Is Apple’s flagship “See” the “Game of Thrones” slayer it so desperately wants to be?

Genre: Science-Fiction
Premise: In the distant future, after a virus has left less than 2 million souls on earth, tribes of people attempt to survive without the most basic human sense – sight.
About: When a media company worth 900 billion dollars lets everyone know they’re entering the TV space, everyone in that space gets really f’ing nervous. We live in a TV world that’s increasingly becoming harder and harder to stand out in. The only way to do it is with big money. And no one has more money than the house that Jobs built. “See” is one of their flagship programs, and it comes from Francis Lawrence (Red Sparrow, The Hunger Game sequels) and Steven Knight (Eastern Promises). Lawrence is quoted as saying that they’re going to be able to do stuff with this show that you never get to do in TV. Can’t wait to find out what that’s all about!
Writer: Steven Knight
Details: 69 pages (Third Draft)

With all of the screenplays I read, it is rare that I come across an idea that I truly consider original. I’ve never seen an idea like this in the television world. I’ve seen a movie covering similar territory – Blindness – but that was one of the worst movies I’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting through.

Sight-challenged subject matter, unless you’ve got Al Pacino, is a TOUGH thing to film. I mean, you’re watching people literally stumble around in the dark. To put an entire cast into that world is one of the riskiest things I’ve ever seen. And when you’re introduced to the world-building here, with entire towns built around strings and ropes that the inhabitants use to pull themselves around, you’re thinking, “They’re going to do this for 70 episodes?”

I kept waiting for the moment where some miracle light came down and all of a sudden everyone could see. But I don’t think that moment’s coming. We’ve got babies who can see. But that isn’t going to pay off for another 15 years. What do we do in the meantime?

Maybe I should break down the plot for you. The year is 2600-something. We’re high up in the mountains in a weird village that has, like I said, ropes and pulleys and shit. Through some title cards, we learn that back in the 22nd century, a virus swept through the planet that killed almost everyone. Anyone who remained was left sightless.

Over in a cave, a strange woman, an intruder of sorts named Maghra who only joined this clan weeks ago, is pushing out twins. Meanwhile, the clan’s leader, a giant of a man named Baba Voss, is dealing with an approaching army. He can’t see this of course. No one can. But in a world with no sight, you use your other senses acutely, and sense-specific generals use their hearing to note that hundreds of horses are coming up the mountain. They will be here soon.

Via a series of conversations throughout the village, we learn of a mysterious man named Jerlamarel. He was the man who got Maghra pregnant then disappeared. It is rumored that Jerlamarel had sight (vision is considered witchcraft in this time, so sight is never talked about). Jerlamarel left a message (messages are written via a series of knots in ropes) that there is a secret bridge off this mountain that will take everyone here to a new land.

Because they are vastly outnumbered by the approaching army, the village decides to flee to this rumored bridge. After they cross it, they find their way into a valley, a valley overlooking a once-familiar but now dead skyline, that of New York City. What they don’t know is that they’re moving towards another village, a village led by a woman with one goal – to find and kill the witch babies who have inherited the power of sight.

Does the word prayergasm mean anything to you?

Oh, it will.

What I really liked about “See” was that it had an extremely complex world it needed to set up, but said, “Fuck it. I’m not only going to set this world up. I’m going to entertain you while I do it.” It kills me when young writers make the mistake of believing that because everything in their fantasy world is soooooo complex, it needs 70 entire pages of dry setup. There can be no fun when you’ve got the Squybar language to establish, and the Tenth Thistle Law that the reader has to know to understand why the War of 2119 ended in the Calagar Revolution.

Your job as a writer is to tell us those things WHILE ENTERTAINING US AT THE SAME TIME. Trust me. However complex you think your world is? It’s not a tenth as complex as this one. And yet we already have a war on page 10 in “See.”

