I listened to the entire 3 hour Joe Rogan interview with Quentin Tarantino yesterday and it’s an interesting listen for sure. Rogan isn’t much of a movie buff. Ironically, the only movies he seems to love are Tarantino’s. So the interview was more of a love fest from Rogan’s end and that prevented some of the more free-flowing conversation that you usually get from the podcast. Still, because it was Tarantino, there were lots of gems dropped. So many, in fact, that I thought I’d highlight the top 10 for you. I always learn something about screenwriting when Quentin speaks and this was no different. Let’s take a look.
1) Tarantino reads a lot of biographies – This may not seem like that big of a deal but it may be the most important tip on this list. I noticed, throughout the interview, that Tarantino kept referring to biographies he’d read. “I read this biography on So and So.” “Oh, I read her biography.” “Yeah, he’s got a great biography.” I’ve often wondered how Tarantino creates such vivid interesting characters. This may be his secret sauce. Biographies allow you to get into people’s heads in a way nothing else does. I’m sure, whether intentional or not, this is what allows Tarantino to access such incredible detail when he creates characters.
2) Go against the grain! – Tarantino points out that he grew up in a terrible era for movies – the 80s. Everything in the 80s was a correction of the avant-garde movies of the 70s. As a result, they were safe, they were friendly, they were politically correct. Tarantino responded to this with, “I don’t want to make those movies. I want to make something different.” Which is why his movies revolutionized the business. They were unlike any movies we’d seen. I want you to apply that mindset to the cinema of 2021. Are you writing movies that are just like the movies you’re seeing today? Or are you writing movies that you want to see? You can make both work. But the second option allows you to become a potential game-changer.
3) Let the character decide where the story goes, not the writer – This is a hard one for beginners to grasp because they look at their characters as fictional creations and therefore the idea of giving them creative autonomy is an assault on logic as well as their ego. But here’s why it’s a relevant philosophy. Screenwriters are too stringent. They’re trying to hit that first act break. They’re trying to shove in those Blake Snyder beats. Their intentions, much of the time, are in service to structure. If you see your characters as real people, their intentions will be much more pure. What they say and what they do is going to steer your story in a more unique direction. This explains why Quentin’s movies are so original. He doesn’t play God. He lets his characters play God.
4) But he gives himself an out – With that said, Tarantino gives himself an out. “I am the storyteller,” he says, “so if I have to steer [the characters] in a direction that I think is more interesting or more exciting, well then obviously I can do that. I have the power to do that. But I’m trying not do that.” In other words, this kind of rule works in theory but it doesn’t always work in practice. If characters are blathering away about something mundane or boring, it’s in your interest to reevaluate the scene and, possibly, steer it in a more interesting direction. Also, we’re talking about Quentin Tarantino here. His characters are so vivid and his imagination so active that his version of “letting characters take you where they want to go” is going to be more interesting than the average writer’s “let your characters take you where they want to go.” So don’t assume that following this advice is an automatic win. Sometimes you have to intervene.
5) Don’t be afraid to write uncomfortable moments – I already know this tip is going to trigger some people but it’s one of the things that sets Tarantino apart. Ever since that brutal torture scene in Reservoir Dogs, Quentin hasn’t been afraid to take on the PC Police. Here, Rogan brings up the scene in Hateful 8 where Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character gets brutally beaten and he basically asks Tarantino, “Is that okay?” considering it was a woman. Tarantino’s answer was that, of course it was okay. This was a really bad woman who had done really bad things. If she was a man and did the exact the same things, everyone would be fine with him getting beaten. So why should her gender matter? He acknowledged that it is tougher to watch. But that was the point. He wanted that moment to be uncomfortable. That was a deliberate artistic choice. This is a big reason why Tarantino’s movies feel so different. He’s comfortable with making people uncomfortable. So you can be the artist who stays between the lines and writes comfortable safe things. Or you can be the one who stands out.
