The Other Star Wars had the most difficult job of any script I’ve ever read. It followed my viewing of Sharknado, the greatest movie in history.
Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.
Genre: Comedy/Satire
Premise: (from writer) When President Reagan announces his Strategic Defense Initiative, it sets off a chain of increasingly outrageous misunderstandings between the KGB, CIA… and George Lucas. Only a fanboy-slacker can help avert nuclear disaster.
About: This script won the Amateur Offerings Weekend a couple of weeks ago. Submit your script (details up top) to get on the list. Best of the 5 picked that week will get a review. So make sure to submit a snazzy, well-crafted logline and a great query letter!
Writer: Paul Jarnagin
Details: 111 pages – (this draft has been slightly updated from the newsletter draft based off notes the writer received).
I’ve cooled on comedies lately because I’ve read so many bad ones over the past couple of years. But when you mix in Star Wars, my midichlorians start to tingle and everything’s a-okay in the galaxy once more. “Use the force, young Carson. Review this script,” are the words I hear from my Jedi Master, the late great Togan Sheeves.
And, of course, anything that gets me thinking about Episode 7 is good. For those who haven’t joined my newsletter yet, you should know I’m actually holding a Star Wars script contest that culminates at the end of the year. You write a Star Wars script, and I review the best five submitted. Write a sequel, a spin-off, any story that could happen in the Star Wars universe. We’ve been complaining about the prequels forever now. Show Disney you can do better and maybe they’ll buy your script. Now, onto TODAY’S Star Wars script.
It’s 1982. Tensions are high between the world’s two superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. At any moment, someone could lob a nuclear missile at the other and begin the destruction of the planet. Not an optimistic time.
Which is why President Ronald Reagan and his group of advisors come up with SDI, a missile defense shield that will prevent any Soviet missiles from penetrating U.S. airspace. His team decides to designate this project, “Star Wars.”
Over in San Francisco, George Lucas hears about this and gets pissed. He’s about to release Return of the Jedi and the last thing he wants to worry about is politics. Little does George know, however, that the Soviets are VERY interested in him. Convinced that George’s movies hold some secret tidbits about the SDI program, the Soviets sneak into Skywalker Ranch, break into George’s biggest vault, and steal what’s inside – a single, mysterious video tape.
Hoping they can gleam clues from it, the Soviets bring the tape back to Russia and make hundreds of KGB agents watch it around the clock. The tape turns out to be The Star Wars Christmas Special, the single worst movie ever made. Worse than Sharknado 2: Shrimpicane. This plan has an unintended effect: after watching the tape, all of the agents go insane.
Meanwhile, across the galaxy (or the ocean), we have our hero, 21 year old Kent Macleroy. Kent is a jobless, penniless slacker who spends most of his time as the dungeon master in a 3 person Dungeons and Dragons group. Kent’s busy being a nobody when he’s suddenly recruited by the CIA for his unhealthy knowledge of Star Wars.
You see, the CIA has caught wind of the KGB’s obsession with George Lucas and now believe that Lucas is the key to this whole equation. So, Kent heads over to the CIA and just starts answering Star Wars questions for them (i.e. “Who is that little guy who sits next to Jabba The Hut?” “What are Ewoks?”). They then use this information to try and one-up the Soviets.
In the end, there’s a lot of posturing and positioning and red-tape ripping from the three major players– the Soviets, the CIA, and George Lucas. Only a miracle is going to prevent world disaster, not necessarily from a nuclear war, but from the The Star Wars Christmas Special being released again.
Looking back at “The Other Star Wars,” I’m sad to say I didn’t laugh much. And I’m not sure why. I’m thinking it could be the whole “satire” thing. Satire scares me. It puts this “serious” slant on humor, which seems to contradict the very meaning of humor. Whenever I see the word, I feel like I need to get myself in “intelligent mode,” which forces me to pay attention more, which gets me all tense, which completely takes me out of the mood to laugh.
But even if that isn’t a problem for you (I’m sure it’s not), there are still some big issues that need fixing. First, the main character is barely a part of the story. I’m not even sure Kent has to be in this script. He’s basically an observer, and I would argue the fourth most important entity behind the CIA, the KGB, and Lucas. It’s possible, of course, to write a good movie without a main character, but it’s usually a death star sentence. Audiences like to identify with someone, hop on someone’s back, and root for them. I’m not sure Kent had enough weight to be a main character. He didn’t have any presence.
And even if he did, he wasn’t doing anything. He was just observing. You’d like for your protagonist to be active, to drive the story, but Kent was more of commenter, constantly telling the CIA how stupid they were for believing that Lucas had anything to do with this. Which was funny, but you need your main character to do more than comment and observe in a script.
The next big issue was the lack of stakes. It wasn’t clear what happened if everybody didn’t get this sorted out. The logline ends with “help avert nuclear disaster,” but unless I missed something (which is possible – I found my mind wandering due to the lack of an engaging protagonist), there’s no impending nuclear disaster. This would be an easy fix. When the Soviets find out that the U.S. is instituting a missile defense shield, why not decide to launch an attack before the shield can go up? Now you have your movie’s ticking time bomb (literally) and everything everyone does has a lot more weight, because world destruction is only a button-press away.
Finally, the story became unnecessarily confusing. Again, a script read is a compound process. When a reader doesn’t like one thing, he starts to check out a little. When he doesn’t like another, he checks out more. Doesn’t like another, happens again. It’s human nature. And those two things (the lack of a solid hero and the lack of stakes) were so big, by the time the second half came around, my head wasn’t in it.
Still, I had trouble keeping up. I understood the Soviets motivation for going after Lucas’s stuff. But I was never clear on what the CIA was doing. They wanted to learn Star Wars in order to… understand why the KGB wanted to learn about Star Wars? Everything between the CIA and George Lucas was muddled. It needed to be laid out more clearly. And I think this goes back to that lack of a doomsday scenario. Because we were never sure what anyone was trying to prevent (no missile was in danger of being launched), it was hard to discern everyone’s motivations.
This was a cool idea, but I think for it to really sparkle, Paul would need to create a more present and active protagonist, inject higher stakes, and clear up what everyone is after. I wish him the best. Always rooting for my fellow Star Wars fans. ☺
Script link: The Other Star Wars
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If a character isn’t described when he’s introduced, I know immediately that the character is going to have problems. That’s the most basic form of character identification there is – the physical description. So if that’s not there, it tells me the writer didn’t look into his backstory, his flaws, his fears, his dreams, his secrets. Kent wasn’t described when introduced, and sure enough, he wasn’t active or present in the story.
