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5 Plot Point Breakdown: The Eagle (2011)

By Michael Schilf · August 31, 2011

Screenplay Genre: Adventure / Drama

Movie Time: 114 minutes

1. INCITING INCIDENT

After returning to Rome to heal from wounds sustained in the highlands of Scotland, young centurion Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) saves the life of the British slave Esca (Jamie Bell) by encouraging the crowd to give him life after showing courage in the face of certain death to a gladiator in the arena. (00:28:50)

2. LOCK IN (End of Act One)

In an attempt to restore the reputation of his father and the family name, Marcus, accompanied only by his now British slave Esca, decides to set out across Hadrian’s Wall into the uncharted highlands of Caledonia to retrieve his father’s lost legion’s golden emblem: the Eagle of the Ninth. (00:42:02)

3. FIRST CULMINATION (Midpoint)

When Marcus and Esca stumble upon the savage tribe of the blue people in the mountains of Scotland, Esca saves their lives with some quick thinking by constructing a role reversal, by explaining and physically illustrating to the tribal warriors that Marcus is the Roman slave to Esca. (1:02:29)

4. MAIN CULMINATION (End of Act Two)

Esca is invited into the tribe as a guest, while his slave Marcus is beaten and abused, but eventually, the opportunity presents itself, and in the dead of night while the tribe is sleeping, Marcus and Esca kill the tribe’s chief and successfully steal back The Eagle of the Ninth, escaping on horseback into the highlands.

5. THIRD ACT TWIST

After being chased day and night by the tribe’s warriors, gravely injured and alone, Marcus stands in a river bed, preparing to fight to the death with the Eagle of the Ninth proudly secured to his staff, when suddenly Esca returns through the morning mist, leading a group of centurions from Marcus’s father’s legion twenty years prior, all of whom stand at Marcus’s side for the obligatory final battle. (1:35:02)


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