7 Types of Conflict in Film, With a Movie Scene for Each

A man in a Texas gas station is asked to call a coin toss. He does not know what he stands to win. We do, and the scene is almost unbearable, even though nobody raises a voice or a weapon.

That is conflict: a character who wants something, and a force in the way. There are seven types of conflict in film, and this list counts them down by how far away the opponent is. Number 7 is the universe. Number one is inside the hero’s own head. Each type comes with one movie scene that shows it at full strength. Spoilers ahead.

7) Character vs fate (man vs fate)

In a character vs fate conflict the opponent is destiny, chance or a god, and the hero cannot fight it directly. All they can do is choose how to meet it.

• Film: No Country for Old Men (2007)
• Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
• Who is in conflict: Llewelyn Moss, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and everyone else, against Anton Chigurh and what he stands for
• What they want: Moss wants to keep $2 million he found in the desert. Bell wants the world to make sense
• What stands in the way: A killer who lets a coin decide who lives
• How it ends: Moss dies off screen. Chigurh is hit by a car at random and limps away. Bell retires

The scene:

Chigurh stops for petrol in West Texas, 1980. The owner makes small talk, and Chigurh takes offence. He puts a coin on the counter and tells the man to call it. The man asks what he is calling it for. Chigurh will not say. The man calls it right, and he lives.

Chigurh sees himself as an instrument. The coin travelled 22 years to get here, he says, and now it is here. Near the end he offers the same toss to Moss’s widow, Carla Jean. She refuses to call it. She tells him the choice is his and the coin has no say. It is the only time anyone in the film argues with fate, and it does not save her.

Also watch:

• Final Destination (2000). Teenagers escape a plane crash, and Death comes back to collect them in order. Fate as a slasher villain.
• Slumdog Millionaire (2008). A boy from the Mumbai slums knows every quiz answer because of the life he has led. The film’s verdict is that it was written.

Why it matters: You cannot punch fate, so give it a face. A coin, a list or a quiz show turns an idea into something a camera can film.

6) Character vs the supernatural (man vs supernatural)

In a character vs the supernatural conflict the opponent breaks the rules of the natural world, so the hero’s usual tools stop working.

• Film: The Exorcist (1973)
• Director: William Friedkin
• Who is in conflict: Chris MacNeil and two priests, against the demon inside her 12-year-old daughter
• What they want: Regan back
• What stands in the way: Something medicine cannot find and faith can barely face
• How it ends: Father Merrin dies during the rite. Father Karras takes the demon into himself and goes out of the window

The scene:

The cleverest stretch of The Exorcist has no demon in it. It is the hospital. Regan is scanned, injected and tested, and the film shows every needle. The doctors find nothing. Friedkin is closing doors. By the time Chris turns to the Church, the audience has watched science run out of answers.

The priest she finds is the worst man for the job. Father Karras is a psychiatrist who has lost his faith and blames himself for his mother’s death. The demon knows it, and speaks to him in her voice. When Merrin dies, Karras stops praying and starts fighting. He orders the demon to take him, and then throws himself down the steps outside.

Also watch:

• The Shining (1980). A hotel works on a caretaker’s weaknesses through a long winter. We cover the real building in where The Shining was filmed.
• Poltergeist (1982). Ghosts take a suburban family’s youngest child through the television.

Why it matters: Make the supernatural the last explanation left. The longer your characters try ordinary answers, the more the audience believes the extraordinary one.

5) Character vs nature (man vs nature)

In a character vs nature conflict the opponent is an animal, a storm, a sea or a planet. It has no motive and no mercy, and it cannot be reasoned with.

• Film: Jaws (1975)
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Who is in conflict: Police Chief Brody, the scientist Hooper and the fisherman Quint, against a great white shark
• What they want: A safe beach
• What stands in the way: The shark, and a mayor who will not close the water in the week of the Fourth of July
• How it ends: The shark eats Quint and sinks the boat. Brody shoots an air tank in its mouth

The scene:

Out at sea, Quint harpoons the shark and ties it to a yellow barrel. The barrel is meant to tire it and keep it on the surface. It goes under. From then on the three men are hunted by barrels. One pops up behind the boat, then two, then three, moving against the current.

Jaws is one of the purest man vs nature examples in movies because the shark wants nothing. The human conflict, Brody against the mayor, exists to keep people in the water. The beach scene is also a textbook case of the Kuleshov effect.

