Does the ballsiest franchise sequel since Fury Road deliver on the wild chances it takes?
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: 50-something game developer Thomas Anderson starts to believe that the game he’s developed, “The Matrix,” may be rooted in reality.
About: Pretty much every major creative in town has come to WB with a Matrix pitch over the past decade and a half. But it took Keanu Reeves becoming an action star again with John Wick for WB to finally greenlight the fourth film in the series. The movie’s production was suspended when Covid hit and Lana Wachowski seriously considered scrapping the sequel. The cast, however, desperate to see it completed, convinced her to keep going. The script was written by Lana and her Sense 8 writers, David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon.
Writer: Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, and Aleksander Hemon
Details: 2 hours and 27 minutes
Let’s be real.
When you’re showing up for a Matrix review, you’re showing up to either hear, “GREATEST MOVIE EVER” or “WORST MOVIE EVER.” Anything in between is an insignificant opinion.
Well, if that’s what you’re hoping for, you’ll be disappointed in this review. Because Matrix Resurrections takes some chances that are so wild, you can’t help but admire them, even if the end result isn’t as good as you want it to be.
This is a spoiler heavy review. You’ve been warned.
Our movie starts inside a new version of the Matrix where a fresh-faced female character, Bugs, runs into a sleeker younger copy of Morpheus. They watch a familiar scene from the original Matrix, where Trinity beats up a bunch of cops then runs for her life. But there’s something off about the scene. Trinity isn’t quite… Trinity.
Cut to the real world, where we meet an older Thomas Anderson (Neo), who’s a rich game developer. The game that made him rich? The Matrix. Thomas Anderson has no idea where these ideas and concepts for “The Matrix” came from. But he’s created a trilogy of games based around a trio of characters – Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity.
After a suicide attempt, Mr. Anderson has been seeing a therapist and is starting to believe this therapist is manipulating him. So when Bugs comes to him and tells him that his game is based on something that really happened, it’s like Thomas knew it all along.
Bugs releases him from the Matrix, where we learn that both Neo and Trinity are being kept in special isolated containment units. Their pairing seems to be the central force behind the new Matrix code.
Bugs brings Neo back to the newest underground city, Io, where we meet Nairobi (from the Matrix Sequels) who’s now 80 years old. Nairobi is upset that Neo is here because she’s worked hard to keep peace with the machines. His arrival puts everyone at risk.
Meanwhile, Neo becomes determined to release Trinity (“Tiffany” in the real world) from the Matrix, so the team forms a plan. Bugs and Morpheus will handle the physical side of getting Trinity. But it will be up to Neo to convince Trinity/Tiffany to take the red pill. That won’t be an easy task considering Tiffany doesn’t know Neo, doesn’t believe in the Matrix, and has a husband and two children.
Yet when Neo arrives, Tiffany finds herself drawn to him and finally gives in. Once the Matrix realizes the power couple have teamed up, it initiates its “swarm” protocol, whereby every single person on the planet becomes a kamikaze killer. It’ll be up to Neo and Trinity to escape a city where the entire population is after them.
When you first realize what The Matrix has done with Neo, you become giddy. “They’re not really going to go through with this, are they?” you wonder, excited. And when you realize that that’s exactly what they’re going to do, your expectations for Resurrections rise from a 5 to a 50.
I never would’ve guessed in a million years that they’d build a Matrix sequel around the meta concept of Neo making a Matrix video game. Not only was it a bold choice, but it made sense. Thomas Anderson used to be a coder. He’s had these intense dreams all his life about this “Matrix” world. Naturally, he would capitalize on that, making a game out of the concept.
The addition adds some new ideas to the mythology. Was the original Matrix ever the Matrix at all? Or was it only a video game modern day Thomas Anderson created? That was what was so great about the Matrix. It was such a head-trip that, afterwards, you and your friends would discuss what it all meant, putting forth various theories that ranged from dumb to downright ridiculous.
It was the early section of this movie that held so much promise. You got the sense that Lana actually had something to say.
The problem with most sequels is that they’re conceived through a faulty process. The lens through which every movie should be conceived is that a writer has something they want to say. For example, James Cameron really wanted to say something about humanity destroying the planet in Avatar. It’s the need to get this view out there that gives the story the necessary energy to keep an audience invested.
When there isn’t a *need* to tell a story – when instead you’re just doing it for money, or because your career is in a slump, or because the studio won’t stop bothering you about it – the script exhibits a decidedly less energetic pulse. We can tell that it isn’t a life or death desire from the artist to get this story out there.
