Genre: Thriller
Premise: Told in real-time from three different perspectives, the United States Defense Department tries to stop a mysterious nuclear missile launch heading towards Chicago (why you gotta take out my home town, Hollywood!?)
About: Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim started out by writing YA movies such as The Maze Runner and Divergent. He then segued into serious fare with Jackie. This seemed to get his appetite whet for some politics, so he developed the interesting failure that was Zero Day, with Robert DeNiro. He then wrote this script which, no pun intended, blew Katheryn Bigelow away.
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Details: 112 minutes

My original plan was to watch and review the most art housey art house movie ever, Bugonia. But then I realized that less than three of you will ever see the movie. So, I instead decided to review the much more accessible Netflix Oscar contender, A House of Dynamite.

To start off, Katheryn Bigelow is an underrated director. James Cameron’s former girlfriend has directed some really cool movies. So much so that you wonder why she continues to be overlooked and underappreciated.

Part of it may be the subject matter she chooses. Both Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit just didn’t have any appeal beyond curious Hollywood folk. That’s the curse when you become an “Oscar” director, like Bigelow became after The Hurt Locker. Is you start making choices that you think the Oscar people will like rather than making movies you want to make.

Generally speaking, when you’re chasing audiences, whether that be the casual everyday moviegoer or the uptight Academy member, you write bad stories. You’re always going to be more passionate about the things that you personally want to explore. And the more passionate you are about those things, the more you’re going to pour into your screenplay.

Where House of Dynamite lies on that spectrum for Bigelow, I don’t know. What I do know is that I like the concept. What I always tell you guys is to pick a concept that feels new or fresh. And fresh can be something old *IF* there have been no movies covering that subject matter for a long time.

It’s been forever since we’ve gotten a nuclear war movie. So the concept itself feels fresh.

Now, you can stop there if you want. Just come up with something that’s new or that we haven’t seen in forever. BUT if you want to supercharge your movie idea, look for an unexpected point of view. That takes your story and elevates it even higher because you’re further creating something unique.

That’s what House of Dynamite did. It’s a nuclear war story told from the specific point of view of war rooms – the places where these giant world-altering decisions are being made. And what’s cool about Dynamite is it added TWO MORE variables that helped it stand out. One, it told the story in real-time. And two, it divided the story into three separate segments, which restarted the timer for each one.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, the plot here is pretty straight-forward. A nuclear missile is launched from somewhere on the other side of the world. Nobody can pinpoint where. All they know is that, in 19 minutes, it’s probably going to hit somewhere in the United States.

The structure is then divided into three real-time segments. The first segment deals with the low-level techy workers whose job it is to figure out what’s going on and defend against it, probably with their own set of missiles.

The second segment, which pushes us back to the beginning of the launch, bumps us up to the actual United States Defense Department. This includes the big dogs, like the Secretary of Defense. These guys are not just ordering the underlings about what to do. They’re communicating with other nations and trying to determine who launched the missile.

Finally, we get to the third segment, which also pushes us back to the beginning of the launch. This final segment is all about the president of the United States, who is pulled from a public appearance and must decide, in the 19 minutes between getting pulled and getting to a safe location, how to respond to this threat.

All right, so, what did I think?

Before I get into that, I have to say that I am not afraid of nuclear war at all. Anybody who follows UFO chatter knows that aliens have shut down dozens of nuclear facilities in the past. The aliens are here to make sure we don’t blow ourselves up. If anyone launches a missile, they’ll take care of it – I PROMISE YOU.

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of the way. This movie, which doesn’t seem to care about aliens for some reason, WAS AWESSOOOMMMMME…

…

…

For exactly two-thirds of its running time.

I was pulled into the movie immediately. It’s got a great hook. A missile has been launched. They don’t know where from, potentially because one of their satellites covering the area was hacked.

And then we just go through the real-life system of how America deals with this threat. And that system is terrifying. That’s where all the tension lies. Running a country with this sophisticated of a defense network means there are all these little checkpoints that need to be hit, and the whole time you’re thinking, “Well, wait. We should put the president himself on the fucking phone and have him call everyone to de-escalate this!” The fact that that’s not part of the protocol is infuriating. Instead, you’re putting the lives of 8 billion people in the hands of 25 year olds. It’s nuts.

