Internal Conflict in Film: The 20 Best Examples, Ranked

Michael Corleone sits in a restaurant in the Bronx with a gun in his pocket and a decision to make. Nobody is threatening him. The fight is inside his head, and it is the best scene in The Godfather.

That is internal conflict in film: a character at war with their own desire, fear, belief, duty or need. These are the 20 best examples, ranked by how much of the story the inner fight carries. Number 20 shares the screen with a great villain. Number one has no villain at all. Spoilers ahead, including the twists in Fight Club and Tully.

20) The Dark Knight (2008)

Bruce Wayne’s internal conflict in The Dark Knight is a single rule, no killing, tested by a villain built to make him break it.

• Release date: 18 July 2008
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Character: Bruce Wayne / Batman (Christian Bale)
• Type of internal conflict: Belief
• The two sides: His one rule vs the lives that breaking it would save
• Box office: $1.009 billion
• Awards: 8 Oscar nominations, 2 wins, including Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger. National Film Registry, 2020
• Fun fact: Ledger was only the second performer to win an acting Oscar after his death, following Peter Finch

Internal conflict example:

Bruce wants out. He sees Harvey Dent as the hero who can work in daylight, and he sees a life with Rachel on the other side of the mask. Every Joker scheme attacks that hope. Choose Harvey or Rachel. Unmask or let people die. Run the Joker down on the street or swerve.

He swerves. That is the whole conflict in one stunt. The Joker stands in the road begging to be hit, and Batman crashes his own bike to keep the rule.

It ranks last here because the Joker does half the work. The same film sits at number 13 on our list of external conflict examples in movies. Same story, other half of the fight.

Why it matters: A strong villain is a pressure test for the hero’s belief. If your antagonist attacks the body and leaves the belief alone, you have an action scene and nothing more.

19) Return of the Jedi (1983)

Darth Vader’s internal conflict plays out behind a mask, with no face and almost no dialogue, and it still lands.

• Release date: 25 May 1983
• Director: Richard Marquand
• Character: Darth Vader / Anakin Skywalker (David Prowse in the suit, James Earl Jones as the voice, Sebastian Shaw unmasked)
• Type of internal conflict: Belief
• The two sides: Loyalty to the Emperor vs love for his son
• Box office: $482 million
• Awards: Special Achievement Oscar for Visual Effects, 4 further nominations. National Film Registry, 2021
• Fun fact: Marquand wanted a famous actor such as Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud to play the unmasked Vader. George Lucas said no, because a star would distract the audience

Internal conflict example:

Luke names it out loud on Endor: “I feel the conflict within you.” Vader denies it. The rest of the film proves Luke right.

In the throne room the Emperor tortures Luke with lightning. The camera cuts to Vader. He looks at his master. He looks at his son. He looks back. There is no face to read, so the edit and John Williams’s score do the acting. Then he picks up the Emperor and throws him down the shaft. That turn is why Vader gets a yes in the verdicts on our list of anti villain examples.

Why it matters: You do not need a monologue to show internal conflict. Three cuts between two people the character loves, and the audience does the rest.

18) Toy Story (1995)

Buzz Lightyear’s internal conflict is a belief about who he is, and the film breaks it with a television advert.

• Release date: 22 November 1995
• Director: John Lasseter
• Character: Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen)
• Type of internal conflict: Belief
• The two sides: “I am a space ranger” vs the evidence that he is a child’s toy
• Box office: $401.2 million on a $30 million budget
• Awards: 3 Oscar nominations and a Special Achievement Oscar for Lasseter. National Film Registry, 2005
• Fun fact: In early drafts Buzz knew he was a toy. Joss Whedon rewrote him as an action figure who has no idea, and the production credits that change with transforming the film

Internal conflict example:

For two acts Buzz has no doubt at all. Then he sees a Buzz Lightyear commercial in Sid’s house, complete with “not a flying toy” on screen. He climbs the stair rail and jumps to prove the advert wrong. He falls and his arm snaps off.