So I was encouraged by this seeming desire to say something. The story felt original. The dialogue purposeful. I had no idea where the story was going but I was excited to find out.
However, the second we get to the underground city of Io, I knew Resurrections was as dead as Dozer. Zion was a movie killer in the sequels. As was Nairobi. Yet you’re bringing both those elements back in major forms? I don’t want to turn this into a “why the Matrix sequels were terrible” thread because I’ve already written about that ad nauseam. But the brilliance of the Matrix were the scenes that took place inside the Matrix, not in the muddy CGI infested underworld.
The unfortunate reality of Resurrections is that every 15 minutes of Resurrections is worse than the previous 15 minutes. The story builds (we’re moving towards the extraction of Trinity). But the energy and the momentum fade. The Wachowskis are masters at undercutting their own narratives.
A narrative needs to move, especially a sci-fi narrative. The pacing of the original Matrix was relentless. There wasn’t a single moment that could’ve been cut. Here, with the Io stuff and some of the talkier scenes, like when The Analyst plays a game of bullet slo-mo with Trinity’s life — they dragged on, killing any momentum the story had.
Another issue is that Resurrections has a huge character problem. Bugs, the franchise’s flashy new toy, has very little to do other than verbally facilitate Neo’s second emergence from the Matrix. I don’t know what the heck they were doing with Morpheus, who is some sort of half-Morpheus who isn’t really Morpheus but he’s trying to emulate Morpheus. So he does a lot of dancing and irreverent joke-telling. It’s bizarre.
Agent Smith is now some dude who kinda dislikes Neo but also kinda likes him. At one point, they even team up. I don’t profess to know what Lana had in mind with him but he didn’t work. Maybe that’s because they wanted Hugo Weaving in the movie but couldn’t get him at the last second so they had to adjust the storyline.
Neo, meanwhile, says very little throughout the movie. Not only doesn’t he say much. But apparently, Neo only has a single power now. To hold his hands up and blast energy away from his body. I waited the entire movie for badass Neo to show up and and start doing crazy Neo sh#t. Bu it never happened. It was reminiscent of another failed sequel that I shall not mention the name of. Only that it rhymes with “Duh Blast Redeye.”
And Trinity, who arguably gets the most exciting storyline here, is absent for the majority of the second act. She really only shows up in the third act. And since, like Neo, she hasn’t said a whole lot, we don’t feel close enough to her. That’s something that really bothers me about the Wachowskis in general. They give these stupid side characters 18 page monologues. Yet their main characters can go a dozen scenes and barely utter 10 words.
It’s pretty clear that Lana didn’t get enough money to make this movie. The one great thing about those Matrix sequels is the extremes they went through to create set pieces that nobody had seen before. I mean, they built their own highway! They spent 40 days shooting a single scene (the Neo vs. 100 Smiths fight). There’s none of that insane dedication here.
The train scene was sloppy. The fixed set piece scenes (like the warehouse) felt rushed with little attention to detail. The swarm motorcycle chase was so dark you could barely tell what was going on.
While I can blame some of this on a less-than-adequate budget, Lana could’ve ditched Io and spent that money on cooler fight scenes inside The Matrix. That’s exactly what they did in the original film. The original Matrix script featured a trip to Zion but WB wouldn’t pay for it. So they had to ditch it. Should’ve done the same thing here.
There’s a lot to learn here if you’re a screenwriter. The biggest lesson one should take is that what happened in The Matrix Resurrections is the same thing that happens to almost every amateur screenplay. Which is that the writer comes in with a head of steam, spends a ton of time getting that first act right, then gives 80% of that energy to the next 15 pages. Then 60% to the next 15. Then 40% to the next 15. So the script keeps getting… not necessarily weaker. But it doesn’t have the same energy that it started with. So, if you’re a screenwriter, make sure you’ve put just as much time into what happens on page 70 as you did on page 10. Cause there’s nothing worse than watching a movie getting more and more boring as it goes on.
I don’t know what history will say about Resurrections. It seems to have some champions out there. I do commend them for trying something different. Not many franchises will take the big swing Lana did. But just because you go for the home run doesn’t mean you’re going to hit it over the wall. Sometimes you barely make contact and the ball dribbles out to third base. That’s probably the best way to describe this movie – bullet-time dribbling down the 3rd base line.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The original Matrix proves the value of combining multiple purposes into a single character. In the original movie, Trinity both recruits Neo and is his love interest. She has two purposes. In Resurrections, Bugs recruits Neo and that’s it. She doesn’t have any other purpose. As a result, she gets lost in the story once that purpose is fulfilled. The lesson here is that when you have a character, give them multiple story purposes if you can. It’ll give them more to do and make them feel more integrated into the story.
