Deadline for Sci-Fi Showdown is tonight (Thursday) at 11:59 pm pacific time. Details for entry ARE HERE
I was going to save this for the newsletter but what the hell. It’s Sci-Fi Week and what’s more Sci-Fi than The Matrix?
So let’s go back in time for a second. I remember seeing the Matrix trailer during the Superbowl and reacting exactly how Keanu Reeves reacted. “Whoa.” There was so much going on at that time in Hollywood. George Lucas was about to release the first Star Wars movie in 15 years. That’s all anybody could talk about, was the lead up to that movie.
And then you had this random flick from a couple of directors nobody had ever heard of starring an actor who most people felt was on the downslide, and yet when it was all said and done, the polls were unanimous. The Phantom Menace was a bust. The Matrix was the future.
The lead up to the sequels was the most heavily discussed lead up to any movies ever. There’d be daily articles about how the Wachowskis were building entire freeways for action scenes. Or how the famous (infamous?) burly brawl set piece had taken more days to shoot than most studio movies.
And so it was heartbreaking when the movies came out and they were such a mess. To give you some insight into how big of a dud those movies were, it’s important to remember that Quentin Tarantino was at his peak popularity at the time. The only modern filmmakers he was intimidated by were the Wachowskis. And the Matrix sequels had the potential of putting the zeitgeist king in their shadow. He was legit afraid of them.
What do you think his reaction was after watching an early matinee of the film on its opening day? “This is what I was worried about??” he said. He left Matrix Reloaded with zero fear of the Wachowskis ever again. Which might seem pompous but anyone who watched that movie knew that the Wachowskis had some deep set issues in their writing.
Their approach to narratives was laborious. Their favorite scenes tended to feature characters espousing endless exposition. They overcomplicated their mythology until it became nonsensical. And, on top of it all, they didn’t have a good plan for their story. The overall plot goal was strong – defeat the machines and destroy the Matrix – but literally every other aspect of the script felt fuzzy, like they’d only given cursory thought to it.
Despite all of this, I still love The Matrix. I believe it was one of those pivotal game-changing moments in Hollywood history that redirected the industry. And for that reason, when I heard that they were making a new Matrix movie, I was ecstatic. Now some of you might say, Carson, you just listed all these reasons why the Wachowskis suck. What makes you think anything’s going to change now?
Fair question.
I don’t know that it is going to change. But there are a few things that I find encouraging. Number one, there has never been a time in history where the dilemma of being too “plugged in” is more relevant than right now. I can’t even tell you how much more dependent I am on machines now than I was in 1999. We didn’t even have Instagram in 1999. Hell, we didn’t even have Twitter! *If* the script really leans into this theme of what being plugged in means in 2021, I think it has the potential to be powerful.
Two, the Matrix sequels were rushed. It’s hard to write any script in a short amount of time. It’s even harder to write a sequel in that time. And it’s harder still to write two sequels in that time. I would go so far as to say they never stood a chance. They rushed it, which is exactly why the movies feel the way they do – big and sloppy. That wasn’t the case with Resurrections. They’ve had 15 years to come up with an idea.
And finally, we have the x-factor, which is that there’s one Wachowski instead of two. When you have two writers, each writer tends to favor certain things. I’m hoping that the Wachwoski that *didn’t* do the movie is the one obsessed with ten minute exposition monologues and stuffing as much mythology into the story as possible. I’m hoping that the Wachowski that *did* do the movie is the one who favors a lean storytelling style, like we got in the first Matrix.
As some of you have pointed out, plot details of Ressurections have already leaked. I am avoiding those. So, if those leaks are accurate and if they point out that everything I’m about to say is wrong? Well, I guess I’ll find that out when the movie premieres. Now let’s get into the trailer…
What’s interesting about watching this trailer is that I didn’t have any expectations. I didn’t go into it convinced the movie was going to be great. I didn’t go into it convinced it was going to be terrible. Truly, I went into it as open-minded as I have in a long time for a franchise. And I felt I was rewarded for that mindset.
The first thing I noticed was how different the cinematography was. The Matrix is known for that green tint. Every movie between 1999 and 2004 had a green tint as a result. Even indie films about pregnant teenagers had a green tint. I like that Wachowski recognized that repeating that green tint would date the movie. By moving into this more vibrant color palette, it gives the Matrix a completely fresh look. You need that to let people know, “This isn’t your daddy’s matrix.”
