After being augmented against her will, a street-girl from a futuristic city must avoid capture by both former allies as well as the wealthy caste — sparking a civil war in which only the strongest survive.

>>>Also, I want the girl to not necessarily be a hero…

So I want to pay my money, invest my time in watching the struggle of the character anyway because…???

>>>Like in Elysium

Which I thought was a waste of my time and money because of a flawed plot. And it didn’t break even at the box office.

Whatever, my jest was to the point out that I don’t see how your main character can be construed as an anti-hero. Anyone with the courage to take on an evil system for a just cause is not an anti-hero (even if initially it’s all personal — she’s doing it for herself; there is no other stakeholder).

Max has just cause for what he does. He’s been exploited, mortally abused, and dumped like so much garbage. He’s not raising hell just to raise hell. He has a positive goal: get to the medical equipment that will heal him.

Ditto your character.

[Further, the movie establishes a relationship with Frey going back to their youth in the opening scene which is how the plot sets up sacrificing his life for the sake of her son. Max is not totally isolate/alienated from everyone, has no personal relationships.]

I dunno about shoe horning the civil war into the logline. Information overload. And personal struggles usually make for more compelling loglines than political ones. Particularly if the civil war is an unintended consequence of the personal struggle (as, say, was the case with Katniss Everdeen in the 1st 2″ Hunger Games” movies).

We may not be on the same page as to the definition of a hero versus an anti-hero. Here’s mine:

A hero is someone whose struggle I sympathize with, whose motivation I can identify with, whose goal I can root for. I can sympathize… identify… root for Max in Elysium. Ditto V in Vendetta because they have just cause, righteous reasons for what they are doing — they are fighting back against tyranny and exploitation. How can someone fighting the bad guys be characterized as an anti-hero?

As stated — or as I understand your logline — your protagonist passes my test for a hero, not an anti-hero.

An anti-hero is someone who I don’t sympathize with, whose motivation I don’t identify with or like, whose goal I’m not inclined to root for. But who is compelling to watch, nonetheless. Like Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood”. The movie is a masterful study in the ancient Greek tragic notion that character is fate.

How do you define them?

A logline is a sales tool where every word matters. Ditto a story pitch. “Hero” raises one set of connotations (the kind that usually interests directors, producers, actors), anti-hero raises another set of connotations that often (but not always) making the concept harder to sell.

So yeah, whether you yourself pitch the story with the protagonist cast as a hero or anti-hero makes a big difference.

In drama, most hero journeys do not start out with a main character wanting to “save the world”. Far from it, the protagonist just wants to save herself, advance her own narrow interest, achieve a purely personal goal. But in the course of the story , the journey, the scope of the struggle expands, the stakes escalate so that she ends up “saving the world” or at least a lot more people than she originally intended.

Does Katniss Everdeen start out wanting to incite a rebellion against the despotism of Panem? Far from it. Does that make her any less of a hero? On the contrary.

I’d like to reiterate an important point FFF made earlier in this thread. That is, in a logline, the protagonist’s struggle MUST be cast in positive terms. She must be doing more than fleeing a negative situation, she must also be struggling toward a positive outcome, a constructive change in her situation.

The logline is usually more effective when it emphasizes what she’s struggling toward, not fleeing from.

fwiw.

If Katniss Everdeen is not the hero, aka: the protagonist, aka: main character, of the “Hunger Games” saga — who is?

We are so obviously not on the same page as to the definition of basic terms, that I don’t know what else to say. Except that by the dramatic conventions of modern cinema, while struggling to merely survive is a positive goal, it isn’t enough to sell a movie concept. It isn’t enough for a protagonist to escape the clutches of her tormentor, to run away. Eventually she must confront her antagonist (who, btw, is???) in a High Noon showdown, aka: the Obligatory Scene.

I’m not making this up as I go along. And neither are the others, FFF and Nir Shelter. Our concerns are informed by our knowledge of standard industry definitions and expectations.

I think you have a potentially interesting hook. I say potentially because “augmented” suggests something interesting, but I’m not clear as to what “augmentation” is. I think the nature of the augmentation needs to be made more specific.

And I suggest that the story that flows from that augmentation needs to be organic, causal. IOW: don’t throw in a civil war just because you think it spices up the plot. There ought to be a clear, logical, cause and effect relationship between her being “augmented” against her will and whatever happens after that. Plot points should fall in sequence like dominoes.

I, for one, am intrigued — but not hooked. I’m circling around the bait — but not taking a bite.

fwiw