Tonight I will be watching The Matrix Resurrections. Tomorrow, I will have the review for you. In the interim, I’ll be praying for a Christmas miracle. As much as I want this movie to be great, I can’t help but look at the Wachowskis’ body of work and see them as screenwriting warmongers. They place emphasis on the wrong things way too often, overcomplicating their narratives, carpet bombing the very fabric of their stories. So I know that hoping Lana Wachowski will learn from every mistake she’s ever made in one single leap is asking a lot. But boy would it be awesome if she pulled it off.
The irony is that The Matrix was built on the most basic classic storytelling template there is – The Hero’s Journey – sticking to it like a tadpole to water. That original film was a model of simplicity. Why did The Wachowskis move away from that in every other movie they made?
Of course, this was not the first time we’ve seen The Hero’s Journey launch a franchise. It was most famously done with Star Wars. Adhering to that simplest of storytelling formulas resulted in a 10 billion dollar empire.
So what is The Hero’s Journey? Why is it so powerful? And how come, despite its insanely positive track record, more screenwriters don’t use it? We’re going to answer those questions right now.
The Hero’s Journey is a storytelling template that breaks down a story (or, in this case, a screenplay) into a series of beats. We meet our hero living his life. He goes on an adventure. He defeats the monster and comes home. Along the way, he battles a flaw within himself that he eventually overcomes, which results in him becoming a better person (In The Hero’s Journey, this flaw is usually a lack of belief in one’s self).
More specifically, the hero is called on an adventure, usually by another character. The hero will refuse this call because it means change and the hero, like all humans, is uncomfortable with change. However, the hero eventually acquiesces, either on their own or due to changed circumstances (Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle being killed by stormtroopers, for example), and off he goes.
The hero meets a series of characters on his journey, each with a specific purpose. You have the mentor, the ally, the trickster, the guardian, and the shadow, to name a few. Some of these characters will help our hero. Some will hurt him.
Most of these characters engage our hero in the adventure portion of the story, what we know as the second act. The primary directive of this act be a series of obstacles thrown at your hero that test him, each trying to prevent him from achieving his objective.
The last stage of The Hero’s Journey is the only stage that doesn’t mesh with the Hollywood movie formula. This third act is known as “The Return,” and follows the hero back home after he’s defeated “the monster.” While there are some examples of this in modern cinema (Mad Max: Fury Road comes to mind), most modern movies defeat the monster and follow with two or three scenes totaling ten minutes tops.
There are 17 sub-sections of The Hero’s Journey and while I’m not going to go through all of them, I’m going to show you some of the major ones and how they line up with the original Matrix film. It should be noted that even Joseph Campbell recognized that every story is unique and that not all story beats will be applicable to every film.
The Call To Adventure – This occurs when Neo goes to the dance club and meets Trinity, who tempts him with finding out what the Matrix is.
Refusal of the Call – This happens when Morpheus is guiding Neo out on the ledge of his building and Neo says, “F%$$ this,” giving himself up to the agents.
The Crossing of the First Threshold – Campbell describes this stage as, “leaving the known limits of his world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm.” This occurs when Neo takes the red pill and travels through the mirror.
The Road of Trials – “The road of trials is a series of tests that the hero must undergo to begin the transformation.” The Wachowskis attack this one pretty literally. This is when we see Neo jump across the building, try to identify agents, and, of course, fight Morpheus in the dojo.
Woman as the Temptress – “In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him to abandon or stray from his quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. A woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.” This occurs when Neo goes to the Oracle, who tempts him with being “The One,” only to find out that he is not. Of course later, we realize that she needed to tell him this for him to ultimately understand, through his own inner transformation, that he is The One.
Apotheosis – “This is the point of realization in which a greater understanding is achieved. Armed with this new knowledge and perception, the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure.” This occurs when Trinity tells Neo she loves him, giving him the confidence in something greater than himself. He is now ready to save Morpheus.
Atonement with the Father/Abyss – “The hero must confront whatever holds the ultimate power in his life. In many myths and stories, this is the father or a father figure who has life and death power. But it doesn’t have to be the father. Just someone or something with incredible power.” Unlike Star Wars, there is no father storyline in The Matrix. You could argue that Morpheus is Neo’s father figure. But he’s not the antagonist Neo must battle, like Luke with Vader. Instead, Matrix reflects the broader view of this stage, “Someone or something with incredible power,” aka defeating Agent Smith and the other agents when he stops the oncoming bullets in mid-air.
