Note: I screwed up with the Scriptshadow 250 Top 5 Announcement. Monday, as we Americans know, is a major holiday (Memorial Day). So we’re going to move that announcement to Wednesday instead. Sorry about that!
Genre: Somnium
Logline (from writer): A loyal astronaut, scheduled to be on the first mission to Mars, begins having terrifying dreams of the mission going wrong. Then, when the mission is sabotaged, he finds himself the prime suspect.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I’ve been writing for three years now, my script Jack Curious is in the Scriptshadow top 25 at the moment. This script is the script I wrote to teach myself the craft, and while it made the quarterfinals of the Big Break Contest and connected me with some cool people, it’s been sitting on the shelf for the last two years. I’d love the opportunity, with the help of the SS community, to pull it apart and work out how to make it better. I also have most of the budget together to make my narrative feature directing debut (I’ve only done docos so far), and I’m wondering if this could be the script to do it with.
Writer: Bryce McLellan
Details: 109 pages
We’re seeing a lot of Mars projects these days. We had The Martian. There’s that new weird Mars teenage love story (that I reviewed a few years back and was convinced would never see the light of day). There’s a Zachary Quinto movie I just learned about called Passage to Mars that for some reason takes place in Antarctica. There’s the Deadpool writers next sorta-Mars movie called “Life.” There’s “Approach The Unknown,” about a single manned Mars Mission. There’s one of my favorite amateur scripts submitted to the site, The Only Lemon Tree on Mars. And if you want to get really technical, they’re thinking about making a sequel to Veronica Mars.
What does this mean?
Hell if I know.
People have a galactic hard-on for red dirt?
I guess if we want to get into it, there’s something to be said for understanding where the hot topics are. Because once you know you’re playing in the same sandbox as everyone else, you have to decide if you can build a better sandcastle than them. If all you’re going to do is fill up your Big Gulp cup with goopy sand and flip it around four times and call it a day, your sandcastle probably won’t be able to compete with the next guy’s.
That’s why I recommend staying away from the hot subject matter. If everyone’s writing about Mars, write about Neptune. Or Uranus. Heh heh. Heh heh. “Uranus.” However, since we can’t go back in time and warn Bryce about this, we’ll have to see if he’s pulled off Plan B: finding a new angle into a Mars story.
The year is 2050 or so. Sam obtained the Mars Mission astronaut job when one of the other astronauts went crazy. I guess being picked for the first mission to Mars can be a bit anxiety-inducing for some. Joining Sam will be the Buzz Aldrin-like Jack and the smart-as-a-whip, Connie.
The American-led launch is competing against a similarly constructed Chinese launch, and just like when two Hollywood studios get the same idea at the same time, instead of joining forces and creating the best launch possible, they waste a lot of money to win the race by a few weeks!
And then Sam starts experiencing nightmares. They’re flying to Mars, their ship disintegrates, he lands on the surface with a thud. And then there are the winds. Sam can’t stop having nightmares about those horrifying 200 mile an hour Mars windstorms.
Meanwhile, as we move closer to launch, we cut back in time six months, where we learn that Sam’s wife, Kate, was pregnant. Since she’s not pregnant in the present, and we don’t see any kids around, we get the sense that that situation didn’t end well. And subsequent flashbacks will confirm that.
When a fire on the shuttle sets the launch date back a few months, people within this NASA-like operation begin to suspect that someone’s working for the Chinese, possibly sabotaging the mission so that China can launch first.
The big question is: Is it Sam? A lot of people think so. And with Sam’s nightmares getting worse, with his brain starting to break down, not even he’s sure anymore.
Let’s start with the good news. This is NOT like other sandcastles. And I should’ve known that since Jack Curious, Bryce’s Top 25 Scriptshadow 250 script, is anything but normal.
However, I think Somnium suffers from the flip side of things. Have we deconstructed storytelling TOO MUCH here? Is this “too indie?” Is “too indie” even a thing? I think so. But I know a lot of you don’t.
Let’s start with the flashbacks. Whenever I look at flashbacks, I ask the question, “Are they necessary?” 99% of the time, they’re not. But when they are, they’re usually used in a pattern. And that’s because the writer is using them to tell a separate story in the past, that, if told well, can actually be as interesting as the present story.
I’m not sure this flashback story passed that test. It’s about a woman losing her child. And the thing was, we already knew she lost the child. Like I pointed out, we didn’t see any kid in the present. And she wasn’t pregnant in the present. So obviously she had to have lost the baby.
So why is it important that I see that for myself? Why can’t that just be backstory and not a series of flashbacks? I don’t have a good answer for that, and therefore I’d argue the flashbacks weren’t necessary.
Next up is the way the plot was designed. And Bryce takes a HUGE chance here. I give him credit for that. But let’s look at this logically…
Remember the movie, National Lampoon’s Vacation? The original one with Chevy Chase? Remember what they were trying to do? Get to Wally World, right? Well imagine if that movie wasn’t about actually going to Wally World, but rather about getting in the car that would take them to Wally World.
That’s kind of what this felt like to me. And I’m not saying that the destination has to always be the biggest thing possible. But when you dangle something as exciting as Mars in front of the viewer, and then you tell them we’re not even going to see Mars in the movie…it’s kind of like a literary version of blueballs. We feel cheated, right?
Now, to Bryce’s credit, Somnium starts to get a lot better in its second half. The main reason for that is the China mystery. Are they sabotaging the launch? And if they are, is Sam involved? That was the plot point that drew me back into the story after I got pissed when I realized we wouldn’t be going to Mars.
I also liked the mystery of Sam getting fed these suspicious pills. It added another layer to the sabotage mystery. Maybe someone was manipulating Sam to sabotage the launch without his knowledge?
Unfortunately, none of this stuff gets paid off in a satisfying way. It was paid off in that vague “you decide” way. And I’ve never been a fan of that.
If I were Bryce, I would introduce the Chinese sabotage mystery much earlier in the script. Make it a major plot point. Because if there’s one thing this script lacks, it’s structure. It’s plot. It’s built on this wishy-washy foundation of flashbacks and character uncertainty. It needs a plot that’s more definable.
Then use the flashbacks as a decoy. We think they’re about Kate losing the baby. But through them, we reveal that Sam IS actually involved with the Chinese, therefore making the past plot an official part of the story as opposed to just character backstory.
The more you structure Somnium, the better it’s going to be. And I think Bryce is a good writer. So he can pull it off. But it’s going to require work.
Script link: Somnium
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Flashbacks JUST FOR CHARACTER BACKSTORY are usually a bad idea. If you’re going to use flashbacks, use them to ADD TO THE PLOT. We should learn cool things in the flashback that we couldn’t have learned in the present. And these things need to AFFECT THE PLOT. That’s one of the only times flashbacks can be an asset.