But it’s nuts in the most captivating of ways.

That’s something I’m always looking for in screenplays: authenticity. I look for events that I know are based in reality. Because I know, then, that what I’m watching is genuine. And when you feel like you’re watching something genuine, your very being gets pulled into the movie.

Remember suspension of disbelief? One of the worst things you can do as a screenwriter is have your characters or your plot do something that’s unrealistic. In doing so, you alert the reader that what they’re reading is bullshit. The suspension of disbelief is broken. The audience has tapped out.

With movies like this, it’s the opposite. The attention to detail is so on point that we feel even closer to the story than we normally would. I don’t know if there’s a term for the opposite of the breaking of suspension of disbelief. But if someone wants to invent it for this movie, feel free to do so.

So why isn’t the movie gaining more interest from the Academy? Why does it only have a 6.7 on IMDB? For the first hour and twenty minutes, I was ready to scream at all the dum-dums who had rated this film so poorly.

But then the third and final sequence of the movie came.

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh very much no.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a great movie fall apart so spectacularly.

Wow. Talk about a miscalculation.

We discuss this all the time on the site. A screenplay is a series of creative choices. And the ending is probably the most important creative choice of all. House of Dynamite quite possibly made the worst creative choice they could’ve made for the film’s ending.

But before we get to that, we have to acknowledge the other big issue with the third sequence which was that Idris Elba did a jarringly terrible job as the president of the United States. His big acting choice, as far as I could tell, was to be really tired for some reason. Even before the missile enters his day, he’s tired. And everyone he talks to, he’s tired.

If I’ve learned one thing from this movie, it’s that I do not want Idris Elba to be my president. This guy would drive any country into the ground. Because Oppenheim wrote him terribly too! Elba’s president is the most clueless person in the entire story. He seems to be learning everything on the fly. He can’t make any decisions. He asks every question sixteen times.

I get what Oppenheim was doing I think. He wanted the final sequence to be different – more personal. These other two sequences were all about pace. This was more about one person. Slowing it down and dealing with the problem from a single perspective. Which could’ve worked…

If Elba hadn’t shit the bed in the role. He was so awful. Which meant that, essentially, the entire final act didn’t work. And that was BEFORE we got to the unacceptable, ambiguous ending.

Ugh.

For movie lovers, there is nothing worse than a great movie that implodes right in front of your face. And just like this nuclear missile, you’re helpless to stop it.

I read some interviews with Bigelow and Oppenheim and they said that they chose to go with this ending believing it would “start a conversation.” Oh, it started a conversation all right. A conversation about how bad you destroyed your movie.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the stream (as long as you know going in that the ending is the worst ending ever – in fact, just stop after the first two sequences and imagine whatever you want to imagine for the final act. I promise you it will be better than what they came up with)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: This movie should be taught in screenwriting schools across the country for the danger of ending your script ambiguously. I’m not saying it never works. BUT IT DOESN’T WORK WAY MORE THAN IT DOES. And this movie should scare the shit out of ambiguity-obsessed screenwriters. Cause the choice of ending here – for us to never find out what the president decided or what happened to Chicago, in a movie that mined two hours of tension and anticipation from those very facilitators, was… I hate to say it… but an all-time moronic creative choice. You literally turned an Oscar-worthy movie into trash.

Here are some scene breakdowns to get you motivated!

Next weekend, aka Halloween Friday, we’re scheduled to have a showdown for the 97 participants in the Blood & Ink Horror Script Showdown contest. The showdown is titled “That Scene” Showdown and it involves submitting “that scene” from your script, aka, that amazing killer scene that will be remembered for decades once your movie comes out.

But I’m starting to get worried because only three people have submitted their scene so far. I suppose that since it’s just one scene, writers may be using every single second they have to perfect it before they submit. But if I get anything less than 20 scenes, I’m going to cancel the showdown. Which means you guys will have nothing to participate in while you stuff all your Halloween candy down your gullet.

After a little self-analysis, I realize that I might have set the bar too high. Telling writers to come up with the best scene ever is kinda intimidating. So, I’ve decided to dial things back. Just send me a good scene. If you have a good horror scene in your script and you are one of the 97 Blood & Ink participants, submit it to the showdown. Here are the details.

For Blood & Ink Contest Participants Only!