The next scene is the low point played for laughs. Buzz sits at a tea party in an apron as “Mrs Nesbitt.” The joke works because the grief under it is real. He resolves the conflict when he accepts the new belief and uses it: “falling with style.”

Woody vs Buzz is number 5 on our external conflict list. This entry is the fight Buzz has alone.

Why it matters: An identity crisis is the cleanest belief conflict there is. Give the character proof they cannot argue with and film what they do next.

17) Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Spider-Man 2 turns Peter Parker’s internal conflict into a physical symptom: he wants out so badly that his powers stop working.

• Release date: 30 June 2004
• Director: Sam Raimi
• Character: Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire)
• Type of internal conflict: Desire
• The two sides: A normal life with Mary Jane vs the responsibility he has carried since Uncle Ben died
• Box office: $797 million
• Awards: Won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, plus 2 sound nominations
• Fun fact: Maguire’s back condition nearly cost him the role. Jake Gyllenhaal was lined up to replace him

Internal conflict example:

Peter is failing at everything. He is late for class, fired from the pizza job and missing Mary Jane’s play. Then his webs cut out in mid swing and he drops into an alley.

A doctor tells him the problem is in his head. So Peter puts the suit in a bin and walks away, and for ten minutes of screen time he is happy. The film lets him enjoy it. Then a building burns, he runs in with no powers, and he learns someone on another floor did not make it out.

Why it matters: Raimi found a way to photograph a state of mind. If the inner fight can change what the character’s body can do, the audience never needs it explained.

16) Casablanca (1942)

Rick Blaine’s internal conflict is between the cynic he plays and the idealist he used to be, and he settles it on a runway.

• Release date: 26 November 1942 (premiere), 23 January 1943 (US general release)
• Director: Michael Curtiz
• Character: Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart)
• Type of internal conflict: Belief
• The two sides: “I stick my neck out for nobody” vs the man who once fought for lost causes
• Box office: $3.7 to $6.9 million on a budget of about $1 million
• Awards: 3 Oscars from 8 nominations: Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. Bogart was nominated. National Film Registry, 1989
• Fun fact: Co-writer Howard Koch said the team started shooting without a finished script or an ending

Internal conflict example:

Rick holds two letters of transit. They can put two people on the plane to Lisbon. He can use them to leave with Ilsa, the woman who broke him in Paris. Or he can give them to Ilsa and her husband, a Resistance leader the Nazis want dead.

The script makes both choices cost him. Keep Ilsa and he betrays the cause he pretends not to care about. Send her away and he loses her twice. He sends her away, shoots a Nazi major and walks off into the fog with a corrupt policeman.

Why it matters: Casablanca is the model for desire against belief. The want is personal. The belief is bigger than the character. The ending works because he pays in full.

15) The King’s Speech (2010)

The King’s Speech is a film about a man whose enemy is his own throat.

• Release date: 6 September 2010 (Telluride premiere), US limited release that November
• Director: Tom Hooper
• Character: King George VI, “Bertie” (Colin Firth)
• Type of internal conflict: Fear
• The two sides: Fear of speaking vs the duty to speak for a country at war
• Box office: $414.2 million on a $15 million budget
• Awards: 4 Oscars from 12 nominations: Best Picture, Director, Actor (Firth) and Original Screenplay
• Fun fact: Screenwriter David Seidler developed a stammer himself as a child

Internal conflict example:

The proof that the conflict is internal comes early. Lionel Logue puts headphones on Bertie, plays loud music and has him read Hamlet into a recorder. Bertie storms out. Later he plays the disc. With his own voice hidden from him, he read it perfectly.

The block is fear, and the film traces it back to a childhood of correction and ridicule. The climax is a man alone in a small room with a microphone, in September 1939, with Logue conducting him through nine minutes of live radio.

