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As we approach this weekend’s big movie release, Mission Impossible 19, I pondered what it was that made big action movies tick. My first thought was set pieces. Mission Impossible thrives when it has those 15 minute show-stopping set pieces.
But set pieces need something to connect them together. Those connecting pieces are your plot. And, actually, the more I assess today’s action movies, the more I realize how much plotting they contain.
This is because a) Studio movies are plot-driven. b) There are more characters than ever in movies these days (Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Marvel), each with their own plotline. And c) big action movies need a lot of plot to push the story forward.
Managing this can be overwhelming, which is why I always encourage writers to keep their plots simple.
A good simple plot begins with a protagonist’s goal. You see, a story needs to always be moving forward. So you design your script to accomplish that. Always ask, what can I do to keep pushing the story forward?
By introducing a goal for the main character, you’ve begun the forward-pushing process. Whether it’s to find the Ark of the Covenant, kill Thanos, save your kidnapped daughter, find the serial killer, or win the National Spelling Bee, you need that push to get things started.
The bigger the goal, the bigger the initial push. What that means is, if you introduce a giant goal, like ‘we need to kill Thanos or the universe dies,’ the reader will endure more pages before they require another major plot point.
Now we just need to write a bunch of shit before we get to the end and our job is done, right? Oh, if it were that easy.
Think of your plot as going on a New York to LA road trip. The big introductory goal is the first tank of gas you put in your car. But you will need to refill your car with gas many more times throughout the story before you get to your final destination.
The question then becomes, “When do you refill?” Well, like I said, it depends on how big your initial goal is. If it’s really really big, you may not need to introduce a second plot point for 30 pages. But, generally speaking, in plot-driven movies, you need to refill the tank every 12-15 pages.
But Carson, what does “refilling the tank” mean? “Does it mean I need to add another goal?” Maybe. But not necessarily. Things get tricky here because there are many ways to affect a plot. Technically, you have infinite options.
But the way I like to look at it is, you have your main plot goal (kill Thanos). Then you introduce the smaller goals that need to be accomplished to get there. For example, your hero may need to confront some supervillain who knows where Thanos is first. That could take 12-15 pages.
Once that goal is over, you then introduce a new goal (put more gas in the tank) and you’re good to go for another 12-15 pages.
However, what I’ve learned is that if you only have your characters complete a series of goals until they get to the final goal, the script gets predictable and stale. It feels like we’re on a very stiff roller coaster in the backwoods of Appalachia.
Therefore, there are other plot developments (or “plot points”) that can put gas in the tank.
The recent Final Destination movie is a good example of using different ways to fill up the tank. At one point, a character who’s slated to die next doesn’t die for some reason. This creates doubt and uncertainty within the group, which lowers their guard. Which results in one of the other characters getting killed.
This is a different kind of plot development. It doesn’t give us a goal we must achieve. It’s more of a disruption. Note how when you add a disruption, it sends the script down another path. Which is a big part of plotting. Plotting is a series of events that occur, one after another, often through cause and effect.
Now that you know what plot is, let’s discuss how to get the most out of it. Because I read a lot of scripts where the plot falls apart. What do you think the most common reason is for a plot falling apart? I’ll let you mull that over for a second. Ready for the answer? Overplotting.
This is when you have too much stuff going on in the movie. Your primary plot is too busy. You have too many characters engaged in too many subplots. Too many new plotlines are introduced before old ones have been completed.
Why is this bad? Because plot has this evil twin brother who, if you’re not careful, can take your screenplay down faster than Connor McGregor can pin a 7th grader. That evil brother? His name is EXPOSITION.
The more Brother Plot plays a part in your screenplay, the more Brother Exposition plays a part in it as well. That’s because all plot needs to be explained. If Spider-Man needs to take down Mysterio with a gangbusters plan, you need to explain that plan to the audience. That exposition takes time and is often boring to read. If your plot is simple, the occasional exposition scene isn’t a problem. But if your plot is complex, you will be spending nearly all of your scenes keeping the reader updated on what’s going on.
This is why my screenwriting philosophy is to keep your plots SIMPLE but ACTIVE. Make them easy to understand, but constantly moving (and evolving!). They still need to zig. They still need to zag.
Anora is a great example of this. Nobody is ever confused when watching Anora. We always know what’s going on. Guy and girl fall in love in first act. Girl must find guy in second act. Girl must go back to her old life in third act.
Very simple.
And yet never is the movie predictable. And never does it get bogged down. That’s great plotting. Which is one of several reasons it won the screenwriting Oscar.
Compare this to Killers of the Flower Moon. That script was the epitome of overplotting. We followed 6-7 key characters in town, each with their own heavily detailed plotlines.
On top of this, the individual plotlines were dense and hard to follow. This is what happens when you try to do too much with your plot. You bring your story to a standstill as you bounce back and forth between subplot updates and heavy exposition.
EVERY TIME YOU ARE USING EXPOSITION IN YOUR STORY, YOUR STORY IS AT A STANDSTILL. It cannot move while exposition is being offered. The more plot you add, the more exposition you must include, which means the more areas of your script that are standing still.
Some of you may point to several dense intricately plotted movies that worked. It’s true. Any level of plotting can work. But the more plot you add, the more time you will need to spend rewriting and rewriting and rewriting to make all that additional plot feel seamless and elegant. One might have to rewrite an exposition-heavy scene 50 times before it’s cleaned out every ounce of excess exposition.
Mad Max: Furiosa is a densely plotted film. There is a TON going on in that story. From Furiosa getting kidnapped as a child, to growing up with this evil family, to escaping, to becoming a road warrior. Meanwhile, a parallel storyline is showing us Dementus grow up and try to take over the region, fail, then succeed. Then we have this third faction of people who control the bullets in the region. There’s a lot going on.
I can’t imagine the amount of time it would’ve taken to rewrite that script to get it to that final draft. And even then, you have plenty of people who still think the film is overplotted. They’ll say there’s too much going on.
Compare that to the previous film, which had the simplest plot ever: Furiosa needs to drive from Point A to Point B. Is it a coincidence that people liked that sparsely plotted movie a lot more? I don’t think so.
This is why I say, err on the side of writing Fury Road rather than Furiosa. Audiences prefer simple easy-to-follow plots as long as those plots are active, and as long as those characters are going after things and overcoming obstacles along way.
How does this relate back to Mission Impossible?
Well, Mission Impossible isn’t as relevant to the average screenwriter as one might think. When Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise want to make a Mission Impossible movie, they just make it. There is no one who gets in their way. This means that Christopher McQuarrie can do whatever he wants with the script.
If he wants to write a quadruple cross somewhere that only 3% of the audience will follow, he can do that. There is no producer telling him he needs to get rid of that plot development because it doesn’t make sense. Ditto coming up with some set piece that isn’t relevant to the larger story.
This is why the Mission Impossible scripts are slightly difficult to keep up with. And why you don’t want to use them as learning tools. They will lead you astray for sure.
A great spy script has effortless setups and payoffs, elegant double-crosses, twists that are surprising yet still make sense. That’s what you’ll have to do to get your action script noticed. Nobody’s giving you that if you go Full McQuarrie.
In the meantime, keep your plotting simple. What that’s going to do is allow you to focus on the fun. Focus on the chase. Focus on the conflict. Focus on the drama. You will not have to deluge your script with endless scene after endless scene of exposition. Your template, if you’re writing action specs, should be movies like Novocaine, Civil War, Fury Road, Nobody, and The Beekeeper.
We just want a fun story that moves along briskly and surprises us every now and then. If every screenwriter had that kind of philosophy when they wrote an action movie, we’d have a lot more great action movies.