Once the trailer gets going, you start to get a feel for the story they’re going to tell. It seems that Neo was placed back in The Matrix and is going to, once again, get pulled out by Morpheus and his team. This brings up questions such as, are they going to do a soft-reboot of the film a la The Force Awakens? In which case I believe a lot of people are going to feel cheated.
Or are they – and this is the route I’m hoping they’ll take – use the unique mythology of the Matrix to play into the repeating nature of the system? Deja-vu, glitches, memories, dreams. Some people have complained that a lot of shots from the trailer are taken from the first films. Well, maybe that’s the point. Maybe the Matrix is repeating the same events and Neo has to find a way to stop it.
With that said, I do wish there was a little more “new” going on. I like the Doogie Howser opening. Without question, he’s a bad guy, there to specifically get inside Neo’s head so they know what he’s thinking and can continue to control him. Carrie-Anne Moss looks way better than I thought she’d look. Keanu looks great although he sort of looks like he does whenever he’s walking around LA. I like the blue-haired chick. She feels like she’s going to steal the movie.
As far as the action goes… I mean, let’s be honest, this is where the movie is going to live or die. The awesome thing about The Matrix is that it can provide a type of action scene that no other franchise can match, even comic book movies – this mix between the real and the fantastical that’s, strangely, grounded in reality.
For example, if you look at a Spider-Man set piece, he’s fighting in the real world, yes, but he’s also fighting 1000 drones that can create illusions. Whereas, with the Matrix, you can only bend reality so much. So we get these heightened “real-world” action scenes that are bigger and better than your straight-up action set-pieces. James Bond on steroids with a side of DMT.
The action in the trailer looks good. But there isn’t yet a money shot. There are scenes that get right up to the “money shot” line but they don’t cross it. Like the girl flipping over the car. The guy walking through a door where reality is tilted. Or that mid-city cross-walk set piece where there are a million things going on at once. All of those look good. But not great.
The problem with changing the industry so radically is that you influence so many people who have, since, tried to elevate what you invented. Walking through a door where reality is 180 degrees upside-down doesn’t have the same punch after Christopher Nolan built an entire set-piece around the very same idea in Inception.
So I’m hoping they’re keeping their money shots under wraps until the movie, or, at the very least, until the final trailer.
I, for one, am more hopeful for this Matrix sequel than I was before I saw the trailer. And I’m going to say one last thing that’s probably going to tick some people off but I don’t care. I think a huge reason this looks good is because Lawrence Fishburne isn’t back. When I saw how much weight Fishburne gained for the sequels, that told me everything I needed to know about how little he respected the franchise.
I’ve heard numerous times that he’s a diva. That he wanted way more money than he deserved. I feel like he would’ve been an emotional drain on the entire set if he would’ve come back. Putting this new guy, the Candyman dude, in the role – think about how excited he is to be playing such an iconic character. I’m sure that that positive energy affected everyone. Because, whether you liked this trailer or not, you can’t deny that everyone looks engaged. They want to be there. They want to make a great movie. Now, did they make a great movie? We’ll have to wait and see. But you know my ass is going to be there opening night to find out.
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Hey, have a great sci-fi script with a killer concept? Want to get your own “Matrix” made? Enter Scriptshadow’s Sci-Fi Showdown screenwriting competition. I pick the best five concepts. You, the readers, vote on the best script, then I give that script a review. If I like it, we’re going to do everything in our power to get it made. The deadline is today (Thursday) at 9:59pm Pacific time. Details to enter are here! Good luck!
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: (my logline) A female doctor who’s ripped out of the virtual patriarchal world she’s existed in her whole life must team up with a group of rebels who plan to take down the giant evil company that runs this matrix.
About: This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. Heather Quinn has a couple of projects in development. But this is really her first official breakthrough script.
Writer: Heather Quinn
Details: 120 pages
Readability: slow
So, I’m going to be honest with you. There were a couple of red flags right off the bat with this one. First was the logline that appeared on the Black List: “A woman abruptly discovers nothing she’s known until now is real, and she must recover the truth in order to save the rest of the country, still trapped inside of the lie.” This isn’t a logline. This is a teaser, and a vague one at that. It doesn’t tell us anything about the story. 99 times out of 100 when I encounter a logline that doesn’t give us any sense of what the story is about, it means the script is in trouble.