What: “That Scene” Showdown
When: Friday, October 31st
Deadline: Thursday, October 30th, 10pm Pacific Time
Send me: title, genre, logline, up to 100 words of context for the scene, a PDF of the scene
Sent to: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

In the meantime, I want to talk about some of the memorable scenes I’ve seen this year to give you guys an idea of what constitutes a good solid memorable scene.

Eddington: The Power of Tension

One of my favorite scenes in Eddington is when Sheriff Joe Cross, played by Joaquin Phoenix, goes into the supermarket during Covid to get a few things. A big theme in the movie is that Joe refuses to wear a mask or physically distance himself from others. So when he walks into this supermarket, everyone turns to him and starts staring. Some people take out their phones and start recording him. The grocery store manager comes up and tells him he has to leave unless he wears a mask. He refuses. And that’s pretty much it. That’s the scene.

Why does this scene work? The scene works because it leans so heavily into tension. Tension is a subcontractor of conflict. And conflict is the lifeblood of drama. If you have drama, you have entertainment.

So just seek out scenarios that have tension and you’ll naturally have an entertaining scene. It’s also important to note here that there isn’t any huge yelling or fighting going on. That can work in certain scenes. But if you’re not careful, it will feel on the nose.

With tension, you don’t have to worry about being on the nose. You just put your character in a scene where the variables surrounding that scene make one or more of the characters uncomfortable. The more you dial up those variables to raise the temperature of the tension, the more uncomfortable people will be, and the more entertaining the scene will be.

Weapons: Suspense Through the Unknown

Another good scene this year came in the movie Weapons. The scene occurs near the middle of the movie when a druggie, James, is looking for a quick score. He needs money so he can buy drugs. He comes across a house that looks empty for the moment. He sneaks off to the side, breaks a window, and slides inside to the dark living room.

Once inside, he starts looking around for valuables, only to turn around and see that, sitting perfectly upright on a couch three feet away from him, are a man and a woman. Their eyes are wide open. And yet they’re not moving. He gets closer to them to try and see what’s going on and he eventually concludes that they’re incapacitated. So he ignores them and goes looking around for things he can steal.

Meanwhile, the camera always has this couple in the background just sitting there, lingering. And at some point, unbeknownst to him, they stand up. The rest of the scene evolves from there.

This is a classic horror scene setup. You place an element of danger in the scene and you draw out the suspense of how that danger is going to develop for as long as you can. And then, usually, you let the danger loose.

These scenes are always better, however, if you can find a new spin on them that the audience isn’t used to. Which is why this Weapons scene stands out from the competition. We don’t understand the rules of this scenario yet. We don’t know why this couple is frozen. We just know it’s creepy as hell. Our lack of understanding is what supercharges the suspense here. We know something may happen while James is looking for dough. We just don’t know what. And it adds this extra tension to the suspense that really brings the scene alive.

The Ballad of Wallace Island: Conflict Within Desire

Let’s take a left turn and talk about a scene from another favorite 2025 movie of mine, The Ballad of Wallace Island. This is a small movie about a once successful married couple folk band, Herb and Nell, who have since broken up and gone in different directions with their lives. Years later, their number one fan, however, pays them to come play a concert together on his remote island.

The scene in question happens about halfway through the movie. After a lot of frustrating moments together, Herb and Nell realize that they have to practice to make sure the concert goes well. They haven’t played together in years.

The two sit down together out on the porch with their guitars and they just start practicing. Now, of course, the songs they became famous for were songs they wrote about each other when they were falling in love. So the songs have a lot of history to them that, just singing them out loud, forces them to revisit their relationship, whether they want to or not.

Things start out cordial and, because of the songs, become flirty. It’s clear that there are still feelings between these two. But the other personal and business shit that gets in the way of that is what eventually destroyed them. And that reality starts coming out, leading to them ultimately fighting again.

The reason the scene works is, again, due to conflict. This will be a theme you can consistently draw on when your scenes aren’t working. You want to find the conflict in the scene and build the scene around that. But what’s great about this scene is that the conflict isn’t clean cut. It’s not just, “I don’t like you and you don’t like me.” Or “I like you but you don’t like me.”