This is a testament to the old advice: Start your story as late as possible. Sure, Knight could’ve given us 30 pages of setup before the war. But that’s not how good storytelling works. Especially these days when viewers have LITERALLY 400 other options to turn to. You have to grab people fast. So we grab and go with a war and then an evacuation.

I was shocked they made that choice, to be honest. Usually, when you have TV shows, money is tight. If you’re going to build an elaborate village on a mountain with an intricate system of movement and engagement? In a normal show, you’re going to use that set for AT LEAST your first season. That set gets torched by page 50 here. I guess this is what Apple was talking about with their deep pockets. You think you’ve got money Netflix? That’s pocket change for Apple.

So I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen once they left. But I’ll tell you one thing that happens. Prayergasm. Queen Kane, who rules the only town in the world that still has electricity, masturbates whenever she prays to God. And hey, why not? Nobody’s going to catch her. Even if they hear her, it’s easy to deny. “Queen? Are you buttering your muffin again?” “Um, no!” “I thought I heard something.” “Prove it.” Argument won.

The cool thing about this concept is that it places the audience in the unique position of knowing more than the characters. So, for example, in the scene where the fleeing village people are approaching the cliff and looking for this rumored bridge. Everyone is desperately looking around, dangling perilously near the cliff that the bridge crosses, tempting fate with each step. WE can see that the bridge is right there. But they’re clueless. That adds a unique form of dramatic irony that allows us to ball our fists and scream out, “It’s right there! It’s right in front of you! Just keep walking.” This opens up avenues you can explore on multiple levels throughout the series.

What I wonder about is the staying power of this hook. Its biggest asset is also its biggest weakness. Will audiences stick with characters flailing around like drunken sailors season after season? I don’t know. There are no old comps to compare this to. Everything is brand new and therefore unknown.

But I like that. If these are the kinds of risks Apple is going to be taking, then they can definitely take on “I don’t know how to make good movies” Netflix and “We Only Have One Good Show” HBO. All you need is a couple of winners and you’re a player baby.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Knight will occasionally use a tactic where we meet an important character, but due to the way the story’s set up, the intro to that character needs to be brief. So Knight will write, right after the character intro: “We will get to know this person well.” Knight understands that when tons of information and new characters are being thrown at the reader, it’s difficult to know what needs to be remembered and what can be filtered out. Adding that little tag is a thoughtful way of saying to the reader, “I don’t have time to get into this person’s deal now. But since you have to remember so much shit, I want you to know he’s important. So don’t forget him.”

Genre: Gothic Horror
Premise: Two hitmen are recruited by a strange Native American woman to kill a bizarre monster who lives under her basement.
About: This script was written in the mid-70s for Hal Ashby’s production company. Ashby is best known for the weirdest love story of all time, Harold and Maude, a personal favorite of mine. He was obsessed with this project though, coveting Jack Nicholson to play the lead. He had the author of the book, Richard Brautigan, adapt the screenplay himself, but was unhappy with the result. So he got a real screenwriter in Michael Haller to adapt the story, the final product of which he was excited about. But he could never get all the pieces together. Later, Tim Burton would become obsessed with the project, but he also had trouble getting it made. This is the Haller version of the script.
Writer: Michael Haller (based on the novel by Richard Brautigan)
Details: 108 pages

Still getting over that Oscar hangover?

Texting your buddies to remind them when tonight’s Bachelor Finale Viewing Party starts?

I’m right there with ya. Mine starts at 6:30. I invited all my neighbors but for some odd reason, when I approached them with roses and asked, “Will you accept this Bachelor Viewing Party Rose?” 5 of them shut the door in my face, 3 stood silently, and 2 called the police.

The good news is I made bail. So onwards and upwards and let us all hope Ari finds love.

A few of you sunk your teeth into me the other day like a diseased zombie when I eviscerated some script choices in Three Billboards, calling me delusional for blindly following the GSU faith. But anyone who reads this site regularly knows I like a lot of weird scripts. I mean, I liked Meat, which was the anti-GSU. I’m also consistent in saying that how you break the rules is how you will make your script stand out.