Two, the script is 120 pages. Now we’ve had discussions on this site ad nauseam about page count. Some writers will threaten to rip your eyes out if you tell them they have to keep their script under 110 pages. And I respect that point of view. However, one thing is undeniably true about page count. Certain stories warrant a bigger page count. Certain stories do not. A script that takes place over 3 time periods and has a cast of 25 characters is, naturally, going to need more time to be told. Whereas a story about a single character escaping a virtual reality… that shouldn’t require 120 pages to tell.
Of course, as new information in this script arrives, I may change my mind. But that brings us back to the first point, which is that we have zero idea of what this movie is about because the logline is so vague. Hopefully, this is one of those amazingly gifted writers who can make any scenario work. Let’s check it out…
32 year old Lynn Roberts is a doctor. She’s got no friends other than her twin brother, Duke. Speaking of, at Lynn and Duke’s birthday party, we notice that the men all feel very 1955 in their approach to the world. They think it’s bizarre, for example, that a woman could be a doctor.
One night while Lynn is walking from her bedroom to her bathroom, her bathroom disappears. Every time she goes through the door, she’s still in her bedroom. This glitch eventually results in her waking up in a glass container. That’s right, Lynn was inside this movie’s version of the matrix!
Lynn is rescued by a guy named Gray Johnson who tells her that a company called VTI has almost 70% of humanity plugged into their version of the matrix. Out here, in the real world, woman can be doctors without being sneered at!
He brings Lynn back to his secret hideout where Ruth, Lynn’s aunt, explains to her that her grandmother was going to be the first female president of the United States when her car was run off the road and she died. Lynn was in that car!
According to Ruth, Lynn has to reclaim that memory of what happened in the car that night so that they can upload that memory to everyone else in the VTI matrix. Once they all realize what really happened that fateful night, they’ll snap out of their imprisoned minds and wake up. But that’s only if Lynn can access that memory. Will she do it? Only time will tell!
For the first 30 pages of Reality, I thought to myself, “Wow, this writer totally proved me wrong. This’ll teach you to make giant assumptions in the future, Carson.” I was most impressed by the detail-oriented writing, which did a great job painting a picture of both the characters and the world they were in. Really solid stuff.
And then, ever so slightly, the cracks started to show. There started to be a whole bunch of exposition. Which is fine. There was a lot of exposition when Neo exited the Matrix.
The difference is that this exposition didn’t make sense. Apparently, the point of creating this virtual world was to keep women more domesticated. However, it wasn’t clear why anyone wanted to do this or what the end game of such a virtual world was. You also had a woman in charge of this evil program, which confused the message.
We’re told that upwards of 70% of the population are inside the virtual world. If I have this right, that means you’ve created an evil virtual world where women are kept down yet none of the other 30% of the people on the planet are trying to stop it. Do they even know it’s happening? If no, how is it that the rest of the world has no idea what’s happening to 4.5 billion people? Wouldn’t that be hard to cover up? Or are you saying they know and are okay with it? And if they’re okay with it, then why do you need to create a virtual world in the first place? It sounds like you could’ve just done it in the real world.
Not to mention, the financial requirements of placing 4.5 billion people inside of a virtual reality would be in the vicinity of 500 trillion dollars. And that’s a conservative estimate. And what happens to all the infrastructure of the planet when 70% of the population are no longer using it? Wouldn’t that have devastating implications for society?
Some of you may be thinking, “Why does that matter? Who cares how much it costs?” The reason it matters is because suspension of disbelief is critical to buying into any science-fiction story. Even if, as an audience member, you aren’t calculating the exact cost of the enterprise like I am, you’re still thinking, “Something’s off here. This doesn’t feel realistic at all.”
I call this practice working it out on the page exposition. This occurs when you have this giant chasm of mythology to manage and you try to work it all out on the page. You have your characters talking about it and hope you can write yourself into something that makes sense. While this is okay to do in first drafts, you need to refine and focus your mythology so that it’s not just some big garble of information, but rather something that’s logical and can hold up to scrutiny.
At one point Phyllis, the leader of VTI, mentions that she’s worried the United Nations is going to make a stink about the company’s latest actions. Um, why exactly should anyone be worried about a governmental body that’s already allowed 4.5 billion people to be enslaved? I think it’s safe to assume that they aren’t that bothered if they didn’t do anything after the first billion.