6) Making a movie is easier than ever – Outside of maybe Robert Rodriquez and Kevin Smith, Quentin is the OG DIY filmmaker. When he got money in his bank account, his sole focus was to figure out how to use that money to make a film. He made 30 grand for writing True Romance and his first thought was, “I’m going to make Reservoir Dogs with that money.” You have to understand back in 1991 just how insane of an idea making a movie for 30 thousand dollars was. Just the cost of film processing alone was probably 30 grand. But the mindset back then was: FIGURE IT OUT. Do whatever you have to do to get your movie made. It just so happened that a producer was able to raise a million bucks for Tarantino to make Reservoir Dogs. But he would’ve made it for 30 grand if he had to. I bring this up because the barrier for entry to make a movie in 2021 compared to 1991 is 10 times lower, AT LEAST. Yet people seem to have more excuses than ever why they can’t make a film. I know not every screenwriter wants to be a director. But if you’re interested in directing at all, channel that original Tarantino spirit of getting your movie made no matter what. It’s still the fastest way into the business.
7) Quentin’s writer’s block advice – Tarantino’s process works like this. He’ll write a scene and, if he doesn’t finish the scene, he’ll get away from his writing pad (he still writes longhand), and just think about the scene in terms of what could make it better and where it could go next, and then he goes back to his pad, jots down all those notes and then he DOESN’T WRITE IT. He waits until the next day to implement that stuff. If he *does* finish a scene, he utilizes this same process but focuses more on the next scene and where that scene could go. Afterwards, he writes down notes and calls it a day. This way, he’s always going into tomorrow’s writing session with momentum. Cause he’s always got something prepped to write.
8) Audiences need someone to root for, even in Tarantino movies – One of Tarantino’s least successful films is Hateful 8 (by the way, this is one of my favorite Tarantino films). He recognized, after reading criticisms of the movie, that he made a choice the movie couldn’t overcome, which was that every character was a villain (that’s why it’s called the “hateful” 8). And while he personally loves the movie, he learned that making a film without anybody to root for isn’t the best way to go. Although he doesn’t say this in the interview, this may have been why he followed that movie up with one of his most likable characters ever in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).
9) You can’t spell Tarantino without “fun” – What I’m about to tell you is something I don’t think even Tarantino realizes about his movies. Tarantino talks all the time about violent films that inspired him. He talks about “Manhunt,” “Taxi Driver,” “Mean Streets,” “A Million Ways To Die.” But those movies never touched the popularity or the box office of a Tarantino movie. And I think the reason for that is is because Tarantino likes to have fun in his movies. No matter how dark or violent his movies get, they have tons of jokes, they have tons of fun moments, they have tons of entertaining dialogue. What he’s done is basically figure out how to popularize dark cinema. He’s made it fun. I’m not saying you have to do this. But if you’re writing something dark and you want to broaden your audience (aka, get more producers interested), consider doing what Tarantino does and add those fun moments, those jokes, that dialogue.
10) Tarantino doesn’t like character arcs – Listening to Tarantino talk, you get a sense of his disdain for movies that have heroes who act one way for 70 minutes, only to completely change into a nicer more wholesome person for the final 30 minutes. You can tell he doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t see any authenticity in it. And if you look at his last movie, you can see that none of the three main characters, Rick Dalton, Cliff Booth, or Sharon Tate, change in the movie. They’re the exact same people at the end. To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this belief. I understand that artificially forcing a character transformation at the end of the movie is weak sauce. But it’s tough to sell characters who don’t learn anything at all over the course of their journey. There’s an element of “well then what was the point?” to the viewing experience. I’m not sure I agree with Tarantino’s take here. But, again, this is one of the many rules he lives by that makes his movies feel different from everybody else’s.
Genre: War/Thriller/Horror
Premise: A female U.S. Army Special Agent is sent to a remote, all-male outpost in Afghanistan to investigate accusations of war crimes. But when a series of mysterious events jeopardize her mission and the unit’s sanity, she must find the courage to survive something far more sinister.
About: This script finished on the lower half of last year’s Black List. I may be a little salty in this review considering Lafortune stole my Kinetic creative duo, Ric Waugh and Gerard Butler, for their next movie, Kandahar, about a CIA operative and his translator who flee from special forces in Afghanistan after exposing a covert mission. Grrrrrrr…
Writer: Mitchell Lafortune
Details: 97 pages
I really like this setup for a movie.