The thing I’ve found with The Hero’s Journey, and any screenwriting template, for that matter, is that the further down into the template you go, the less effective staying true to the template becomes. That’s because every story is unique and has its own set of challenges that don’t fit perfectly into a template. To that end, you should try and hit the major beats (such as defeating the villain), then pick and choose which of the other beats best apply to your story.
However, you should follow the first half of any storytelling template as closely as possible. Those early beats tend to be universal. It’s only when your script gets into those latter stages that it becomes its own thing and, therefore, should be treated less strictly.
The main reason I wrote this was to remind people just how powerful The Hero’s Journey template is. It’s arguably the best bet for creating a universally loved story that will be celebrated for decades. Look at what the template has yielded. Star Wars. The Matrix. Lord of the Rings. The Wizard of Oz. Harry Potter. Does it get bigger than those movies??
I think the reason screenwriters don’t use it that much is for a couple of reasons. One, it’s more organic to the literary world. We can see that in Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Oz, and Harry Potter. When you try and do it in the movies, you tend to have to squish it together more. Which is why most of the films that use it expand out to multiple movies in order see the formula play all the way through. Also, any story that sends a character into a strange world or strange universe is going to cost a lot of money.
So you either have to be clever and come up with the world’s cheapest hero’s journey. Or be a well-known director with enough clout to demand 100 million bucks. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. The Wachowskis had only made one small film before The Matrix (Bound) and then shot The Matrix itself for 60 million bucks.
If you want to write the next billion dollar franchise, I don’t think there’s any question that the place to start is The Hero’s Journey. How can you argue with these results?
I will see everybody tomorrow for my most anticipated movie of the year! Matrix Ressurections! I can’t wait!
Note: These next 10 days are going to be weird so grab a notepad and write this down. I’m doing the weekly article tomorrow instead of Thursday because Matrix is coming out on Wednesday and I want to review it Thursday. So I’m switching those two days around. I will be sending out a newsletter by the 27th. And I probably won’t post anything next week but you never know. Us Americans are trained by our government to feel guilty when we don’t work. So we’ll see what happens!
Genre: Children/Holiday
Premise: Twas the night before Christmas and five kids have to find three items to save their foster father’s home from being repossessed.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on this year’s Black List. Writer M. Miller Davis has spent much of the last decade working on production crews. He has also written for several small TV shows. But this is his breakthrough moment as a screenwriter.
Writer: M. Miller Davis
Details: 104 pages
Tis the season!
You would think it would be easy to write a Christmas movie. You’ve got eccentric characters like Santa Claus, Rudolph, Ebenezer Scrooge, Frosty the Snowman. And Christmas is such an emotional holiday as it’s built around family and connection and healing. The ingredients are there for a good screenplay. And yet, like every genre, it ends up being a lot harder to write these things than you think.
You know what they should do? Writers should start adapting Christmas songs into movies. There are so many beloved Christmas songs. And Hollywood loves themselves an adaptation. Why not? Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. Sounds like there’s a story to that one! Am I just giving out free money at this point? Maybe. Either that or free embarrassment. I’m sure we’ll find out which at some point.
Right now, though, we’re going to find out if Operation Milk and Cookies is as good as its title. Jump in the back of Santa’s sleigh with me and take a magical journey into the world of getting to read a screenplay in just five paragraphs.
12 year old comic book nerd, Henry, 11 year old selfie-obsessed, Nadia, way too big for being 13 years old, Tomas, and 9 year old cute little oddball, Astrid, have just found out that their foster dad, Brian (described as “a Paul Rudd type”), doesn’t have enough money to pay this month’s mortgage. Which means that they’re going to be kicked out of their house on Christmas!
With only two days before the holiday, the foster siblings come up with a plan to raise money by shoveling sidewalks and selling old partially destroyed barbie dolls. After their entire day’s work results in making 5 dollars, they prepare for homelessness.
But then they happen upon a nice old man’s home, who invites them in. His house is filled with Christmas decorations and he’s warm and sweet, even making the kids cookies! He tells the kids a story about when he was a kid, he researched how to find Santa and learned that Santa couldn’t resist three things: Cocoa butterscotch cookies, a golden fir pinecone, and something that represented Christmas spirit.
The kids put a second plan together. They’ll find these three items by tomorrow night (Christmas Eve), luring Santa to their home, and ask him to give them money to pay for the mortgage so they don’t get kicked out. Their mission is soon complicated, however, by a group of bank robbers who are using an old cookie factory as a hideout.
