Change is a Sprint

Change is Action

There’s a movie on. Our main character was living and enjoying a happy life but now they’ve been arrested. Very quickly the situation has gone from ‘why have you brought me here?’ to the villain locking them into a torture device. With a laser pointed in their direction, the villain demands to know how to get the McGuffin. The hero doesn’t even know what a McGuffin is!

You’ve seen this movie, this scene, a number of times. Just as the mild-mannered lead is about to succumb to the deadly force of the enemy, a door blasts open. Our secondary lead (and often future love interest) arrives, carrying all of the needed information about the plot. They’re here to save the main character so that they can deliver it to us in the next scene. They break the hero of the story free and say “Come with me if you want to not die”. You’re watching the 2014 Animated feature The LEGO Movie.

We know that The LEGO Movie is referencing Terminator 2 here. The T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and John Connor (Edward Furlong) walk into the psychiatric facility holding Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and save her from a T-1000 (Robert Patrick) trying to kill her.

This scene could be someone pulling up in a car and yelling ‘Get in!’ as the world turns to hell around them, or as simple as a character grabbing the hand of the hero and saying ‘Run’ before they even know they’re in a movie. In films like 1999’s The Matrix, Neo (Keanu Reeves) receives a mobile phone that begins to ring the moment he has taken hold of it. The commanding voice of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) on the other end tells Neo that men are on the way up to his office and he needs to get out of there immediately.

Action movies do it one way but ‘action’ doesn’t just mean the genre. In the 2011 movie The Descendants, Matt King (George Clooney) learns that his comatose wife was having an affair before her accident. In shock and with no way to handle his swelling emotions, Matt does the only thing he can. He puts on his flip flops and runs through the streets of Hawaii to his wife’s best friend’s house to ask if it’s true.

I don’t know if it’s the fact he chose flip flops or it’s his hesitation to find out if his marriage is really falling apart but the slow run of Matt as the slapping sound of flip flops echoes through the street really does surprisingly capture the core of what this movie is about to give us; A heart-breaking story yet funny delivery of a man who lost his way long before he lost his wife.

In Greta Gerwig’s 2019 movie Little Women, Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) attends a party with her older sister Meg (Emma Watson). While Meg enjoys quiet conversation with a man, Jo is stood across the room nodding towards the exit, asking if they can go home yet. Jo has no interest in men and actively despises the idea of what this crowded room expects of her. She has much larger creative ambitions for herself than romance. Jo and Meg’s relationship is interesting in that Meg is equally as creative as Jo but is content and happy to find a partner she can grow old with, she wants that romance.

A man awkwardly waves to Jo from across the room, hoping to make conversation. As he tries to cross the room towards her, Jo gets out of there. She backs into a small room where she meets a boy named Laurie (Timothée Chalamet).

The pair form a momentary bond over their disinterest at the sort of event they’re attending and as Jo (comfortable as ever in her own skin) candidly speaks about her distaste in having been born a girl and wishing she could have joined her father in the civil war as a fighter, Laurie simply shows respect. We can see that Laurie in this scene is clearly smitten but we get behind him as a character because he doesn’t want to change Jo in any way to be his. Both Laurie and the audience know that while he has feelings for her, Jo does not feel the same. He respects that immediately, forming a friendship bond instead of trying for a romantic one and so we root for their friendship to form.

“But where’s the action!” I can hear the voice in the back of your head call. This isn’t an article about the creative push back of a woman stuck in a period drama!

Laurie asks Jo if she would like to dance and after confiding in him that she had burnt her dress, disallowing her to dance in public, Laurie says ‘I have an idea of how we can manage’. ACTION. Music swells, the pair are outside on the deck surrounding the property, dancing alone as the party goes on inside. They move from window to window trying to stay hidden from the crowd and while starting off with a formal dance, they quickly swap to a jovial pace.

EXT. GARDINER’S NEW YEAR’S PARTY. PORCH. NIGHT. 1861. Laurie bows, Jo awkwardly curtsies and then they go dancing wildly up and down a wrap-around porch. It’s actually very romantic in its exuberance. Sometimes Jo is the woman and sometimes the man – same with Laurie.