You’ve got someone going into a remote, potentially dangerous, situation, and they’ve a job to do. They have to solve a mystery.
The reason I like it is that it keeps the main character active. I’ve read the “bad version” of this setup numerous times, which is the same thing but without the mystery. A new person comes to a remote location and just has to… hang out or whatever.
Since these movies are about the shit eventually hitting the fan, you need enough meat beforehand so that you don’t start the “shits hits the fan” section too soon. Because if the shit hits the fan on page 40, it’s really hard to come up with pure chaos for 60 straight pages. You want to delay that as long as you can. And this setup allows you to do so while keeping the story interesting. If there’s a murder to solve, every scene leading up to the “shit hitting the fan” moment contains dramatic tension.
Amelia Yates is a CID officer for the army. That stands for Criminal Investigation Division. She’s out in Afghanistan in 2008, trying to get by, when she’s chosen for a mission in Afghanistan’s valley of death, the Korengal. The U.S. has a remote outpost there and a soldier named Ismail’s gone missing.
Amelia’s a little concerned since this is an all-male unit. Normally, they’d send a male CID out there. But the only male CID they’ve got is on leave. So Amelia will have to substitute. She heads out to the Korengal, which people have dubbed “the most dangerous place on earth,” a tiny little valley in between huge mountains.
There, she meets the team, a bunch of dudes who are mostly good guys with a couple of bad apples. A youngster soldier named Grady is particularly scary as he seems to have left the laws of America back in his country. You get the sense he’s ready to pounce the second he sees Amelia alone.
Which, of course, makes Amelia’s job a lot tougher. She’ll be responsible for talking to all these men, one by one, to try and figure out how Israel disappeared. Everything goes swimmingly at first, or at least as swimmingly as you can imagine in the remote Afghanistan mountains, but Amelia starts learning some unsettling things. Such as that it wasn’t just Ismail who went missing, but his entire unit.
Also, everybody seems to be on edge here. They’re all going a little cuckoo in the head. For example, they keep telling Amelia that they’ve been attacked by monsters. Amelia assumes they’re suffering from some collective mental disorder until she starts seeing some strange things herself. Like one day she sees Ismail walking around, perfectly fine. Then the next day, he’s gone.
Things come to a head when attacks ramp up on the base and Amelia sees giant alien spider monsters attacking them from all sides. They end up winning that firefight and then, the next day, Amelia wonders if what she saw was real. Good news comes down the pipe as home base closes her mission. She can come back now. But she’ll have to wait for a helicopter to come and get her. And maybe, just maybe, that helicopter’s never coming.
Most bad scripts you can tell are bad right away because the signs are obvious. But, every once in a while, you run into a good writer who’s not the best storyteller and, for those scripts, it takes longer before you realize the script is in trouble.
But the writer usually provides you with a few signs ahead of time if you’re paying attention, which was the case with War Face. There’s a scene early on, right before Amelia is about to go to Korengal, where she’s walking through the barracks at night and she hears someone behind her, possibly dangerous, spins around, stabs him in the neck, kills him, only to realize it’s another officer. She freaks out, runs to a friend, tells him what she’s done, and he says, “don’t worry about it. I’ll cover it up for you.” And then Amelia just leaves.
You can’t have your main character murder someone and resolve that murder within a page. You just can’t. Just the logistics of covering up the murder take time. But the mental repercussions are something you have to deal with in writing. You have to take us through a few scenes to show the transition from that mistake to being able to move forward. To try and get away with your hero killing someone then leaving for her mission a page later does’t ring true at all.
That’s when I first said, “Something tells me this is going to get sloppy.”
Which is exactly what happens. After a couple of strong interrogation scenes when Amelia first gets to Korengal, the weirdness begins. They’re attacked but it’s not clear by who. Soldiers start having nightmares galore which we don’t realize are nightmares until after the fact (one of the number one ways to identify amateur writing), Amelia sees Ismail alive, but wait, maybe it was just her imagination, Amelia buries a group of child-aliens, more attacks, some giant-aliens attack the base, they barely survive, then Amelia finds Ismail again, he now says I’m a translator for a parallel world, we cut to another world that has giants.