Where myself and my critics differ is in intentional rule-breaking vs ignorant rule-breaking. I’m fine when someone breaks a rule with a purpose. But when I sense they made a choice ignorantly, either overall or in a specific area, I’m going to call them out on it. If you overlook a more dramatically engaging choice out of sloppiness, that needs to be discussed. Because while the strength of that film may have masked that particular mistake, aspiring screenwriters need to know that it won’t work if they try the same thing.

How does this tie into today’s screenplay? Because today’s script is a more obvious example of what happens when you abandon structure, instead “writing from the heart” and steering your choices through theme.

The year is 1902. Two hitman, Cameron and Greer, are coming back from a failed job in Hawaii. Greer is the brains of the operation while Cameron’s a bit of an autistic weirdo. Everything is counting for him. He counts footsteps, words, repeated noises, everything.

When these two get back to the mainland, they’re approached by a young beautiful Native American woman named Magic Child. Magic Child hands them a few thousands dollars and says they need to come back with her to Oregon to kill something.

At a time when Coke cost negative 5 cents, a few thousand dollars is a lot of money. So these two don’t hesitate in accepting the offer. However, once they get back to Magic Child’s town, shit starts getting weird. They go back to Magic Child’s mother’s house, Miss Hawkline, and within five minutes, Magic Child and Miss Hawkline become the same person. So there are now two Miss Hawklines.

Sure, why not.

Original Miss Hawkline explains that Cameron and Greer need to kill a monster for them. This monster lives underneath their basement, in something known as the Ice Caves. You see, Miss Hawkline’s scientist husband was working on an experiment, and may or may not have accidentally created the monster before disappearing.

Cameron and Greer are all geared up to go, but as the group of four gets to talking, they become distracted, even confused, about why they’re all here. After several scenes of this, they seem to get their senses back, only for Miss Hawkline to confide that the monster has the ability to make them confused. Which is why they’re confused.

Uh-huh. Okay.

This goes on for many more pages, with the group fucking (yes, fucking), having tea, and eventually realizing that the monster they thought was the monster was never the monster. Or… something. In the end, the missing dad comes back and everything is great again. But not really.

Getting back to my point. It’s easy to say that one’s critique of a story choice is incorrect when the overall screenplay works. But when an objectively awful screenplay makes the same mistake, nobody’s there to defend the same reasoning. The reality is that every script is the sum of its parts and therefore if a script does a few things wrong but a lot of things right, it’s still a success. But that does not mean its mistakes are above criticism. And I’d argue that that’s what this site is about – having a discussion about those choices so we don’t make the same mistakes in our own scripts.

The second this script went away from its structured setup – find and kill the monster – to an unstructured one – reality dissolves and everyone talks to each other for long periods of time trying to figure out where they are and what’s happening – it completely falls apart. It’s a terrible choice. And it’s a terrible choice specifically because it abandons structure.

It just so happens that this script is so appallingly bad after that choice that I doubt any of you would disagree with me after reading it. But while the critique of a similarly bad choice in an otherwise good movie (Three Billboards) makes for a more interesting discussion, a bad choice is still a bad choice. Sam Rockwell’s racist character in Three Billboards not becoming the deputy under a new black sheriff was the wrong choice. Period. Dramatically, it was way more interesting than sending Rockwell home to do nothing for the next 30 minutes. And writers need to know that.

Getting back to The Hawkline Monster, the bigger problem here is that poor screenwriters working before the internet had little to no resources for how to structure a screenplay. So you got a lot of scripts like this, which charged strong into the midpoint, only for the writers to run out of ideas. Their solution, then, was to write whatever came to mind for the next 50 pages until they got to the climax.

Sadly, a lot of writers still write this way.