We also get this shaky plot goal about changing a memory in Lynn’s past, which will then, if I understand it correctly, change all the other imprisoned peoples’ memories, which will then wake them up. I must’ve read this part ten times and I still don’t understand how it works. You don’t get points just because you include a goal in your screenplay. The goal has to actually make sense. It must be clear. We must believe in it.
The script has a few interesting moments later on when we’re not sure whether our current reality is actually another matrix but these ideas are scattered and never amount to more than a brief, “Oh, that’s cool.”
It’s too bad because it seems like Quinn is using this story to explore several things she’s passionate about, specifically the place of women in society. But it’s buried underneath so much shaky mythology that it’s impossible for any of it to register. Which is why I will say it for the ten millionth time: KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. Stop overcomplicating your stories. Stop trying to do too much. Your story will be lost. Your message will be lost.
Luckily, we have the perfect comp for what “Reality” looks like in a tighter sleeker package: “Don’t Worry Darling.” The reason that script became one of the biggest script sales of the year was because it had ONE CLEAR MESSAGE and it didn’t do anything to distort that message. The script isn’t perfect. But in the battle between patriarchal Matrix movies, it’s much more focused and a lot more entertaining. And it’s because the writers kept things so simple.
Look, “Reality” isn’t a bad script. But the writer is still learning the craft. There’s that ‘searching’ quality to the writing that I see all the time with new writers. They’re trying to work their plot and characters out on the page instead of focusing on what they should be focusing on – entertaining you, the reader.
If you’re an aspiring screenwriter yourself, this is a rare opportunity to see the difference between a sale-able sci-fi script and what most amateur sci-fi scripts look like. Read “Reality” and “Don’t Worry Darling” back to back and you’ll have a better understanding of screenwriting than 90% of the aspiring writers out there.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Use different colored text ORGANICALLY to help your story. The best part of the script is that the first 15 pages are written in blue text. Then, when Lynn gets pulled out of virtual reality, it changes to black text. It had a similar effect to what it was like watching The Wizard of Oz when they went from black and white to color.
Deadline for Sci-Fi Showdown is THIS THURSDAY. If you want to enter your script, DETAILS HERE!
Genre: Light Sci-Fi
Premise: Six astronauts on the ISS, three Americans, three Russians, are ordered by their respective governments to take the other side out when a nuclear war erupts down on earth.
About: This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Nick Shafir, is repped by UTA and Zero Gravity. Nick is a director as well. This is his first big breakout screenplay.
Writer: Nick Shafir
Details: 105 pages
Readability: Medium to Fast
Man, after the twist in Malignant, can any script ever keep my attention again? It’s hard to get juiced up about explosions a hundred miles away if the people dealing with them aren’t parasitic tumor twins.
I actually see a lot of International Space Station scripts and I’m not surprised why. You’ve got a group of people crammed up in close quarters. You introduce something that goes wrong (usually something down on earth). And then let the conflict of nobody agreeing with each other combined with the ultra-contained location do the work for you.
And yet nobody’s written a genuinely good version of this setup. I suspect the problem is at least, partially, due to the ISS being a weak location for a movie. Visually, it’s a disaster. And while a cramped location sounds good for a rip-roaring story in theory. There’s something almost too limited about this tiny space.
30 year old American Dr. Kira Williams is headed up to the International Space Station for the first time to work on her cancer research. Headed up there with her is 20-something Christian, who seems a bit nerdy and really nice.
Once on the ship, they meet everyone else. There’s American captain, Gordon Barrett. There’s his secret girlfriend, Weronika (a Russian). Then there are brothers Alexey and Nicholai. Alexey is the nice one. Nicholai is a little more calculating.
After Kira settles in, she checks her research station, which she learns Alexey is sharing for his own research. This information was not given to her before she was sent up here so Kira is immediately upset.
But that’s about to be the least of her worries because while everyone is staring down at earth, they start to see a bunch of little flares pop up. A few minutes later, the station shakes. And a few minutes after THAT, the power goes down. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that there’s a nuclear battle going on down on earth and they’ve been hit by the EMP blasts.
Gordon then gets a message from the US government: Take over the space station by any means necessary. He huddles up with Kira and Christian and figures that if they’re getting that message, the Russians are also likely getting that message. Which means it’s time for an all out war, right?
Ehhh, not exactly. Instead, we get a lot of scenes of people talking, acting a little agitated, a space walk, and learning that if they don’t get the station turned back on, they’re going to crash into earth’s atmosphere in 24 hours. Who’s going to end up winning this space station spat? Will we even care? I think you can tell by my attitude what the answer to that question will be.