Little Women, Greta Gerwig

The pair’s mutual respect and friendship is locked in here. The simple action of a dance instead of an overdrawn conversation to try and sell it to us. This scene cements the friendship of the pair and will go on to play a large part in the plot as Laurie remains Jo’s best friend, even joining the private ladies club of the March sisters where they put on performances for each other. Laurie will confess his feelings for Jo over an hour later into the movie and while we don’t want them to pair and we know Jo doesn’t want him, you just can’t help but want to give Laurie the world is his heart breaks. One ‘actually very romantic’ dance on a porch locks in a friendship doomed to break a boy’s heart. We see that future coming as early as the dance, through the use of action.

Change is Inaction:

When discussing inaction you have to think about what your characters have been avoiding personally. For Makoto Konno in Mamoru Hosoda’s 2006 film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time it’s as simple as a conversation.

After falling onto a walnut that gives her the ability to leap backwards through time (it’s not a walnut but hey it looks like one) Makoto spends much of her newfound ability on making up for her day-to-day errors. Late for class? Leap. Bad grade? Leap. Just really feeling the groove on your karaoke session with the lads? Leap, leap, leap, keep that party going! Makoto’s use of the ability reaches to more personal matters though as when her best friend Chiaki keeps approaching her to confess his love, she leaps back in time to get away from it.

Eventually, Makoto notices a number on her arm that indicates how many trips she has left. With a set number of wrongs to right in the lives of others and a limited supply of chances to fix them, Makoto begins to make good use of the power granted to her. As Makoto is almost finished righting wrong, she gets caught off guard. Chiaki comes calling once more and instead of confessing his love, he asks if she has been leaping.

Makoto panics, she uses her final leap to avoid that call and consequently messes up as a friend of hers borrows her faulty bike. With the knowledge the brakes don’t work and her friend is heading towards a deadly train crossing, she tries her best to chase after them but ultimately fails.

Chiaki comes to Makoto and reveals the backstory of the walnut and rewinds time to save their friend. The trade off for this is that Chiaki leaves, just as Makoto finally realises that she has feelings for him. Makoto’s inaction, complete avoidance of confronting the truth within her heart and hearing out her friend has caused her to lose him. This ongoing inaction allows for one final choice of action as Makoto looks down at her arm and sees that the reversal of time by Chiaki has restored her final jump by taking her back to before she used it.

Makoto’s former inaction now explodes into action as she sprints out of her house down the street, music kicks in and you feel genuinely excited as she bounds downhill to get a final, giant leap into space and time in order to go back and find Chiaki in her past, finally working on repairing the meaningful problems within her own life instead of the trivial problems she faced prior or the personal problems of others. She’s finally leaping for her own future.

2015’s The Final Girls is a Horror/Comedy about Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga) entering into the world of a 1980’s slasher film her mother appeared in. The core heart of this story is that her mother had died in a car crash a year before Max fell into this movie where her mother isn’t really her mother at all, just the scream queen character she played in the film.

Filled with jokes about the slasher genre like tying the ‘slutty girl’ character of the movie to a chair to stop her taking her clothes off (this movie universe’s version of a foghorn that brings the killer to the house). It’s the relationship Max shares with the mother that grounds us.

The opening scene of the movie has Max spending time with her mother Amanda (Malin Akerman) as she goes from audition to audition trying to secure a serious acting role that will change her image from the 80’s slasher character she’s famous for. After another failed audition, Amanda puts on Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes and the pair sing along. The car is T-boned, Amanda dies and time skips forward a year as Max attends a screening of that movie her mother had hated so much. Max and her friends enter into the world of the film after a fire breaks out in the cinema and the gang attempts to escape through the cinema screen.

Max is thus stuck spending time with the image of her dead mother in the one version of herself that her mother had hated most. When Max first meets the character (named Nancy in the movie within a movie) she can just about hold back her tears. It’s clear that while Amanda hated being known for the role, the performance she gave as Nancy brought some genuine life to her. While all other 80’s movie characters they interact with are strictly one note, Nancy has goals and plans for herself.

At the conclusion of the movie, Max is alone with Nancy and uncertain of what to do to survive the film as rules dictate there must be a ‘Final Girl’ that survives. Max is not ready to let the image of her mother go and while Nancy is volunteering herself to die for Max to fill that role, Max is adamant to stop her.