The way to prevent this is to KNOW YOUR ENDING. Once you know what you’re writing towards, it’s the same as picking a vacation destination. You can now look up prices, book the plane, book hotels, study the place you’re going to visit, pack, go to the airport, and show up at your destination. Imagine if you hadn’t picked a vacation spot? You just winged it. You might show up at the airport with a suitcase full of t-shirts and land in Juneau, Alaska during a time of year when all the hotels are booked.

Once you have your ending, you just have to make sure your characters are always moving towards that ending, that there are obstacles getting in the way, and that each ten pages we’re feeling a little less certain that they’re going to succeed. That’s what provides that sense of purpose you need in a story.

If you want to write purely through theme and leave your pacing and purpose up to the powers that be, go right ahead. But don’t be surprised when people look at you sideways after they’ve read your script.

Script link: The Hawkline Monster

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Screenwriting is a mathematical writing medium and is therefore heavily dependent on structure. I know people hate to hear it. But it’s true. Until you see it that way, you’re always going to have a hard time pacing your scripts correctly.

What’s in a description?

Character descriptions (or “character introductions”) are one of the easiest ways to know if you’re dealing with a seasoned writer or a newbie. So what I did was I went back through 9 scripts to find you 10 protagonist introductions. What I discovered is that, as you’d expect, different writers have different approaches to character introductions! Some are overly-descriptive. Some get to the point. This proves that there’s no “right” way to write a character intro. But I’m hoping that by seeing ten character introductions yourself, you’ll have a good idea of what works best.

AS GOOD AS IT GETS

MELVIN UDALL

in the hallway… Well past 50… unliked, unloved, unsettling. A huge pain in the ass to everyone he’s ever met.

Analysis: I love this character introduction because there’s no bullshit. It tells you exactly who the character is in very blunt easy-to-understand language. Too many character introductions are vague or tell you barely anything at all. Which is why I’m a big fan of this give-it-to-us-straight approach.

THE MATRIX

NEO, a man who knows more about living inside a computer than living outside one.

Analysis: Oooh, I love this description. It’s so damn clean and we immediately understand the character after reading it. Notice that there’s more of a poetic angle to the description, which, if nailed, can take your description to the next level.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

A strange girl, Allison Reynolds, is staring out the passenger window at the school. She’s thin and plain-looking. No makeup, no style to her long, straight hair, no attempt to look like anything. A pale invisible human being.

Analysis: A few of you may have noticed that the character name isn’t capitalized. Don’t worry about that. This was written in the 80s when John Hughes was still new to screenwriting. Not all of the rules were well-known. — This description is longer than the others, but I don’t mind long as long as the words count. I have an extremely good feel for this character after this introduction so I’d call it a success.

INCEPTION

The speaker, COBB, is 35, handsome, tailored.

This is a terrible description and one you want to avoid at all costs. What you want to be wary of is any description that could apply to millions of people. A description should give us a sense of who the character is in a way that makes them feel unique. So why was this awful introduction used by one of the most successful filmmakers in the business? Because some writer-directors already have the character in their head and don’t feel the need to “sell” them on the page. Simple as that. But that NEVER applies to writers writing on spec. Plus, it’s just good practice to write strong descriptions.

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

ANDY DUFRESNE, mid-20s, a wire rim glasses, three-piece suit. Under normal circumstances a respectable, solid citizen; hardly dangerous, perhaps even meek. But these circumstances are from from normal. He is disheveled, unshaven, and very drunk. A cigarette smolders in his mouth. His eyes, flinty and hard, are riveted to the bungalow up the path.

Analysis: Ideally, you want to introduce a character in their natural habitat, performing an action that tells us who they are. But sometimes, due to the story, you have to introduce them as the opposite of who they are. Andy is a great guy. But we need to see him as a possible murderer for the story to work. You’ll notice how this complicates things, since the writer is forced to write two opposing descriptions. It’s not preferable but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

GET OUT

CHRIS WASHINGTON, 26, a handsome African-American man shuts the medicine cabinet. He’s shirtless and naturally athletic. He scrutinizes his reflection with a touch of vanity.