Alright, so here’s something to think about. Whenever you walk into an idea, you’re basically walking into a movie where there’s 12 obvious choices you can make throughout the narrative. That’s an admittedly arbitrary number but it’s typically in that ball park.
For example, if you write a haunted house movie, jump scares are one of the 12 obvious choices. Someone standing in front of a mirror and a freaky ghost appearing behind them in the mirror is one of the twelve obvious choices. Someone hearing a noise upstairs and, even though no one in the real world would ever go check what that noise was, our character goes up to check it out – that’s one of the twelve obvious choices.
These 12 obvious choices can be found in every common movie blueprint. Your job, as a writer, is to understand that these 12 obvious choices exist, and to attack them in two ways. The first is to avoid them. This is preferable. If you can give us something we haven’t seen before, that’s always better than something we have seen before. But if you can’t do that, and you’re forced to use an obvious choice, you must look for a way to elevate it. Give us a version of that obvious choice that feels fresh.
So, take a second to think about this concept. Bunch of people up on a space station. What are some of the 12 obvious choices? Well, losing air is one. That always happens. The space station losing power and it’s going to crash into earth within a certain amount of time is another. I read that plot beat a lot. There’s, of course, going to be a spacewalk at some point.
Actually, the spacewalk is the perfect example. We all knew it was coming. So, okay, give us a version of that spacewalk we’ve never seen before! But we don’t get that here. There’s always a moment that I know a script can’t recover from. The spacewalk scene was that moment in ISS. It was such a vanilla execution of a spacewalk, it felt like the story wasn’t even trying. You didn’t know *exactly* what was going to happen. But you knew about 95% of what was going to happen. It was achingly familiar.
The frustrating thing about screenwriting is that it’s impossible to avoid all 12 of these obvious choices. There’s an argument to be made on the writer’s behalf that he would’ve been negligent to NOT include a spacewalk scene. It would’ve seemed weird to be up on the space station and remain inside the entire time. You need at least some outside time to break the monotony up.
Which basically leaves you with two options. Figure out a way to give us a never-before-seen spacewalk scene OR think twice about writing the script in the first place. Because some scenarios are so limiting that you get locked into the most obvious versions of these obvious choices whether you fight it or not. That would be my assessment of ISS. The problems weren’t made once you got to the station. The problem was writing “FADE IN” in the first place. All of the scenarios that happened in this movie have happened in other movies in much better ways. So if your concept doesn’t have a way to twist this that gives you new more exciting versions of these scenes? Why write it?
There is one lifeline that can save you should you find yourself in this predicament. And that’s the characters. If the characters are great, they can make up for a familiar scenario. But, unfortunately, the characters are very vanilla here.
Every character feels safe. There are no wildcards. Everybody exists in this safe gray zone where they’re all trying to do the right thing. And while that sounds good in theory, this setup needed an x-factor character. It needed someone evil. It needed someone to root against. If everyone is mostly good and a few characters are kind of bad… you’re not going to get much drama out of that equation. I’ve read numerous versions of this setup that were better mostly because they had ruthless characters that would do anything to survive.
This is yet another example of how important concept is. Every concept has a ceiling. If that ceiling is low, you better think twice about writing the script. Even if today’s writer knocked the execution out of the park, I still think this would gotten a ‘wasn’t for me’ just because of how limiting the concept it. Unless it had a parasitic cancer twin. In that case, genius rating without question.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you have a script built around a war, you better have a character to root against. We have to hate someone and want to see them go down more than anything. ISS doesn’t have that. As a result, I felt zero emotional attachment to what was going on.
Today’s horror experience has me convinced there should be another Scriptshadow Showdown before the end of the year. Details coming soon!
Genre: Horror
Premise: After losing her baby, a young woman starts to have visions of a mysterious killer massacring his victims.
About: This one comes from James Wan, he of Aquaman fame. Wan is jetsetting back to his horror roots! Malignant only made 5.7 million at the box office this weekend but it’s tough to judge that number since it was available on HBO Max for free. Malignant also decided to keep its twist out of the marketing, which was a brave move, seeing as doing so would’ve, at the very least, doubled its revenue.
