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Genre: Action/Superhero
Premise: (from writer) When a godlike superhero begins serving vicious, indiscriminate justice, a PTSD-suffering tactical operative must join a special ops mission to bring him down before the entire world becomes collateral damage.
About: (from writer) Here’s something interesting about myself: when I was just out of high school I saw an HBO promo with Matt Damon (in his Talented Mr. Ripley afterglow period) and Ben Affleck (in his post-Armageddon apology tour) asking aspiring filmmakers to submit a screenplay to their new show, Project Greenlight. Since I wasn’t looking forward to college, I decided I was going to become a filmmaker instead. Obviously, I did not think this through. Three months later I had a 57-page screenplay about a group of teens that were the youngest people on earth due to an inexplicable infertility pandemic. Other than beating Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men to the punch by 6 years, the result was horrible; I remember writing a description that started with, “She oozes cool from every pore.” Yeah, I know. I was so disappointed with my screenplay that I did not even bother submitting it. But I caught the bug, and I kept writing. Thirteen years later I am finally submitting a work that I am proud of. I would love to get some feedback from you and the Scriptshadow community.
Writer: Jorge Osvaldo
Details: 98 pages
Not gonna lie. It’s hard as hell to read a script right before you go on vacation to Paris. Your mind is in a land of towers and mona lisas, and butter. Lots and lots of butter. And in what’s becoming a weekly thing here at Scriptshadow, I was forced to read the amateur entry at three in the morning. Again! Man, I really do make it tough on you guys, huh?
But shiver me timbers and call me Beasly, I was yanked into this script faster than a Miley Cyrus twerk. Uhhh, you had me at “Guy drives a tank out of his garage and starts attacking city.” That opening was so snazzy, I actually forgot about the Paris crepe stand app I bought for my iphone. But as every crepe connoisseur knows, a crepe’s worth is determined not by how it looks coming off the pan, but by its taste. And thus, I grabbed a couple of “ouis,” a few “bonjours” and sat down with this croisscript to determine if it was as good as it looked.
It’s St. Louis. The economy is icky. On this particular day, two deputies are tasked with repossessing Jeffery Winston’s home. Jeffery is a former military man though, and doesn’t like protecting his country only to get shitted on by it. So when these men who call themselves “defenders of the public” try to take what’s rightfully his, he goes bananas, grabs his tank in the garage, and rolls over the cop cars into St. Louis, where he starts shooting at buildings.
Cut to Thomas Soler, a good-looking farmer who lives with his parents. When Tank Dude hits the local news, Thomas begrudgingly turns into his alter ego, Apollo, flies over there, and beats the tank up. As far as we can tell, Apollo is basically superman, albeit slightly edgier.
Well he’s about to get a LOT edgier. While he’s gone, a junkie breaks into his parents’ house and kills his father! Apollo does not like this. He quickly vows to take down the killer and anyone associated with him. Since Tank Dude brought him out of his house and made him miss protecting his dad, he makes him the primary target.
Standing squarely in the way of this assault are Jeffrey’s public defenders, Derek and Emma Dunne. When Showtime at the Apollo flies into the courthouse to kill Jeffrey, they rush him to safety. It turns out Derek’s not exactly yesterday’s leftovers. He used to be a prominent member of the military. In fact, his brother, who got injured in Afghanistan on his watch, comes back with a job offer – kill Apollo. The government is tired of this weapon of mass destruction flying around like a wild card. They want a top secret ops team to take him down. And since Derek’s one of the best, they want him.
Derek resists at first but eventually relents, and primarily teams up with his brother’s girlfriend, the attractive yet tough-as-nails Avery Parker. Part of the problem with killing Apollo is that no one knows his true identity. So the two start investigating leads. But it’s too little too late. Apollo is so torn up about his dad’s death that he’s just killing everyone. He even goes and kills his best friend in jail for reasons I, as well as the characters, are never privy to. Eventually, there’s a showdown between Apollo and the Ops team and blood is shed. But whose blood is it? Who is that survives?
The Killing of Apollo started out promising but, in my opinion, lost its way. I will say this, though. Yesterday I was discussing the need for PDA in a script. The Killing Of Apollo, with its big idea and action packed set pieces (especially the first one) met two of the three criteria with guns’a’blazin (the producer and director element).
Where it failed was in the actor portion. And a big reason for that was I had no idea who the main character was. But also, there wasn’t a lot to either Derek or Apollo. Derek has the cliché “served in Afghanistan” military background. And then of course, Apollo is a superhero with Superman’s powers who lives on a farm whose father is then killed by someone. Isn’t that a combination of the biggest three superhero backstories ever (Batman, Superman, Spiderman)? If you’re going to create your own superhero, you gotta build him from the ground up. Hancock (original spec sale title: “Tonight He Comes”) was all the things Apollo is, but he’s a drunk. He’s an alcoholic. We hadn’t seen that kind of superhero before. That’s what made him fresh.
I’m guessing the unique hook here could be, “What if Superman got pissed?” I might be interested in that IF the new super-character you created felt unique in some way. But Apollo was too familiar.
Another thing about the characters here was that they kept getting introduced, and introduced, and introduced. At a certain point, I wasn’t sure if we’d even met our protagonist yet . I didn’t know if the story had began. It took forever for Derek to show up, for example. Do we really need throwaway characters Cole and Ray? Why not just have Apollo’s dad be in the city and Jeffrey accidentally kills him with one of his tank blasts?
Ditto with Apollo’s friend in jail. Why do we need this guy? He just spouts out a bunch of irrelevant Apollo backstory and then Apollo kills him. It’s a cool unexpected moment, but not necessary for the story.
Speaking of the story, I’m not sure it ever hit its stride. The ex-military black ops “Kill Apollo” operation didn’t have any weight behind it. It’s hard to feel the importance of something when someone’s telling you about the directive second-hand. If Apollo really needs to be killed, let’s have the Secretary of Defense or the president set it up. That way we’ll know it’s a big deal.
There are some good things here. That opening action sequence rocked. The detail Jorge would add to certain moments really brought scenes to life. For example, in an awesome set piece, Apollo is trying to save a helicopter from crashing, and unfortunately, the blades have spun around to face him, and we see the blades repeatedly hitting his face, breaking on impact. I loved that stuff.
But I think a lot more depth needs to be added to this story. We need a better sense of how Apollo (the superhero) came to be. We need those details to be as far removed from previous superheroes as possible. The plan to take down Apollo can’t seem so off-the-cuff. We need someone with real weight making the decision to do it. And the reason for doing so can’t be so vague (i.e., “He’s unpredictable and therefore must be killed”).
I don’t mean to be so flippant with my analysis. I sympathize with Jorge. I know writing these films isn’t easy. You have to satisfy the superhero nerds and you have to satisfy the non-superhero nerds who just want a good story. This to me seems too focused on the former and not enough on the latter. I think I’d need more meat on this one, along with more originality, before I jumped onboard.
Script link: The Killing Of Apollo
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: As someone writing for 13 years, you gotta know to push past the clichés. The military vet protagonist who injured someone close to him in the Iraq (or Afghanistan) War. That’s been done way too many times before. Ditto the superhero who lost his father (or mother, or uncle). You have to build backstories that we HAVEN’T seen. Is it easy? Hell no. But that’s why the people who take the extra time to find those original backstories stand out. Because everyone else takes the easy route.