MAX You can be the final girl.

NANCY No, Max. No. That’s not who I’m supposed to be, remember? I’m just the shy girl with the clipboard and the guitar.

MAX Yeah, but you wanted to change that.

NANCY Honey, let me do this.

MAX No.

NANCY Max, I’m not afraid.

MAX I wanted to save you.

NANCY Oh, Max, you did. You did, Max. Just by letting me be here with you. I’ve never felt more real or more alive ever before.

MAX No. No, Mom, you belong at home, with me. Look, your name is Amanda Cartwright, and you live in Encino, and you love Bette Davis Eyes and Mel’s Diner. And you wanted to be the biggest movie star, more than anything in the world. And you had a daughter. You have a daughter. I’m not going back without you. I don’t wanna lose you again.

NANCY Max. I’m not lost. I’m right here, all right? You’ll always know where to find me, okay? But you have to let me go. You have to let me go.

MAX I love you. That’s what I never got to tell her.

NANCY Don’t worry. Wherever she is, she knows. You were right about one thing, you know?

MAX What?

NANCY I’m a movie star.

The Final Girls, M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller

Max’s inaction was waiting so long to confront her feelings over the death of her mother due to the inability to let her go. A version of Amanda exists within Nancy due to the depth she had given to her performance of the character and this touching final dialogue with her daughter gives exactly what Max needed to hear when facing another life-threatening situation, this time in the form of a slasher villain.

Max letting go of her mother and learning to appreciate what’s left of Amanda in the form of an 80’s slasher character is shown as Nancy walking outside while Bette Davis Eyes plays once more. Nancy draws the killer out and allows herself to die so that Max can live on and Max finally letting go gives her the strength to keep going. This concept of the ‘Final Girl’ trope is elevated by an emotional core that’s heavily tied to audience perceptions of shlock horror. To tie a cliché’ genre trope to a moment so heartfelt and meaningful to character growth is one of the biggest strengths of the movie.

Change is a Sprint:

So we’re at the title of the post and the core of what I want to talk about. We’ve explored how change can elevate a sequence but what does it really mean to change as a person and how do we put that to film in a meaningful way? Let’s look at two films that tackle characters who are struggling to find themselves and how a dedication to knowing your characters can elevate a moment. 

In the breakout hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse from 2018, our hero Miles Morales struggles deeply with the self-concept. Miles is a teenager that is yet to figure out just who he is as a person and how he wants to behave; All of the right pieces are there and we as an audience can see what he has to offer the world but Miles is yet to cement himself within his own mind. He spends the early parts of the movie modelling himself after his own uncle, Aaron, and later in the movie as he develops Spider-Powers he rotates to a Halloween costume of Spider-Man that doesn’t even fit properly, a visual indication of his attempt to imitate being imperfect.

Miles knows his idols and he wants to be like them but Spider-Verse is a film dedicated to exploring how imitation isn’t how we truly find ourselves. Thankully Miles is given a world of other Spider-People to spend time with who have all struggled and know what Miles is going through. His life gets flipped quite heavily and quickly in this movie and it’s no wonder that when power is thrust upon him and he’s surrounded by potential equals, he does his best to fit in.

One of the first things to set up Miles’ challenge is that most of the Spider-People in this movie have some form of unique power. Miles’ unique abilities are of invisibility and electricity, powers the others cannot teach him to gain control over. Miles can spend a day with Peter Parker learning the ropes (or webs, in this case) but when faced with the immediate requirement to use one of these unique powers, he just wouldn’t be able to pull it out of the bag. His confidence only goes as far as he can see, he learns via imitation.

The second challenge comes through the reveal that his uncle, his former hero and person he modelled himself after, is a villain. I said before that we can see the strengths in Miles that make him worthy of the title but he can’t see them himself, we know that Miles is inherently a good person who wants to do good and help others and he believed this to be true of his uncle too. When his model of what makes a good person flips upside down, he no longer has an anchor point and it sends him spiralling. Miles’ strong qualities that make him a good person cannot be moved. He won’t suddenly swap sides because his hero is really villain, he will just be floating without anchor.