If ever there was a script that embodied the phrase, “everything and the kitchen sink,” this would be it. It’s a jambalaya of cheap tricks, anything the writer could think of to keep the story scary. You can only use cheap tricks for so long. Audiences will give you one scary moment that turns out to be a nightmare. They won’t give you five.
Also, it’s not a good idea to build a story around everybody going insane. It encourages the writer to be sloppy. If you know you never have to explain anything cause you can always depend on the “it may have been a hallucination” explanation, you’re likely to keep going back to the well even though each subsequent use of it results in diminishing returns.
I mean, if all of this wackiness wasn’t enough, we finish off the script with a time machine. That’s not clever writing. That’s lazy writing. You want the rules of your world to be clear and easy to understand. If we’re still learning about the rules on the second to last page (now we can time jump!), your rules are not clear nor easy to understand.
Which is too bad because the script had potential. Like I said at the outset, this is a strong setup for a movie. I could even imagine War Face without the supernatural angle. Just the idea of a woman going into an all-male unit where someone’s missing and everyone’s been stuck there for 18 months is an exciting setup for a film. It’s still cool with the supernatural stuff, but this is exactly what I was complaining about in my Thursday article. Where so many writers go wrong is that they overcomplicate things. If you would’ve had a simpler story here, this could’ve been so much better.
Let’s finish off with some positives though. I loved the choice to use Korengal for a couple of reasons. One, it’s really hard to come up with places that audiences haven’t been to in movies. Movies have covered EVERYTHING. So I always applaud writers who can find a location that is both new and interesting.
Two, you want to come up with ideas that support superlatives. I love that Korengal is considered “the most dangerous place on earth.” That’s the kind of thing that makes a logline pop. Imagine if this story instead took place in “an extremely inhospitable place.” Doesn’t have nearly the same level of gravity to it does it? You want words like “most,” “worst,” “biggest,” “most devastating.” Movies are about extremes. Play to that.
Finally, I liked the choice to focus this around a female lead. Writers have been changing their leads to females over the last three years for no other reason than they hope it improves their chances of selling the script. Here, going with a female lead actually makes the script better. If this is a male soldier going into an all-male outpost, it’s a completely different movie, and not as interesting, in my opinion.
So there’s still stuff to celebrate about War Face. But once you get into that place where every scene could be a character’s imagination, all the stakes go out the window.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m going to teach you a trick. Writers like to use phone calls to family members early in a script to establish exposition or create sympathy. For example, if you want to show that your character loves his kid but the conditions of the story don’t allow you to write a scene where they’re together, you might have him call and talk to his kid briefly. Here’s my tip. ALWAYS PUT A TIME LIMIT ON THESE PHONE CONVERSATIONS. It takes what is, essentially, an unimportant scene that doesn’t move the story forward, and gives it some dramatic tension in order to make it a little more entertaining. Wanting to talk to your kid but not having enough time is always more entertaining than giving your characters as much time as they want. There’s a scene early on in War Face where Amelia calls her dad right before she leaves for her mission and it was the perfect opportunity to create a time-sensitive phone call. “Come on Amelia, chopper leaves in two minutes. Gotta move.” That would’ve juiced up this phone call quite a bit. Instead, it’s a normal phone call with all the time in the world. Therefore, it’s boring. And it outs itself as a scene only meant to create sympathy for the protagonist.
Taylor Sheridan solidifies himself as a Top 5 screenwriter in Hollywood with his latest.
Genre: 1 Hour TV Drama
Premise: In a small town surrounded by seven prisons, two brothers do everything in their power to keep an all-out war from erupting in the community.
About: Paramount looks to be building its Paramount + streaming service around one name – Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan, who already has a major hit at Paramount with Yellowstone, has two Yellowstone offshoots teed up and then this one, Mayor of Kingstown, with Jeremy Renner in the lead. Antoine Fuqua is executive producing and will likely direct the first episode.