Also watch:

• The Revenant (2015). A trapper is mauled by a bear and crawls through a frozen wilderness. See where The Revenant was filmed.
• Cast Away (2000). A FedEx man spends four years alone on an island. See where Cast Away was filmed.
• The Martian (2015). An astronaut has to grow food on a planet where nothing grows. See where The Martian was filmed.

Why it matters: Nature has no character arc, so the change has to happen in the humans. Brody starts the film afraid of the water and ends it swimming home.

4) Character vs technology (man vs machine)

In a character vs technology conflict the opponent is something people built, and it now follows its own logic.

• Film: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Director: Stanley Kubrick
• Who is in conflict: The astronaut Dave Bowman, against HAL 9000, the computer that runs his ship
• What they want: Bowman wants to stay alive and finish the mission. So does HAL
• What stands in the way: HAL has decided the crew is the risk
• How it ends: HAL kills four of the five men on board. Bowman gets back inside and shuts him down by hand

The scene:

Bowman and his crewmate Frank Poole suspect HAL is making errors. They shut themselves in a pod and switch off the radio so that he cannot hear them plan to disconnect him. Kubrick cuts to HAL’s red eye, then to their mouths through the window. He is reading their lips.

HAL cuts Poole loose on a spacewalk. When Bowman goes out to recover the body, HAL calmly refuses to open the pod bay doors. Bowman blows himself through the emergency airlock without a helmet. Then he floats into HAL’s memory core and pulls the modules one at a time, while the machine pleads, slows down and sings “Daisy Bell”.

Also watch:

• The Terminator (1984). A machine from 2029 is sent to kill one waitress, and it does not stop.
• Ex Machina (2014). A programmer tests a robot for consciousness, and she is testing him.

Why it matters: The best machine opponents are not evil. HAL is doing his job as he understands it, which makes him close kin to the well-meaning antagonists in our anti villain examples.

3) Character vs society (man vs society)

In a character vs society conflict the opponent is a system: a government, a hospital, a company, a class or a set of rules. It has a human face, and the face is not the real enemy.

• Film: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
• Director: Miloš Forman
• Who is in conflict: Randle McMurphy, against Nurse Ratched and the hospital behind her
• What they want: McMurphy wants to be treated as a man. Ratched wants order
• What stands in the way: Rules that can always be rewritten by the person holding the keys
• How it ends: McMurphy is lobotomised. Chief Bromden smothers him out of mercy, breaks a window and walks free

The scene:

McMurphy asks for the ward schedule to be changed so the men can watch the World Series. Ratched allows a vote. Every man in the group raises his hand. She rules that it is not a majority, because the silent long-term patients at the back count too. McMurphy finally coaxes one more hand into the air. She tells him the meeting is closed.

So he sits down in front of the blank television and calls the game anyway. He invents pitches, hits and a crowd. One by one the others gather round and cheer at a grey screen, and Ratched stands behind the glass with nothing in the rulebook to stop it.

The lead is a rule-breaker with a criminal record, which also makes him an anti hero.

Also watch:

• The Truman Show (1998). A man discovers his town is a television set and his life is the programme.
• 12 Angry Men (1957). One juror holds out against eleven, and against the ease of a quick verdict.
• Erin Brockovich (2000). A legal clerk with no training takes on a power company over poisoned water.

Why it matters: Society wins on procedure, so let your hero win on spirit. The imaginary ball game changes no rule, and it is the moment the ward stops being Ratched’s.

2) Character vs character (man vs man)

In a character vs character conflict two people want things that cannot both happen. It drives more films than any of the other types of conflict, and the best versions make the two sides equals.

• Film: Heat (1995)
• Director: Michael Mann
• Who is in conflict: Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, against the thief Neil McCauley
• What they want: Hanna wants McCauley’s crew off the street. McCauley wants one last score and a way out
• What stands in the way: Each other, and the fact that neither can do anything else
• How it ends: On a runway at LAX. Hanna shoots McCauley, and holds his hand while he dies

The scene:

Halfway through the film Hanna pulls McCauley over on the freeway and asks if he wants a cup of coffee. They sit across a diner table, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the same frame for the first time, and they talk like colleagues. Broken marriages. Bad dreams. Neither knows how to live a normal life, and neither wants to.

Then each tells the other, politely, that he will kill him if it comes to it. Both mean it. Every gunfight that follows carries the weight of that table. For 25 more pairs like them, see our external conflict examples in movies.

