* a brief response to a class assignment. Which is more important, character or action? *
Character Over Action
Action is simply a verb. Without something behind it to give it some meaning, it is purposeless (except perhaps for spectacle only).
Ex. Blow up.
Ex. The car blows up, killing the shop owner who owed money to the mafia boss.
Ex. Kiss.
Ex. The princess kisses the frog, knowing that he is actually a prince in disguise.
As you can see, while the verb alone is somewhat intriguing, it’s only intriguing because you want to know why the verb is happening. You want to know what is behind the action. That’s where character comes in.
Now I’m not going to argue that you can create entertainment without characters. Many video games (though less and less now) had no real focus to it. It was simply action because it was fun. Super Mario makes no sense (an Italian plumber stuck in a world with mushrooms and mean turtles) but it provided very little for the player to build off of. In other words, while you are trying to save the princess, the player doesn’t in fact care about the princess, they instead are interested in the action and puzzle solving that will get you to that princess.
Another example would be The Matrix. The action in the movie was groundbreaking and still to this day is some of the best physical action (as far as fighting) you can get. What if the movie was just that…cool fight scenes? It would still be amazing, but we’d have no reason to feel attached to the characters. Now once we start learning about the story and characters we know that the action is precipitated by Neo trying to free humans from the Matrix.
This of course does not mean that characters can be without action. Characters need action to justify their very characters. Just like a noun needs a verb to be a complete sentence, a character needs action
A character acts in order to build more upon their character (or another character). An action does not simply use a character to build more upon the action. Yes stories use actions to help create a character (ex. Batman losing his parents, Peter Parker getting bitten by the radioactive spider, Harry Potter realizing he’s a wizard) but that does not mean action is without character. Even in these examples there are reasons (characters) behind what happened (ex. crook robbing a couple in an alley, a careless breach in the spider’s containment–instigated by fate or nature as a character rather than a human being, Harry Potter’s back story of having his family killed by Voldemort and his accidental run ins with magic at the hands of the Dursleys.
You see a beached whale explode. Certainly that is a great visual for the eyes, but I’d bet a penny or two that your mind goes automatically to Who, What, Where, Why, and How. Because action without a person behind it and some sort of motive behind us does not fit into our realm of understanding. That’s why natural tragedies are often the hardest to comprehend. Who is to blame for such a tragedy? Mother nature I suppose, but nature does not follow any rules of understanding or discernment. Nature is chaos and it does simply what it’s supposed to do without regard for life.
An action without a character and a verb without a noun is chaos.
…
Of course chaos alone now and then can be quite entertaining. 
