The protagonist walks onto the stage. His career is strange, but plausible. Of all the weird people doing this job, he is the best. Not because he's the smartest, strongest, oldest, or most qualified, but because he thinks outside the box and is willing to go the distance.
10-15 minutes into the story there’s a terrible fire. Only our protagonist can put it out, but like every hero in almost every movie ever, he’d rather just watch TV and drink beer.
Hold the phone! A wiser character appears and offers the hero a deal. Extinguish the blaze and you’ll find that treasure you’ve been seeking your whole life. You’ve never been able to find it, but I swear to God, this time X marks the spot.
Our protagonist accepts. Not because he wants to, but because he has to.
A bunch of secondary characters try and convince the protagonist that putting out the fire is literally retarded. Our hero says “whatever,” grabs his axe and helmet and storms off. The secondary characters file some complaints throughout the movie, but we don’t really see them again until the end when the hero says “I told you so.”
Yadda, yadda, yadda, a bunch of dangerous garbage jumps in the hero’s way, and he gets into an argument with anything that has a pulse. He uses his wits and debate skills to outsmart everything except -- KABOOM. He didn’t see that coming! Now he’s screwed. Or is he? No, of course not, he’s the main character. If there was a chance of him failing this would have to be an ensemble cast and a TV show. It’s not.
While our hero may be invincible, we don’t want the audience to feel cheated. Nolan turns himself into Satan, writes himself into the movie, and meets the hero at a crossroads, at midnight, Mountain Time.
At this point the hero is Jonesing hard for the treasure and it’s been at least thirty minutes since he crossed the Rubicon, so he makes a deal with the devil. The hero trades something valuable and irreplaceable for a magic spatula that spurts fire-killing foam when you smack stuff with it.
The hero douses the inferno and finds the treasure which doesn’t look at all the pictures in the catalogue. It’s cool.
Everything is okay now.
The end.