Also watch:

• Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Two decent parents, one child, one courtroom.
• There Will Be Blood (2007). An oilman and a preacher spend 30 years trying to humiliate each other.

Why it matters: Put your hero and your opponent in a room and let them be civil. If the scene still crackles, the conflict is built on what they want, and you do not need to make either of them a monster.

1) Character vs self (man vs self)

In a character vs self conflict the opponent is the hero’s own fear, guilt, pride or desire. It is the only internal type, and it is first on this list because every other conflict ends up feeding it.

• Film: Raging Bull (1980)
• Director: Martin Scorsese
• Who is in conflict: The boxer Jake LaMotta, against Jake LaMotta
• What they want: To be champion, and to be loved
• What stands in the way: A jealousy so fierce that he destroys everyone who loves him
• How it ends: Alone in a dressing room in 1964, overweight, rehearsing another man’s speech about wasted chances

The scene:

LaMotta has opponents with names. Sugar Ray Robinson beats him bloody in their last fight, and Jake’s only answer is to boast that Ray never knocked him down. But the ring is the one place he is at peace. The damage happens at home. He decides, on no evidence, that his wife is sleeping with his brother, and beats Joey in front of his children.

Years later he is in a jail cell in Florida. There is nobody left to hit. So he punches the concrete wall, then drives his head into it, and sobs that he is not an animal. It is the man vs self conflict with everything else stripped away: one man, one wall.

Robert De Niro gained about 60 pounds to play the older Jake. We rank 20 more inner battles, from Michael Corleone to Nina Sayers, in our guide to internal conflict in film.

Why it matters: The outer fight gives the audience something to watch. The inner fight gives them a reason to care. Work out what your hero is fighting in himself before you choose who he fights in the ring.

What is conflict in a story?

Conflict in a story is the struggle between a character who wants something and a force that stands in the way. No want, no conflict. No obstacle, no story.

The same types of conflict in literature apply to film, with one difference. A novel can tell you what a character is thinking. A film has to show it, so conflict in movies tends to be turned into something visible: a shark, a nurse, a red light on a wall.

Internal vs external conflict: what is the difference?

Internal conflict happens inside a character, and external conflict happens between a character and something outside them.

	Internal conflict	External conflict
The opponent	The character’s own fear, guilt, desire or belief	Another person, society, nature, technology, the supernatural or fate
Types	Character vs self	The other six
How film shows it	Performance, silence, choices under pressure	Action, dialogue, obstacles
What it gives the story	Meaning	Momentum
Example	Jake LaMotta in his cell	Brody on the sinking boat
Go deeper	Internal conflict in film	External conflict examples in movies

The two work as a pair. In Jaws, Brody’s fear of the water is the internal conflict and the shark is the external one. The ending settles both with a single shot.

How many types of conflict are there?

There are seven types of conflict on this list, and you will also see the number given as four or six. All the lists agree on the core.

The 4 types of conflict taught in schools are character vs character, vs nature, vs society and vs self. Lists of six add technology and the supernatural. Lists of seven add fate. Some writers add an eighth, character vs the unknown, which film usually folds into the supernatural.

The older “man vs” wording and the newer “character vs” or “person vs” wording mean the same thing.

How do you write conflict in a screenplay?

You write conflict in a screenplay by giving your hero a clear want, and then putting the strongest possible obstacle between them and it.

1. Name the central conflict in one line. Who wants what, and what is in the way? “A police chief who fears the water must kill a shark.” If you cannot write the line, the script is not ready.
2. Pick a main type, then add a second. Jaws is man vs nature with a man vs society problem in the mayor. The second type keeps act two alive.
3. Tie the outer conflict to an inner one. The opponent should press on the hero’s flaw. That pressure is what drives a character arc.
4. Raise the stakes in steps. Each clash should cost more than the last, and the final one should cost the most.

Heat has the best man vs man conflict of its decade, and there is no venom in it. Hanna and McCauley like each other.

What they have is equal skill and goals that cannot both come true. Build the opponent as the hero’s match, give him a reason, and the heat takes care of itself.

For the people inside the conflict, start with character development. For where it all sits in a script, see our screenwriting guide.

FAQs about conflict in film

The Final Cut on conflict in film

Seven types of conflict, one rule. Somebody wants something, and something is in the way. The opponent can be as large as fate or as close as the hero’s own reflection.

Six of these seven films are on the Library of Congress National Film Registry, and none of them settles for one conflict. Watch them with the list beside you. Then look at your own script and ask who, or what, is in the way.