Movie Narrative Charts
Movie Narrative Charts
[colors given approximately in HEX at first appearance]
These charts show movie character interactions.
The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the
lines indicate which characters are together at a given time.
Lord of the Rings
[yellow line (fff500)] ring
[thin line, here dark green (467120)] ringbearer
[grey colored area (e9e9e9)] battle/event
[line ending with a dot, here black] death
[bar, here light brown (daccae)] army
[line, here brown (9d7929), in a bar, here light brown] character leading army
[grey line (b7bfb6)] wizards
[brown line (9d7929)] men
[blue line (4a89a8)] elves
[dark brown line (6c411b)] dwarves
[dark turquoise line, 143035] ents
[green line (4e7629)] hobbits
[signs and colors not explained by the legend]
[Characters entering the chart on the left, from top to bottom]
[Characters leaving the chart on the right side, from top to bottom]
[The five characters leaving off the top border of the chart]
[text next to the group of five] Ship to the West
[other characters leaving on the right side]
[characters starting or leaving in the middle the chart]

Star Wars (original triology)
[Characters entering the chart on the left, from top to bottom]
[Characters leaving the chart on the right side, from top to bottom]
[Characters starting or leaving not in battle/event-areas and not on the left/right side of the chart]
Jurassic Park
[all dinosaurs are represented by red, all men by black lines]
[for dinosaurs locked up, there is a donut-sign.]
[Characters entering the chart on the left, from top to bottom]
[Characters leaving the chart on the right side]
12 angry men
[All lines go parallel, start and end at the borders of the chart. There are no areas of battle/event.]
Juror 1 --------- Juror 1 ----------- Juror 1 ------------ Juror 1
Juror 2 --------- Juror 2 ----------- Juror 2 ------------ Juror 2
Juror 3 --------- Juror 3 ----------- Juror 3 ------------ Juror 3
Juror 4 --------- Juror 4 ----------- Juror 4 ------------ Juror 4
Juror 5 --------- Juror 5 ----------- Juror 5 ------------ Juror 5
Juror 6 --------- Juror 6 ----------- Juror 6 ------------ Juror 6
Juror 7 --------- Juror 7 ----------- Juror 7 ------------ Juror 7
Juror 8 --------- Juror 8 ----------- Juror 8 ------------ Juror 8
Juror 9 --------- Juror 9 ----------- Juror 9 ------------ Juror 9
Juror 10 --------- Juror 10 ----------- Juror 10 ------------ Juror 10
Juror 11 --------- Juror 11 ----------- Juror 11 ------------ Juror 11
Juror 12 --------- Juror 12 ----------- Juror 12 ------------ Juror 12
[Three characters enter the chart on the left side, all represented by black lines]
[The lines come to a giant scribble and end up with dotted lines and question marks in the right area. One cannot see which line leads to which end.]

These charts show movie character interactions. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time.
A mass of colored lines weaves back and forth across the chart, representing various characters. Sauron is represented by a red bar at the bottom contained within a huge black bar with branches, that in turn represents his army of nazgul, orcs, etc. Major locations (Moria) and plot points (the breaking of the fellowship) are marked. Gandalf, especially at the beginning, jumps all over the map in a short time. Eagles appear and then disappear a couple of times. Treebeard's line is flat except for the march to Isengard. At the end, the ship to the West drifts off into a corner. The hobbits start off in the top left with Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin with Bilbo with them for a short time because of the party at the beginning.  They go off on their adventure and briefly encounter Gandalf.  They are then split up for a short time but meet back up at Weathertop when the Nazgul attack and they meet Aragorn (Strider at that point). They meet up with the rest of what becomes the fellowship of the ring at the council of Elrond at Rivendell. The newly formed fellowship must then venture into the mines of Moria which is referenced in comic 760 and comic 1218 . After encountering the Balrog and the later death of Boromir the fellowship splits up. Frodo and Sam take the ring and go off on their own to destroy it and sneak into Mordor with the help of Gollum. Merry and Pippin are captured by the Uruk-hai but are rescued by Eomer and his army. Eomer and his army then briefly reunite with Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn while Merry and Pippin find Treebeard and flood Isengard. While Merry, Pippin and Treebeard are flooding Isengard Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas fight at Helm's Deep with Gandalf and Eomer and Theoden.  Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas go to wake the army of the dead while Pippin goes with Gandalf and Merry goes with the Rohirrim.  All of these people rejoin for the battle of the Pelennor fields where Eowyn kills the witch king after Theoden dies along with Denethor.  The orcs, men and oliphants are all destroyed and Aragorn releases the army of the dead.  All the surviving members of that battle go to the Black Gate except Eowyn and Faramir.  Sam and Frodo destroy the Ring, Gollum dies and everyone who is still alive is there for Aragorn's coronation. Everyone goes back to their respective homes except for Frodo, Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Bilbo who get on a ship to the west.
