Genre: Horror
Premise: A mysterious drifter gets stuck inside a Chuck E. Cheese like entertainment center called Wally’s Wonderland where the animatronic creatures come alive and kill.
About: It’s here. The single greatest Nic Cage movie that hasn’t been made yet. Wally’s Wonderland! An idea so fun it seems impossible no one’s come up with it yet. I guess the universe needed the idea to collide with a certain Direct-to-Digital icon before it was ready to unleash the greatest midnight horror film ever… that hasn’t been made yet. I read somewhere that the writer wanted to make “the ultimate B movie that was so absurd you had to tell your friends about it because of how stupidly awesome it was.” I admire a writer who knows exactly what he wants.
Writer: G.O. Parsons
Details: 93 pages
When one reads Wally’s Wonderland, one has to ask the question: “Will this be the greatest B-movie ever made?”
Nick Cage taking down an animatronic ostrich with a mop could be this generation’s cut yourself out of the inside of a shark with a chainsaw moment.
I can tell you something this script taught me right off the bat. It’s in reference to idea creation. There are big news stories in our pasts that just sort of came of nowhere and everyone talked about them. Then, just as quickly as they arrived, they disappeared. If you can identify one of these stories and find a movie idea for it, you’ve got something that already has “concept cache” because it’s been proven to capture peoples’ interest.
I remember those news stories about how pedophiles and sickos used to hang out at Chuck E. Cheese because that’s where all the kids were. Today’s script has taken that idea to the next level, centering around a group of these degenerates who sacrificed their souls in order to live on in animatronic form.
The Janitor is driving his jeep down a lone highway in Middle-of-Nowhere Nevada when, all of a sudden, all four wheels blow out at the same time, bringing him to a screechy scary stop. And yet the Janitor is unphased. By the way, it’s never clear if The Janitor is named The Janitor because he *is* a janitor or because he must become a janitor due to his circumstances. Such details are unimportant in Wally’s Wonderland.
A tow truck shows up and a man named Jed explains to The Janitor that the police were chasing someone the other week, put out one of those spike lines to blow the guy’s tires, and, wouldn’t you know it, forgot to recollect it! He takes The Janitor back to his garage where he gives him the damage – $1000. Unfortunately, Jed informs him, they don’t take credit cards. It’s clear that The Janitor doesn’t have cash on him so Jed offers an alternative.
Cut to Wally’s Wonderland, a long since closed-down Chuck E. Cheese knock-off. The owner, Tex Macadoo, is planning to reopen the place. But he needs someone to clean it up first, make it spick-and-span. If The Janitor is quick, Tex tells him, he should be able to finish the job by morning. The Janitor hasn’t said a word to anybody yet. He doesn’t even react. He just stares intensely at whoever’s talking to him.
Wally’s Wonderland is a freaking mess. Remnants of hundreds of sad 1990s birthday parties are scattered about haphazardly. And then there’s those rusty creepy animatronic dolls (Pirate Pete, Beary the Bear, Ozzie the Ostrich, and Wally the Weasel) up on stage. They stand there staring out at nothing. Or at least that’s what we think. What The Janitor doesn’t know is that Jed and Tex have locked him in the building. He’s about to be sacrificed to these animals… which are very much alive!
The first one, Ozzie the Ostrich, strikes almost immediately. But a strange thing happens when he attacks. Unlike the other humans who freak out and run and scream for their lives, The Janitor just stands there waiting for the Ostrich and then cracks him in the face with his mop. He then relentlessly beats him to a wirey pulp.
You’d think that after an animatronic Ostrich tried to kill you that you’d prepare for battle with the other three fake animals in the room. But not The Janitor. He simply goes back to work, determined to clean the place up before dawn.
Meanwhile, a group of high school kids led by a girl named Liv head to Wally’s World to burn it down. They know the town sacrifices people in there and they’re going to put a stop to it. But first they have to get The Janitor out of there. So they head up to the roof where they’re able to gain access inside. Once in, however, things don’t go according to plan. The animatronic animals are more than happy to fatten up on young human flesh.
Strangely, The Janitor doesn’t care. He really really really wants to clean. Unless a kid being eaten is directly in the way of doing his job, he ignores them. It’s not clear whether The Janitor doesn’t realize he’s been conned or if he knows he’s been conned but still wants to clean the place. Either answer is acceptable to me.
You know where this is headed. The whole time, Wally the Weasel has been sitting atop his stage perch, awaiting all his other minions to take their shot at the Janitor. And when they fail, he must now get the job done himself. Nicholas Cage……….. vs. a 9 foot animatronic weasel. I’m going to ask you an honest question. Do you even need to go on with life after this battle? Cause I don’t think I do.
One of the first things I wondered before reading this was how is Nicholas Cage going to fight animatronic monsters for 90 minutes inside of five rooms? I was worried the flame was going to burn bright then go out before the second half.
So I liked what Parsons did. He brought in these high school kids. Not only did that give us more battles to show, but The Janitor plays an Equalizer-like character. He handles every attack with ease. So we needed characters who STRUGGLED to defeat these things to make it more interesting. Remember, that’s where you grab the viewer – when things are unknown. If we know our heroes are going to win every fight, there’s no conflict, there’s no uncertainty, and therefore there’s no tension. Bringing those kids in was key.
Also, if you have a character who’s as unstoppable as The Janitor is, you need to look for ways in the second half of the movie to handicap them. That way they don’t have access to their fighting superiority and you DO get uncertainty in their fights. When the town realizes that The Janitor is winning, they go back in, handcuff him, and leave him there so that he can be properly sacrificed. So now The Janitor has to fight with his hands tied behind his back! That’s smart screenwriting.
It also helps, in movies like this, if you can occasionally take us outside. Technically, you can keep everything inside. It’s certainly cheaper to do it that way. But even in script form, there’s a “claustrophobic” feeling that sets in if you’re not occasionally cutting away from the place. So it was good that we’d occasionally cut back to the bad guys. We even get one great scene where the bad guys are driving away only to see an animatronic penguin bash through their windshield and attack them.
This also allows you to cut out boring stuff. If we stayed inside the whole time, we’d have to show The Janitor after he killed someone or washing his hands or doing other boring things. By occasionally cutting outside, we could cut back to the Janitor all set up in a new spot to clean. It’s an aspect of screenwriting I don’t talk about much because it’s unsexy. But the advantage of cutting away to anything is that you can then jump forward in time to a story-convenient plot point once you come back to your A-story.
The only thing I’d probably change here is to have a little more fun with the animals’ personalities. Each animal should have a distinct approach and style and way they talk. This is a stupid example but if there was someone named “Cheaty Cheetah,” he might talk really really fast. Disney movies are good at this. In Zootopia, there was that scene at the DMV and they were stuck with a sloth who spoke at -50 miles per hour. This is such an absurd premise that you might as well lean all the way into it.
Either way, I had a lot of fun with this and I hope they figure out a way to have midnight showings in Los Angeles because that is exactly how this movie is meant to be enjoyed.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Handicap your hero as the script goes on! Whether your hero is as capable as Denzel Washington in The Equalizer or as outmatched as Bruce Willis in Die Hard, look for ways to handicap them as the story goes on so that their job gets tougher. The tougher it is, the more we’ll doubt they can succeed. That’s where you want your audience. You want them thinking, “There’s NO WAY they can pull this off.”