Why it matters: A fear conflict needs a task the character cannot dodge. A king has to speak. Find the one thing your character’s job or family demands, then make that the thing they are afraid of.

14) Mulan (1998)

Mulan sings her internal conflict to her own reflection: the daughter her family expects against the person she is.

• Release date: 19 June 1998
• Directors: Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft
• Character: Mulan (speaking voice Ming-Na Wen, singing voice Lea Salonga)
• Type of internal conflict: Expectation
• The two sides: Bringing honour to her family the approved way vs being herself
• Box office: $304 million
• Awards: Oscar nomination for the score. Won the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature
• Fun fact: Christina Aguilera’s single version of “Reflection” won her a record contract with RCA

Internal conflict example:

The matchmaker scene is a disaster. Mulan goes home, wipes off half her make-up and sings “Reflection” to a face that is half bride, half herself. It is the internal conflict drawn as a split image, which animation can do in one frame.

Taking her father’s armour looks like it solves the problem. It does not. In the army she is hiding again, this time as a man. The conflict only ends when she saves the Emperor as herself and he bows to her. For more from the studio, see our list of the best Disney animated movies.

Why it matters: Expectation conflicts work when the character loves the people doing the expecting. Mulan never resents her father. That is why the choice hurts.

13) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

The Two Towers stages an internal conflict as a conversation between one character and himself.

• Release date: 18 December 2002
• Director: Peter Jackson
• Character: Gollum / Sméagol (Andy Serkis)
• Type of internal conflict: Desire
• The two sides: The Ring vs loyalty to Frodo, the first person to show him kindness in centuries
• Box office: $945.1 million
• Awards: 2 Oscars from 6 nominations: Sound Editing and Visual Effects
• Fun fact: The scene was written and directed by Fran Walsh. It is built from 19 shot and reverse shot set-ups, the grammar films use for two people talking

Internal conflict example:

Frodo and Sam are asleep. Gollum wants to kill them and take the Ring. Sméagol says master looks after us. The camera cuts from one side of his face to the other, as if two actors were in the scene. Serkis changes his voice, his eyes and his spine for each half.

Sméagol wins the argument. “Leave now and never come back.” For a few scenes he is free, and the film lets you hope. Then Faramir’s men beat him, he thinks Frodo betrayed him, and Gollum comes back.

Helm’s Deep, from the same film, is on our external conflict list. If you want to see where it was shot, read where The Lord of the Rings was filmed.

Why it matters: Shot and reverse shot on one actor is a technique you can steal on any budget. It costs a lens change.

12) The Godfather (1972)

Michael Corleone’s internal conflict is the most famous in American film: the son who swore he would stay out against the son who cannot watch his father die.

• Release date: 24 March 1972
• Director: Francis Ford Coppola
• Character: Michael Corleone (Al Pacino)
• Type of internal conflict: Expectation
• The two sides: “That’s my family, Kay. It’s not me” vs loyalty to that family
• Box office: $250 to $291 million on a budget of $6 to $7 million
• Awards: 3 Oscars from 10 nominations, including Best Picture. Pacino was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. National Film Registry, 1990
• Fun fact: Paramount executives thought Pacino was too short for the part. Coppola won them over by screening The Panic in Needle Park

Internal conflict example:

The restaurant scene. Michael has fetched the gun from the toilet. He sits back down across from Sollozzo and a police captain. The plan says shoot straight away. He does not.

Coppola holds on Pacino’s face while Sollozzo talks in Italian with no subtitles. The words do not matter. A train screeches on the soundtrack and gets louder, and his eyes flick. That noise is the inside of his head. Then he stands and fires.

It is number 12 and not higher because the fight ends there. The rest of the film is consequence, a textbook negative character arc.

Why it matters: Sound can play a thought. The train is never shown and never explained, and nobody who sees the film forgets it.

11) Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Ennis Del Mar spends 20 years choosing fear over love, and the film never lets him off for it.