As the title text points out, most of the plot of The Lord of The Rings occurs on a rough northwest to southeast axis, with the Fellowship of the Ring traveling from the Shire near the top of chart to Mordor at the bottom of the chart (and back again.)  The most significant exception to the northwest-southeast axis is the area of the chart between "The Breaking of the Fellowship" and "Isengard Flooded."  Helm's Deep and Isengard are southwest from the overall northwest-southeast axis of the movies.
Luke, mostly accompanied by R2-D2, joins and parts from other sets of characters. There's a dotted alternative path on Jabba's line for the special edition. A dark line representing Vader, travels through the duel where he kills Obi-Wan and proceeds to the Death Star to meet with the main charcters for the first time. Vader travels to Hoth where all the characters escape and goes to Cloud City where Han is frozen. He then duels Luke before going for a long time alone and confronts Luke for a short time before taking him to the Death Star II where the climatic duel happens and he is killed. Leia at first with C-3PO is captured and placed on the Death Star before being rescued and proceeds to Hoth, Cloud City, the Sail Barge and finally to the Battle of Endor before reuniting with all the survivors. R2D2 and C-3PO are mostly together save for when Luke is attacking the Death Star and Luke's Jedi training. Luke's line swerves through most of the scenes, breaking away from the other characters during the Jedi Training, the duel on Cloud City and the duel on the Death Star II. Han and Chewie are always together as they go through all the scenes. Greedo, Lando and Boba all appear in their respective scenes. Yoda appears about halfway through (where Luke's Jedi training is marked). All the surviving lines group up at Endor except for Vader, the Emperor, Luke, and Lando; after the climactic duel, the latter two join the rest.
The human characters are in black; dinosaurs are in red. Dilophosaurus appears briefly to eat Nedry and then fades out again. the T-Rex appears at the start and swoops down on the cars and eats Gennaro. It then weaves out until the end where it eats the raptors. The three raptors are together at the beginning, but split up about halfway through. One has a dotted portion of line between "locked up" and "escapes." In the meantime, they cut off the lines of Arnold and Muldoon. Malcolm, Grant, Sattler, Hammond and the kids all weave in and out of their respective scenes. The raptor lines all end when t-rex's swoops down to meet them at the end, and all the surviving humans leave together.
This is a very famous trial film that tells the story of a jury made up of 12 men as they deliberate the guilt or acquittal of a defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt. Only one of these angry men believe the defendant may be innocent and he argues this against the other 11, eventually convincing them that there is reasonable doubt in the case.
The lines are labeled Juror 1 through Juror 12. They are all perfectly horizontal and parallel.
The joke in the 12 Angry Men graphic is that in the movie all 12 jurors (the angry men) are in the same room for the entire duration of the movie. They never move and they all always interact with each other, hence their lines stay straight and close to each other.
This is actually not entirely true. The movie begins in the court room; a couple of times during the proceedings, a few jurors go into the washroom and have a brief discussion there; and finally, in the very last scene, two jurors have a brief exchange in front of the courthouse. In fact, this chart would actually become a useful reference to the film if each of the jury's votes sessions was shaded as battles/events, and each juror's vote shown on their line, tracking when each juror's vote switches from 'guilty' to 'not guilty'. But as far as the characters' locations, there is no need for such a narrative chart, and that is the joke.