Writers: Story by James Wan and Ingrid Bisu. Script by Akela Cooper
Details: 110 minutes
When I pressed play on this movie, my first thought was, “Why the hell is James Wan going back to horror???” He’s directed Fast and Furious movies. He turned a so-so superhero into a billion dollar franchise. As much as I love horror, it is the stepping stone genre to bigger and brighter pastures. It didn’t make sense for someone this big to go back to it.
But after doing a little digging, I learned that James Wan’s wife came up with this idea. My assessment of the project immediately shifted upon hearing this news. Just to be clear, I don’t dislike when people in relationships work together. However, what I’ve learned is that it’s harder for a couple to see an idea clearly when they’re seeing it through the prism of, also, managing their relationship.
Two of the biggest movie stars in the world – Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt – made a movie together and ten people saw it. Branjelina couldn’t see through their own relationship enough to recognize how boring their concept was.
For 90 minutes, while watching Malignant, I felt bad for James Wan. I figured his wife came to him with this idea. He wanted to make her happy so he agreed to direct it. He ends up having to release this unwatchable ridiculous horror movie… Good husband move. Bad artistic move.
But then something magical happens in Malignant. The twist arrives. And that twist is SO GOOD that it becomes the first twist in history to retroactively make the entire previous 90 minutes awesome.
In order to fully understand how this can be, you need to watch this movie. The film can’t be discussed without its twist. So I’m going to be discussing that here. You can read my review first. But you’re going to be robbing yourself of a really fun movie-watching experience.
The ridiculous plot of Malignant goes something like this. There’s this pregnant woman named Madison who was adopted as a child. She loses her baby when her abusive boyfriend beats her up. And now she’s trying to pick up the pieces in a creepy old house she moved into.
Meanwhile, a serial killer (or serial kidnapper) is out there killing and kidnapping people, then taking them back to his Hunchback of Notre Dame clock tower and stringing them up to the ceiling like a spider. I’m not kidding. This really happens.
From there, two of the cheesiest cops you’ve ever encountered in a movie try to find the killer. But they’re so bad at their jobs (not to mention talking to each other in a believable way) that they keep missing the killer. That is until Madison comes to them, with her sister in tow (who’s up for “Most Random Character of the Year”) and says Madison’s been having visions of the killer killing these people! The cops reluctantly bring her into the fold and start to get closer to finding the killer.
Meanwhile, Madison’s sister heads off to learn more about her adopted sister. She’s only recently found out Madison was adopted. This leads her to a psychiatric hospital and an old video tape of who her sister really is. And here, my friends, is where the big twist arrives. Spoilers ahead.
Have you ever heard about those people who have rare disfigurements where they have, like, some teeth and a nose partially growing out of their neck? Well, it turns out Madison had the most extreme version of this disfigurement. An entire second person was growing out of her back. And this disfigured thing had its own personality and everything.
So the hospital eventually had to cut the thing out. But, the only way they could do that was to shove the remainder of the thing’s face back into Madison’s skull. This “thing,” who calls himself “Gabriel,” has taken over her mind and is the actual serial killer. But it’s not just that. Since this thing grew out of her back, it’s learned to readjust Madison’s muscular-skeletal alignment and walk around backwards, resulting in some legitimately creepy offbeat physicality.
Madison finally recognizes that this thing has been taking over her body and fights back. But Gabriel isn’t letting the body go that easily. Only one of them will win out. Who will it be???
I don’t know how Malignant did it.
The second that image arrives on screen – where we see old footage of Madison, as a little girl, with this secondary monster thing growing out of her back – everything about the movie changed in an instant. It goes from stupid and nonsensical to “holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” There’s this funny shot of the sister watching the video, horrified, that’s so over-acted, it’s ridiculous. And yet you’re reacting the exact same way she is.
But the genius of Malignant is that it doesn’t end with that shot. There are a lot of movie twists that don’t have legs. This one has ‘deadlift a thousand pounds’ legs. Because, while we’re watching this horrifying old video tape, we cut to Madison, who’s in jail with a bunch of women who are bullying her, and she turns around and opens up the back of her skull, allowing “Gabriel” to peek out, and she/Gabriel starts slaughtering everyone.
But not facing them. She kills them all backwards because Gabriel can only see out of the back of her head. This means that Madison’s bones need to twist and crack in a certain way so that they’re usable behind her. And that leads to an utterly unique fighting style that you’ve never seen before.
Why am I making a big deal out of this? Well, every horror movie these days either does the upside-down creepy crab-walk thing. Or they turn scary people backwards. But nobody ever comes up with a reason for why these people are backwards. It’s lazy writing.
