Time to compare a plot-driven script with an anti-plot-driven script
There are two things I can promise you. Number one, In and Out has the most consistently good cheeseburgers on the planet. And two, there has never been, nor ever will there be, a screenplay analyst who compares Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse and Sanctuary. I am the only one.
That’s right. I finally watched Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse, the animated sequel to Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse.
It’s always been hard for me to take these animated movies seriously. I think, “If it was a good script, they’d make it live-action.” It brings me back to all those Disney animated movie sequels that went straight to video. “Simba Learns Salsa.” “The Little Mermaid and Paco the Parrot.” “Abu and Jafar: Oops What Happened to My Flying Carpet?”
But this Spiderman movie did really well, it got great critic scores, and it’s been recommended to me by a handful of people.
So I watched it.
And I didn’t like it.
I just don’t think these movies are for me, man. It took me 45 minutes just to get used to the style of animation, which looked like a 3-D movie without the 3-D glasses. I had to put 100% of my focus into not getting annoyed by the faded muddy backgrounds.
Once I got past that, I could see what fans of the film liked. It’s a surprisingly heartfelt film. There’s a lot of emotion here, explored mainly between children and their fathers. When you’re young and trying to find your way in life, you can feel confused and lonely. And during those times, you really need your parents. And when they don’t see things the way you do, you feel more alienated than ever. I thought this movie captured that well.
I also thought the soundtrack was amazing. Whoever was in charge of the music of this movie deserves an Academy award because, like I said, most of the time I was annoyed by the animation. But, even then, I was feeling things because the music did such a great job of pulling me in.
For those who haven’t seen it, Spiderverse has an extremely complicated plot, so I’m going to simplify it for you. Miles and Gwen are both “Spider-Man” in their own universes. When a spotted villain who has the power to create black holes that he can seamlessly jump through, trips up the multiverse circuitry, a series of “canon” malfunctions happen, putting the multiverse in danger.
Gwen takes Miles to “Spider-Verse” which is an MIB like headquarters where the millions of different Spider-Men across the universes hang out. It’s there where Miles learns that, in every universe, a Spider-Man loses a loved one. And Miles’s timeline is about to kill off his loved one, his father.
If Miles saves his father, it destroys the multiverse and everything in it. If he doesn’t save his father, well, then his father’s dead. Obviously, he’s going to try and save his dad. Except that a million Spider-Men are determined to stop him. So he has to pull out all the spider-stops if he has any chance at protecting daddy.
While you process all that, let’s jump into the other movie I saw this weekend, an indie movie called, “Sanctuary.”
The reason I even know about this film is that it has two of my favorite young actors in it: Margaret Qualley (playing Rebecca) and Christopher Abbott (playing Hal). The writer, Micah Bloomberg, has a bit of pedigree. He’s the guy who created the buzzy Homecoming podcast, which went on to become a big Amazon adaptation (Sam Esmail, Julia Roberts), which he also wrote. The director, Zachary Wigon, directed one episode of that series, which, I’m guessing, is how they connected.
Sanctuary blew me away with its opening act. Granted, it works better if you don’t know anything about the movie going in (that’s your cue to go watch it now and come back). But it’s really clever stuff, which is one of the more elusive tools in the screenwriter toolkit. Are you clever? Cause if you can consistently outsmart the reader, you can gain a lot of fans.
In the first act, Hal, a seemingly well-off businessman, is visited in his ritzy hotel room by Rebecca, a lawyer from the firm that’s considering Hal for their new CEO job. Rebecca is here to do some last-minute diligence for the firm to see if Hal is right for the job.
They sit down at a small boardroom table and she begins to question him on things. Have you ever been arrested? Do you have any history of alcohol abuse? Questions like that. Much of the dialogue is sophisticated with splashes of humor.
Rebecca: Do you abuse prescription drugs?
Hal: Do I abuse prescription drugs?
Rebecca: Is that question confusing?
Hal: I take prescription drugs. I don’t know how they feel about it.