The reality is, they still like each other. But they know that they can’t overcome all the other shit to make it work. So there’s this tug of war going on within each character, for Herb a little more than Nell, that’s making his goal (to be with her tonight) impossible. That’s where character work tends to be the most interesting. When two people want something but there are other factors keeping them apart.

And this device has been used forever. Romeo & Juliet. They want to be together. But their families forbid it. There’s something so much more frustrating about that than “one person doesn’t like the other one” and that’s why they can’t be together. But I find the situation in Ballad even more frustrating because the thing that’s keeping them from being together is self-imposed.

I bring this specific scene up because it’s all character and backstory. It’s a reminder that you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles to write a good scene. You can write a good scene with just two characters sitting down, as long as you’ve drawn those characters up in a way that creates a charged atmosphere every time you put them in front of each other.

Nobody 2: Using Your Unique Element

Finally, I want to highlight a scene from an underrated movie in 2025, Nobody 2. If you want to sit back and gobble up some snacks and enjoy something without having to think too much, this is the movie to rent.

The movie has Hutch, Bob Odenkirk, who’s a secret undercover assassin, take his family to a small town water park for a summer getaway. But what he doesn’t know is that the town is run by a powerful hillbilly drug ring.

On the first day there, the family, namely Hutch’s teenage son and daughter, go to play at the arcade. Once there, some kid picks a fight with Hutch’s son. It’s 100% the other kid’s fault. But when Hutch comes to take care of things, the big ugly muscled scary manager of the arcade starts yelling at Hutch to keep his son in check.

Hutch keeps apologizing but tries to make the point that the other kid was in the wrong. The manager gets angrier, puts more pressure on Hutch to leave. And then, at the last second, the manager gives a little shove to Hutch’s daughter as they exit. Hutch continues outside, pauses, tells his family he forgot something. He’ll meet them back at the room. He then proceeds to go inside and kick the living hell out of the manager along with all the other roided up coworkers.

So why does this scene work? A couple reasons. Let’s start with the big one. Whatever you have that is unique to your story, you want to use that to drive scenes when possible. That’s what’s going to make your scenes different from other movies.

Hutch is a secret hitman. That’s called (as I point out in my dialogue book) reverse dramatic irony. It’s the same principle that guides scenes with superheroes out of their costumes, like Spider-Man or Batman. When Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker is dealing with an asshole, the reverse dramatic irony of us knowing that they’re picking a fight with Spiderman creates an intense amount of energy within the reader where they cannot WAIT to see what happens when Peter becomes Spiderman and makes this jerk pay. It literally works EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And it works here as well. Hutch is a secret superhero. We know that. They don’t. He can beat up all these guys but he has to keep his “superhero” persona under wraps while he’s here. But we know it’s only a matter of time before he cracks and fights back. And the time between the manager confronting Hutch and Hutch cracking is the line of suspense that makes us obsessed with the scene. I am telling you, it would be literally impossible for anybody watching that movie to walk away during that scene. Because they HAVE TO SEE Hutch crack and beat the hell out of this guy. That’s when you know you’ve got a good scene.

But there’s more going on in this scene as well. Audiences react strongly to certain triggers/hot buttons. Injustice is one of them. Bullies is another. Corruption. All three of those things are going on here. So they help supercharge an already charged scenario.

But the big note here is to USE THE SPECIFIC SPECIAL THING that you have in your screenplay to drive scenes, just like Hutch’s secret superhero status drove this scene.

The Takeaway

Okay, that’s it, folks. I hope these scene breakdowns have inspired you. Now submit your own scenes so that Scriptshadow can have a Happy Halloween next weekend! I need a good reason to take down 26 Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. You know, besides, “It’s Friday.”

I’m completely overwhelmed with work at the moment so I can’t put up a proper post today. But I heard about this abandoned Star Wars movie and it got me revved up! Revved up good? Revved up bad?

Let’s find out.

Apparently, after Episode 9, Adam Driver’s people went to Disney and said, “We want to make a Kylo Ren movie.” The film was going to be about the continuing adventures of Kylo Ren and was pitched as a “reverse Darth Vader” movie, where Kylo learns to be good.

Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm were on board. But when they went to the top dog at Disney, Bob Iger, he killed it. He didn’t see how Kylo Ren could still be alive, considering that he died in Episode 9.

Adam Driver’s package included writer Scott Z. Burns, and director Steven Soderbergh.