Analysis: This isn’t a very good description. The only thing that truly tells us something about this guy is the action at the end. That he has a touch of vanity. I’d rather have more to work with. And Peele does do a little better with Rose’s description…

ROSE ARMITAGE, 28 – Caucasian, brunette with freckles – cool and beautiful like an old Summer Camp crush. Rose looks at pastries through the glass. She can’t help but smile.

Analysis: The Summer Camp crush comparison gives this description a little more pop, makes it a little more fun. Any clever comparison can do that.

JUNO

JUNO MacGUFF stands on a placid street in a nondescript subdivision, facing the curb. It’s FALL. Juno is sixteen years old, an artfully bedraggled burnout kid.

I don’t love the fact that we have some non-character related description placed between the character name and character description, but it does create a less formal feel to the format, which some people like. The important part is the end: “artfully bedraggled burnout kid.” That’s a great description in that it gives us a really good visual of this girl. All the more impressive when you see that Cody achieved it in just four words.

AMERICAN SNIPER

CHRIS KYLE lays prone, dick in the dirt, eye to the glass of a .300 Win-Mag sniper rifle. He’s a Texas boy with a shitty grin, blondish goatee and vital blue eyes.

Analysis: Shitty grin. Does he mean shit-eating grin? Vital? Does he mean vibrant? The only thing in this intro that gives me any insight into the character is that he’s from Texas. And that’s because Texas is such a unique state. But it’s still asking me to generalize a lot about the person. This is why I tabbed this script a failure. The writing was not every good. This whole movie is about this one character and yet we start off that journey with a below-average introduction.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI

It is late, the supermarket all but deserted. We are tracking in on a fortyish man in Bermuda shorts and sunglasses at the dairy case. He is the Dude. His rumpled look and relaxed manner suggest a man in whom casualness runs deep.

Analysis: I looooooooovvvve this introduction. My favorite of the list. Bermuda shorts and sunglasses in a supermarket at night already gives me a great feel for the character, but then the Coens top it off with, “His rumpled look and relaxed manner suggest a man in whom casualness runs deep.” I mean how great of a line is that? The Big Lebowski is the big character introduction winner!

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. I highly recommend not writing a script unless it gets a 7 or above. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Sci-fi/Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) In the 1950s, a manufacturing company stirs up controversy when they publish a user’s manual to a time machine called the Gadabout TM-1050.
About: Today’s script finished number 37 on last year’s Black List with 9 votes. The idea came through Safe House (“Edge of Tomorrow”) and Sony, and newbie Ross Evans was brought in to write it.
Writer: Ross Evans
Details: 121 pages

Jack Black for Wilbur?

Most of the Black List scripts these days are World War 2 stories, book adaptations, whatever the current trend is (Jane Wick this year), and biopics, biopics, and more biopics. Man are there are lot of biopics. So it was a nice change of pace to see amongst all that sameness, a classic Spielbergian story aimed squarely at the family crowd. We don’t usually get that in Blacklistville.

Don’t worry, this isn’t another 80s nostalgia bomb with four precocious 12 year-olds making vaguely inappropriate jokes about boobs n stuff. I think that trend’s about to die. Instead, Gadabout is more inspired by Back to the Future. And it does so better than most of the scripts that are inspired by Back to the Future in that it isn’t a beat-for-beat remake of Back to the Future. That’s the good news. But have the 80s Gods blessed it with a totally tubular story? That’s yet to be determined.

After his grandmother, Gennie, dies, a distraught 10 year-old Henry asks his mom if he can stay with Grandpa Wilbur for the night to help him deal with the pain. Grandpa Wilbur’s a bit of a weirdo and says that Henry can do anything he wants while he’s here, except go into his shed. That’s his sacred place.

Being a 10 year-old boy, that’s the first place Henry goes, and it’s there where he finds a manual for the Gadabout TM-1050 time machine, written by… his grandpa! No sooner has he found it than Wilbur appears, upset that Henry broke his one rule. But after Henry puts on the charm, Wilbur decides to tell him the story of the Gadabout.