Miles’ failures to be able to handle himself in a fight causes the other Spider-People in his company to tie him up and leave him behind for his own safety. They’ve all helped him as best they can and they know he will figure it out someday, but it’s not today. Now I’m keeping quiet about the finer details of the plot but what happens next is Jefferson, Miles’ father, knocks on Miles’ door with the intention of giving his son some bad news, information that Miles already knows by being there under the guise of Spider-Man. Miles is unable to move or speak because he’s still tied up, so his father believes he’s being ignored.

INT. VISIONS DORM HALLWAY – NIGHT JEFFERSON is in the hallway in full uniform.

JEFFERSON Miles! Miles, it’s your Dad.

Jefferson sees a shadow moving under the door – it STOPS.

INTERCUT BETWEEN MILES AND JEFFERSON Miles, now a couple of feet from the door, FREEZES.

JEFFERSON (CONT’D) Please open the door.

Miles starts to slowly BACK AWAY from the door, inch by inch.

JEFFERSON (CONT’D) Miles, I can see your shadow moving around.

Miles STOPS again.

JEFFERSON (CONT’D) Yeah. Ok, I get it. I get it. Still ignoring me. Look, can we talk for a minute? Something happened…

Jefferson struggles with what to say.

JEFFERSON (CONT’D) Look sometimes, people drift apart, Miles. And I don’t want that to happen to us, ok? Look, I know I don’t always do what you need me to do or say what you need me to say, but I’m… I see this…this spark in you. It’s amazing, it’s why I push you. But it’s yours and whatever you choose to do with it, you’ll be great.

Miles’ eyes are wide and soulful. He rests is head against the door, so close.

JEFFERSON (CONT’D) Look call me when you can, ok? I love you. (then) You don’t have to say it back though.

Jefferson still waits for an “I love you” back. When he doesn’t get it, he taps the door farewell and walks down the hall.

Miles CLOSES HIS EYES and we sit with him for a beat.

Miles’ hands visibly RELAX as his venom strike starts to crackle to life on his hands – using this memory is how he’s learning to control his powers.

Miles uses a mini VENOM STRIKE to BREAK FREE from the chair restraints. He CAN’T BELEIVE IT.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman

It’s important that you take note of the script specifying that miles is using this memory to control his powers. Miles’ relationship with his father throughout the movie has been strained to say the least. Jefferson isn’t exactly a cool guy in the eyes of his teenage son and he despises Spider-Man so there’s an inherent distance between the two just by Miles BEING a Spider-Man. Miles’ strongest qualities, the ones that makes him want to do good; they’re traits his father always had, traits Miles started the film with, before meeting the hero Spider-People.

Just the other side of the door is his upset father, whose voice cracks when delivering the line ‘Something happened…’. Miles feels responsible for the pain his own father is dealing with and he can’t even get the webbing off his mouth to say ‘I love you too’ when he knows it’s what his father needs to hear. There’s not a thing he can do to help the person he loves most when he does not have control of his own power.

Miles finds himself through learning what we have known the whole time. He wants to do good and help people. He wants to be able to go out there and hug his dad. Miles needs to change, right now, so he can never fail his father or anyone like this again. He finally knows who he is through his desire to help those who need him most, including the Spider-People who have just gone off to take part in a final fight without him.

Miles breaks free from restraint and here’s the title coming in. Change is not easy, at all, for anybody. Throughout the movie, Peter Parker refers to it as a ‘leap of faith’ and with that comes one of the coolest ‘finding yourself’ moments with a sequence set to the song What’s Up Danger by Blackway & Black Caviar. Miles is not fearless when he leaps from the side of a building in this sequence. He’s so scared of taking this leap that the window he’s on shatters when he jumps from it because his fingers are still clinging to the glass.

Miles falls down towards the city below and the image flips upside down to show that Miles isn’t falling, but rising. Changing yourself is difficult because to make permanent, meaningful change in yourself is to commit to tackling what is scaring you most about moving forward. Our bodies inadvertently fight change as much as they can to protect us because we currently live in a moment that’s survivable and why risk that if it’s ‘working’ but the truth is that the change you desire exists because it isn’t working. To stay put may not be a case of letting your father down in a time of need, but it’s almost certainly a case of feeling like you’re letting yourself down by staying still.

So Miles finally finds himself by stepping up to his desire to be better by doing what scares him the most about achieving it. He goes on to the final battle changed and completely becomes a new, confident person who is now dishing out the advice to the people that need him most.