So the question is, did Bob Iger really not like the pitch? Or did he not like the team? Cause people have come back from the dead in Star Wars before. It wouldn’t be a difficult move.

My guess is that there was no way in a million years they were letting Steven Soderbergh direct a Star Wars movie. That would be a tough sell before the Disney sequels were made. But afterwards? When there were about three directors on the planet that the Star Wars fans would’ve approved of, and you’re going to bring in the guy who made Bubble?

I’ll say this. Disney would’ve saved about 200 million dollars on the production since Soderbergh would’ve shot the movie on iPhones. But I don’t think Soderbergh brings anything interesting to filmmaking in general, and definitely nothing to the Star Wars universe. The guy made one good film – his first one – Sex Lies and Videotape. Beyond that, he used Hollywood for his film school experiments and they fell for it every time.

However, if you took Soderbergh out of the equation, would a Kylo Ren movie have worked? I would say yes. Kylo was the only truly interesting thing about the sequels. He was a risky unique character played by a weird actor who’s impossible to look away from. That combination made the character irresistible.

But I agree that it couldn’t have been about Kylo Ren after Ep 9. It needed be about the Knights of Ren. Everyone loved that idea – of Kylo running around with the Knights and wreaking havoc. There have to be a couple of good stories there. Why not do that movie?

Disney’s just terrified of Star Wars right now. I’m going to make an analogy from my life so bear with me. When you are dialed in in tennis, it literally feels like you can’t miss. You look forward to every match. You hit every shot – forehand, backhand, serve – with unbelievable confidence. And you just don’t worry. You feel like you’re going to win every match you play.

But when you start losing and you stop having a good feel for the ball, and you start doubting your mechanics, and you start tinkering with your shots, you engage in the exact opposite experience. The court becomes a nightmare. You don’t feel like you understand the game anymore. When you’re playing during those times, tennis feels like a foreign language. You become a walking error machine.

That’s what’s happened to Disney with Star Wars. They are afraid of their own shadow when it comes to this franchise. And that’s likely the real reason they passed on a Kylo Ren movie. Even if they thought it would work, they don’t trust themselves anymore.

You can see this in their new Starfighter Ryan Gosling Star Wars movie. They won’t even tell us what that movie’s about. That’s an indication to me that they’re terrified that they’re wrong. And if they’re going to be wrong, they want that wrongness to happen during as short of a time period as possible. If we tell them that the idea is stupid already, they have to go through two more years of “Star Wars is terrible” until the movie comes out.  Better to keep it under wraps and let it be stupid for the four weeks it lasts in theaters.

This is, what? The fifteenth developed Star Wars movie that has been scrapped now? They gotta figure some stuff out over there. They need a new team but, more importantly, they need a tennis player with some confidence. Someone who’s going to step onto the court and hit his groundstrokes with purpose. Not this pushy scared hope-my-opponent-misses game that Lucasfilm and Disney are playing right now.

Big script with some big attachments!

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: A hotel bellhop with low self-esteem is plucked from obscurity by an up-and-coming self-help guru who teaches him everything he knows.
About: As you may have noticed, The Rock is rebranding himself. I’ll leave it up to the commenters to come up with a new clever nickname for this “indie” version of The Rock. This script somehow attracted The Rock and Darren Aronofsky, no doubt to become an Oscar contender next year. It’s written by a complete newcomer in Zeke Goodman, who, up until now, has only written short films. He’s also an actor and has appeared in a dozen TV shows.
Writer: Zeke Goodman
Details: 112 pages

I have a theory on why The Rock is rebranding himself away from big action movies and toward more thoughtful, deeper films. I don’t think it’s a move where he’s bored of action films. I actually think he’s been juiced up on so many roids for so long to maintain that body that he knows if he continues, he’ll be buried under a rock within five years. So he’s had to ditch the roids, which is why he’s so much smaller. And he’s using this new, more natural version of himself to be in more natural, realistic movies.

Which is ironic because this script is anything but natural. It’s one of the more artificial story constructions I’ve run into in a while. One of the harder things to determine is how scripts like this get big names attached. What I’ve learned is that if a script can approximate a story based on subject matter that the actor or director really likes, they’ll buy it and try to fix the script. So I’m guessing The Rock and Aronofsky are both intrigued by self-help gurus.