The fact that these three figured out a way to not only have it make sense that the entity walked backwards, but then asked the question, how would something like this operate? And then built an entire backwards fighting style around it? – it was awesome. There’s no other word for it. I love when writers DO THE WORK and figure out why things are happening instead of throwing stuff onscreen with only a vague sense of how they work. They really thought about this character.
One of the creepiest images I’ve seen in a long time is when Gabriel takes over the body, Madison’s mind goes dead. So he’s running around, killing everyone, and, occasionally, we’ll spin around to see Madison’s face, which is in a dead stasis state. The fact that she’s doing these horrible things and is helplessly along for the ride was creepy as hell.
So how does it make the previous 90 minutes better?
Because once you realize how absurd this idea is, it allows you to not take everything so seriously. Any movie that ends with a functioning human tumor shouldn’t result in you getting mad because the cop character is boring. When you watch it a second time – which I plan to – you just laugh your ass off at the fact that this cop is such a tool.
Leading up to the movie, I kept hearing this word being bandied about – “bonkers.” Bonkers can either be a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes people use the word for a movie that falls apart so spectacularly that they want to validate spending two hours on it so they say it was “BONKERS!” But Malignant really is bonkers. It’s so out there. It’s so weird. The movie is all over the place. I mean at one point they randomly show you that underneath the city is a second dead city that this city was built on top of. And then they just keep going on with the movie and never mention it again. It’s so silly and so stupid and so random. But I dare anyone to watch it and not be riveted by the third act.
The confusing thing is that so many of these horror movies start strong and fall apart. But this movie somehow does the opposite. And if there’s a preference between the two, that’s the one you want to use. You want start weak then finish with a bang. I mean, you want to do both, of course. But there’s nothing like the feeling of a movie that ends on a high. And WOW did this leave on a high. James Wan and his wife are geniuses!
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Where you place your big twist has a major effect on the third act. You can put it late in the third act, like The Sixth Sense does, and just allow people to finish on that adrenaline high. Or you can put it at the beginning of the third act and use the reveal to drive those last 25 minutes, like Malignant does. Once we learn she’s the killer and has this tumor thing controlling her, we watch her become this killing machine all the way up until the final scene. Every movie is different so you should assess this tip on a case-by-case basis, but I like the ‘beginning of the third act’ twist a lot because you get to stay with the twist (and play with the twist) longer.
Sci-Fi Showdown is only ONE WEEK AWAY!!! ENTRIES DUE NEXT THURSDAY!
Guys!
Do I need to remind you that NEXT THURSDAY is the DEADLINE for the Scriptshadow Sci-Fi Showdown? That’s when the five best sci-fi concepts submitted to me will be published here on the site, along with the scripts, and then you, the readers, will read and vote for your favorite screenplay. The winner will then get a review from me the following week. More importantly, if the script is good, we’re going to try and get it made! As in produced! So, if you’ve got a sci-fi script that you think is great, get it tuned up and send it to me by next Thursday.
What: Sci-fi Showdown
When: Entries due by Thursday, September 16th, 11:59 PM Pacific Time
How: Include title, genre, logline, Why We Should Read, and a PDF of your script
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
I was trying to think of the most influential tip I could give you to dramatically improve your sci-fi script in one week, and I realized that if you can write one great sci-fi set piece scene, it can have a gigantic impact on how the script is received. That’s because a great set piece can be the motivator for why someone wants to produce your film. If they fall in love with just that one 10 minute scene, and have this vision of how awesome that scene is going to look in a movie theater, that could be the driving force that leads to a sale.
But before we can identify what makes a good sci-fi set piece, let’s talk about what makes a bad one. The worst set pieces are generic set pieces. A generic situation where people are shooting at each other. A generic car chase or motorcycle chase through a city. A generic fighting scene. There’s no form to these scenes. There’s no creativity to these scenes. They’re unimaginative time-wasters masquerading as entertainment.
The worst example of this is when you have one army on one side of the screen and another army on the other side of the screen and they race at each other, and in the trailer, they always cut away right before the two sides collide. That’s the epitome of a generic uncreative set piece. The reason I can say that with confidence is because nobody on this board can point to a single memorable moment in any of those scenes – Avengers Endgame, Ready Player One, Aquaman, Attack of the Clones – that occurs after the two sides begin fighting. It’s all a bunch of big boring generic nonsense.