• Release date: 9 December 2005
• Director: Ang Lee
• Character: Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger)
• Type of internal conflict: Fear
• The two sides: His love for Jack vs the terror of what happens to men like them
• Box office: $179.1 million on a $14 million budget
• Awards: 3 Oscars from 8 nominations, including Best Director. Ledger was nominated for Best Actor. National Film Registry, 2018
• Fun fact: Ledger chose Ennis over Jack because he found him the more complex of the two

Internal conflict example:

Jack has a plan. A little ranch, the two of them, a life. Ennis answers with a memory. When he was nine, his father took him to see the body of a rancher who had lived with another man. That image runs his whole life.

Ledger plays the conflict in his jaw. Ennis barely opens his mouth to speak, as if words might give him away. There is a society outside him that would punish him, and that part is external. The film’s subject is the guard he keeps on himself when nobody is watching. He ends the film alone with two shirts on a hanger.

Why it matters: Internal conflict does not have to resolve well. A character who loses to his own fear can carry a film, if the audience understands where the fear came from.

10) Inside Out (2015)

Inside Out is the only film on this list where the internal conflict has a cast list.

• Release date: 19 June 2015
• Director: Pete Docter
• Character: Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) and Joy (Amy Poehler)
• Type of internal conflict: Need
• The two sides: The need to feel sad about the move vs the pressure to stay the happy girl
• Box office: $858.8 million
• Awards: Won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Nominated for Original Screenplay
• Fun fact: Docter got the idea from watching his own daughter grow quiet and withdrawn. The team consulted psychologists Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner and considered about 27 emotions before settling on five

Internal conflict example:

Riley is 11 and her family has moved to San Francisco. Inside her head, Joy runs the control desk and keeps Sadness away from the buttons. That is the conflict: one part of Riley refusing to let another part speak.

With Joy and Sadness lost in long-term memory, Riley goes numb, steals her mother’s card and boards a bus home. It only stops when Joy hands Sadness the controls. Riley cries in front of her parents, and the first memory that is both blue and gold rolls into place.

Why it matters: Pixar took “she has mixed feelings” and built sets for it. When the inner fight is hard to see, ask what it would look like as a place.

9) Good Will Hunting (1997)

Will Hunting can solve any problem on the board except the one that keeps him from leaving Southie.

• Release date: 5 December 1997 (limited)
• Director: Gus Van Sant
• Character: Will Hunting (Matt Damon)
• Type of internal conflict: Fear
• The two sides: Fear of being left vs the life his talent and Skylar are offering
• Box office: $225.9 million
• Awards: 2 Oscars from 9 nominations: Robin Williams for Best Supporting Actor, and Damon and Ben Affleck for Original Screenplay
• Fun fact: The script started as a roughly 40-page assignment Damon wrote for a playwriting class at Harvard

Internal conflict example:

Will leaves first. That is his rule. He sabotages job interviews and he tells Skylar he does not love her on the night she asks him to come to California. Abused as a foster child, he has learned that anyone who gets close will go.

The therapy scenes with Sean are two men sitting in a room, and they are the action of the film. Sean says “It’s not your fault” again and again until Will’s defence gives way. No new fact arrives. The only thing that changes is inside Will. The outside push comes from his best friend. Chuckie is number 9 on our list of secondary characters in film.

Why it matters: The antagonist here is a defence mechanism. If your character’s flaw once protected them, the audience will forgive them for holding on to it.

8) Wild (2014)

Wild is 1,100 miles of a woman walking away from herself and finding out that she came along.

• Release date: 5 December 2014
• Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
• Character: Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon)
• Type of internal conflict: Need
• The two sides: The need to forgive herself vs the grief and self-destruction that followed her mother’s death
• Box office: $52.5 million on a $15 million budget
• Awards: Oscar nominations for Witherspoon and Laura Dern
• Fun fact: Witherspoon bought the book and produced the film through her own company, Pacific Standard. She called it the hardest film she had ever made

Internal conflict example:

The trail supplies the external conflict: heat, snow, boots that do not fit and a pack she cannot lift. None of it is the story. The story arrives in flashes. A song, a horse, her mother’s face. Vallée cuts them in mid step, the way a memory ambushes you.