Writer: Taylor Sheridan (story co-created by Hugh Dillon)
Details: 48 pages
No, for those wondering, this is NOT a sequel to the Mare of Easttown. At least I don’t think it is. Come to think of it, I have no idea. What if it is a sequel to the Mare of Easttown? I guess we’re going to find out.
We see a tennis ball launch over a fence and come to a stop. Two combat boots enter frame, hands emerge and pick the ball up, a man slices the ball open, retrieves $200. We pull back to see we’re in a prison. We pull back further still to see this prison sits next to another prison. And then another prison. There are seven prisons in total here, all of them nestled up against one small town.
We meet Mike and Mitch Mclusky. Mike is the muscle. Mitch is the brains. Together, they’re trying to keep this town together. You see, every single day there’s some kind of issue in one of the prisons. For example, maybe a white prisoner crossed a line with a black prisoner and now he’s a marked man. The white prisoner’s father will come to Mike and Mitch and plead that they do something to help his kid. Mitch, who’s known as the “mayor” of this town, even though he’s just the superintendent of these prisons, usually figures out a solution.
The story really picks up when Mike and Mitch are given a map by an old associate named Milo through an intermediary named Vera, a local stripper. Milo helped them out a long time ago so they have to do what he says. And right now, he’s buried 200,000 dollars for them to retrieve on the other side of town.
Mike and Mitch retrieve the money without any issues and Mitch throws it in his safe. Mind you, this is dirty money. Mike and Mitch are definitely on the take. And why wouldn’t they be? They’re keeping this town together!
Well, that night, a stringy gangbanger named Alberto gets a lap dance from Vera, who makes him feel like the biggest man in the world when he’s paying, but turns off the charm the second the dance is over. Furious, Alberto secretly follows her home, rapes her, kills her, then finds a copy of the map she gave Mitch.
Alberto traces the map back to Mitch (**spoilers coming**), shows up in his office, and demands that he give Alberto the money. Mitch, comfortable around crazy people, casually retrieves the money for Alberto, who then casually lifts his gun and shoots Mitch in the side of his head. Mitch is dead. He then cooly walks out with 200 grand.
Across town, Mike is attacked by a bunch of crips after one of the men Mike was protecting in prison disobeyed an order and attacked a crip. Mike is barely able to get out of the situation alive and storms back to town hall to yell at his brother for not giving him a heads up. Instead, he finds out his brother is dead. Mike will now have to decide if he wants to take his brother’s place as the NEW Mayor of Kingstown.
Whatever “it” is in regards to screenwriting, Taylor Sheridan has it.
I generally don’t enjoy super-serious stories about small towns. The stories tend to be too slow for my taste, too mundane. But Taylor Sheridan somehow is able to make the mundane captivating.
This was so good.
It started out sloppy though. We’re told by some father that his inmate kid is being taken advantage of. Can you do something, Mitch and Mike? One of the hardest things to do in screenwriting is talk about a character who the audience hasn’t met yet. We have no baseline for who this father is talking about because we’ve never met his son. It’s a wobbly way to begin.
Then this Vera woman shows up and starts talking about ANOTHER CHARACTER we haven’t met yet, some guy named Milo. If these characters are the ones involved in all the drama, why aren’t we meeting *them?* Why are secondary characters introducing them?
Then some crazy young drug addict is getting a lap dance. We’re talking to some local gangbanger to try and fix a problem. We’ve got two more dudes who need help with their kids in prison. It’s a cacophony of information without any context.
But the moment the second half rolls around, all these storylines start intersecting, and what was previously a golf cart putting along on its last ounce of fuel, becomes an Indy 500 race car that’s lapped everybody ten times over. I mean (**SPOILER**) when Alberto shoots Mitch, my jaw hit the floor. What the hell just happened!??? Mitch was the main character! From that moment on, Sheridan had me in the palm of his hand.
One of the things I was trying to figure out was what does Sheridan do differently? Because he’s not writing big splashy sci-fi stuff here. He doesn’t have cool set pieces. He doesn’t even have basic stuff, like car chases. Most of his stories are 2-3 people in a room talking. Like I noted yesterday, with Fast 9, people in a room talking is your enemy as a writer. So what is it that Sheridan does that others don’t?