The last box is a movie called Primer from 2004, which became a cult classic.  It is about a group of engineers who discover a way to travel through time, but only in one direction (backwards) and only at the speed of regular time (i.e. you have to stay in the time machine for one hour to move an hour back in time). Because of this, the story ends up having multiple versions of the same person existing at the same time; the plot and time-travel mechanics are notoriously hard to follow, so that it is almost impossible to figure out where each character is at one time, as the comic illustrates.
Three lines start on the left labeled Abe, Aaron, and Granger. They enter a mass of scribbling. Somewhere vaguely towards the end, three lines emerge and fade out, all labeled with question marks.
The chart for Primer is referenced in the title text of the fourth image in the what if? Plastic Dinosaurs .
These charts are a reference to " Napoleon's March , " the map and statistical infographic by cartographic pioneer Charles Joseph Minard . It details the movements and losses of Napoleon's troops on his failed conquest of Russia.  The size and location of Napoleon's army are represented by tapering streams similar to the design used for Sauron's and Saruman’s troops in the LotR Chart. Minard's chart is extensively discussed by Edward Tufte in his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information , and he summarizes some of that on his website .

[colors given approximately in HEX at first appearance]
These charts show movie character interactions.
The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the
lines indicate which characters are together at a given time.
Lord of the Rings
[yellow line (fff500)] ring
[thin line, here dark green (467120)] ringbearer
[grey colored area (e9e9e9)] battle/event
[line ending with a dot, here black] death
[bar, here light brown (daccae)] army
[line, here brown (9d7929), in a bar, here light brown] character leading army
[grey line (b7bfb6)] wizards
[brown line (9d7929)] men
[blue line (4a89a8)] elves
[dark brown line (6c411b)] dwarves
[dark turquoise line, 143035] ents
[green line (4e7629)] hobbits
[signs and colors not explained by the legend]
[Characters entering the chart on the left, from top to bottom]
[Characters leaving the chart on the right side, from top to bottom]
[The five characters leaving off the top border of the chart]
[text next to the group of five] Ship to the West
[other characters leaving on the right side]
[characters starting or leaving in the middle the chart]

Star Wars (original triology)
[Characters entering the chart on the left, from top to bottom]
[Characters leaving the chart on the right side, from top to bottom]
[Characters starting or leaving not in battle/event-areas and not on the left/right side of the chart]
Jurassic Park
[all dinosaurs are represented by red, all men by black lines]
[for dinosaurs locked up, there is a donut-sign.]
[Characters entering the chart on the left, from top to bottom]
[Characters leaving the chart on the right side]
12 angry men
[All lines go parallel, start and end at the borders of the chart. There are no areas of battle/event.]
Juror 1 --------- Juror 1 ----------- Juror 1 ------------ Juror 1
Juror 2 --------- Juror 2 ----------- Juror 2 ------------ Juror 2
Juror 3 --------- Juror 3 ----------- Juror 3 ------------ Juror 3
Juror 4 --------- Juror 4 ----------- Juror 4 ------------ Juror 4
Juror 5 --------- Juror 5 ----------- Juror 5 ------------ Juror 5
Juror 6 --------- Juror 6 ----------- Juror 6 ------------ Juror 6
Juror 7 --------- Juror 7 ----------- Juror 7 ------------ Juror 7
Juror 8 --------- Juror 8 ----------- Juror 8 ------------ Juror 8
Juror 9 --------- Juror 9 ----------- Juror 9 ------------ Juror 9
Juror 10 --------- Juror 10 ----------- Juror 10 ------------ Juror 10
Juror 11 --------- Juror 11 ----------- Juror 11 ------------ Juror 11
Juror 12 --------- Juror 12 ----------- Juror 12 ------------ Juror 12
[Three characters enter the chart on the left side, all represented by black lines]
[The lines come to a giant scribble and end up with dotted lines and question marks in the right area. One cannot see which line leads to which end.]