Flash back to 1958, when Wilbur was a young inventor, trying to make his way. Wilbur was a classic scatterbrain inventor – good at inventing, terrible at explaining. So when he pitches his giant box called “The Go-Backer” to the bank in hopes of securing funding, they laugh him out of the room.

Once home, a young Gennie tells Wilbur she can’t wait for him to follow his dreams anymore and walks out on him. Only minutes later, Don, a sketchy vacuum salesman, arrives at the door and notices the time machine. Curious, he wants to know how it works. After Wilbur proves to him it’s the real deal, Don tells him that all it needs is a new name, a shiny makeover and they’ll make millions.

True to his word, it isn’t long before everyone in town owns a Gadabout. But there are limitations. Due to power restrictions, you can only go back 30 minutes in time. And traveling to the future requires more power than anyone can produce. So you can forget about that. Still, that’s enough for people to do stuff like re-run their dates if they go bad, or pick up an extra 30 minutes around the house if they’re running late.

It’s when Don wants to go national that things become a problem, particularly because the machine is faulty. For example, a local Gadabout addict has over 20 versions of herself living in her house. All of this leads us to the ultimate question, and the one Henry himself wants to know: If all of this really happened, how come nobody’s ever heard about it?

I’ll never forget a note I received on one of my first screenplays. “It’s all rather… easy.” I must’ve sat on that note for a month. Easy? Easy?? I’ll show you “easy” you ignorant mother&*%$#. It took time. And Bob’s Corner Liquor Store. But I eventually figured out what he meant. There wasn’t a whole lot of conflict in my screenplay. There weren’t any obstacles. If the script were a rollercoaster, it was one that went in a straight line with a few mildly high rises and a few mildly low dips.

For the majority of its running time, that’s how Gadabout felt to me. It was all very pleasant and sweet and nice. But it was one hell of a straight roller-coaster ride. Nothing went too well and nothing went too bad. Eventually, things do get out of hand and the blood starts pumping. But that isn’t until page 80. And that’s a really long time to wait for the good stuff.

Cause that’s all storytelling is when you think about it. It’s the storyteller manipulating the emotions of the story reader. And it’s not a bad kind of manipulation. The reader WANTS to be manipulated. They want those high highs and low lows. I mean look at a film this script was clearly inspired by, The Princess Bride. That movie probably has more highs and lows then any family film ever. Within the first 15 minutes, our princes is kidnapped by three bad men. The emotional manipulation starts immediately.

And that was my frustration here. I never felt anything throughout the first 80 pages of the script.

Part of the problem is that it wasn’t clear what was at stake. The only question that’s being asked is, if all this time machine stuff happened, how come there’s no record of it? And while that’s a fun mystery, it’s not enough to carry an entire movie.

Since the love of Wilbur’s life, Gennie, dies at the beginning of the story, why not build a high-stakes storyline around that? Maybe he never got to tell her something. And if he still had a Gadabout, he’d have the chance to go back and have one last conversation with her. But the Gadabout doesn’t work anymore. It’s permanently damaged. And so the flashback storyline is setting up a present-day storyline that actually matters, because maybe Wilbur realizes how to make the fix that gives him one more time-travel.

I admit that’s clumsy because I’m thinking it up on the spot. But this script needed something LIKE that. Where something BIG matters. Because there wasn’t once here where I said, “Ooh, I HAVE to find out what happens with that.” And with every screenplay, you want to have four or five of those things.

None of this is to say the script is bad. It’s fine. The last act is actually balls-to-the-wall crazy, as we start jumping all the hell over time. The question is, will people be able to muscle through a day-long walk in the park to race the Indy 500? I guess that depends on how much you like walking in the park.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When it comes to time travel scripts, you need restrictions so every time your hero fails at something, the audience doesn’t say, “He’s got a time machine. Why can’t he go back and try again?” One of the best ways to combat this plot hole, and it’s something we see in Gadabout, is POWER RESTRICTIONS. You can always say that the time machine takes up so much power that it has limitations in how much it can be used and for how long. It’s logical and it saves you from having to deal with a bunch of “But why didn’t they just…” questions.