All of his scenes seemed to be centered around a PROBLEM.
“I have a problem,” someone says. “My kid is stuck in prison and people are trying to kill him. Can you help me?” Rarely, in this pilot, is there a moment where characters are just exchanging information. Scenes die when there are no dramatic undertones. In a lot of those Fast 9 scenes of characters in a room talking, they would be explaining plot points, joking around with each other, or the mother of all writing no-no’s, recalling some event that happened in the past. There wasn’t any dramatic tension in the scenes.
Here, there always seemed to be a problem, which created an obvious desire to solve said problem, which gave the characters a goal, which gave the scene a point. Or, if there wasn’t a problem, there was an undercurrent of potential danger. For example, Vera dancing for Alberto was a scene that didn’t have a “problem.” But Sheridan highlights the anger and danger inside Alberto. We get the sense that he’s a volcano ready to blow. So the dance isn’t just a dance. It’s a prelude to something potentially terrible happening.
Scripts live or die on their scenes. So if you can come up with an operating procedure that ensures all your scenes are entertaining, you’re set. And Sheridan seems to have figured that mystery out.
Finally, there’s a subtle anti-woke approach to the writing here. Regardless of how you feel, politically, about the implementation of woke ideology into television and movies, one of the problems with it is that it’s made story points a lot more predictable. If there is a story point where either a ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ development could happen, 99% of the time in 2021, the writer will choose the woke option.
Sheridan isn’t concerned about that. He just wants to tell a good story. That’s probably why I was surprised at some of things that happened in this pilot. My initial thought when they happened was, “Wait, you can’t do that! Can you??” And then I realized, I only thought you couldn’t do it because I’d gotten used to the last year’s worth of screenplays doing the exact opposite.
Mayor of Kingstown is top-grade writing. Even more impressive considering how busy Sheridan is. Check this one out!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: (**SPOILER**) I’m a newly converted fan of the “kill off your supposed lead character in the pilot* move. Not only does it make the pilot memorable. It creates major questions moving forward for the series. One of the hardest things to do in television is make someone want to read (or watch) your next episode. Something like this creates so much uncertainty moving forward that you practically have to watch the next episode.
If it’s not in your Inbox, check your “SPAM” and “PROMOTIONS” folders!
We’ve got a good one, starting with a sneaky good show that nobody over 25 has heard of. Yet I guarantee once you start watching it, you won’t be able to stop. I give my thoughts on the current shaky state of the superhero genre. I help make sure you never rely on a deus ex machina again. I get into a couple of giant Apple TV sales and what you can learn from them. And I review the best original sci-fi spec of the year.
Oh, and one more thing. I know yesterday’s post was a bit controversial. But I stand by it. Of course there are times where you will write “two people sitting and talking” scenes. But it’s the laziest choice you can make. And if I can be that little voice in the back of your head every time you’re about to write one of these scenes that motivates you to try a little harder and come up with something else? And I can do that 2 or 3 times a script? I’ve done my job.
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FAMMMMMMMMMIIIIIIIIILLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!
Genre: Action
Premise: Dominic Toretto is pulled back into a life of crime one last time when he finds out that his long lost brother, Jakob, is attempting to construct a super-weapon.
About: The ninth installment of the Fast series is here! The film made 70 million dollars at the US box office this weekend, which tops the post-pandemic high of A Quiet Place 2 (50 million). These two films were obviously meant to be on a double-bill. For the first movie, you get nothing but silence and in the second movie, you get nothing but noise.
Writers: Daniel Casey, Justin Lin, story by Alfredo Botello, based on characters by Gary Scott Thompson
Details: 2 hours and 25 minutes
Something funny happened when I was figuring out where I was going to watch this movie.
Since all the theaters close by have closed down, I have to find random theaters to travel to each time I want to see a film.
Anyway, you know how you sometimes space out when you’re googling something and you’re not really thinking as you type? When I googled Fast 9 showings, I oddly received a Miriam Webster definition of the word “family.” It took me a few seconds to figure out what happened but I guess, subconsciously, in searching for Fast and Furious showings, I had inadvertently typed the word “family.”