This story is set in 1999 and follows 20-something loser Jacob, who works as a bellhop at a hotel. He works all day, then goes to community college at night, then goes home to take care of his mentally challenged mother. The two are survivors of Jacob’s father, who used to beat her and sexually abuse him.

One day, Jacob learns that his favorite self-help guru, Charles Evans (The Rock), is holding a show at his hotel. So Jacob writes a letter to him asking for direction in his life. That letter ends up getting to Charles and, during his performance, he reads it to the audience and comes down to ask Jacob to join him on his journey because he thinks Jacob is special.

Jacob drives out to Charles’ mansion the following week and begins training with him. During this time, Charles oddly becomes just as obsessed with Jacob as Jacob is with him. In fact, he gets his hands on Jacob’s journal, which details the sexual abuse by his father, and Charles ends up putting that in his own book, saying it happened to him.

For reasons I cannot explain, Jacob is completely fine with this and keeps working on his self-help skills as he moves up the ladder in Charles’s company. He even takes over the role of Charles’s current assistant, Tiffany, who’s the one who gave Jacob’s letter to Charles that day. Needless to say, she’s not happy.

When 9/11 happens, it provides an opportunity to work with Rudy Giuliani and really up the profile of the company. During this time, Jacob shines and begins to unleash his stage presence in a way that threatens Charles. This results in a mano a mano showdown between the two, and only one can win. In the end, Jacob has bitten off more than he can chew and ends up being kicked out of the club, making him anonymous again. It’ll now be up to Jacob alone to rise up and make something of himself.

Wow.

Um.

Guys?

This was NOT good.

I’m actually shocked. Because Darren Aronofsky is really good at picking material. And this just… I wouldn’t call it “garbage,” but it’s really poorly written. Everything about this script is inauthentic. Unsure of itself. Confusing.

I don’t know where to begin.

I’ll just list a bunch of strange happenings that made this read one of the most frustrating I’ve had in a while.

There’s a section of the script where Jacob has just come onto the team. They have a seminar coming up. Charlie poses a challenge to all the junior team members. Whoever cold-calls and gets the most sign-ups for the seminar gets to run one of their own group sessions.

We watch a cold call from Jacob, who tries to get a guy to sign up by awkwardly telling him about how he was sexually abused by his father. The man hangs up on him. We then cut to Tiffany saying to Jacob, “You did it! You were the top cold caller. You get to run your own session.”

Wait, what?? We saw him do one call and fail. How did he win???

Speaking of Tiffany, Jacob is enamored by her beauty when he first meets her. They start hanging out a lot and, one night, Tiffany initiates sex with him. Afterwards, Jacob sits awkwardly on the bed and won’t look at Tiffany. She asks him, “Hey was this okay?” But he doesn’t answer. The next day she checks with him again. “Hey, was last night okay?” And he doesn’t answer her then either.

And that’s just… it! Jacob is clearly obsessed with this girl. She sleeps with him. He doesn’t seem to like it. And then WE ARE NEVER TOLD WHY!!!

There’s a lot of that in this script. Things that don’t have any finality happen and we’re never told why.

Then you have this giant plot development where Charlie copies and pastes Jacob’s sexual assault backstory from his journal to put in his own book, which becomes a best seller, and Jacob NEVER REACTS. At one point, Tiffany asks him, “Do you have an opinion on that?” And Jacob doesn’t respond.

I think I know what may be happening here. This happens a lot with newbie writers, which it looks like Goodman is, where they just assume that the reader knows what’s going on in their head. So, the writer knows what Jacob thinks about Charlie stealing his father-rape backstory, but he doesn’t think he needs Jacob to say it out loud because the reader will just read Goodman’s mind and know.

Beginner Screenplay Tip: Never assume that because you know something, the reader will know something. The reader doesn’t know something UNLESS YOU TELL THEM.

There are other badly written moments in the script as well. A big emphasis is placed on how, earlier in the story, when Charlie and Jacob are alone, Charlie pats Jacob on the back for doing something right and: “Charlie’s hand lingers on Jacob’s back. Moves up to his neck.”

So you think this is going to be some abuse story where Charlie is bringing Jacob in solely because he’s sexually interested in him. That’s what a moment like that would imply, right? Well, nothing about Charlie being interested in Jacob that way IS EVER MENTIONED AGAIN.