Cheryl is walking the Pacific Crest Trail to become the woman her mother thought she was. Nobody else is in most of the frames. The resolution is a voiceover on a bridge, and it is earned because every mile before it was an argument with herself.

Why it matters: Editing is the best tool film has for internal conflict. A two-second cut to the past, with no warning, tells the audience what the character is thinking better than a page of dialogue.

7) Whiplash (2014)

Andrew Neiman’s internal conflict is simple to state and horrible to watch: he wants to be great more than he wants to be well.

• Release date: 10 October 2014
• Director: Damien Chazelle
• Character: Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller)
• Type of internal conflict: Desire
• The two sides: Greatness vs everything else: a girlfriend, a father, his health
• Box office: $50.4 million on a $3.3 million budget
• Awards: 3 Oscars from 5 nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for J.K. Simmons
• Fun fact: Teller has played drums since he was 15 and performed much of the drumming himself. An 18-minute short version won a jury award at Sundance in 2013

Internal conflict example:

Fletcher, the conductor, is the external pressure. Watch what Andrew does when Fletcher is not in the room. He breaks up with Nicole before she has done anything wrong, because one day she might slow him down. He crawls out of a car crash and runs to the stage with a broken hand.

Nobody makes him do that. The final solo is the choice made in public. His father watches from the wings and sees a son he has lost. Fletcher smiles. The film refuses to tell you which of them is right.

Why it matters: Desire conflicts are strongest when the want is admirable. The audience wants Andrew to be great too, and that makes them complicit in what it costs.

6) Moonlight (2016)

Moonlight follows one internal conflict across three ages and three actors: who Chiron is against who he has to be to survive.

• Release date: 21 October 2016
• Director: Barry Jenkins
• Character: Chiron (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes)
• Type of internal conflict: Expectation
• The two sides: His own nature vs the hardness his world demands of a man
• Box office: $66.7 million on a budget of $1.5 to $4 million
• Awards: 3 Oscars from 8 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay
• Fun fact: The three actors who play Chiron did not meet until after filming. The whole film was shot in 25 days

Internal conflict example:

The film is split into three chapters named for what people call him: Little, Chiron and Black. In the first he barely speaks. In the second he is beaten at school for being different, and he answers with a chair.

In the third he has rebuilt himself as the thing that scared him. Muscle, gold fronts, a drug corner, the car of the dealer who once looked after him. It is armour. Then Kevin, his one moment of tenderness as a teenager, phones after ten years. The last act is two men in a diner, and the conflict is whether Chiron will take the armour off.

Why it matters: Jenkins shows that an internal conflict can be a whole life. The body the character builds is the expectation made visible.

5) Tully (2018)

Tully hides its internal conflict inside a second character, then shows you she was never there.

• Release date: 4 May 2018
• Director: Jason Reitman
• Character: Marlo (Charlize Theron)
• Type of internal conflict: Need
• The two sides: The need for rest and help vs the belief that a good mother does it all alone
• Box office: $15.6 million
• Awards: Golden Globe nomination for Theron
• Fun fact: Theron gained nearly 50 pounds for the role over three and a half months. Diablo Cody wrote the script

Internal conflict example:

Marlo has a newborn, two other children and nothing left. Her brother pays for a night nanny. Tully is 26, funny, calm and tireless. She cleans the kitchen, bakes cupcakes and listens. Marlo starts to come back to life.

Then a car goes into a river, and the film shows its hand. Tully is Marlo’s maiden name. The nanny is Marlo at 26, a version of herself she has been talking to through weeks of exhaustion. The clues are planted early, in the way good foreshadowing in movies works. Some critics argued that using postpartum mental illness as a twist was a mistake, and that is a fair debate to have.