At the start of the Into the Unknown Documentary series, a show on Disney Plus that follows the production of Frozen 2, writer and director Jennifer Lee shows us a diary that she has written from the perspective of Elsa as a way to get to know her character. We don’t get a deep look into what’s written inside but for how much I’m about to gush about the personal journey Elsa goes through in this movie it felt important to let you know that the process of writing her came with a full on diary from the land of Arendelle by the snow queen herself.

While Spider-verse may have tackled finding yourself through the ones surrounding you, Frozen 2 is about the reverse of this. Elsa doesn’t have a single familiar that she can see, she’s an outsider to everybody because not a single one has any form of power like she does. Her family cannot understand her struggle and so her plot is more about how while the people surrounding you can only want the best for you and be supportive, it can hold you down to a degree.

If you are, great, if you’re not, then just imagine being LGBTQ in a family of straight/cis people that have never had to have that deep a struggle with who they are. These people may not be directly against LGBTQ people, they just don’t have any way of ‘getting’ it, nor interacted with anyone who identifies as such before. In X-Men 2 when Iceman goes back to visit his family, they love him, but they see his being different from them to mean he’s lesser. Iceman’s mother comes at him with a classic ‘have you tried NOT being a mutant?’ but in a sincere way where you’re frustrated because she means well but oh my god stop trying to hold your child back for your own comfort.

People that are struggling to get where they need to be can get held back by people who just don’t know what it feels like to be so disconnected from who you actually are. These can be people who could be accepting of you once you walk through the door presenting yourself proudly but when you exist in the weird middle ground of figuring yourself out, the idea of you changing is closer to ‘but you could also just stay as you are now and be happy with us’.

Elsa’s sister, Anna isn’t doing anything wrong overall. Anna and the rest of the main cast are good people who love Elsa but who Elsa is just isn’t here right now. How can she accept any of their love and support if she doesn’t take the steps to go out on her own and find the person she is before returning changed, able to accept their affection.

Hannah Gadsby released a Netflix comedy special called Nanette in 2018 where they announced that they would be quitting comedy because they found that they were putting themselves down in jokes in order to be able to speak on a level that audiences were comfortable with. At one point in the show they recount what their mother said to them when asked if she had any regrets.

‘The thing I regret is that I raised you as if you were straight. I didn’t know any different. I’m so sorry. I knew well before you did, that your life was going to be so hard. I knew that, and I wanted, more than anything in the world, for that not to be the case. And now I know that I made it worse. I made it worse because I wanted you to change, because I knew that the world wouldn’t.’

Nanette, Hannah Gadsby

Elsa lives within the castle or Arendelle with her family and they are happy with the way things are, even she can be happy at times. But every now and then she can hear a voice singing far in the distance, bugging her to go searching. There are two songs in Frozen 2 that could be LGBTQ anthems and the first of these is called Into the Unknown, written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Elsa sings to the voice about how she wishes she could ignore it to maintain stability within her family but the pull is too great.

There are a few key takeaway throughout the song and if you haven’t seen the movie or just need some clarity at what I’m getting at then here some key moments.

Everyone I’ve ever loved is here within these walls
I’m sorry, secret siren, but I’m blocking out your calls
I’ve had my adventure, I don’t need something new
I’m afraid of what I’m risking if I follow you
Into the unknown
–
Are you someone out there
Who’s a little bit like me?
Who knows deep down I’m not where I’m meant to be?
Every day’s a little harder
As I feel my power grow
Don’t you know there’s part of me
That longs to go
Into the unknown

Into the Unknown, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez

Elsa just cannot resist the chance at getting answers for who she is. To take it back to Miles in Spider-Verse, Miles knows who he wants to be but isn’t certain of how to get there, he struggles to lock a self-identity in place but knows the goal. Elsa doesn’t have a clue of about any of that, she has no reference point at all to work from; She’s a pure outsider, completely alone and without vision. All Elsa has is the knowledge of where to find the answers for her identity.

So Elsa goes, initially due to trouble caused to the kingdom but once the ball gets rolling, she’s making the moves to find this voice for herself. A huge part of Elsa’s story is overcoming Anna’s overwhelming love, at least momentarily, because Anna wants to help Elsa but can only see danger in the path she’s taking and so constantly tries to hold her back because where the hell is Elsa even going?!