In retrospect, I’m surprised Fast 9 doesn’t show up when you type “family.” I had a little running bet with myself on how many times the word would be used in the latest installment (my over/under guess was 100) and I lost count at 20. That was after two scenes (I’m kidding – sort of – because even though it wasn’t technically said that many times, I could tell the characters all wanted to say it that many times). My next contest should be you get to write once scene, three pages max, the only stipulation being that you have to use the word “family” in dialogue 100 times. I’m curious to see if it could be done.
In this latest installment of Fast and Furious, Dom and his wife, Letty, are living off the grid when they get a message that Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) crashed his plane in a remote forest. That plane was transporting a special device. If Dom doesn’t retrieve it, someone bad will.
So Dom reluctantly gets the band back together and off they go. At the plane, they retrieve one half of a black crystal ball type device. No sooner do they get it than a private military force that Dom will eventually learn is run by his long-lost brother, Jakob (John Cena), start chasing them.
After Jakob gets the half crystal ball, Dom chases him, but watches in shock as Jakob launches his car off a cliff and gets snatched up, Knight Rider style, by a really cool looking stealth jet. After regrouping, the team realizes that Mr. Nobody hid the other half of the crystal ball in a vault in Edinburgh, Scotland of all places. They have to get that other half before Jakob does!
After Jakob beats them to the second piece, an Edinburgh chase sequence ensues with Dom’s team riding in a big giant super-magnet truck. They use this truck to “suck” Jakob’s car through an entire section of the city, slurping the car up and into the back of their truck.
Things are looking great for Dom’s team. They even learn that Han, the eponymous Tokyo Drift character who supposedly died a few movies ago, is back and alive!!! Unfortunately, Jakob’s team of meanies bust him out and secure both halves of the magic ball. Only then do they learn that the magic ball, code-named ‘Ares’ because of course it is, can destroy the entire planet or something. So they’ll have to do everything they can to stop Jakob, possibly even go into space!!!!
Okay, I’ll hold on while you finish laughing.
Look, at this point, Fast and Furious exists in its own universe. You either launch your weirdo spaceship into that universe or you don’t. I hung on for the ride, no pun intended, because I think it’s funny. I get just as much joy out of the moments where Dominic Torreto is about to leave a discussion for the 50th time, only to stop, turn back, wait for his close-up, and deliver a line that inevitably includes the word “family,” as I do watching rocket cars shoot into space.
But if you’re comparing F9 to other F movies, it doesn’t rank high. It’s a little too slow and I’m going to explain why. But first, let’s talk about mcguffins.
A while back someone asked me to write an article about how to write Marvel movies since the biggest movies each year were inevitably franchise films with tons of characters, the exact opposite of what I preach for spec screenwriters (which is to focus on one great protagonist).
Maybe I wrote that article, maybe not. I don’t remember. But the answer to his question is mcguffins. The mcguffin is the thing that all the characters are after. You use mcguffins because a) it keeps all your characters active (they’re all pursuing the mcguffin) and b) it streamlines character goals. If you have six characters with six different things they have to achieve, that takes forever to setup and execute. But if you give them a mcguffin, then all six of them have a goal and it only takes a couple of minutes to set up.
However, in these really big movies, what you’ll see is that one mcguffin isn’t enough. So they do this thing where they split the mcguffin into two (or more) mcguffins. This allows them to do a couple of things. They can split the characters up into several groups so they all have something to do simultaneously. We saw this with the attempts to get the infinity stones in Avengers Infinity War. But it also allows you to give your characters a “win” mid-story and still have work to do. They’re able to get one half of the mcguffin (yay!) but they still have that other one out there.
I don’t love split-up mcguffins. They always feel video-gamey to me. By that I mean the only reason they seem to be split up is because the writers wanted more flexibility with the plot. But I get it. When you have this many characters, you don’t have much of a choice. I just like when split-up mcguffins are organic. A great example is Indiana Jones. You had to get the staff *AND* the medallion. That’s so much better than clumsily hacking an object in half and, for some unknown reason, putting the two halves on different sides of the planet.
