You thought the Jungle Cruise discussion was over.
How dare you.
In my Monday Jungle Cruise post, I noticed some interesting conversations happening in the comments section. Some Scriptshadow readers proclaimed that almost anyone could have written Jungle Cruise. Since I LOVE these types of debates, I had to write an article about it. So I ask the question: could anyone here really have written a 200 million dollar Disney film? Is writing a big family blockbuster that easy?
Let me take a second to remind everyone that screenwriting is the most underestimated art form of all the art forms. I don’t know many people who think they can paint the Mona Lisa. I don’t know many people who think they can write the next Catcher in the Rye. I don’t know many folks who think they can produce a Kanye album. But I’ve met more people than I can count who believe they can write a screenplay that makes a billion dollars at the box office.
For whatever reason, there’s something about screenwriting that makes people believe it’s easy to do. I think it comes down to the belief that if you’ve *watched* a movie, you think you can *write” a movie. I mean, they’re practically the same thing, right?
The irony is that screenwriting may be the HARDEST art form to master because it’s so darn restrictive. It forces you to work within very specific parameters, parameters that seem to actively stifle your creativity.
Successful screenwriters are the ones who keep studying that formula until their storytelling becomes invisible. That’s the nut that every screenwriter is trying to crack – tell a story with such skill that the audience forgets it was written. The reason people can’t appreciate that effortlessness (and believe screenwriting to be so easy) is because they’ve never seen a movie where it wasn’t present. They haven’t seen a student film or a bad festival film. Those films more accurately represent the challenges storytelling involves.
So I’m going to highlight five things I saw in Jungle Cruise that I do NOT see in the average amateur screenplay. I do this not to dismiss aspiring screenwriters. I do it to remind you that there are many skills one must learn to be a competent storyteller. Also, it’s good practice to take some personal responsibility in your screenwriting. Ask not why some unimpressive screenwriter is getting work while your screenplays are collecting digital dust. Ask how you can improve as a screenwriter to give yourself a better chance at succeeding. Here are five starting points from Jungle Cruise.
1) Do more than one thing at a time
Most aspiring screenwriters can only ever handle one thing at a time. For example, if they’re setting their protagonist up, that’s all they’re doing. The scene is solely meant to establish the hero and nothing more (that he’s mean, or sweet, or greedy, or selfless). Scenes that are only doing one thing are often boring. Professional screenwriters understand that you’re often required to do several things at once in a scene. In the opening of Jungle Cruise, which has Lily watching her brother make a plea to an auditorium of aristocrats to finance their voyage, she slips away to look for, and steal, the arrowhead that contains the location of the healing flower they’re after. So instead of setting up our two lead characters – Lily and McGregor – and that’s it, Michael Green also sets up the plot (that they’re looking for this flower) while creating a scenario to ENTERTAIN us (Lily sneaking around the building to steal something). Rarely should you ever write a scene that does just one thing. The limited number of scenes in a script (around 50) necessitates that you’re always doing two, three, even four things at once.
2) Creating obstacles for your characters
Another common issue I find in amateur scripts is that the writers make things incredibly easy for their characters. They open up this wide road and say, “Drive on it for as long as you want until you get to the finish line.” Professional screenwriters do the opposite. They add potholes to the road, dead ends, alternate routes, they have a bomber fly by and drop a bomb on the middle of the road, they have a magician make the entire road disappear. Professional writers are always looking for ways to make things harder for their characters. Green could’ve easily written Jungle Cruise so that when Lily arrived in the Amazon, she had a quick chat with Frank (The Rock) about a cruise price and off they went. Instead, Green created local gangster, Nilo, who Frank owed money to. Nilo removes Frank’s boat engine and says he won’t return it until Frank gets him his money. This is the way you want to think as a screenwriter – always looking for ways to make things harder on your heroes.
3) Good plotting requires creativity and imagination
Beginner writers don’t try very hard when it comes to plot. They piece together a bare-bones foundation that does just enough to move the plot forward and nothing more. Professional writers are always looking for clever ways to twist and rearrange the plot in order to keep things exciting. There’s a scene late in the first act where Frank sneaks into Nilo’s office to steal the key that gets him his boat engine back. As this is happening, Lily shows up at Nilo’s office as she’s heard he’s the one who can get her a boat. What this plot development does is it allows Frank to pretend to be Nilo in order to get Lily’s business. It’s a fun little scene that moves the plot forward in a cute way. Consider the beginner screenwriter alternative. Lily finds Frank drunk in a bar and asks him to take her down the Amazon. That’s the scene I see in 99% of the scripts I read. Cliche. Unimaginative. Would it have kept the plot moving? Sure. But in a boring obvious way.
4) The dialogue is almost universally better in a pro script
Dialogue is so subjective that it’s almost impossible to discuss how some dialogue is better than other dialogue. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, the dialogue we see in movies is almost always better than the dialogue we read in amateur screenplays. There are a lot of reasons for this that are hard to quantify. But one that can be quantified is that pro writers are always looking to twist a dialogue line in a way that makes it fresh. For example, during a break in the action in Jungle Cruise, Frank and Lily are having an argument. During a pause in the argument, Frank notices the special arrowhead necklace around Lily’s neck. He stares at it as he realizes its importance. Lily notices this. Before I tell you what Lily’s next line of dialogue is, I want you to try and think of a good line of dialogue yourself. What should she say here? I can tell you from experience that most amateur screenwriters will write a line like, “Why are you staring at me,” or “Stop staring at me.” Note how generic and unimaginative these lines are. Better yet, imagine an entire screenplay full of basic lines like this. That’s what amateur dialogue looks like – an entire script full of tired, cliched, unimaginative sentences. Instead, Lily utters this line: “You’re staring at me. How do I make it stop?” It’s by no means a world-beater line. But it’s more thoughtful and kinda funny, giving the line an extra kick. This is how you want to approach your dialogue, always looking to find that twist that improves the cliched line.
5) Characters are purposeful and clear in their motives
Aspiring screenwriters too often believe that the reader can read their mind. These writers may have never *stated* what the hero’s motivation is but their assumption is the reader will know it based on… well… they should just know because it’s “that kind of movie.” That’s not how screenwriting works. If you don’t tell us something, we won’t know. I can’t stress how often I encounter this issue in beginner scripts. New writers assume the reader knows WAY MORE than they actually do. So when it comes to important things in your script, like character goals or character motivation – these are things you want to clearly convey to your audience. A good example of this occurs when Lily sits down to explain to Frank WHY THIS JOURNEY IS SO IMPORTANT. She explains what these special flowers are, what they’re capable of, and how they’re going to change the world. After this speech is over, we understand the importance of the journey and why Lily is so passionate about it. Newbie writers often overlook such moments. They either have no idea an audience would want this information or assume that a vague understanding of the information is enough. Professional writers are keenly aware that unless the characters are clear on what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, it’s hard to enjoy the story.
I know it’s easy to dismiss family films as “screenwriting-lite” because they play to the broadest possible audience. But don’t fool yourself. Just like any piece of art, it takes a ton of skill to make the experience feel effortless. Keep learning these individual screenwriting skills. Only after you’ve mastered them will you be able to write something as clean and as fun as Jungle Cruise.