Realizing that the kids can rat them out to the cops, they go all ‘Goonies’ on them, chasing them around town. This is happening, in addition to, Brian trying to find them. If either party finds them before they can locate the three items, Santa won’t show up, they’ll lose their house, and it will be the worst Christmas ever!!!
Sometimes you read a script that does everything technically right yet you still find yourself not invested in the story. That was the case for me with Operation Milk and Cookies.
I mean, the story has a classic GSU setup. We have a clear goal – find these three items. We have clear stakes – if they don’t, they lose their house. And we have clear urgency – they have until tomorrow, Christmas.
We have the ‘next level’ stuff as well: a legitimate set of obstacles that get in the way of the characters’ objectives throughout the second act. That comes in the form of the bank robbers, who chase them.
So what’s wrong here? Why didn’t this light my yule log? Well, there could be a couple of things. Sometimes, when you follow the formula too rigidly, the plot becomes predictable. And Milk and Cookies is definitely a standard plot. It’s very straight-forward with virtually no twists or reinvention involved.
The second possibility is the characters. Usually when plot and structure are on-point and you’re still not enjoying a screenplay, it has something to do with the characters. But this is where it gets tricky. The characters in Milk and Cookies weren’t bad. There’s this cute little storyline where Nadia gets her hands on a cell phone for the first time and goes absolutely nuts with it, becomes obsessed with selfies. There were a handful of fun little character moments like this.
However – and this is a mistake I see in 95% of amateur screenplays – there was nothing exceptional about any of the characters. The kids were all kids we’ve seen before in these types of movies. They were fine. Absolutely fine. But “fine” isn’t good enough. Nobody remembers a screenplay for characters who were “fine.”
You need at least one main character to be exceptional. You need to take risks with them. Do something different. That’s the only chance you’re going to write a character who pops off the page. I’ll give you a perfect example. Jojo in “Jojo Rabbit.” A kid who has Imaginary Hitler as his best friend. That was a huge risk. I remember when I reviewed that script and people were getting butt-hurt about it in the comments. “Why would anyone create a movie that made Hitler sympathetic. This is awful!” The script went on to win an Oscar.
But the point is that that was a risky choice. I’m not saying you have to take that extensive of a risk in a script like this. But you have to take some risk. And I felt like the writer was playing it safe with all the characters.
The reality is, this is how most screenplays are written. With writers playing it safe. Which I understand. It’s scary to take risks. Especially in this day and age where one wrong comment could get you canceled for life. But let’s be real. The best art always has some risk attached to it, whether it be through the concept (Eternal Sunshine), the characters (Joker), or the plot execution (Parasite).
With the Matrix sequel coming out tomorrow, that’s the perfect example of risk. They made a movie about people living in a simulation, and when those people fought each other, they only fought with kung-fu. How does that even make sense? I don’t know. But it captivated the world and influenced movies for the next 20 years.
Even Cauliflower, the top-ranked script on the Black List this year, a script I didn’t like, took some big risks. It made some weird choices. I didn’t like the final product but that’s the reason why so many people don’t take risks. They know there’s a bigger chance of failure. Still, I would rather read another Cauliflower than I would another Operation Milk and Cookies.
I understand that some people may argue this is just a fun Christmas movie. It’s not meant to be Jojo Rabbit. But I would push back on that. You don’t have to take Academy Award level risks to write a good script. You can take a risk with just a single character. Come up with one wild weird memorable character. Like Bill Murray’s gopher-obsessed weirdo grounds manager in Caddyshack. You do that and people will remember your screenplay.
I wanted to like this but it just didn’t leave enough of an impression on me. I felt like I’ve seen this movie many times already.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Split a goal into parts to give yourself more plot. In the “Goal” part of GSU, you can often run into a situation where a single goal isn’t big enough to give you a 100 page plot. If that’s the case, split the goal up. They just did this in Red Notice with the three jeweled eggs. And the writer does it here with the three items (Cocoa butterscotch cookies, a golden fir pinecone, and something that represented Christmas spirit). It’s an easy and effective way to ensure that your plot doesn’t end on page 45!
Spider-Man saves more than the multiverse. He saves the movie business!
Genre: Superhero
Premise: When Spider-Man accidentally opens up a rift in the multiverse, villains from other universes arrive in our world, determined to eradicate him.
About: Spider-Man No Way Home defied… well… pretty much every expectation in the book, tallying 253 million dollars over the 3 day weekend. That’s better than The Force Awakens and only behind the two-part Avengers finale. There is no other way to describe this opening than, “Wow!” A trivia tidbit for you. All three Spider-Man movies have the word “Home” in their titles. Homecoming, Far From Home, and now, No Way Home.
Writers: Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers
Details: 2 hours and 30 minutes!