That’s what was so frustrating about this script. You’re desperately trying to figure out: what is the story here? What is the writer trying to say? What is the point of all this? At a certain point, I thought it might be like Nightcrawler, where the student becomes consumed with being the best and mercilessly takes down the teacher.

But when that moment actually comes, it turns out Jacob’s not interested in that at all!

Again, this script keeps setting potential storylines up only to abandon them seconds later.

So, why was it purchased by these big dogs again? I do think that self-help gurus are interesting character studies for anyone who likes to tell stories. The idea of someone telling other people how to live their lives when their own lives are so faulty is a character dilemma steeped in irony.

But I don’t even think this gets anywhere close to mining this dynamic. Because while Charlie doesn’t have a tough childhood to overcome, which is why he had to steal Jacob’s, he seems like the real deal otherwise. He seems to have studied hard to become this person and genuinely cares about others. So, it’s not like he’s this con man, which would’ve been way more interesting.

It’s just bad writing, man. It honestly feels like it was written by a freshman in high school. No real life experience to draw upon and therefore just guessing how these sorts of life things work.

Very disappointing screenplay.

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

What I learned: Commit to a side, dude. What is the point of your story? Whatever it is, commit to it. I have no idea whose story I was supposed to side with here. Jacob’s? Charlie’s? If you’re just throwing a bunch of random ideas on the page and expecting the reader to do the ‘figuring out’ for you, you’re going to write a really frustrating script.

After a very touch and go preview Thursday, The Black Phone 2 led the weekend box office with 26 million bucks. Once again, horror is ruling the land. It’s so satiating for the masses these days that they’re even showing up for the limping weakened sequels.

For me, I can’t watch a sequel to anything that was clearly meant to be one movie. I read the original short story for The Black Phone and it was unapologetically a singular idea. It’s like when they came out with a second season to 13 Reasons Why on Netflix. That first season was such a singular story, it made zero sense to continue on and yet they tried. The whole time, you’re sitting there saying, “Why are we even here anymore??”

A story needs to have a purpose, and the stronger the purpose, the better the story. That purpose is tied to what’s unresolved. If the central unresolved question is a compelling one, people will watch. So, whatever story you’re writing, ask yourself, “What is unresolved? And how compelling is it?” If you have strong answers to those questions, you’ll be in business.

As we were talking about the other day, this has not been a good time for indie movies slash Oscar hopefuls. Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman is tumbling off the box office tiles with 15 million dollars over two weeks. I’ve never understood this guy’s films. They’re all weird. They have no marketable elements whatsoever. I saw billboards with Channing Tatum with a toy bear on his shoulders and I just felt sorry for everyone involved in that film cause who the hell understands what this movie is about looking at that billboard?

By the way, this is why studios hate working with writer-directors. Cause they’re stuck trying to market their dumb movie ideas. The movie is called Roofman. The main character walks around with a stuffed bear on his shoulders. And I think the story takes place in a Walmart. How do any of those elements come together in a cohesive way??

Poor After The Hunt is in free fall. It’s just too adult a premise and, as pointed out on Saturday, way too “arthouse” looking. It seems to want to promote how much smarter it is than you, which isn’t very inviting. Nor is the main character inviting. So… not a lot to pull people in there. I still love the script and the movie, though. Check it out once it gets to streaming. You might be surprised.

The Smashing Machine should be called The Crashing Machine, as it’s crashing and burning right in front of our eyes. It’s another film that looks extremely inaccessible. I’m told that the story of this fighter is incredible. All I see is The Rock looking really sad and that’s enough to keep me far away from this movie.

Warner Brothers continues to do everything in its power to make you think One Battle After Another is a good movie. It made 4 million bucks this weekend. People like to point out that it’s made 100 million overseas. But Leo’s movies always make something overseas ever since he became a global phenomenon with Titanic. I have no doubt that every single one of those ticket purchasers has buyer’s remorse. The film is projected to lose a hundred million bucks. It’s just a disaster of a project, even if they’ve got the best marketing team in town trying to convince you otherwise.

I’m not giving up on indie movies, though! I’m seeing Bugonia this weekend! I think they said you have to shave your head to get in. Hey man, whatever it takes! I’m there for the weirdness!

