You may call it Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3, but I call ’em “Thesis,” “Anti-thesis,” and “Synthesis.”

The three worlds of a screenplay are just that, different places with different demands. When deconstructing a script in class, or in a studio consultation, this is where I always start: the big picture, the overview. Examining the “three worlds” not only shows “How does it begin and how does it end?” it reveals the process of the hero’s “transformation” in a way that is the starting point of any discussion about “fixing” a script. A good example of the “three worlds” in action is seen in the #2 movie of the weekend, Wanted.

Wanted is fun action picture, and while I shy away from movies that encourage their teen audience to shoot people as a way to get results (Grand Theft Auto IV dude, about as scary as it gets), there is a style to the violence that is new and terribly intoxicating. But as a structuralist, I am most concerned with how it works.

Wanted works like Matrix. A naif, an innocent, a cubicle dweller with a dead end life, is told on page 12 that in fact he is a natural born assassin. After the normal guy hesitancy to join up — even though doing so means hanging out with Angelina Jolie — our hero succumbs and his training begins. This section is just part of the “upside-down version of the world,” the Anti-thesis of everything our hero, and we, think of as “normal.” And “training” is always a big part of any “Fun and Games” rise to the “false victory” of Midpoint.

And yet, the funhouse-mirror reflection characters that appear here are just like those Dorothy finds in Wizard of Oz. What were farmhands and mean teachers and sideshow medicine men become in the “Anti-thesis” world scarecrows and wicked witches and wizards. So it is in Wanted, as our hero finds a whole new pecking order at “work.” If he thought being a cubicle dweller was tough, his coffee breaks now include dips in a pool of electrolytes to speed recovery from his knife cuts and broken bones.

But that’s World Two for ya. And “Anti-thesis” is just the beginning of change this hero will undergo. It’s like Training Day, in that regard, in which we begin the movie with an “ethical” but naive hero, throw him into the upside-down world where the rules no longer apply, and now force him to choose a “third way.”

And again, just like Training Day, when that world proves to be false, and falsely embracing, we must change yet again. In Wanted‘s “All Is Lost” the hero (James McAvoy) is “worse off than when this movie started” and the “whiff of death” includes almost being killed while losing the “mentor” that didn’t seem to be so when we first met him. The compare-and-contrast between these two dead teachers in Training Day (Scott Glenn) and Wanted (Thomas Kretschmann) tells us how very similar these two stories are too.

The “third way” the hero seeks is a combination of what he was and what he’s learned. The hero can no longer go back to the life he had before, but he can’t stay where he is either. In the “netherworld” of “Dark Night of the Soul,” he must find a new answer — and he does! Wanted‘s Act Three “Synthesis” includes the “Five Point Finale” and a “Storming the Castle” sequence that actually is a castle! Love it when that happens!

By the end, Wanted‘s hero is “transformed” having crossed through three worlds: Thesis- Anti-thesis-Synthesis. Yes, the special effects are great, yes, the story is compelling, but it’s this transformation that makes it the most satisfying part of any movie, and what we all seek — audience and writer.