You gotta give it to Amy Pascal, Kevin Feige, and Tom Holland. They have found the winningnest of winning formulas with this iteration of Spider-Man. How did they pull it off? Since Spider-Man just beat out Star Wars, let’s use that franchise as a comparison. Kathleen Kennedy once famously said the reason comic book movies have thrived while Star Wars has dived is because every comic book character has 50+ years of comic book stories to draw from. All they have to do is identify which of those stories were successful then, simply, make the movie version of that. From what I understand, the multiverse was a huge success for Marvel Comics. As was the whole “Forget Peter Parker” storyline.
The reason that’s relevant is because the only variable that’s been capable of predicting success in this business is success in a previous form. Whether it be a movie, a comic book, a novel, a podcast. The industry loves verification that something was good somewhere else at some other time. So the ability to cherry pick from 50 years of comics that have had all these popular storylines is a huge advantage.
I’m jealous. Because all Star Wars has is Boba Fett.
Back to our web-slinging friend — Spider-Man No Way Home is a better movie than I thought it was going to be. But it was far from perfect. To convey just how clunky the movie could be, its most critical scene is its worst and its least critical scene is its best. More on that in a minute. But first, if you haven’t seen the film, let’s give you a quick plot breakdown. This film is impossible to discuss without spoilers so if you haven’t seen it, you might want to come back and read this after you do.
Peter Parker has just been exposed as Spider-Man to the world. No more secret identity. Cancel culture than comes for his best friends, MJ and Ned, who are told they won’t be accepted into their dream school, MIT, because they’re affiliated with Spider-Man.
So Peter goes to the crusty old Dr. Strange and asks him to cast a spell making everyone on the planet forget he’s Spider-Man. That way, MIT will accept MJ and Ned. Dr. Strange says fine. But as he’s conjuring the spell, Peter keeps amending it. “Can you make MJ remember me?” “And Aunt May?” “And Ned?” This cripples the spell and opens up the multiverse.
Doctor Octopus takes advantage of this, arriving from a separate world to attack Spider-Man. Then the Sandman. Then Electro. Then the Green Goblin. Doctor Strange constructs a bad guy holding cell, telling Spider-Man to go out, bring the villains back here, so he can conjure another spell to send them back to their own worlds.
But when Peter learns that all of these villains meet their death back in their home worlds (courtesy of other Spider-Men), he wants to “cure” them first so that they don’t fight Spider-Man back on their home worlds and, therefore, live. Since we’ve all watched movies before, we know where this is going.
That’s right. The villains escape and turn on Peter, determined to kill him. Since Spidey knows he can’t defeat four top-level villains all on his own, he recruits two Spider-Men from separate universes and the Spidey-Trio call the villains out to the Statue of Liberty where they ready for the ultimate Spidey Showdown!
Like every comic book movie these days, Spider-Man No Way Home is a mixed bag. For those who want Cheetos, you’re going to have to endure some Ruffles. For those who want Ruffles, you’re going to have to endure some trail mix. You’re going to hate some bites. You’re going to love some bites. And it will be up to the individual to determine whether the yummy snacks outweighed the rancid ones.
Here’s my biggest takeaway from Spider-Man No Way Home. Normally I don’t like overstuffed narratives. I think they’re a writer’s biggest enemy. I think they cause more harm than good 99% of the time. Too many characters and too many storylines just don’t work well within the feature screenplay format.
However, one of the exceptions to this rule is when the “overstuffed” narrative is organic to the concept. No Way Home is all about this rift being opened up in the universe that is allowing things from other universes to come here. That concept requires multiple characters and multiple storylines because all these characters arriving here is organic to the setup.
I’m not sure you open up a multiverse and only allow one villain through. I’m not sure you open up a multiverse and don’t play with the idea of multiple Spider-Mans. With all this stuff being organic to the concept, I was into it.
But I almost wasn’t due to a single scene.
The spell-conjuring scene between Peter Parker and Doctor Strange might have been the worst scene I’ve witnessed in a comic book movie. It was bad on every level. Mainly from the writing. But the acting was awful as well. You could see poor Benedict Cumberbatch grimacing through the the lines he had to read. It played out like an improv class at the Groundlings. There was no structure, no thought as to how to play the scene, no consideration of whether the scene was working or not. You can always tell when a scene isn’t working because the actors try to distract you by adding a lot of improvised jokes.
The reason this scene bothered me so much is that it’s the scene that holds up the entire movie, right? I call these “Pillar” scenes because that’s their job. They have to hold everything else up. Why, then, they insisted on shaky logic and goofiness as the main motivators for the scene, I’ll never know.
