We don’t get to talk about the action spec much, which means today’s review is going to be an education on the matter…
Genre: Action
Premise: (from IMDB) Disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning finds himself trapped inside the White House in the wake of a terrorist attack; using his inside knowledge, Banning works with national security to rescue the President from his kidnappers.
About: Writers (and married couple) Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt had been writing together for over a decade before they sold their first script, Olympus Has Fallen. Rothenberger had actually won the Nicholl competition all the way back in 2002 (with a Korean war epic – total Nicholl-bait!). They struggled with numerous near misses over the next decade before signing with Gersh and Kaplan-Perrone off a script they wrote called “Cali.” The reps read through their entire body of work – 20 scripts – and said that Olympus Has Fallen was the one they wanted to go out with. However, they first spent a year revising the script, mainly updating it from its original incarnation, which was dated. The movie was then purchased by Millineum and got Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman attached. Antoine Fuqua directed the film. It just came out this weekend and finished second at the box office with a 30 million dollar take.
Writers: Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt
Details: 115 pages
The reason I wanted to review Olympus Has Fallen was simple: Action. Producers want action scripts. Why? Action films have the potential to make more money than any other genre because action sells everywhere. The guy who lives in the middle of the desert in Nigeria isn’t going to turn on an action movie and go, “Wait, what’s going on? I don’t understand. Why are things blowing up?” Blowing-up is a universal language.
Artistically, I have a problem with this. It hurts to admit that the writing of a movie doesn’t matter to the guy in Spain who doesn’t understand English. As long as his action appetite is satiated with enough car chases and explosions, he’s happy. To that end, it’s appropriate to point out that the most important aspect of an action spec is the concept. If you’ve got something a little unique that we haven’t seen before that has the potential for a lot of great action scenes, your spec has a chance of getting picked up.
But here’s why that’s not all you need, despite most writers believing that’s the case. The guy in Nigeria may not be discerning of what your love interest’s backstory is. But the guy at a studio desk in Hollywood is. You see, he gets hundreds of action scripts to read. So he’s going to be weighing all of them against each other. Concept will be the biggest determinant. But he’s also looking at execution, originality, castablity, character, etc. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, quality does matter.
Mike Banning is your typical secret service agent. The guy is big. Looks former athlete’ish. Flashes that alpha male smile. Or at least, he USED TO flash a smile. Not after tonight though. While hanging with the prez at Camp David, Banning is unable to save Mrs. President from falling through the ice pond and dying a cold airless death! Banning never mentally recovers from the ordeal, and when we cut to two years later, we see that he’s now a Secret Service GROUP agent. That’s, like, the level BELOW the lead agents! Olympus has fallen? More like Banning has fallen! Right after the First Lady has fallen. Through the ice!
President Benjamin Asher doesn’t have time to dwell on dead wives though. Tensions are heating up between North and South Korea, and decisions have to be made on how the U.S. will respond. South Korea’s new president decides to come to the U.S. to personally ask the president for help, but soon finds out he’s got his own secret service issues. Once in the White House, the head of his security, a nasty little bugger named Kang, snaps his fingers and his entire team enacts a plan to take over the White House! Looks like Kang is secretly North Korean! And he’s come here to re-unite his country with his Southern brothers!
In the meantime, Banning is off on the outskirts of the city doing some menial task when he sees a bunch of explosions and stuff in the distance. So he hops in a sewer and starts the long underground trek to the White House. At some point during his smelly stroll, Kang reveals that he wants the codes to a secret defense project called “Cerberus.” Everyone in the U.S. cabinet looks at each other with bulged eyes. How does he know about Cerberus???? But that should be the least of their worries. Because it turns out Kang isn’t here to re-unite the Koreas like originally assumed. His plan is MUCH more terrifying!
Beep beep boooop.
Scriptshadow verdict computing……….
Analysis…….
