Plots where a team has separate goals

September 1, 2023 10:06 AM

I was talking about the movie 2001 with my kids and I was wondering about other plots, movies or otherwise, where there is a team that should or seems to have the same goal but then some members do not. I'm fine with the different goals having tragic or non-tragic resolutions.
posted by bdc34 to Media & Arts (24 answers total)

Best answer: In One Piece (a manga, anime, and now live action series) the main character's goal is to become the king of the pirates but everyone that joins his crew has their own goal that dovetails with his: Zoro wants to be the world's greatest swordsman and the pirate king can use a guy like that, Nami wants to map the entire world which makes her a good navigator, Sanji wants to find a mythical seat that has all the world's different fish and tagging along might get them there, etc. It remains to be seen what would happen when one of the crew member's goals conflicts with Luffy's but there's still more story to tell.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:11 AM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: I've recently been watching Let's Plays of a game called Virtue's Last Reward in which people are kidnapped and made to play a killing game. Thing is, all they have to do for everyone to get out is to successfully play three rounds of Prisoner's Dilemma with all "cooperates." There are no resources to compete for. There are no extra prizes for getting out ahead of everyone else. And the only disclosed preexisting relationships between players are two good friends and an old man and his adopted "grandchild."

Spoilers: it takes dozens of iterations for the group to get it together enough to do so, and even then they end up having to knock out one of the players to do it.
posted by praemunire at 10:12 AM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: Alien (Bishop/Weyland-Yutani vs. Ripley/the Nostromo crew) would be my canonical example (other than 2001 itself).
posted by The Bellman at 10:12 AM on September 1, 2023 [21 favorites]

Oh, not Bishop, Ash! I'm so sorry to all artificial persons out there -- what a terrible mistake!
posted by The Bellman at 10:33 AM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Best answer: This is a trope of children's sports movies. One half of the team is working a secret play that the other half of the team, or the adult coaches, is unaware of, so that it's a surprise to both them and the audience at home. Off the top of my head I think it was the conceit of "the annexation of Puerto Rico" secret play in the Little Giants, but it's been a while since I've seen it. Also the fake with the rosin bag in Rookie of the Year.

I mean on reflection the end end goal is the same (winning the big game) but the midpoint goals are different.
posted by phunniemee at 10:33 AM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: Lots of sci-fi "space mission" type thrillers have this as a plot point -- in theory the crew share a common goal, but inevitably one or more members have a secret agenda or difference of opinion which threatens the mission. Off the top of my head:

• Sunshine
• Interstellar
• Alien, maybe

In a different vein, the novel Quarantine by Greg Egan explores this topic a bit. Hard to explain further without spoilers, but one of the central themes of the novel is loyalty -- what it means to be loyal to a cause, and how that plays out differently for different people even if they share a common loyalty in theory.
posted by mekily at 10:48 AM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: As another obvious example, this twist is what made Survivor so hard for me to follow (I only watched a couple of seasons).
posted by JimN2TAW at 11:11 AM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: Where Eagles Dare -‌- like 2001, also from 1968. Lots of wartime escapades like this, where one member of the team "is not what he seems." Another from that era, but sci-fi, instead of WWII: Fantastic Voyage. And yeah, Ash in Alien.
posted by Rash at 11:11 AM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: The Abyss. I suggest watching the Special Edition, which is near-universally thought of as clearly superior to the theatrical release.
posted by Flunkie at 11:19 AM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: This is one of the central aspects of The Wire. The idea is that people think of "the police" as a monolithic organization (including non-police characters in universe), but realistically, there are a lot of differing goals and priorities within the police, including, in one memorable scene from the second episode, no real goal at all. One of the main things David Simon was trying to show was the internal tension between detectives and managers who actually wanted to solve crimes and those who wanted to pad stats or angle for promotions. In addition to the police, some seasons focus on other institutions like schools. The show also goes into a little detail about the differing goals of the various drug dealers, although there's less internal conflict - they tend to achieve their individual goals by working together. It's a show that really makes you think about how you ascribe motives to groups.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:35 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Not only Alien, but Aliens as well, with Paul Reiser’s character playing the part of the corporate stooge.

A twist on this plot is John Carpenter’s The Thing. The team wants to find and kill the alien. But team members are secretly getting replaced by alien replicas who sabotage the team’s goals (and kill the team members).
posted by ejs at 12:08 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Hunt for Red October
posted by credulous at 12:25 PM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", Captain America and the strike force boarded the Lemurian Star to rescue SHIELD hostages, however the Black Widow had a secret side-mission to retrieve confidential SHIELD intel.
posted by alchemist at 12:27 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: In another silly example, in the first volume of the manga Spy x Family, a man, a woman, and a child all want to pretend that they are a high-powered privileged family to get through an extensive interview process so the child can get into an elite academy. However, the man, a foreign spy, wants the child to do it so that the child can befriend the child of another man he wants to assassinate; the woman, a local assassin, is looking for cover as a "housewife" for her work after an office job went wrong; and the child, a foster, is trying to hide the fact that she's telepathic. None of the three know the others' secrets. I believe later a dog with its own secrets joins the "family!"

(Of course they all become secretly fond of each other and it threatens to jeopardize the mission, etc.)
posted by praemunire at 12:31 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I would think that a number of heist films/shows have this to some extent. Netflix's 'Kaleidoscope' definitely fits the bill.
posted by cobaltnine at 12:37 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Rash: Lots of wartime escapades

The Guns of Navarone (from IMDB's plot synopsis I gather that the movie version has a different character being the traitor than the book), and Force 10 from Navarone.
posted by Stoneshop at 1:27 PM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: Andromeda Strain
posted by cda at 1:51 PM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: This might be a major stretch (based on the exactly how far you're willing to push the meaning of "team", and on whether or not the different goals need to be a surprise to the viewer as opposed to the characters), but: Amadeus.
posted by Flunkie at 1:59 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Princess Bride! Westley wants to rescue Buttercup, Inigo Montoya wants revenge, Fezzig is more reactive and just wants to look after his friends in the moment, and they happen to converge on the common goal of overthrowing Humperdinck.
posted by threecheesetrees at 3:47 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I think Escape from New York would fit this bill. (If you can consider Snake Pliskin being his own team.)
posted by perhapses at 8:37 PM on September 1, 2023

Best answer: The Wild Bunch. Most of the gang of thieves is just in it for the money, but one is trying to secure weapons for his village so they can defend themselves.
posted by equalpants at 9:46 PM on September 1, 2023

Best answer:

• Valerie wants to fight for true love
• Miracle Max wants Valerie to stop yelling at him
• Yellin wants his arms not to be ripped off

posted by Flunkie at 10:07 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Ronin, like a lot of films with criminal or espionage themes has a character who is not after the main boondoggle at all but after something else.

Reservoir Dogs? Like a lot of crime films has a character who is actually a police officer. I guess you could distinguish films / tv series where the viewer knows who is a cop from the beginning and ones where that is a reveal.

A through-line in the British police procedural line of duty (well it is after series one and was retrofitted to match S1 plot) is the presence of one or more criminal gang infiltrators in the police as well as undercover police who are infiltrating the criminal gang[s]. In most cases it is not known to the viewers who is who until quite late.
posted by atrazine at 7:27 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh, also, Andor is a great example. All the characters are ostensibly on one side or the other (Empire vs. Rebellion) but they all have their own individual motivations which are sometimes in conflict, and the show does a great job exploring these.

(I wholeheartedly recommend Andor even to those who aren't Star Wars fans — it's one of the best shows I've seen in years and fully stands on its own as a great scifi series.)
posted by mekily at 10:44 AM on September 8, 2023