It took me a good 20 minutes to mentally get back into the movie again, such was the terribleness of that scene. I can’t believe they didn’t reshoot it. Maybe it was due to a Covid issue.
Luckily, No Way Home had a secret weapon. MORE SPIDER-MANS! This was its saving grace. I thought that seeing the Toby Maguire Spider-Man again was what was going to move me. But it was actually the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man that made the biggest impact on me, despite not liking the Garfield Spider-Man films very much.
For those who don’t know, Garfield had a rocky relationship with Sony as Spider-Man and their relationship ended somewhat bitterly. So to see him come back with such excitement and vigor was heartwarming. It me made feel good. He even delivers a meta-speech to Tom Holland saying, “I just don’t want you to end up like I did. Hating what you’ve created.” And it worked because this was a meta movie from the get-go.
I even got the tingles when the three Spider-Men came together early on in the Statue of Liberty fight and changed their strategy from fighting separately to fighting together. Seeing them swing into action after that moment was really cool (and the crowd cheered like crazy – yay for being back in movie theaters!).
I do think it’s interesting that No Way Home’s best scene was its least relevant one. That tells me there’s something inherently wrong with this comic book formula that they haven’t figured out yet. I shouldn’t be getting the biggest feels during moments that aren’t part of the main narrative. The scene I’m referring to comes after Peter allows Dr. Strange to erase the world’s knowledge of Peter Parker for real this time, and Peter goes to pay a visit to MJ, who no longer knows who he is.
This is a basic “dramatic irony” scenario, as you screenwriting aficionados know. The writer allows the audience to know something that one of the key characters in the scene does not. In this case, they know that MJ has been in love with Peter before. But she doesn’t know this. She doesn’t even know who Peter is. So we get this chill scene where he visits her at work and he wants to tell her who he is… but he realizes he can’t. It’s the quietist scene in the movie yet it’s its best because it’s so emotionally gut-wrenching.
If they could’ve had 4-5 scenes of this emotional magnitude throughout the movie (and no, the melodramatic over-acted Aunt May death was not emotional at all), it could’ve been the greatest Spider-Man movie ever, and up there with the greatest comic book movie.
How does a movie which fails its most important scene and aces its least important still end up being worth the price of admission? BECAUSE IT’S SPIDER-MAN. x3! Watching these spider-boys become spider-besties is cuter than watching three Golden Retriever puppies play with a rabbit. You’re going to love it. Is the rest of the movie clunky? Sure. Does anybody really understand how the Spider-Men are “curing” these villains? Not really. But No Way Home is inarguably fun. So you can bet your Spidey-dollars it’s worth checking out.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This movie taught me that dramatic irony works even better when the stakes behind the dramatic irony are high. In the scene I highlighted above, when Peter talks to MJ, the secret isn’t that he’s going to break up with her. That’s still dramatic irony but it’s low stakes dramatic irony. The secret is that she once knew him and they were madly in love and a couple. The stakes of that secret are enormous, which is what makes that final moment between them so powerful.
One of the nice things about the Black List is that it tells us where the industry is trending. These are the scripts causing managers and agents to sign writers. These are the scripts managers and agents are encouraging their writers to write. And since reps have a direct pipeline into what the studios (both large and small) are looking for, this means the scripts are giving you clues about what you should be writing yourself.
To help you out, I broke the scripts down into genres. It should be noted that the Black List doesn’t include “genre” on its list which makes guessing some of these scripts tough, especially if they’re crossovers. Whenever that was the case, I went with the more dominant genre inherent in the idea. For example, for “Max And Tony’s Epic One Night Stand,” which has this as its logline: “A disastrous Grindr hookup goes from bad to worse when a meteor unleashes a horde of aliens on New York and the two ill-matched men must depend on each other to make it through the night alive,” I went with “Comedy” over “Sci-Fi” because comedy is the dominant genre within the premise.
Okay, before I share the results, can you guess which genres finished at the top? The answers might surprise you. We’ll start with the lowest and go up from there.
Western – 0
Musical – 1
Romantic Comedy – 2
Children’s – 2
True Story – 4
Biopic – 5
Horror/Supernatural – 6
Action/Thriller – 7
Sci-Fi – 8
Thriller – 10
Drama – 11
Comedy – 17
Okay! What information can we gather from this tally? Let’s start at the bottom. I’m surprised there were no Westerns on this list! The Black List usually has a few of them every year. Westerns are a weird genre in that general audiences don’t like them much but people within the industry love them because they harken back to the Hollywood of old. It seems like everyone in the movie business wants to be involved in a Western at least once in their life. So that was a surprise.
