Genre: Family/Holiday
Premise: (from Black List) A young girl partners up with an elf, a Russian explorer and a reindeer to rescue Santa Claus from a band of evil elves and save the North Pole.
About: Today’s script finished on last year’s Black List with 10 votes. The writers, Paul Laudieo and Ben Baker, are both new to the game. This is their breakthrough script.
Writer: Paul Laudieo & Ben Baker
Details: 112 pages
Today’s review comes with a reminder. Thursday, December 14th, is the last day to send in your script for the FINAL AMATEUR OFFERINGS COMPETITION of the year, which is for holiday-themed scripts only. So if you have a script about Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, or even that long awaited Alastair Sim biopic (we’ll see how many of you get that reference), send it to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think it should be featured on the site.
The good news is that Netflix has embarked on being the home of everything Christmas. Their “Christmas Chronicles” movie, starring Kurt Russell, has been viewed over 20 million times! And it’s still 3 weeks til Christmas! So there’s a real shot that if you write a great Christmas script, good things will come of it. Today’s Christmas adventure was featured on last year’s Black List. Let’s check it out!
13 year old perennial good girl Sophia is headed to her grandmother’s house for Christmas with her family. While Sophia loves her four siblings, she’s sick of them being so selfish all the time. So when the family finally gets to Grandma’s and her older sister, Caitlin, starts being a bitch, Sophia screams at and throws a plate at her, which leads to her getting punished.
Later that night, while stewing in her room, Sophia notices an elaborate sleigh landing on the roof! Oh my. Is that… Santa Claus?? Sophia runs outside to see that it is not Santa, but rather someone named Bucklebee the Elf. Bucklebee makes Sophia an offer she can’t refuse. Come to the North Pole and party her ass off. Since that sounds better than hanging with her annoying family, Sophia walks into the sleigh carriage, which has a giant endless carnival inside!
Sophia begins to enjoy the festivities until she notices a kid hiding from everyone. She runs after him and he tells her that Bucklebee is evil! He’s an elf who’s taken over the North Pole and loves to sing mean variations of holiday classics (“I see you when you’re sleeping! And I know when you’re awake! I know that you’ve been bad, not good! So give in and accept your fate!”). And one of his favorite things to do is kidnap the “naughty” kids every year. Heeding his warning, Sophia is able to escape the sleigh, jumping out onto a snowy mountain.
It’s here where she runs into Juniper, an elf who escaped the Rebellion, Cosmo, a baby reindeer, and Georgy, a Russian man who’s been wandering around these parts for years in search of the Abominable Snowman. When Sophia informs them she heard that the exiled Santa Claus is somewhere in the Yulewood Forest, they reluctantly agree to help her look for him. Unfortunately, Bucklebee and his army of oversized crows are hot on their tail, determined to prevent Santa Claus from returning at all costs!
When it comes to kids movies, there’s this odd glitch in the success matrix that seems to favor darkness. Think about the most famous kids movies. The Wizard of Oz. Willy Wonka. The Lion King. The Nightmare Before Christmas. These films get really dark! I don’t know why this is because, on the surface, you’d think anything for kids should be straight-up fun and happy. But the proof is in the pudding. In the movies I listed above, there’s death and moody songs and intense villains and uncomfortable weirdness. I mean, who the hell came up with flying monkeys? Or a girl who turns into a giant blueberry and disappears?
Escape From The North Pole sticks to that tradition. Bucklebee is both evil and freaky. But it’s not just him. There’s a warped sense of hopelessness that permeates the story. Santa is gone. Kids get kidnapped into a flying carnival of hell where they’re all drugged to prepare them for slavery. And some of the biggest set pieces are really sad. Like the Cave of Lost Toys – an entire world of toys living underneath a cave because they weren’t deemed fun enough to play with. Yeah, right?! This is some dark shit!
But what Laudieo and Baker get right is that they build a central group of characters to contrast against that. Our heroes are actually fun. Sophia is delightfully earnest. Georgy’s a big goofball. Juniper doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. And who doesn’t love baby reindeer who haven’t yet learned how to fly? These four are the beacon of light that keep us headed for land.
Yet Laudieo and Baker run into a screenwriting problem I see often. They cheat on the hero’s character flaw. You can’t do this because the hero overcoming their flaw is the emotional anchor to the story. When you get it right, it’s the thing that makes the audience feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Get it wrong and the movie can still be good. But it’s not MEMORABLE to the audience because they don’t associate any FEELINGS with it.
Let me explain in more detail. This whole premise is based around Sophia getting on the naughty list. That’s why she’s picked up by Bucklebee. However, Sophia isn’t naughty. The entire opening of the movie establishes that it’s everyone else in the family who’s naughty. She’s the lone good one. But if she’s good, Bucklebee won’t want her. So the writers have to construct this moment where Sophia loses her cool and throws a plate at her sister. And that’s what gets her on the list.
The reason this is a problem is because Sophia doesn’t have a true character flaw to overcome. She doesn’t have to learn to be “nice” or “unselfish” because she’s already nice and unselfish. By cheating to get her on this trip, you’ve given us a character who can’t be arced. The writers would’ve been better off making Sophia legitimately selfish or “naughty.” That way, we can use the adventure to teach her a lesson and arc her. The problem is that every writer’s terrified of making their hero mean because all the screenwriting books tell them the hero has to be “likable.” But if a character doesn’t have any flaws, then there’s no reason to send them on an adventure. The whole point of going on any adventure, even in real life, is to test and learn something about yourself.
While some writers rebel against the notion of character arcs in movies because that stuff never happens in “real life” (or at least, that’s the argument), family films are one of the genres where you have to do it. If there was ever a genre built for arcing characters, it’s this one. Your main audience is in the process of learning what’s right and wrong in life. Your responsibility as a writer is to show them.
But that doesn’t mean Escape From The North Pole was bad. I found it to be imaginative (I loved stepping into the carriage and it being a million times bigger inside than out), and brave (the darkness gave the story an edge that struck a nice balance between sophisticated and childlike). I just wish more had been done with the characters. That’s where the real magic happens in these movies. And it could’ve elevated Escape From the North Pole into something truly memorable.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I wouldn’t recommend writing something like this. It’s so hard to get a 150 million dollar non-IP film made. Christmas movies like The Christmas Chronicles and Elf can both be made for under 30 million bucks. So if you have a choice, write one of those over the much more expensive Escape From The North Pole. That is NOT to say it’s impossible to get this movie made. Only that when a script comes along with this big of a budget, you’re eliminating 90% of the buyers in town.
