What's In A MacGuffin?
Sometimes We Don't Need To Know
Merriam-Webster defines a MacGuffin as “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.”
You may not be familiar with the term, but you have seen the use of a MacGuffin in many books, TV shows, and Movies. For example:
The One Ring in the Lord of the Rings
The Death Star plans in Star Wars Episode Four: A New Hope
The Rabbit’s Foot in Mission Impossible Three
The Case in Pulp Fiction
The Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
In many cases, we are aware of the exact nature of these MacGuffins and how they motivate the characters:
The Death Star plans hold the key to destroying the Death Star
The One Ring in Lord of the Rings allows the bearer to control all other ring-bearers
The Holy Grail in Indiana Jones will grant eternal life to anyone who drinks from it
While this is a useful plot device, sometimes, as writers, we focus on our audience’s desire to know everything when we could, and should, keep certain things mysterious.
Why We Need A MacGuffin
MacGuffins drive the plot forward and help establish the stakes. In many stories, the MacGuffin is something that everyone races to get their hands on. When everyone is trying to get their hands on the item, we can get a nice race-against-time story full of action, suspense, betrayals, and twists.
There have to be stakes to make the plot interesting and believable. In Star Wars, the stolen Death Star plans expose a weakness that the rebels can use to destroy the Empire’s new superweapon. The pursuit of these plans brings us to the final battle, in which the rebels fight to exploit the Death Star’s weakness and destroy it before the Empire can explode the moon that the rebel base is on.
If the MacGuffin in Star Wars was the plans for a new Star Destroyer but would not expose any weaknesses and the Star Destroyer held no world-ending power, then the stakes are much less, and the characters would be less likely to take extreme measures to secure these plans.
It helps to understand what the MacGuffin is so we can understand what is at stake, but this is often not the case. We can understand the stakes without knowing what the MacGuffin is.
Less Is More
One of my favourite movies is the 1998 film Ronin, starring Robert De Niro. The plot is moved forward by the pursuit of a silver case. Even as the film closes, we never find out what was in the case, but that does not detract from the film in any way. If anything, it adds to it.
We don’t know what is in the case, but we do know a few things:
The IRA and a group of Russians want the case
The IRA can not afford to buy it but will fund a group of mercenaries and criminals to steal it
Whatever is in the case is valuable enough to have a gun battle in the middle of a busy city centre to steal it
It’s also valuable enough to justify killing almost anyone who stands in the way
The people who the IRA hires don’t care about what’s in the case; they see stealing it as a job and want only to get paid
The contents of the case are important enough to handcuff it to someone’s wrist so they can take it with them wherever they go
If we knew what the case contained, it would have detracted from the story and the characters. With the exception of Robert De Niro’s character, no one else on the team seems to care about what’s in the case.
They see it as a job, and when it is done, they’ll be on to the next one.
Not caring about what’s in the case gives us insight into who these people are and their motivations. They’re former spies, mercenaries, and criminals; in a way, they’re like the rest of us, but instead of punching the clock at a nine to five, they’re committing crimes to earn a living.
We all work jobs without knowing every detail of the inner workings of the organizations we work for. We do it to earn a living, to earn money.
Our characters can be motivated to pursue the MacGuffin without knowing what it is, and crafting a narrative around this is challenging. However, doing this has the payoff of showing the audience complex and thought-provoking characters who will stick with them for years.
Establishing the Stakes With a Mysterious MacGuffin
Many writers feel that their audience will not find the actions of those chasing the MacGuffin realistic or justifiable unless we know exactly what it is and what its effect on the world will be.
We know what happens when a deadly virus is released or a nuclear weapon detonated.
In some cases, this is an important part of the narrative. Sometimes, we need to be shown the danger.
Saving the world is a great motivation for our characters, but what about when the stakes are much lower? What happens when life as we know it is not in jeopardy?
Going back to the movie Ronin, our characters don’t need to know what’s in the case. They are motivated by money, and when betrayed by one of their own, they are motivated by revenge.
The stakes are clear. They do not get paid if they do not deliver the case to the IRA, and since these people are operating outside the law, they are comfortable with killing and risking their lives for a paycheck.
It’s who they are.
In Pulp Fiction, we also see a case with mysterious contents. Our characters are motivated to retrieve this case because it’s their job, and they are criminals, so we can assume that failure would lead to a violent end for them.
The stakes are clear. Get the case, or else!
My last example is the Rabbit's Foot in Mission Impossible 3. We never find out what it is, but through exposition, we learn that it is dangerous enough that the world's fate may hang in the balance.
It’s so dangerous that Ethan Hunt will sacrifice anything to keep it out of the wrong hands.
Even if we do not know what the exact nature of the MacGuffin is, there are several ways that the audience will understand how important or dangerous it is:
Money - If the ‘bad guys’ are willing to pay insane amounts of money to obtain the MacGuffin, we know that it’s important, and our characters will be willing to take exceptional risks to get it.
Mysterious Properties - Sometimes, no one knows exactly what the MacGuffin does. A great example is the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. No one in the film knew what would happen when the Ark was opened. Still, Indy was motivated to keep it out of the Nazi’s hands in case it did have supernatural powers.
Leverage - In Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Purloined Letter, all we know is that a stolen letter, which serves as this story’s MacGuffin, holds compromising information. That’s enough to drive the plot forward and motivate the characters.
Knowledge—In The Bourne Identity, the MacGuffin is Jason Bournes' lost memories and knowledge of who he is and why he has the skills he does. His backstory is the key to understanding why the government is pursuing him and returning to a normal life.
In any story, we need stakes, and even an unknown MacGuffin can develop tangible motivations and stakes that our audience can understand and relate to.
Over Explaining
Sometimes, knowing what the MacGuffin is serves only to weaken the narrative or cause confusion. In the movie Tenet, the MacGuffin is the Algorithm. The movie itself is confusing enough, but its attempts to explain the algorithm in detail were unscary.
It would have served the audience better if it had been kept mysterious. We didn't need to know what it was; we understood its importance because the film showed that it held great power and could not fall into the wrong hands.
Another example is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In this film, the nature of the skulls is overexplained, which detracts from the suspense and mystery. The great thing about Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade was that the artifacts Indy was searching for held a sense of mystery and intrigue.
Since we didn’t know what the Ark of the Covenant would do when it was opened or the exact nature of the Holy Grail’s powers when everything was revealed at the conclusion of the film, the payoff was genuine and surprising.
Final Thoughts
MacGuffins are great plot devices but don’t overexplain them to your audience. Writers need to trust that their audience is wise enough to enjoy the story and draw their own conclusions without our meddling.