to deepen your understanding of writing craft and editing/revision, join me and Jane Friedman January 24 for one of my most popular presentations, “Analyze Like an Editor.” The class is $25, and live online at 1 pm EST, with playback for registrants.