It didn’t bother me that much but for those of you thinking of incorporating this device, try your hardest to choose mcguffins that are split organically. Don’t create a key and, for no reason whatsoever, have somebody chop it up into three pieces. It’s lazy!
One of the criticisms you’re going to hear coming out of this movie is that it’s too slow. But, to be honest, I don’t know how a movie like this *can’t* be slow. When you have this many characters you’re trying to keep track of, many of them with their own journeys, it’s almost impossible to keep the plot moving.
One of the brilliant things about John Wick is that where John Wick goes, the movie goes. So you can always keep things moving. But here, you’ve got Dom trying to figure out his life, his brother trying to figure out his, you got the wives who go off on a side quest, you’ve got Han, who’s introduced back into the mix. In the case of someone like Han, you can’t just plug-and-play that plot point. You’ve got to have the “explanation” scene of how he survived the previous film’s death. And it’s not just that. You’ve got to stop everyone’s story and get them all together so that Han can explain everything to them.
Every time you have to sit your characters down and talk through current plot points, you’re slowing your script down. Which is why you always want to keep your plot and characters moving. Fast and Furious has become so bloated with characters, each of whom are now required to have their “moments,” that it’s become very hard for the story to keep any momentum at all.
But let’s be real. You’re not coming to Fast and Furious movies to whine about whether a cafe scene was necessary or not. You’re here for the action set pieces. Specifically action set pieces THAT WE CAN’T SEE ANYWHERE ELSE. So if you get that right, all else is forgiven. Did they get it right?
I’m going to point to two action highlights for me. The first occurs in that early jungle sequence where Dom’s team of cars is trying to get away from the private army’s team of cars. Tej (Ludacris) realizes that they’re about to enter an old landmine site. I thought this was a really clever idea. Basically, you take one of the most famous movie scenes ever – Han Solo trying to escape from Darth Vader by flying into an asteroid field, and bring it into a car-chase.
They didn’t stop there. They added a cool rule, which was that, taking into consideration the half-second of lag before these landmines explode and the expected blast radius, that the cars had to be going at least 80 miles an hour or else hitting a landmine would blow them up. This was not easy to do when you’re driving on grassy lumpy terrain. Also, Roman (Tyrese Gibson) is driving a large armored car that only goes up to 70 mph. So he’s just going to have to hope that he doesn’t hit any landmines. This whole sequence was clever.
Another set piece I liked was the one in Edinburgh. Due to the chaos of the situation, Ramsey, their computer expert, is forced to drive. There’s only one problem: SHE CAN’T DRIVE. She never even got her license. But they have to stop Jakob and she’s the only one near a car right now. This is a great way to take a basic setup and make it fresh. If Dom is driving this car, it’s one of 100 Fast and Furious Dom car chase scenes. We’ve seen it already. With Ramsey, it’s a completely new experience. She’s a disaster at the wheel but she’s their only shot so she does her best. It added a fun spin to a mid-movie set piece.
With that said, something was missing here. Movies are weird. Each one of them has a certain energy to it. And when a movie is really cooking, it’s usually because everyone’s on that same elevated wavelength. We’ve seen that in this franchise before. Fast 7, with James Wan directing, had that special extra gear to all the action. But everybody here looked a little bored. Which I suppose is one of the challenges of trying to draw a franchise out this long. Inevitably, you get to a point where it’s hard to get excited that you’re doing yet another version of what you’ve already done.
It was still fun going back to the movies. So I had a good time. But they need something more than John Cena to jolt this franchise for the next film. John Cena was fine. But I think we all know where Fast and Furious needs to go to keep this franchise on top. And that is Mars.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I really really really really really believe you should think twice about putting any characters in chairs talking to each other in an action movie. Some of you might say, “you have to slow down sometimes,” and that’s true. But there are other ways to do it. Say Ramsey and Tej have to infiltrate an upscale party to find a villain. You might put them on the dance floor together while they covertly scan the party to see if their villain is present. During that time, you can also include some exposition. You can give the audience a “slow” moment and still keep some tension to the scene as well as keep the momentum of the story going.