What I learned 2: If you’re going to write a time travel movie, I recommend doing a time-travel comedy. Time-travel is a complicated concept that, the more you use it, the more plot holes it creates. When you write a comedy, people are more forgiving of these holes as they don’t need everything to make perfect sense.

Genre: Superhero
Premise: (from IMDB – the worst logline writing site ever) T’Challa, after the death of his father, the King of Wakanda, returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced African nation to succeed to the throne and take his rightful place as king.
About: Going into 2018, Black Panther was seen as the weakest of the four Marvel offerings being released. But after a shocking weekend where it made over 200 million dollars (for the 4-day haul), it may prove to be the best return on investment of all four films. The movie stars a predominantly black cast, a first for a mainstream comic book movie, as well as being directed by a black director, Ryan Coogler. The film is now the highest box office release ever in the month of February.
Writers: Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole (character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby)
Details: 135 minutes

I suppose it was inevitable that the media would politicize this movie. Politicizing is the new click-bait cuz there’s no money in posting stuff like, “Black Panther was a really good movie!” It has to be, “Black Panther Challenges Hollywood’s Diversity Problem” or “If You Don’t Like Black Panther, You’re a Racist.” I get it. Those titles are more provocative and more likely to make you click. So as long as people keep clicking on them, they’re going to keep posting them!

What’s interesting about Black Panther is Ryan Coogler clearly cared more about making a good movie than starting a movement, which is always the way to go. Nobody cares about your beliefs if they’re wrapped inside a bad story. So Coogler stripped away a lot of the trappings of comic book movies and focused on character development and story. The result is the strongest dramatic offering from Marvel to date. Indeed, this film made me think more than any other Marvel film. It’s a testament to the savvy writing on display from Coogler and Cole.

For those who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a seemingly poor country in Africa called Wakanda that has a secret high-tech city in the mountains where they mine Vibrainium, one of the most powerful energy sources in the universe. After their king dies, T’Challa (Black Panther) rises to the throne, intent on keeping Wakanda and its energy source a secret.

However, in London, this dude named Killmonger, a young black mercenary, steals an ancient Wakandan axe from a museum in the hopes that it will lead him to the hidden city. Killmonger eventually finds Wakanda (spoilers!) reveals that T’Challa’s dad killed his own father, demands a ritualistic battle for the throne, gets it, kills T’Challa, and takes over. But, of course, you wouldn’t have a movie called Black Panther where Black Panther died, so BP rises from the dead to take back Wakanda!

Like I said, this Marvel movie makes you think more than any other Marvel film. One of the things that separates professional screenwriters from amateurs is that professionals are always looking for contrast within their characters. If a character is generic and straight forward, he’ll fail to make an impact. Finding the right contrast within a character is often the key to unlocking them.

So here, T’Challa has this energy source that can help so many lives across the planet. However, if he were to announce that to the world, he would have to reveal Wakanda’s secret, something he’s reluctant to do. So here we have a hero with the power to help millions who actively chooses not to. I don’t know of any other hero in the MC universe who’s like that.

On the flip side you have Killmonger, who grew up on the streets of Oakland. He’s our bad guy. And yet the whole reason he wants to get to Wakanda is so he can use their resources to help disenfranchised people around the world. We’re talking about our bad guy here! One of the best lines in the movie is when he tells T’Challa and his council (paraphrasing) “You guys are all sitting pretty up here in your utopia when there are 2 billion people across the world just like us who are starving.” And he’s right!

I’d never seen that kind of maturity in a hero-villain dynamic before, where the villain’s motivation actually made more sense than the hero’s. And it’s a big reason why this was more than your average popcorn flick.

