[Butter Report Card] HIT MAN (Netflix)
Hit Man features a delightful mashup of caper, complication, and romance Butter, but smashes into the #1 issue afflicting non-romance writers who try to add romantic arcs to their other-genre stories.
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Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise) and co-written by him and its lead actor, Glen Powell, has become a bona fide hit for Netflix, the streaming service that acquired it after a buzzy festival run.
What made this movie irresistible? And what should we Consider when trying to create stories that mash up elements from more than two genres?
ECLECTIC WRITER ALERT! You’ll definitely want to come over the Butter Report Card for Hit Man1!
Spoiler Alert: If you like to be surprised, make sure you’ve watched Hit Man (streaming on Netflix in most territories) before continuing on with this post. (There are also light spoilers for Bridgerton Season 3, Wednesday Season 1, and Baby Reindeer)
UFs PLAYING OUT
From Zero to Hero: When someone unassuming becomes the hero of their story, usually via a previously unknown Quick/Easy Acquisition Native Talent (Q/EANT).
In Hit Man, a nebbish, divorced professor, who had trouble sustaining a loving relationship, discovers he has a Q/EANT for impersonating hit men when he’s forced to sub-in for an undercover detective who’s been temporarily suspended from the police force.
After getting shoved out of the background of the story, he goes on to become both the figurative and literal hero of his life, and he’s eventually rewarded with a happy ending when he Risks It All For Love.
I’m the One They Call Doctor Healgood: When someone gets to help someone wounded (physically or emotionally or both) heal through the power of good sex.
This is not only highly arousing for readers, but it’s also a great way to progress a relationship and the characters within it.
In the case of Hit Man, his emotionally wounded Mysterious Love Interest becomes bolder and more aggressive, transforming from a helpless, wilted flower into someone who is willing to kill her abusive, controlling husband.
Butter Sex Tip: In romance, it’s a great tactic to make the cause of the emotional wound a Big Juicy Secret that eventually gets revealed after Breakthrough Sex or a Breakthrough Argument2. These kinds of confessions show your audience that your couple has progressed from hiding to revealing themselves, which is an important aspect of both character and couple development.
Surprise! Our Casual Love Is Real: When two people with trust issues discover they can trust each other. And that the other person in the relationship really does love them back. This often involves one or both of them Risking It All For Love and/or Protection. This Butter often powers No Strings Attached romantic arcs and Fake Relationship romances like Purple Hearts, in which the previously cagey heroine ends up confessing her deep and abiding love after the hero Risks It All to protect her.
BUTTER
Here are pats of Butter that made Hit Man yummy and/or compelling.
🧈Q/EANT Getting Stronger Display: When the MC gets to play around with and show off the talent they either quickly or easily acquired.
Think about the “Getting Stronger” montages in…
Both versions of The Karate Kid
The low stakes first season fights in Cobra Kai (Netflix)
The main characters of The Devil Wears Prada and Emily in Paris becoming more fashionable over the first hour and first season, respectively.
Audiences love Competence Butter. So, whatever talent you want your character to develop, think about ways to show it over the course of your story.
🧈 The Case of the Mysterious Love Interest! Hit Man is a mash-up of so many things: it’s a character study, a coming of (thirty-something) age story, a caper, and perhaps most commercially, a romantic noir.
Keep in mind that an MC solving the mystery of who their new lover is wins as a perennial favorite.
It works super-well for any kind of Arranged/Fake Relationship setup. (ex. Queen Charlotte, Purple Hearts)
And so many hit psychological thrillers are powered by this Butter engine, including Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, and Before I Go to Sleep.3
Real Talk. Right now, I’m in the powerful grips of Flower of Evil (Netflix), a K-Drama4 centered around a detective whose beloved and outwardly perfect husband may or may not be a serial killer.
I cannot watch episodes of this K-Drama fast enough as this detective begins to unknowingly solve the mystery of her mysterious husband.
In the case of Hit Man, we’re kept on the edge of our seats, trying to figure out if his Mysterious Love Interest is playing him for a fool. On one hand, their sex is off the chain.
On the other hand, hot roleplay might not be the only reason she decided to pursue a no-strings-attached relationship with a hit man. I adored the way the scene where they agree to keep it cas replay in our minds as The Case of the Mysterious Love Interest really starts to twist out with the body drop of her estranged husband.
However, this is also where the Missed Opportunity to fully Bake the Surprise! Our Casual Love Is Real UF becomes apparent.
So, if you’re writing a non-straightforward mash-up of genres with heavy romantic elements…
CONSIDER
Did I actually SHOW the main character fall in love?
Did I fully Bake my romantic UF into my larger plot?
I mentioned in my last post that No, Baby Reindeer, Don’t! Butter is super-hard to pull off—mainly because it can feel excruciating for the writer to have their characters do truly unwise things in order to reach their goal.
But in Hit Man, this particular kind of Butter doesn’t get pulled off because we’re saying, “Why, Baby Reindeer, why?”