Why it matters: Casting the other side of the argument as a person gives an inner fight dialogue, blocking and a face. The risk is the reveal. It has to be honest on a second viewing.

4) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eternal Sunshine sets its internal conflict in the most literal place possible: inside Joel Barish’s head, while it is being erased.

• Release date: 19 March 2004
• Director: Michel Gondry
• Character: Joel Barish (Jim Carrey)
• Type of internal conflict: Fear
• The two sides: Fear of the pain Clementine causes him vs the love he finds he cannot give up
• Box office: $73.3 million on a $20 million budget
• Awards: Won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth). Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress
• Fun fact: Gondry banned Carrey from improvising, a rule he did not apply to the rest of the cast

Internal conflict example:

Joel hires a company to delete his ex from his memory. Halfway through the procedure, asleep and unable to wake, he changes his mind. The rest of the film is Joel dragging Clementine through his own memories, hiding her in his childhood and in his shame, while the technicians hunt her down.

Both sides of the conflict are Joel. The Joel who signed the form and the Joel who wants to keep her. Sets fall apart around him as each memory goes. At the end the two meet again with the tapes of everything that went wrong, and they both say “Okay.”

Why it matters: Kaufman turns a decision and its regret into a chase. If you can give an internal conflict a clock, it will play like a thriller.

3) Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club gives an internal conflict a body, a wardrobe and a soap business, and lets it punch the hero in the face.

• Release date: 15 October 1999
• Director: David Fincher
• Character: The Narrator (Edward Norton)
• Type of internal conflict: Desire
• The two sides: The wish to tear his life down vs the need for the order he has built
• Box office: $102.4 million on a budget of $63 to $65 million
• Awards: One Oscar nomination, for Sound Editing
• Fun fact: The film disappointed at the box office, then sold more than 6 million copies on DVD and video in its first ten years. Norton starved himself through the shoot while Brad Pitt bulked up, so one half of the character shrinks as the other grows

Internal conflict example:

The Narrator cannot sleep. He has a condo full of catalogue furniture and a job working out whether recalls are worth the money. Then he meets Tyler Durden, who is everything he is not. Tyler blows up the condo, starts the club and builds an army.

Tyler is the Narrator. Every fight between them is one man hitting himself in a car park, which the film shows you on security footage. He ends it by putting a gun in his own mouth to kill the part of him he made.

It is third because Tyler gives the conflict an external shape, with plots and bombs. For more on characters like this, see our guide to the anti-hero.

Why it matters: Fight Club is the limit case for externalising. Two actors, one mind. It is also a warning, because a generation of viewers picked Tyler’s side.

2) Black Swan (2010)

Black Swan has an internal conflict so complete that the heroine is her own rival, her own saboteur and her own victim.

• Release date: 3 December 2010 (limited)
• Director: Darren Aronofsky
• Character: Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman)
• Type of internal conflict: Desire
• The two sides: Perfect control vs the abandon the Black Swan role demands
• Box office: $332.1 million on a $13 million budget
• Awards: Best Actress Oscar for Portman, from 5 nominations including Best Picture
• Fun fact: Portman started training six months before the shoot, five hours a day, across ballet, cross-training and swimming

Internal conflict example:

Nina is a perfect White Swan. Precise, fragile, controlled. Her director tells her she cannot dance the Black Swan until she learns to let go, and he says the line that sums up the film: “The only person standing in your way is you.”

Aronofsky fills the frame with mirrors and doubles. Reflections move a beat late. A new dancer, Lily, seems to be stealing the role, and Nina can no longer tell what Lily has done from what she has imagined. There is a mother and there is a director, and both push her. The enemy she fights on opening night is wearing her face.

Why it matters: This is a desire conflict where the want and the obstacle are the same trait. The control that made Nina good is the thing she has to destroy to be great.

1) Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Manchester by the Sea is the purest internal conflict in modern film: a man everyone has forgiven, who will not forgive himself.

• Release date: 18 November 2016 (limited), after a Sundance premiere on 23 January 2016
• Director: Kenneth Lonergan
• Character: Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck)
• Type of internal conflict: Need
• The two sides: The need to forgive himself vs the conviction that he does not deserve it
• Box office: $79 million on an $8.5 million budget
• Awards: 2 Oscars from 6 nominations: Best Actor for Affleck and Best Original Screenplay for Lonergan
• Fun fact: Matt Damon was set to star before he stepped aside. He said he would not have given the role up to anybody but Affleck

Internal conflict example:

Lee is a janitor in Boston. His brother dies and leaves him guardian of a 16-year-old nephew, which means going home to the town where, years before, Lee’s carelessness started a fire that killed his children.

Look for the villain. There is none. The police let him go. His brother trusted him with a son. His ex-wife stops him in the street, in tears, to say she was wrong to blame him. Every outside force in the film is offering him a way back, and he cannot take it.

A standard script would heal him by the last reel. Lonergan has him say four words to his nephew: “I can’t beat it.” He arranges for the boy to stay with friends and takes a flat with a spare room, so the boy can visit. That is the size of the win.

Here is where I land on it. Black Swan and Fight Club are louder, and I would not argue with anyone who put either of them first. They both cheat a little, though. They turn the inner fight into a second person you can look at. Manchester by the Sea gives Casey Affleck nothing to hit. It is a man standing in a kitchen failing to make small talk, and you can see the whole war in how he holds his shoulders. I rank by how much of the story the inner fight carries, and here it carries all of it. It is also the only film on the list brave enough to let the character lose.

Why it matters: When everyone around a character says yes and the character still says no, you have internal conflict with nothing else mixed in. It is the hardest kind to write and the kind that stays with people.

Five more internal conflict examples worth studying

These five missed the 20 because another film on the list makes the same point with more force.

• Taxi Driver (1976). Travis Bickle wants to clean up a city he is part of. We cover him in our anti-hero guide.
• A Beautiful Mind (2001). John Nash has to decide which of the people in his life exist. A belief conflict with the highest possible stakes.
• Lady Bird (2017). A teenager who wants to leave Sacramento and cannot admit she loves it. Expectation and desire in the same character.
• Raging Bull (1980). Jake LaMotta wins in the ring and loses to his own jealousy everywhere else.
• Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Six family members, six private battles, one van. Olive’s is covered in our guide to conflict in film.

What is internal conflict?

Internal conflict is a struggle that takes place inside a character’s mind, between two wants, beliefs, fears or duties that cannot both win.

You will also see it called character vs self or man vs self. It is one of the two basic kinds of conflict in storytelling. The other is external, where the opposition is another person, society, nature or technology. Our guide to conflict in film covers both.

Internal conflict in film has a problem that novels do not. A novelist can write what a character thinks. A camera can only record what a character does. So every example on this list ends the same way: the inner fight is forced out into a choice the audience can watch. Michael fires. Rick puts Ilsa on the plane. Bertie speaks. Lee says he cannot beat it.

What are the five types of internal conflict?

The five types of internal conflict are desire, belief, fear, expectation and need.

Type	The question the character is asking	Examples from this list
Desire	Which of the two things I want do I give up?	Spider-Man 2, The Two Towers, Whiplash, Fight Club, Black Swan
Belief	Do I hold to what I believe when it costs me?	The Dark Knight, Return of the Jedi, Toy Story, Casablanca
Fear	Will I let what scares me decide for me?	The King’s Speech, Brokeback Mountain, Good Will Hunting, Eternal Sunshine
Expectation	Do I become who they need or who I am?	Mulan, The Godfather, Moonlight
Need	Can I accept the thing I need and do not want?	Inside Out, Wild, Tully, Manchester by the Sea

Look at the top five of the ranking. Two are desire and two are need. There is a reason. Belief and expectation conflicts come from outside pressure, a villain or a family, so they share the story with an external force. Desire and need conflicts can run with nobody else in the room.

