MacGuffin

MacGuffin -a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot.

The MacGuffin is what drives the action in movies.  The audience is never really aware of the MacGuffin. It's an underlying source of the movie. Moviemakers don't take time to specify what the MacGuffin is because we, as the audience, don't care. All the audiences truly care about is that justice is served and the bad guy is caught. Audiences tend to be black and white when it comes to plots and that's why specifying the MacGuffin isn't important. Directors know this. Yet without the MacGuffin a plot would seem empty... or choppy.

Alfred Hitchcock was a pro when it came to using MacGuffins.  The 39 Steps and North by Northwest are prime examples of MacGuffins being put to use in Hitchcock's films. Both movies deal with spies being after something.  By the end of the movie you no longer care about what it is the spies are after. All you care about is that the innocent man gets away free. Another prime example of Hitchcock using a MacGuffin is in the movie The Wrong Man. The Wrong Man is about an innocent man being accused of a crime he had nothing to do with. The crime that he was accused of doing is the MacGuffin. Honestly, I can't even remember what crime he was said to have committed. All that I remember is that he was innocent but everyone believed he was guilty. All I wanted was for his innocence to be proven to the world. And that is what a MacGuffin is.