About midway through the interview, Hal starts to get annoyed. Only after some back-and-forth do we realize that not everything is as it seems. Rebecca is not a lawyer. She’s a dominatrix. Hal is not gunning for a CEO job at another corporation. He’s her client. And Hal has specifically written this script out for Rebecca ahead of time. What he’s getting annoyed by is that she’s going off-script.
This is another tool every writer should have in their toolkit – the scene-flip. We all think we understand what’s happening in a scene. But then, midway through the scene, the writer flips the script (literally) and it turns out we’re reading something completely different.
This is an especially effective device for the first scene of your screenplay. The reader has zero context for what they’re watching, which means they have no choice but to take everything you’re telling them at face value. This is what allows you to trick them so easily with the scene-flip.
After that opening scene, we see Hal and Rebecca, together, in a celebration of sorts. It seems to be part of their routine. After they get done with a session, they order in food, eat, and chat. I guess it makes it a little less icky than if he immediately kicks her out. She *has* been preparing for three weeks.
When this second scene arrives, we get another “flip” of sorts. They change into completely different people. He’s more fun and casual. She’s more shy and careful. This is not only a fun screenwriting thing to do. It pulls double-duty because this stuff is like crack to actors. They get to play two-roles for the price of one.
In less than 30 minutes, this screenplay has completely captivated me.
Okay, so, what does this have to do with Spider-Man?
What’s so fascinating to me is that these movies are attempting to do completely different things when it comes to plot. And you can extrapolate this to most movies that are either “Hollywood” or “Indie.” But you can really see the differences with these movies because they represent the extremes.
Spider-Man is drowning in plot. It has so many different universes. It has all these Spider-Men we have to get to know. We have the villain and what he’s trying to do – which requires an entire subplot to set it up. We have a “Super” Spider-Man guy, Miguel, who’s leading the charge on fixing the multiverse. I don’t think we get to the midpoint before we learn what this movie is really about – Spider-Man saving his dad.
Meanwhile, with Sanctuary, there’s virtually no plot. After that opening scene, we learn that Hal’s father, a hotel magnate, just died. And he’s taking over the company. Much of what Hal and Rebecca have done in her dominatrix sessions is help him be assertive – learn to stand up for himself and go after what he wants. He tells her that he’s ending their relationship because he’s finally “ready.” She wants to be fairly compensated for getting him to this place, so she starts demanding money. And that’s pretty much it. That’s the plot.
Note how, with Spider-Man, the writers’ primary job is to figure out how to get all of the plot stuff (via exposition) out of the way as soon as possible so the movie can just have fun. But because there’s so much to set up, it takes them all the way until the midpoint. Only then can Spiderverse breathe.
Meanwhile, since Sanctuary barely has any plot, it runs out of it fast and must start searching for it. We get a five minute “searching for a hidden camera” scene at the 30 minute mark because the writer has to figure out how to fill up at least 90 pages.
It’s funny, when you think about it. When a movie like Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse dies, it is because it has too much going on. There’s too much to manage. The reader gets so frustrated trying to keep track of everything, they give up. Movies like Sanctuary die for the opposite reason. There isn’t enough meat on the bone. The plot is so thin that the script inevitably finds itself in these giant valleys searching for a reason to exist.
This is a long way of me saying, you want to know which kind of writer you are because then you can write the kinds of scripts you’re good at. If you’re more of a technical writer who’s good at managing giant chunks of exposition that you’re able to easily hide in your script, the big Hollywood movie is more for you. If you’re a more creative writer who is good at finding powerful character moments so that you don’t miss a beat when the plot runs thin, then character pieces are probably for you.
As for these movies, neither of them are perfect. I’ll give Spider-Man this: It felt original. Which was a nice change from these live-action superhero movies that have all felt the same lately. And then with Sanctuary, it does struggle with those no-plot valleys. But Bloomberg knows how to write. He knows how to keep the character conflict going during those softer plot moments, enough to keep us invested. For that reason, Sanctuary will probably end up on my Top 10 list this year.
