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Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise (from writer): When a young CIA trainee, working low-level assignments in Europe, is framed as a traitor, he discovers he holds the key to preventing global warfare and must outwit both ‘The Agency’, and the terrorist cell that hunts him, before they can incite World War 3.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I don’t have much to say in this section. I would rather the logline and the script speak for itself rather than trying to sell it to you. I will say my tastes are very commercial in nature as are all my stories. I love action, suspense and excitement, and always try to imbue that in the read. I hope it’s something you like. Thanks to everyone for checking it out.
Writer: Dax Messer
Details: 102 pages
I’m gearing up for some Guardians of the Galaxy madness this weekend, and it got me thinking. Everybody knows this movie is going to make a trillion dollars. In fact, everybody knows exactly how much money every movie is going to make these days.
That’s because opening weekends are paid for. The studios use an algorithm that if they put ‘x’ amount of dollars into advertising they will get ‘y’ return at the box office. And that makes the box office thing, well, not as fun anymore. There used to be a time when you didn’t know what was going to happen. And it was exciting. Now it’s just, “I’ve seen 10,000 commercials for Pirates of the Caribbean so it will make 130 million dollars this weekend.”
However, streaming services are changing that. They’re actually bringing back the days before box office was reported and you found out about a movie (like The Godfather, for instance) because people saw and liked it. There was no number that told you whether something was worth of watching or not. 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things are great examples. Nobody has any idea how many people have seen these shows. But they loved them, so they told people about them, and the shows’ successes evolved organically from that word-of-mouth.
As Netflix and Amazon delve further into the feature world, it’s only a matter of time before that starts happening there as well. Which bring us to The Operative. The Operative seems tailor-made for the new streaming model. It’s not too big. It’s not too small. It’s right in that mid-budget sweet spot that Netflix seems to be loving right now. Let’s see if it delivers.
33 year-old Alex Sagen (cool character name!) just failed The Farm field exam, which means he doesn’t get to become a CIA field agent. But the intelligence agency still likes Alex’s spark, particularly agent Jennifer Monroe, who encourages Alex to take a desk job in Paris, where, if he’s lucky, he might get to interrogate a few terrorists.
Alex reluctantly takes the gig, and, while out of the office one day, gets the heart-stopping news that the office was raided and 17 agents were killed. The terrorist behind the raid, Reza Konesh, is quickly captured, and since there are no longer a ton of agents to choose from, Alex gets the gig to transport Konesh to an interrogation house outside the city.
Once they reach the outskirts, however, their caravan is attacked. Konesh is accidentally killed by his own men, while Alex and another agent escape. But not without suspicion from headquarters. Asshole senior agent Jonathan Brubaker is convinced that Alex is a mole and that he has something to do with this.
With his own agency now wanting to take him down, Alex must figure out what Konesh was up to. So he goes to the morgue where Konesh’s body is being held and locates a microdot on him. He later finds out that dot contains information about a secret U.S. satellite capable of killing millions. Alex will try and use this information to get back into the CIA’s good graces. But as he soon learns, the CIA might be involved.
Before I begin my analysis, I just want to say that this script NAILED its structure. Probably one of the best structures for an amateur script I’ve seen in a year. Messer deserves big props for that.
However, the heart and soul of the script need work. And that’s the main issue I want to talk about.
Look. I get that the bar for originality in the spy genre is low. Like “I need a metal detector to find it” low. Spy-heads want their spies. They want their car chases. They want their espionage. And that’s it. They’re good after that.
And if you’re judging The Operative by that criteria, it delivers.
But if we’re judging this on The Scriptshadow scale, I found the concept and the execution of The Operative to be way too generic. Everything from the plot to the characters to the twists to the dialogue were way too familiar.
Take the fact that we have a micro-disc in The Operative. And that disc has plans for a weapon on it that could kill millions. I read scripts with micro-discs and weapons that kill millions every Sunday. I mean, come on. We’re not even going to try and improve on that trope?
And then there’s the dialogue. Here’s an exchange between Alex and the woman he’s secretly seeing at the agency, Maria, after she survived the terrorist break-in…
Alex: “What happened to you?”
Maria: “I thought… I thought I was going to die in there.”
Alex (checks her body): “You’re not hit. You’re fine.”
Maria: “I’ve never… experienced anything like… My god…”
Alex: “Are you going to be okay?”
Maria: “Yes… I’ll be okay. (beat) I can’t stop shaking.”
Alex: “You’re just in shock, that’s all. It’ll pass. You’re going to be just fine.”
Now, when you look at this dialogue, there’s nothing technically wrong with it. The problem is that it’s just so achingly generic. From how the interaction plays out to which words are used is too expected. The dialogue has no personality, no life of its own.
For example, another option would’ve been for Alex to see that Maria was in shock and used a couple of jokes to bring her out of it. But we never get anything like that here. Everyone speaks as if they’re a spy-novel automaton reading lines off a spy-lines teleprompter.
We also get lines like, “Just another day at the office,” “Who the hell are these guys?” “I want to hear answers, not excuses.” “Please, you’re scaring me.” “That’s what I intend to find out.” “It’s been a long night.” “They’re dead. They’re all dead.” “He’s been off the grid for almost a decade.” “God help us.” I mean there wasn’t one line in this script that I hadn’t either heard before or felt like I’d heard before. This is unacceptable if you want to compete on the big league level. You have to come up with your own stuff, not rely on lines from past spy movies.
What this script needs is an “Originality Rewrite” from the top down. Concept, plot, character, dialogue. Everything needs to be upgraded in the originality department. And there’s really only two requirements for originality. The first is the desire to be original, which you have total control over. The second is your imagination – how capable you are of coming up with original ideas. This you don’t have control over. Some people are imaginative and some aren’t (and most of us are somewhere in between).
But if you can execute the first, just the fact that you’re not settling for average (plot points, characters, dialogue, etc.) means you’ll be more original than most, boosting a generic idea like this into something exciting. Remember, 13 Reasons Why could’ve been set up as a 90210 clone. Instead, it rearranged the formula to come at high school drama from a different lens. That’s originality. And that’s the standard you’re being held to in Hollywood.
Script link: The Operative
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The whole point of constructing a building with superb structure is to then populate it with heart and soul. Nobody builds a house to then decorate it with generic rooms and generic furniture. They do it so they can populate it with their own unique personality. The Operative had the structure but it didn’t have the personality, giving the script a lifeless feel. Let’s take care of that moving forward.