Internal vs external conflict: what is the difference?

Internal conflict is a character against themselves, and external conflict is a character against something outside them.

	Internal conflict	External conflict
The opponent	The character’s own desire, belief, fear, duty or need	Another character, society, nature or technology
Also called	Character vs self, man vs self	Character vs character, vs society, vs nature, vs technology
What the audience sees	Hesitation, a choice, a change	A chase, a fight, a storm, a trial
How it ends	The character changes or fails to	The character wins or loses
Example	Bruce Wayne keeping his one rule	Batman vs the Joker

The two work as a pair. The external conflict applies the pressure and the internal conflict decides what the character does under it. The Dark Knight, Toy Story and The Two Towers appear on this list and on our list of 25 external conflict examples in movies for that reason. If you are writing, our guide to the seven types of conflict in film covers the six outside types.

How do filmmakers show internal conflict on screen?

Filmmakers show internal conflict with five tools: performance, editing, sound, doubles and design.

• Performance. Ledger’s clenched jaw in Brokeback Mountain. Affleck’s shoulders in Manchester by the Sea.
• Editing. The intrusive flashbacks in Wild. The three looks in the throne room in Return of the Jedi.
• Sound. The train in The Godfather. The music in the headphones in The King’s Speech.
• Doubles and mirrors. Gollum and Sméagol. Tyler Durden. Tully. Every reflection in Black Swan.
• Design. Inside Out builds the mind as a set. Eternal Sunshine knocks the set down as the memory goes.

I spent years as a stunt performer, and the thing that work drills into you is that the body gives away a decision before the face does. A performer who is fully committed moves one way. A performer with a doubt moves another way, and the camera catches it every time. The best actors on this list use that on purpose. Watch Pacino’s hands in the restaurant, or the half step Portman takes back from the mirror. For what it is worth, that is where I look first when someone asks me whether a character’s internal conflict is working. If I can see it with the sound off, it is.

How to write internal conflict into your script

You write internal conflict by giving a character two things they cannot both have and a scene where they must pick.

1. Pick the type. Desire, belief, fear, expectation or need. One is enough. Michael Corleone has one.
2. Make both sides worth having. Rick loves Ilsa and believes in the cause. If one side is plainly wrong, there is no conflict, only delay.
3. Give it a source. Ennis saw a body at nine. Will was beaten as a child. The audience will accept any behaviour they can trace.
4. Build an external event that forces the choice. A plane leaving. A live broadcast. A brother’s will. This is where the two kinds of conflict lock together.
5. Show the choice as an action. Then decide whether the character wins, loses or pays. All three can work.

One thing I would push back on. A lot of screenwriting advice tells you to get internal conflict onto the page with voiceover, or a scene where the hero explains his feelings to a friend. Count the examples on this list that work that way. I make it one and a half. Wild uses voiceover and earns it. Good Will Hunting talks, and even there the scene that breaks Will is a single line repeated until he cannot stand it. The other 18 put the character in a room with a choice and point a camera at them. If you need a character to tell us they are torn, my own view is that the scene is not built yet.

For structure, start with our screenwriting guide. For the people you hang the conflict on, read our tips on writing memorable characters.

FAQs about internal conflict in film

The Final Cut on internal conflict in film

Twenty films, five types, one rule. Internal conflict in film only counts when it turns into something the camera can see.

The examples at the bottom of this list share the job with a villain. The ones at the top have nobody to blame. That is the scale, and it is a useful one when you are writing. Ask who your character would be fighting if you took the antagonist out of the script. If the answer is “nobody,” you have a plot and no person in it.

Start with The Godfather restaurant scene with the sound up. Then watch Manchester by the Sea and count the people who try to forgive Lee. When you sit down to write your own, the screenwriting guide is the place to go next.