Movie Themes: Examples of Common Themes for Screenwriters

Theme in film

What is a movie theme?

Robert McKee, the famous screenwriting teacher, defines stories as “equipment for living.” He argues that stories teach us how to live by dramatizing common themes that are central to our lives. McKee refers to movie themes as “controlling ideas,” which are “the purest form of a story's meaning, the vision of life the audience members carry away into their lives.” Here's McKee with further explanation.

For example, while “justice” may be the overriding subject of a movie, a theme derived from this subject may be something like, “If a person doesn't first do herself justice, she can never do it for others.”

In the film analysis below, we organize a number of types of themes into seven major subjects:

• God and Philosophy
• Survival
• Virtue and Values
• Love
• Good vs. Evil
• Society
• Discovering Self-Knowledge

For each of these subjects, we generate a list of subtopics, then analyze how classic films transform several of those subtopics into common themes in movies. Any given movie, of course, can yield multiple and overlapping movie theme examples from across these major subjects.

The symbol of the desk is used in No Country for Old Men, a movie in which the implacable force is pure evil in the form of Javier Bardem’s terrifying serial killer, Anton Chigurh, whose nature and motivations the other characters cannot fathom. 

This character suggests the theme that “the more we try to understand the nature of the universe, the less we are likely to understand it.” The theme is further symbolized by Chigurh’s use of a coin flip to decide who will live or die.

For the Coens in this film, human self-determination is an illusion.

The theme is also expressed through the character of Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), mystified and struck helpless by a universe he can’t understand, much less control. The Coens organize the movie as a standoff between good and evil, using the Neo-Western genre as a way to reinforce that traditional story.

But then they subvert the genre’s typical triumph of good in the third act. Not only does evil vanquish good, but Sheriff Bell quits law enforcement, feeling that his actions can no longer make a difference. In this scene, Sheriff Bell lays out this existential quandary. 

While viewers can read this as the villain getting his comeuppance, the random nature of it — as well as the fact that none of the main characters even realize that it happens — suggests the theme that the moral arc of the universe does not bend towards justice, no matter how much we want it to.

While Andy fights outward oppression, his friend Red (Morgan Freeman) struggles internally. While Red has an easier time of it in prison than Andy, he doesn’t believe that he can make it on the outside if he is ever released.

The famous line from the scene, “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’,” can be tweaked slightly to convey another theme: “If you don’t commit to actively living despite your circumstances, you aren’t really alive, and you might as well be dead.” Eventually Red embraces living, leading to one of cinema’s most famous and moving endings.

Determined to save her parents, Chihiro tentatively begins to face her fears, becoming braver and more adventurous as she stumbles into one strange and frightening situation after another. Eventually she makes friends in this world and decides to risk herself to save them. Even the film’s trailer describes her quest in terms of virtues and values.

Ultimately, Chihiro saves her parents and returns to the real world wiser, bolder, and more self-reliant.

Eventually, Rick agrees to help Ilsa and Laslo. His sacrifice for both Ilsa and the war effort is made out of the highest kind of love - doing what’s best for another person even if it’s not what you want for yourself. The climactic scene in which Rick expresses his love through selflessness is one of the most famous and celebrated in the movies.

The fact that Rick is willing to give up Ilsa for a higher cause also shows that he has gained self-love, as his self-loathing and self-pity would not allow him to make such a choice earlier in the film.    

Do the Right Thing is a powerful indictment of systemic racism, of a society organized around racial hierarchies — with white people at the top — and police policies that single out black people as especially threatening.

But Lee also calls for personal responsibility, exhorting each of us to do better at treating each other with kindness and empathy. The themes in Do the Right Thing  are not dramatized with particular subtlety, but they remain as relevant as ever.

In the second half, the characters’ embrace of crime and violence takes its toll as they succumb to infighting, drug addiction, financial problems, prison, and death. Compare the early Copacabana scene to a later scene when Henry and Karen realize that life as they know it is coming to an end. Scorsese conveys the theme visually, using ugly mise-en-scene, flat lighting, and awkward framing to reflect the poverty of their values.

Ironically, there is very little good in Goodfellas. What good exists is represented by the barley-glimpsed working class people for whom Henry and his friends have nothing but contempt.

For Scorsese, the worst thing about these gangsters is that they never learn why the humble lives of the working class people are more noble than their own. Recognizing this at least might set them on the path to some kind of redemption.

Movie Themes #7

Discovering Self-Knowledge

In this category, subtopics that yield types of themes include:

• Coming of age
• Shallowness vs. depth
• Finding empowerment
• Starting over
• Learning to live with mistakes/guilt/regret
• The cost of not accepting one’s true identity
• Disillusionment/Loss of innocence
• Dangers of ignorance
• Finding self-awareness
• Desire to escape

Cher designates herself matchmatcher in the movie, trying to find love for her friends and teachers. But she tries to hook them up based on shallow considerations such as what social clique they belong to.

Because Cher doesn’t take the time to really get to know people, she ends up feeling confused and alone. Once she begins to accept people for who they really are — and recognize that nobody’s perfect — she is able to develop a deeper understanding of herself.

In each of the movies we’ve analyzed, the arc of a character’s change — his or her ability to find some degree of enlightenment and happiness — depends on discovering self-knowledge, whether it’s Cher, Rick in Casablanca, Red and Andy in Shawshank, or Chihiro in Spirited Away.

Conversely, the characters that don’t discover self-knowledge, such as Henry Hill and his fellow gangsters in Goodfellas are doomed to a life without true fulfillment.

UP NEXT

Theme: Definition and Examples

Now that we’ve identified common themes in seven classic films, read the StudioBinder article on theme and learn more about its purpose and how screenwriters and directors weave theme within narrative film.

Up Next: What is theme?