James at 2011-06-08 13:56:02:

I think a lot of people misconstrue what Hitchcock is saying when he says that McGuffins don't matter.

What the McGuffin specifically is as an item in the film is irrelevant. What is important is what happens should the hero fail to attain that item and why the hero wants it in the first place.

They are motivation and jeopardy rolled into an item. This is the plot device side of the McGuffin.

What a McGuffin also does is it creates a platform to tell a more personal story.

All of Indiana Jones's artifacts are McGuffins. The best two are the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. Because they have both positive and negative side effects. If Indiana fails to retrieve them, the Nazis have a super weapon.

Of the four movies, the Holy Grail has the best use of a McGuffin. Why? (imo, of course)

Because this is the type of story that Hitchcock is talking about. The story is not about acquiring an artifact. It is about the relationship of father and son.

What is brilliant about this movie is that the goal of saving the father and acquiring the Holy Grail become the same at the start of the third act. "Only the healing power of the grail can save your father now."

The sled in Citizen Kane is a McGuffin. This is an example of how they can be used in mysteries.

The heart of the sea in Titanic.

The gold in "d'em d'ere hills" in The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

ShanGraLa in Lost Horizon.

The falcon in The Maltese Falcon.

The Death Star plans are a McGuffin in Star Wars. Also notice how it is the journey of the plans that carve out the Act breaks.

The movie opens with Vader and Co looking for the plans to the Death Star. Act Two starts when Luke and company decide to try and return the droids (plans) to Leia. Act Three begins when the rebellion gets the plans. And the complication is that the Empire planted a homing beacon on the Millennium Falcon, which creates a ticking clock -- which side will blow the other up first?

MI 3 -- JJ Abrams makes this McGuffin painfully obvious -- and I think it actually is a let down because he is so blase about how little the item matters to the film.

Hitchcock's movies are very rarely about the recovery of an item. That's the McGuffin. Generally, the McGuffin is simply a device to get to the real meat of the story that he wants to tell. In Notorious the plans are the McGuffin, but the story he is really telling is about a spy that puts his lover in jeopardy to try and acquire these plans.

In too many failed movies, the plot is simply about the McGuffin.

If story is about the journey, then what happens along the journey is the real prize, not the McGuffin.

Again, using Star Wars as an example, the Death Star plans are tiny and easily forgettable in comparison to other McGuffins like the Holy Grail. But they are both doing the exact same thing in terms of driving the movie and raising stakes. It's not about how great the McGuffin in the film is, rather it is how and what the characters do to attain it and prevent others from getting it.

Also notice that the McGuffin is often acquired by the hero sometime before the third act in almost 99% of successful films.

The only genre that really has a habit of keeping the McGuffin until the very end is mystery. All 4 Indiana Jones movies reveal the McGuffin at the midpoint. Star Wars reveals it at the opening.