The summer movie slate begins this weekend with The Mandalorian and Grogu. Over the course of two prime summer months, we’ll hit the finale of the summer season with The Odyssey.
Both of these movies are getting online pushback for different reasons. With The Mandalorian and Grogu, the pushback is, “Is this story worth telling?” And with The Odyssey it’s, “Does this story actually look good?”
Let’s start with The Odyssey because, of the two, it’s the movie that clearly has a better chance of connecting with audiences. But Nolan hasn’t made things easy for himself. The Odyssey is free IP and it’s been there for anyone to take and no one’s taken it. Why?
I’ll tell you why. Because the story is a post-adventure story rather than an adventure story. That’s the reason why The Odyssey never floated my boat. Because the important thing has already happened. Now, it’s just a matter of getting home so you can sleep in your own bed.
Psychologically, that’s not as exciting as going off on a traditional hero’s journey.
Nolan hasn’t helped his case because the trailers look pretty mid. Kinda cool stuff happens, like a cyclops peeking through the darkness in a cave. But there isn’t a single “holy shit” shot in a Christopher Nolan directed film’s trailer. I understand why that concerns people.
However, I think that Nolan’s purposefully holding back the good stuff. Remember that The Odyssey has the Lotus Eaters, who erase memory, seductive sirens luring sailors to their deaths, Circe the witch who turns men into animals, and the terrifying sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And let’s not forget one of the most famous revenge sequences that’s ever been put to paper.
Little known fact. That final revenge sequence is known as one of the first true representations of a payoff in writing history.
All this stuff about a black Helen of Troy and Elliot Page playing Achilles is theater. I don’t think anybody outside of “people who are way too online” give a crap about that. And I believe that, in the end, this movie is going to be a huge hit.
Now, as for The Mandalorian and Grogu? It’s looking bad folks. When you don’t get even a single “Holy shit this was great” tweet from a carefully curated group of reviewers after your film’s premiere, that’s concerning. To give you some perspective, 2015’s Fantastic Four, widely considered to be one of the worst superhero movies ever made, got around 50 “Holy shit this was great” tweets after their premiere.
It’s a huge moment for Star Wars. If it is the worst performing Star Wars film ever, which it’s projected to be, Lucas Arts is going to be in a very strange spot. Because they just finished putting a new group of people in charge, led by Dave Filoni. Dave Filoni has been doing interviews in anticipation of The Mandalorian’s release, and he claims he’s in the process of putting together a game plan for the next phase of Star Wars.
I’m going to explain how this makes me feel with an analogy.
As many of you know, I’m originally from Chicago. I grew up with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls dominating basketball. I was young enough and dumb enough to think that that would last forever.
Cut to 20 years after that, in 2016, and the Bulls weren’t terrible but they weren’t good either. They were about the 8th best team in the league. And they were led by this egomaniac of a player named Jimmy Butler.
Butler had been with the team for six years and his antics were getting to the point where the organization wondered if he was worth the trouble. They decided he wasn’t and put him up for a trade. Their hope was to get back several young great players, be bad enough for a couple years to get a couple of high draft picks, then launch themselves back into one of the top 3 teams in the league.
But anybody who knew about the Bulls organization knew that it was run by a man, Jerry Reinsdorf, who didn’t care about basketball. He was also known as one of the worst owners in the league. His whole mantra was, “If the seats at the stadium are filled, that’s all that matters.”
So while I watched as everybody in my city celebrated what the trade of Jimmy Butler could become for the Bulls, I knew that dark days were ahead. The top of our organizational tree was a disaster. And he was going to figure out a way to make us even worse. And that’s exactly what happened. The Bulls immediately fell from the 8th best team in the league to the 20th best team. They squandered draft picks. Traded for terrible players. And for the last ten years, they’ve been irrelevant in the NBA.
I get the exact same feeling moving from Kathleen Kennedy to Dave Filoni. Kennedy is bad, no doubt. But Kennedy produced over a dozen of the greatest movies ever. She had an A+ producing resume. Her initial Star Wars instincts resulted in a 2 billion dollar movie. Her downfall was that she never really understood the mythos of the Star Wars universe. But to say she didn’t have any success is a lie.
Meanwhile, Dave Filoni has zero resume. In many ways, he’s the anti-Kathleen Kennedy. He’s someone with zero experience who understands every square inch of the Star Wars mythos. But is a Star Wars Encyclopedia Brittanica the solution for this franchise going forward? I don’t think it is. Because while he can tell you exactly how many Jawas can fit in a Sandcrawler, he doesn’t know the difference between a slugline and a description line.