I was also shocked that there were only two romantic comedies. I thought romantic comedies were making a comeback! For a while there, there was a new one every week on Netflix. But this may simply be a case of what Netflix wants and what cool industry voters want not always lining up. I do think most industry types feel that they’re above romantic comedies. Also, it’s hard to come up with a fresh rom-com idea with the formula being so generic. So maybe that’s why their recent resurgence wasn’t reflected in this year’s list.
Only four true story entries this time around! Feels like it was double that last year. Maybe the industry is getting “true storied” out. I can only hope. Also, we’ve got five biopics. Since we can all agree that biopics are evil, I am exceedingly happy about this development. As much as I detest both these categories – true story and biopic – I readily admit they are industry mainstays and will never go away. So if you have a passion for either, go and write it. That should be your approach to whatever you write, by the way. As long as you’re passionate about it, you’ll write something good. I’ve loved plenty of biopic screenplays where the writer was obsessed with the subject matter.
Horror is next with six entries, which seems about right. Horror is the most popular screenplay genre out there but most horror scripts tend to be silly and lack depth, which is probably why the Black List doesn’t reflect the industry ratio. They think of themselves as above it. Suffice it to say, there was only one social issues horror script on the list, which was surprising. That would be Shanrah Wakefield’s, Rabbit Season: “Supernatural horror about a woman stalked through a dark city park by the most monstrous manifestation of manhood during her walk home from her high school reunion.”
Next up we have Action-Thriller, which isn’t really a surprise. The industry is still obsessed with finding the next John Wick because if you can create one cool character with a gun, you can set yourself up for five movies over the next decade. It’s almost too tempting. If I were considering writing one of these, I’d focus less on the plot and instead on the main character. Try to come up with someone who’s really unique. Who’s odd or different or unexpected in some way. Most of these “John Wick” scripts have the same main character. He’s got a military or CIA past. He hung up his cleats. He’s a secret badass. Those elements are the obvious. Now you gotta come up with things about him that are not obvious. And no, making him a woman is no longer an acceptable twist.
Well, it just warms my heart that there are a full eight sci-fi scripts on the list. Sci-fi traditionally does well on the Black List. But they usually get around five entries. I’d guess that the uptick is due to the success of The Tomorrow War on Amazon. Everyone wants that cool new sci-fi concept. Between purposefully constructed time loops, killer sounds, saving soldiers in the afterlife, and curated VR deaths, maybe we’ve found some.
Thrillers remain right behind horror as the most written genre and it’s easy to understand why. Unlike horror, which requires special effects and therefore, money, thrillers don’t require anything other than a dead body. That makes them perfect for a cheap production. Sure, they’re not as marketable as horror. But they make up for it with their microscopic budget. Netflix is making a ton of these and they absolutely love them. Which is another great thing about the genre. You can go high-brow, like Gone Girl. Or you can go low-brow, like Deadly Illusions.
Next up we have drama. Now this category is a little misleading. When you think of drama, you think of Moonlight or The House of Fog. And I’ve included scripts like that in the tally. But drama can also be a catch-all genre for concepts that aren’t easy to label. For example, Lady Chrylon’s logline is, “Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel after the art starts bleeding into the real world.” Is that a drama? I don’t know. I think it may be. So I put it in the drama category.
I only bring this up because I don’t want people to think that writing Nomadland is going to get you a lot of reads. Straight dramas are still a tough sell. Which is why you need to add some pizazz to them! Like this graffiti artist concept.
And finally, we have the surprise top category on the list: COMEDY! Or is it surprising? Something I learned a long time ago is that when the world is going through hell, write comedy. Yes, you all want to write deep meaningful existential narratives about how YOU SEE the pandemic, confident in the belief that your main character, Mossad, and his narration about his young sister who is on a ventilator, is going to bring Hollywood to its knees and leave the LA river overrunning with a city’s tears.
BALONEY!
All it’s going to do is bore us to death. You want to write about the pandemic? MAKE IT A COMEDY! I guarantee you you will get 100x the read requests from a pandemic comedy than from a pandemic drama. That’s why comedy did so well this year. People want to laugh. COMEDY IS BACK, BABY! Also, nothing beats a snappy comedy logline. They tend to have a significant advantage over their competition.
How bout you? Did you notice any trends in this year’s Black List? Share them in the comments section!
Also, continue to RANK YOUR BLACK LIST READS in the comments. If you liked something, tell us. If you hated something, tell us. It’ll let me know which scripts to review and which I can place on the back burner.