Marty Supreme is still coming out. That one’s a big curiosity because it’s the first solo film from Josh Safdie, one half of the uber-talented Safdie Bros. Ben Safdie is the one who directed The Smashing Machine. So, we’ll see how this Kane vs. Abel story climaxes.

I was going to see Good Fortune over the weekend but some things got in the way. I’ll see it at the end of the week instead. There has been a lot of talk over the years about how the feature comedy film died at the box office. The best explanation I’ve gotten is that people can get their laughs from other places like Youtube and TikTok.

But the real issues run much deeper. The key year seems to be 2008. There were a lot of successful comedies that came out that year (or right before or right after). Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Superbad, Tropic Thunder, The Hangover, I Love You Man, Knocked Up, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It was a comedy smorgasbord.

And then… and then everything fell apart. There was the financial crash, which completely changed how studios did business. They decided that first downs weren’t flashy enough. They wanted to air-it-out with 70 yard touchdowns. They found the solution in superhero movies. To make matters worse, streamers were born. Comedy’s most bankable star, Adam Sandler, went to Netflix. Every comedian and their dog got a 1 hour streaming standup special.

And let’s not forget the studios insisting that the future of comedy was female. Honestly, while I think everything here had some influence on the death of feature comedies, that one really drove the stake into the chest. Because young males are the biggest audience for comedy. And the studios abandoned them. For, what seemed like, a political statement. So it wasn’t just not giving the audience what they wanted. It was telling the audience that they better get on board with what their *new* idea of comedy was, or get lost. And I think that just pissed the key comedy demographic off.

Flash forward to Good Fortune, which is trying to revitalize the genre. It’s got one of the only bankable comedy stars still out there, Seth Rogen. And it’s got Keanu and Aziz Ansari. I don’t think I’m out of turn in saying that’s a great cast. So, why didn’t anybody go see them?

My guess is that it’s a touchy-feely comedy premise. You watch that trailer and you see this movie that wants to make you learn something about humanity just as much as it wants to make you laugh. The screenwriter inside of me loves that. But the producer inside of me says, “bad move.”

These days, if you want to break out with a comedy, it’s got to be a full-on laugh fest, like Borat or Airplane. Or a premise with a little more teeth, like The Hangover. When audiences have already told you that they’re reluctant to come see a comedy film, you don’t get them back by giving them a “kind of” comedy film. You gotta slap them upside the head with comedy!

Then of course, you’ve got the premise, which feels dated. I always say, if you’ve come up with a movie premise that could’ve been used in a movie 100 years ago, it’s probably not the freshest premise. Now, every once in a while, something old feels new again because of a shift in society or new technology, like You’ve Got Mail updating The Shop Around The Corner. But I always get nervous when you’re banking on a 100 year old idea. Especially in comedy where you’re trying to get the kids into the theater.

I suppose the argument here would be, they’re not trying for the young audience. They’re trying to get the adults who used to go to comedies back in the theaters. So they’re providing a slightly more “thoughtful” concept to lure those adults in. But it didn’t work. They’re going to get my money, though! I think this looks fun and the cast is irresistible.

On the TV front, I’m currently working my way through Task, on HBO Max. It’s about this older alcoholic FBI agent who’s given this young task force to help take down some nasty drug dealers in Pennsylvania. There’s just enough there to keep me watching but it’s not a slam dunk by any means.

The show moves along slower than a clock in a school classroom but I’ll give it this. It’s one of the more intricately plotted TV shows I’ve ever seen. They’re setting up three large groups of characters (the task force, a small family of criminals, and a biker gang) and each one has a highly intricate backstory that also needs to be set up.

The show comes from Brad Ingelsby, who created The Mare of Easttown, which was great. I get the feeling that this is his opus. Cause it’s so damn intricate. For those of you who have been with the site for a long time, you know that Ingelsby was once a writer just like you, writing up scripts trying to get noticed. Making The Black List every once in a while. So it’s a great reminder of how far you can get if you stick to it.

If Task doesn’t kick into the crazy soon, I may have to ditch it for The Hunting Wives. I keep hearing about how crazy that show is. And I will not apologize for being a fly drawn to light. Or is it a fly drawn to shit? I guess I’ll find out!