In other words, Kathleen Kennedy was Jimmy Butler. She kept Star Wars up at that 8th place slot for franchises. But with Dave Filoni? We’re about to plummet to depths we didn’t even know were possible with a franchise that used to be the equivalent of Michael Jordan.
It really will be fascinating because there are some key dates here that nobody’s talking about. Dave Filoni became the top dog at Lucas Arts January 15th. Josh D’amro became the new CEO of Disney (which owns Lucas Arts) on March 18th. In other words, D’Amaro did not approve of this move. Therefore, if Mando does poorly, I wouldn’t be surprised if D’Amaro changes up the whole structure at Lucas Arts again. And I think he should. Cause if he doesn’t, all us Star Wars fans are going to experience what I’ve experienced for the past decade as a Bulls fan. Which is complete and utter irrelevance.
Over the weekend, I finally watched “Send Help.”
This is the movie where an asshole CEO of a company crash lands on a deserted island with the weirdo female accountant in his company who he was planning on firing right before the trip. He (Bradley) gets seriously injured and, therefore, must rely on her (Linda) to survive.
I can’t hide how much I adore these spec script setups. While this isn’t technically a spec script, it is a spec script. Producer Zainab Azizi found the script, brought it to Sam Raimi to produce, and he liked it enough to direct it.
So it’s a good example of what coming up with a charged spec-friendly concept can do for a writer. And by spec-friendly, I mean that it works as a script AND a movie. It reads really great on the page, which is what gets people excited and wanting to turn it into a movie.
A lot of scripts are written just for the screen. A script like Sinners with its 40 minute first act setup with tons of exposition is not spec friendly. Dune, with its laborious mythology, is the opposite of spec friendly. I’m guessing The Brutalist was the most difficult script to read of the year.
Meanwhile, Send Help is two people on an island trying to survive and also trying not to kill each other. That’s something that’s easy to follow on the page. You only have to remember two characters. Your mind can drift sometimes and you’re still able to keep up. The dialogue between the two keeps your eyes shooting down the page. The thriller genre is always one of the easiest genres to read. That’s spec-friendly.
And the script has a great ironic setup, which I always tell you guys is a huge bonus. This is a movie about a boss and subordinate who get into a situation where the subordinate becomes the boss and the boss the subordinate. That’s a great concept.
But I didn’t realize how tricky this script was to pull off until I watched the film. It’s kind of a miracle that it works. Cause they’re walking several tightropes at once and if the audience doesn’t buy into a single one, the film is screwed.
For example, one of the main plot points is that Linda found a knife. And because she has the knife, she’s in control. There are numerous scenes of Bradley staring at her using the knife to cut food, implying that “If he could just get a hold of that knife, he could kill her.”
Meanwhile, in the very same scenes that he’s staring at the knife, Bradley is putting together their shelter with a rock-hammer, lol. Linda has to go to sleep at some point, right? Pretty sure he could kill her with the rock hammer. He doesn’t need the knife.
And then the writers have to walk this line between the two hating each other but also falling for each other, since that’s an important plot point for the story to work. The idea is that Linda wants Bradley. But he’s the worst person ever so it doesn’t make sense that she wants him. And then Bradley has to like her for some late story twists to work, and so they have to make that plausible as well.
In many ways, Send Help is Misery but without the logic. The reason that Misery worked was because Paul Sheldon was helpless. He was literally stuck in a bed. Bradley can move around wherever he wants. So it doesn’t make nearly as much sense that Linda is in total control.
But I got to give it to these guys. They get the key thing about the story right – which is the chemistry between these characters. And that’s a great screenwriting tip to take away. You can’t write a perfect screenplay. It’s impossible. There will be tonal slip-ups. There will be plot holes. There will be character inconsistency. There will be plot sloppiness. But you want to figure out what the most important thing is for your script to work and make sure that’s as strong as possible. Because if you nail that, the audience will overlook the other things.
And you really wanted to see what was going to happen with this relationship between Bradley and Linda.
So I definitely think this movie is worth checking out. And one more point in the win column for the power of a good spec script.
Coming Wednesday: A review of the new AMATEUR Top 25 script which comes in at 180 pages. Get ready! And yes, I will be providing a script link so that you can read it yourself.
