Genre: Action/Fantasy
Premise: A combat veteran fights to keep his inexperienced squad alive in the remote Scottish Highlands as they’re hunted by descendants of a Celtic Demigod.
Why You Should Read: I’ll let the logline speak for itself, either it’s your bag or not ;)…. Comparisons: Dog Soldiers/Wickerman/Southern Comfort.
Writer: B. Jack Azadi
Details: 97 pages
I LOVE this setup. I love anything where a group of tough dudes try to take down a supernatural something-or-other. It’s why I loved Aliens. It’s why I loved Predator. It’s why I liked Pitch Black. There’s something about that moment where they realize they’re vastly overmatched that gets me every time.
Surprisingly, these movies have fallen out of favor the last couple of decades. I’m not sure why but I suspect it’s because there were a bunch of Aliens clones that kept coming out summer after summer that were horrible. That and the fact that teams in camouflage have been replaced by teams in capes. The movie that probably sunk them for good was 1998’s Deep Rising. God was that movie bad. But I still think this is a winning formula when done well. Which is why I’m excited to read The Last Scion.
Let’s take a look!
A Scottish military unit has gone missing. So it’s up to a new unit, led by Lieutenant Greystone, to head up into the Scottish Highlands to find out what happened to them. Greystone will be accompanied by combat vet Sergeant Jackson, mysterious intelligence official Lieutenant Parker (the lone female on the team), a tough dude named Paddy, and roughly ten more men.
The team heads up to where the missing unit was last spotted and they find their first clue – a dead soldier’s body whose face has been eaten off. At this point, they’re operating on the thesis that some sort of animal attacked the team. And when they see some overgrown wolves scurrying about, they figure they’ve got their “man.”
But then, when everyone is hanging out at camp, a freaking axe comes flying out of nowhere and lodges itself in Greystone’s face. The soldiers go nuts, busting out their guns and firing in every direction. After everyone settles down, they construct a new plan: GO BACK DOWN THE MOUNTAIN AS FAR AWAY FROM THIS PLACE AS POSSIBLE.
Except it’s not going to be that easy. After a nice old lady kills one of their soldiers, the crew asks Parker what she knows. She confesses that they might be up against Celtic warriors who have kept living up here for centuries and they may even be stronger than average men. No sooner than that analysis is dropped, Parker, Paddy, and Jackson are kidnapped and brought to the Celtic village. Once they realize they’re going to be slaughtered, their final plan is formed: ESCAPE AT ALL COSTS.
For obvious reasons, I was hyper-focused on the first act of The Last Scion, which makes some pretty large blunders that send ripples throughout the rest of the screenplay. Let’s take a look at these trouble spots.
The first issue is the teaser. The teaser takes place 10 years ago. We follow an injured female soldier in the Western Mountains of Scotland as she runs from something. We see her run, we see her run, we see her run. She falls. A wolf emerges, grabs her, drags her off-screen. END OF TEASER.
Now you might say, “What’s wrong with this teaser, Carson? You’ve got an injured woman. She’s running. Something’s chasing her. There’s a lot of excitement going on. Isn’t that what you want?”
No.
Well, yes. It’s great to have a life or death situation in a teaser. But if all you’re showing us is generic imagery (a woman running, a woman falling, something pulling her away), it doesn’t register at all. It feels like every other version of this scene ever. You have to find a way to make it different, like in “It Follows” where a woman is running away from seemingly nobody. Or you have to throw some reveal in there that turns the scene upside-down. Like in Halloween where, after we witness this brutal murder in POV, we reverse to see the mask taken off and it’s a ten year old boy.
A garden variety action sequence is no better than no action at all.
But the much bigger faux-pas of The Last Scion is the character introductions. The character introductions were so restrained and/or minimal that I didn’t even know who the hero was. I assumed it was Parker, since she was the outsider. Let’s check out her introductory scene:
Is this the opening of an exciting character you want to get to know better? All she does is sit in a chair and answer questions. That’s not how any major character in your script should be introduced. Introduce them with panache. Show us why they’re cool, unique, dangerous, exciting, interesting, mysterious, ANYTHING. Anything more than “Answers Questions Woman.”
The final three characters who survive in the script are Parker, Paddy, and Jackson. Let’s check out how Paddy and Jackson are introduced…
The second introduction at least tells us a little bit about Jackson. But it’s not a strong introduction by any means. You have to look for visual and active ways to make a character stand out so the audience knows: THIS PERSON IS IMPORTANT. THIS PERSON IS COOL. Cause if they’re not cool, we’re not paying attention to them. And that was a big issue here. A dozen characters were introduced and I didn’t know who the main three I was supposed to be focused on were until page 80. That’s specifically because of the poor introductions.
This is a major lesson I need to get across to you guys. All this stuff I’m teaching you about the first act isn’t just about the first act. It’s about the whole script. Because if you’re not doing certain things right in the first act, it reverberates throughout the rest of the story.
In my latest newsletter, I talk about Richter scale moments, moments in the screenplay that shake the ground to such a degree that the reader can’t help but get excited to read on. I didn’t see enough of those here. For example, we build up Parker as this big mystery character, to the point where she barely speaks. We occasionally see her sneak away and send a text to someone. So we’re expecting a big reveal with her, a Richter scale worthy moment. But when they finally confront Parker about her secret texting, she comes clean, explaining that they’re up against possibly super-strong Celtic warriors – something we’d pretty much figured out on our own already.
When you have a reveal scene, it needs to actually reveal something. It can’t reveal 15% more than what we already know. Especially in a movie like this. The reveal needs to shake the very foundation we’re standing on.
My favorite part of The Last Scion is when they’re captured and taken back to the village because I not only felt like they were in serious danger, but this place was so weird and unpredictable that you got the sense anything could happen. There’s a moment where the Celtics nail a soldier to a cross, like Jesus, stab him to death, and then the Celtic children dance in the dying soldier’s blood as it sprays all over them.
Unpleasant image? Sure. But shocking? Yes. And this script needed a lot more of that.
If I were producing this script, the first thing I would do is sit down with Azadi and figure out who the hero was. Cause right now, it’s not clear. Then I would spend the next three hours brainstorming an introductory scene for that character that audiences would remember for the rest of their lives. That doesn’t mean he has to outrun boulders. You can make a big impact in a small setting. Go watch Anton Chigurh’s opening scene in No Country for Old Men to see how. But we need to make this guy badass and we need to make it clear he’s running the show. Cause I had no idea who was running the show for three-quarters of the script.
Honestly, that’s going to solve a lot of the script’s problems. From there, you need to create bigger Richter scale moments. The bar isn’t three feet off the ground. The bar is three miles in the sky. Don’t come with your ‘okay’ stuff. Come with the stuff that’s going to get people talking for years once they see your movie.
Cause premises like this are perfect for movies. So the potential is there. But this feels like it’s 4-5 drafts from reaching that potential.
Script Link: The Last Scion
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: With scripts like this that have a ton of characters introduced up front, you need to dedicate an entire week of your prep JUST ON COMING UP WITH CHARACTER NAMES. Make sure every name is distinctive, memorable, and represents the character in question. I remembered, maybe, one quarter of the soldiers here because there were simply too many of them.