These scenes don’t even play well on the big screen. But they play 100 times worse in an actual screenplay. Because we can’t see what’s going on. For these reasons, I want you to follow a simple formula to create a good sci-fi set piece (or any set piece for that matter)
1) GSU – The key character in the set piece should have a GOAL. If they’re not after something within the set-piece, nothing else will work. From there, you need the goal to be IMPORTANT. The stakes must be high. Everything’s going to feel a lot more important if the character is after a cube that has the power to destroy the universe than if they’re after a crispy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-a. And, finally, add a time constraint (urgency). At the end of Star Wars, Luke doesn’t have all the time in the world to blow up the Death Star. There are mere seconds before the Death Star will have a clear shot at the planet Yavin. So Luke needs to destroy the Death Star NOW.
2) Based on your concept – This is a must for sci-fi. Figure out what’s unique about your concept and give us set pieces that COULD ONLY EXIST inside your movie. There are very few moments in the chase scenes from Mad Max Fury Road that felt like they could exist in another movie. Every aspect of the chase felt specific to the Mad Max universe. Check out Rossio’s recent “Timezone” spec sale to see another writer write set pieces that are specific to that concept. I would even say that Rossio is a master at that.
3) Contain your space – How you utilize space is the secret weapon for great set pieces. From the quickly condensing space in the Star Wars trash compactor scene to Captain America’s elevator fight in Winter Soldier to the first alien attack in James Cameron’s “Aliens.” A contained space provides structure. Whereas a big spread out area can be harder to manage and, therefore, get messy. The hardest thing about writing set pieces, in my opinion, is conveying to the reader what’s going on, because what’s going on can often spiral out of control. I mean, imagine writing what was going on in one of those giant Lord of the Rings fight sequences. Nine readers out of ten are not going to be able to keep up with the million and one things happening on screen. So utilize contained space where you can with set pieces. It can do wonders. It’s also a lot cheaper!
4) Imagination – Most writers don’t think that hard about their set pieces and, as a result, you get the same freaking set pieces you always get. I can’t stress this enough. Your set-pieces are your key selling point for a sci-fi movie. They’re where you get to show off what a great idea this is. So you really have to invest in them. Don’t stop until your top 3 set pieces feel like something we’ve never seen before. In the newsletter, we talked about the 5 million dollar spec sale for Deja Vu. A big selling point in that script was the car chase scene where the hero was chasing the bad guy but they were both in two different time periods. That’s an imaginative scene.
What’s a successful set piece that utilized most of these things? The Thor vs Hulk fight in Thor: Ragnarok. We have the contained space. We have the goal (fight to get out of here). The stakes (fighting for their lives). I’m not sure if there was a time constraint on that scene but it was so well constructed in every other area that it didn’t need one. It’s also a good example of how powerful a great set piece can be because that scene sold an entire movie. It was the centerpiece of every trailer. Which is a good thing to think about when writing your own set pieces: Would this scene be the centerpiece of a trailer? Could they sell the whole movie on it? When the answer is yes, that’s when you know you’re onto something.
Another one is the famous T-1000 truck chase sequence in Terminator 2. You may have never realized this until now but that was a classic SPATIALLY CONTAINED scene. The chase doesn’t happen out on a highway, like a boring Michael Bay chase scene. It happens in this contained space with these inescapable walls on either side. Which wasn’t just different, by the way. It added to the intensity of the scene because it gave the Terminator and John Connor no way out. It’s why it remains, to this day, one of the top 5 sci-fi set pieces of all time.
A lesser known set piece is the car-attack scene in Children of Men, which is contained in TWO WAYS. We’re cramped inside this car with five characters who are trying to escape. And then the car itself is contained by this tiny road in the forest. When they’re then ambushed and have to reverse out of the attack, there’s only one place to go. Backwards, up the very same road they came down. It works so well specifically because of how much Alfonso Cuarón focused on containing the set piece.
What I need you to do is spend the next three hours thinking up a big fun set piece THAT COULD ONLY HAPPEN IN YOUR MOVIE due to the fact that it’s so organically connected to your concept. And then apply as many of these above rules as you can. You might not be able to use all of them. But you should be able to get most of them in there. If you do it right, you’re not only going to come up with a great scene, you’re going to come up with a scene that SELLS why your movie should be made.
Good luck! ONE WEEK LEFT!!!