We’re confused because the Casual Love Turns into Real Love UF isn’t Baked into the overall plot, and that makes both his goal and motivation unclear toward the end of the penultimate act.
In Bridgerton, we know that Penelope's motivation for not telling Colin that she is Lady Whistledown until it blows up in her face is that she has loved him for so long and is afraid she’ll lose him.
In Baby Reindeer, the MC explains ad nauseum that he makes poor decisions around his stalker because he both craves her attention and is still wrangling with the emotional fallout from another abusive relationship, which (like his desire to become a comedian) is centered around a complicated desire for attention.
We might not agree with the risks they take for their respective versions of love, but depending on our level of empathy, we understand them.
Hit Man does a great job of Spreading Risk It All For Love Butter when the MC helps the gorgeous woman he is supposed to be setting up for an intent-to-murder charge as opposed to incriminating her.
And the eclectic movie Serves a wonderful epilogue in which the MC now enjoys an authentic relationship with the woman he Risked It All for.
However, this Serve of the UF was never fully baked—most likely because the storytellers were more interested in the noir aspect of the plot than its romantic arc.
It’s possible, though, that the storytellers could have had their noir cake and eaten their happy ending, too, if they’d added just one non-sex scene that cemented the pretend hit man had fallen in real love with his Mysterious Love Interest.
Butter Tip: If you consider a sex scene your Proof of Love, consider adding a non-sex scene that also serves as Proof of Love to really cement the characters’ growing affection for each other.
There’s a reason this scene from Purple Hearts,5 in which the hero helps the heroine though a diabetes episode, melted our hearts and made us root for them to go the distance, even though he’s keeping a HUGE secret from her.
Because we don’t have a Proof of Love scene in Hit Man, the movie slams into several confusion points when the MC starts acting in ways wildly incongruent with the established character, including risking both his official and undercover careers and major jail time to save the Mysterious Love Interest from paying the consequence for her crime and ultimately building a happy life and family with her.
We don’t necessarily hate the happy ending. But it doesn’t feel fully Baked.
Alas, this is a classic example of romantic arcs that are Served without being fully Baked. This often happens in stories that want to be too many things.
In the case of Hit Man…
The Zero to Hero character study UF is
Spread when the MC’s pregnant (by a new husband) therapist ex-wife tells him exactly what’s wrong with him and breaks down that people can change,
Baked the first time the MC saves the Mysterious Love Interest, and
Served when he saves the Mysterious Love Interest from paying the societal consequences for her crimes and, therefore, becomes the chosen identity hero of his own story.
The I’m the One They Call Doctor Healgood emotional wound UF is
Spread when the MC engages in a sexual relationship with the Emotionally Wounded Love Interest,
Baked when she starts initiating bolder instances of sex, and he helps her figure out how to kill her husband,
and
Spread when she takes back her power by killing her husband.
However, the Surprise! Our Casual Love Is Real UF is only Spread and Served because we don’t actually see the MC fall in love.
SOLVES AND TAKEAWAYS
So, if you are cobbling together your own mash-up, try to make sure you have a UF playing out from each genre/element of your plot. And that each genre/element is officially Spread, Baked, and Served.
Example from Wednesday—which is a Dark Academy Gothic Coming-of-Age Mystery Romance.
All of the mysteries are Spread, Baked, and Served.
The romantic triangle is Spread, Baked, and Served.
The highly shipped relationship with her roommate is Spread, Baked, and Served.6
Please keep in mind that these Spreads, Bakes, and Serves need not be overly complicated. Wednesday and her roommate’s relationship progression can easily be tracked through Wednesday’s willingness to receive and give hugs.
Just remember that if you have an eclectic mash-up, it’s super-important to ensure at least one UF is playing out for every genre included in your story.
Spread, Bake, and Serve those UFs so your story feels genius.
If you want to find out more about Spreading, Baking, and Serving romance, check out the Well-Executed Butter series of posts:
And most definitely let me know how you felt about Hit Man in the comments.
Want to make sure your stories and blurbs SPREAD, BAKE, and SERVE romance?
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Butter up your romance with the Universal Fantasy List: ROMANCE!
Premium subscribers, please find a deeper discount and the audio version of this post after the butter jump!
Report Card Explainer: I’m less interested in grading entertainments than breaking them down for Butter. So these report cards are more like the ones you might have gotten in preschool, focusing mostly on the positive with Consideration for possible areas of improvement that might benefit us all as writers.
As I’ve noted in so many places, sex and fights can often be interchanged in fantasy life.
I didn’t actually watch or read Before I Go to Sleep. But this recap of the movie, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth was a banger that had me on the edge of my seat:
Special shout-out to my dear friend author Kenya Wright, who rec’d Flower of Evil to me along with Hierarchy (both on Netflix).
If you loved Purple Hearts as much as I did, I broke it all the way down as a Bonus for the Bestseller Magic Course.
If you’re wondering how, we cover the Wednesday roommate relationship arc and so much more in the Bestseller Magic Course.