Well, I’ll say this. Olympus Has Fallen is better than most amateur action scripts I’ve read. Which may sound like good news. The problem is, I rarely come across a good amateur action script. That’s because most action writers just focus on the explosions. They don’t realize that the totality of explosions equals in a movie is maybe 2 minutes long and that there needs to be this thing called a, um, STORY in between.
Olympus has a story. But besides a few nice flashes (literally) in the first half, it’s a little too standard. I’m thinking the studio must have really REALLY loved this concept (concept is BIG in action scripts! Don’t bother writing an action spec without one!), because they allowed for a bit too much in the cliché department. In my opinion, if you’re going to write an action film, you gotta give us something different here and there. And there WERE some cool moments. For example, I liked when the North Korean plane came in and set off that blinding light weapon so that nobody could shoot them down. I’ve never seen that before. And the Cerberus storyline (which amounted to taking all American nuclear missiles off-line) was slightly…..er…different-ish than many of the plans I’ve seen in these movies.
And there were a few other things that told me I was reading a professional script here. Early on, as Banning is getting ready for work, he gets a phone call from a friend, and the resulting conversation tells us some things about his character. At the same time this is happening, Banning is watching the news, where reporters are telling us about the current North/South Korean situation. In other words, the scene is achieving TWO THINGS at once – exposition about Banning and exposition about the Koreas. Amateur writers would’ve typically separated these scenes. Pros are always looking to combine scenes so that they’re doing two/three things at once.
It’s also important to make the central plan in your action movie believable. You have to ask yourself, “How would this really happen?” and go from there. The more convincing you can be, the more you’re going to pull your audience in. I see too many amateur scripts where the writers don’t even consider this and as a result the reader is taken out of the story immediately. Within the context of the movie, the plan here was pretty believable. I had some reservations about the U.S. letting a C-130 cargo plane fly up to the White House (they do stop it but not before it’s able to help enact the plan), but the stuff on the ground was sound.
The big problem with Olympus Has Fallen – and I’m kinda shocked writers with ten years of experience made this mistake – is that its main character is sooooooo boring. Or maybe “boring” isn’t the word. “Standard” may be better. I’m actually not surprised that Gerard Butler plays the role of Banning because he’s the real-world equivalent of “standard” and “boring.” Despite Banning being the hero here, he doesn’t say or do much! I mean, he’s running around in the underground tunnels and running around in the White House, but I never really felt like I knew the guy because he didn’t say anything, ever!
It’s interesting, the White House Down spec (the competing White House hijack project that’s coming out this summer) took another approach. It paired its hero with the president, allowing for conversation between the two so we could get to know him. Then, of course, Die Hard has McClane talking to the cop (via radio) down below so we could get to know him. Banning doesn’t say much because he’s got nobody to talk to, poor guy. And in a movie market where we’ve seen a million agent-types before, you’re going to need any opportunity possible to get us into the head of your agent so you can differentiate him from everyone else. Of course, this was the sale draft I read. They may have changed it in the film. But it was a real issue in the script.
So the lead-up to the White House takeover was fun. But Olympus falters due to its bland hero and cliché second half. Which leaves a lot of you asking, “Well wait, I thought this was supposed to be an example of how to do it right.” That’s the scary thing – it’s actually better than most action specs. While it may not have been original, it was very competent, and 99% of the action specs I read aren’t even that. Those professional touches like having double-duty scenes, combined with a perfect execution of the three-act structure are things I don’t see in amateur screenplays. I’m still waiting for that kick ass modern-day Die Hard spec to give today’s audiences their first action classic, but scripts like Olympus Has Fallen will have to do in the meantime.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a great reminder that these are the people you’re competing against as a screenwriter – people who have been honing their craft for over a decade, people who have won the Nicholl competition 10 years ago, people who have seen and experienced every kind of writing obstacle one can encounter and figuring out how to overcome it. Chances are, if you’re not throwing everything you can into your own writing, you won’t be able to compete with these guys.