Black Panther also does a great job developing its secondary characters. This is something I also tell newbies. One of the easiest ways to spot a professional is someone who puts just as much effort into developing their supporting characters as they do their main characters.

Nakia and T’Challa are exes, infusing some tension into their relationship. Okoye, the lead guard, is loyal to the throne to a fault, to the point where she supports Killmonger when he becomes king. W’Kabi, the chief defense captain, doesn’t agree with T’Challa’s isolationist ideology, continually pushing him to change his stance. And Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, had more personality in her pinky than the entire DCU. In other words, there was thought put into each and every character here. Nobody was window dressing (well, except for poor Martin Freeman).

And kudos to Coogler and Cole for setting up a hell of a complex mythology. This idea of a secret African country with super-technology right here on earth is by no means an easy sell. Combined with the complexity of the tribal setup itself (I think there were 5 tribes in total), it could’ve easily turned into a head-scratching mess of information. But they lay everything out in a clear visual opening narration (via a father explaining Wakanda to his son) to make sure we knew which way was up.

So with all that praise, I must be giving Black Panther an [x] impressive, right!?

Not exactly.

Black Panther had a major problem. Black Panther himself, T’Challa, was kinda lame. This dates back to a discussion we had on the site a few weeks ago, where we asked if a movie can survive a “vanilla” main character. There were a lot of opinions, with some saying that if you put enough interesting people around the main character, the main character, by association, will become interesting himself. But this movie proves that to be very untrue.

There are three issues here. The first is Chadwick Boseman. Guy’s got a nice smile. He’s got some charisma. But he’s missing SOMETHING. I don’t know what that is. But it says a lot when you’re not even in the top 5 most memorable characters in your own movie.

The second is the writing. While they do give T’Challa that interesting inner conflict, they don’t do enough with it. When you pose the question, “Are we going to help people or aren’t we?” in your movie and then you never answer that question, what was the point of asking it in the first place? That needed more of a payoff.

Finally, while the Black Panther suit is the coolest looking superhero suit in the Marvel universe, it’s the least interesting power-wise. As far as I could tell, his power is, he’s really strong and can’t be hurt? So, um, every other superhero ever? The best superheroes are superheroes with clear – and preferably COOL – powers. If the power is unclear, the superhero’s not going to pop.

This was unfortunate as there were so many great things about this screenplay. However, if you don’t nail your hero, the ceiling for your film is only going to be so high.

The other big issue with the movie was that the action scenes were really bad. The big car chase looked liked someone had cut and pasted a CGI car into the streets of Korea. And the final battle between Black Panther and Killmonger looked like a discarded outtake from the 1982 version of Tron.

There are actually some screenwriting lessons to learn here, although they’re more for those of you working in the professional ranks. Don’t include big animals you’re going to have to CGI in into any big battles. They always look awful. And avoid, if possible, creating an entirely CG environment for any hand-to-hand combat scenes – ESPECIALLY if it’s your climactic scene. It’s going to look bad.

So there you have it. We’ve cut through the hype to give you the real scoop on Marvel’s latest money-maker. It was good. But it made too many mistakes to be great. With that said, I think Wakanda makes the Marvel universe a lot better. We have this awesome energy source just waiting to be tapped. Once a bad guy gets his hands on it, it’s going to be chaos. And I want to be there for when that happens.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Two Lowest Points for the price of one! Black Panther reminded me that there are TWO LOWEST POINTS at the end of your movie. The first low point is at the end of the second act. There’s usually some death involved here, since death is the lowest low point you can reach. Here, (spoiler!) it’s Black Panther dying. The SECOND big low-point will happen during the climactic battle. Think of your end battle (or showdown) as its own three-act movie. Therefore, it too will have a lowest point at the end of its second act. This will usually be shown as the villain getting the upper hand and our hero looking defeated. Your hero will then get one last life/chance/burst, and figure out a way to defeat the villain.