Elsa’s not certain about who she is but she’s certain she needs to find out and so she finally breaks away from Anna to be alone and finish this quest of self-discovery on her own. You may have seen this from the trailer, it was the key opening of the teaser and remained a popular clip online as anticipation for the movie built up. Elsa finds herself at the edge of an ocean, the voice way out in the distance. She has to get to it.

For anyone else this might be a place to turn back but for Elsa, she knows that the voice out in the ocean is the only hope of finding happiness in herself. Here’s the change, here’s the sprint. Elsa runs out, turning water to ice beneath her feet to create steppingstones as she races against a current trying to put her back on land. She falls into the water and lands back on the beach, she goes again. Elsa’s determination to find herself isn’t an internal challenge like Miles; It’s as a physical one that’s enacted by the world around her.

Elsa goes big on her powers, creating larger ice structures in her battle against the sea that the sea crumbles with ease, trying to throw her back. Elsa’s determined, she fall underwater and comes face to face with a water horse that full on tries to murder her to stop her from swimming forward to where she wants to go. This thing puts hoofs on her chest and tries to push her to the bottom of the ocean to stop her. It’s a surprisingly intense battle that finally ends as Elsa wrangles control of the horse, taking down the last obstacle in her way to a yet unknown answer of who she is.

Another song called Show Yourself plays next, written once again by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Here are some key lyrics.

Something is familiar
Like a dream I can reach but not quite hold
I can sense you there
Like a friend I’ve always known
I’m arriving
And it feels like I am home
–
I have always been a fortress
Cold secrets deep inside
You have secrets, too
But you don’t have to hide
–
Show yourself
I’m dying to meet you

Show Yourself, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez

The big reveal of the song is that the person she has been searching for is herself. Yeah, it’s not a huge surprise and the idea of ‘it was you all along’ is not new to movies at all. The basic plot reasoning for this is that she’s the fifth spirit of nature but what does this do for her self-discovery? She finds strength and self-assurance.

If you’re the L, G, B, T or Q in the rainbow alphabet then you may have applied yourself to the journey Elsa takes here. This is the story of someone questioning something about herself that nobody around can understand and while they support her, the love they give can also hold back the chance of going to find out what that is. So in order to finally figure it out, she goes off on her own, discovers it and then returns changed. Her family accepts her truth in full once she returns but right up until she left them, they didn’t want her to find that truth due to their own fear.

Frozen 2 does create reasons for their fear and as far as I am aware this wasn’t purposefully written to be an LGBTQ story at all but that’s the strength of Jennifer Lee having written a diary for Elsa. She got deep in there and really considered what it would feel like to be the only outsider in a world of people who just know who they are already. Elsa’s lack of an idol makes this journey much more introspective and the change she has to go through sacrifices more than Miles had to in Spider-Verse. Elsa had to run from her family, push against a literal ocean trying to hold her back and tame an embodiment of anger and hatred so strong it wants to kill you for going beyond your own limits.

Elsa sprints headfirst into who she wants to find, against everyone and everything so that she is allowed to change into the confident queen she’s meant to be. It’s not new that people believe Elsa is or should be an LGBTQ character and I would of course enjoy for her to officially become one because of how much this feels like that type of story. The film has plenty of issues outside of what I’ve discussed here and maybe I’m projecting because I saw this movie at a pivotal point in my own life but I do think that some of the negative criticism thrown at this movie could be attributed to people that have never experienced this sort of emotional journey before.

Spider-Verse is held up high for a perfect portrayal of self-discovery through external guides and the strength to face your fear and make a change but Frozen 2 is similarly loved in my own heart because Elsa knows the destination and has the resolve to get there very early on but every external force in the world is trying to limit her chances of making it. They don’t want her to change, for their own sake.

Change is taking every bit of energy you’ve got and making it happen, be it against your own fears or the fears of those around you, you have to give it your all or you will fail. In movies with a simpler premise this scene of change is the sprint to the airport to tell the person you love that you love them, overcoming large distances and security to do it. Sprinting is the action used to represent true change in the heart of a lead because it’s a great visual signifier for going all out.