Can I just say, has there ever been a more cursed movie than The Hunt? This is a film that was bullied into pulling its release for accusations against the plot that weren’t true. It gets stuck in Purgatory. Blumhouse finally gets the cajones to make another run at it, setting it up for release this weekend and… the corona virus is in full force, leading to a likelihood of empty theaters. I can’t remember a movie being hit by two huge separate media onslaughts before… ever. I guess some things weren’t meant to be.

But you know what couldn’t be shut down? Not by a Corona N1-Nuclear-Defcon-5 Virus? Sci-Fi Showdown, that’s what. This is the perfect weekend to cozy up to your nearest pet, brew a warm mug of hot chocolate, and read some science-fiction screenplays. This showdown is a special one in that these are coming around less often. That means more submissions and higher stakes. I’ve read one of these scripts already and I can tell you it’s very good. One of my favorite amateur scripts that I read last year. Not going to disclose which one it is cause I don’t want to influence the voting. But I’d be surprised if it didn’t win.

I’m still deciding on what the next Showdown genre will be. Feel free to offer suggestions in the comments. I’ll announce the winning genre sometime this week. But for now, here are your five science-fiction showdown contestants. I don’t know about you. But I’m excited!

Title: The Dying One
Genre: Sci-fi Drama
Logline: Twenty-six year-old Leigh Steinman is dying. Except, no one dies anymore. Not at her age. Now she must adjust to life as the only person in the world dying, while making an impossible choice, take one last shot at a cure or build a legacy in her remaining days.
Why You Should Read: I’ve always loved sci-fi. I was raised on it. And it always drove me crazy how much, at least on film, it fell into predictable patterns. Action and adventure. Special effects. But couldn’t it be more? This is science fiction built on theme and character. I know that’s not easy to pull off, but I’ve spent two decades learning how to. This may not be the flashiest entry, but I promise you, it has depth. It’s unique.

Title: On This Day In History
Genre: Sci-Fi (Pilot)
Logline: Within hours of learning from an otherworldly source that his upcoming flight is destined for disaster, a would-be Good Samaritan highjacks Northwest Orient flight 305 in order to prevent it from crashing – so begins the saga of history’s most elusive fugitive, D.B. Cooper.
Why You Should Read: To be entertained. You could simply read to page 2, at which point you’ll hopefully buckle up and enjoy the ride. For those familiar with D.B. Cooper, great. For those who aren’t, a quick review of his wiki page may interest you.

Title: Nowhere Girl
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: A remorseless killer is given the death penalty, only to wake up 1,000 years later in a spacecraft built for one, with an artificial conscience implanted into her nervous system and a life sentence to serve out.
Why You Should Read: I wanted to write a character who has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, the most horrible monster I could imagine, and still somehow make her worth rooting for. Since my wife is a schoolteacher, and I have received that dreaded text that her school is on active shooter lockdown a couple of times, I knew who that character would be. So now I’d love to know if my fellow writers think I pulled it off.

Title: The Shell
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Logline: After learning his virologist sister is still alive and being held captive after being thought dead, a retired special forces soldier must infiltrate a secret bio-weapons facility to rescue her and steal the cure to a global pandemic.
Why You Should Read: None

Title: Emergent
Genre: Sci-fi/Thriller/Romance
Logline: A brilliant programmer gets embroiled in a bizarre and dangerous love triangle between a co-worker that saved her life and an artificial intelligence that nearly killed her.
Why You Should Read: Emergent had a good contest run last year, placing as a Quarterfinalist or above in Nicholl, Page, Austin, and Big Break as well as a few others. It landed me a few queries and even a couple meetings with managers, but no bites on it yet. I’ve since made some revisions (based on feedback from said meetings, etc.) and will be sending it out again this year. I’d really love to hear the opinions/advice/feedback from the scriptshadow community and even get it reviewed. Cheers.

Corona Virus.

Media creation or legitimate threat?

Who knows.

The only thing I can tell you is that I thought this would thin out my gym floor so I could FINALLY use the squat rack but that hasn’t been the case. Humph.

Today we’re going to shamelessly use this virus to learn how to construct a movie idea. Often times, when writers get big ideas, they don’t know how to exploit the idea to create an actual movie.

I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say you had an idea about dinosaurs coming back to life in the present day. Conceptually, it’s a great idea. So you think, ooh, first I’ll have the dinosaurs show up in Japan. And then Russia. Then Brazil. Then the U.S. And each country is dealing with them in their own way. One country is killing them. Another is trying to protect them. Others are trying to herd them towards a central location. I’ll also cover the internal government discussions about what they should do. We’ll bounce around left and right and right and left so we can cover every angle of this phenomenon.

I’m sorry but that’s not a movie.

Jurassic Park is a movie.

My job today is to explain how to get a Jurassic Park idea as opposed to a Dinosaurs All Over The World idea. And we’re going to do so by using topical subject matter. A studio has just come to us and said, “We want to make a movie about a pandemic. Pitch us your best idea.”

FIND AN ANGLE

The first thing you need to do once you’ve got that big idea is to find an angle. The Walking Dead may have started off as, “The entire world is overrun by zombies.” But that’s just an initial concept. There isn’t yet an angle.

The angle is the plan of attack through which your story takes place. And it could be anything. It could be a group of people holed up in a house fighting off the epidemic. It could be following three separate families dealing with the crisis, each living in different parts of the world. It could be three survivors who have to make it from the bottom to the top of Manhattan, which happens to be the most heavily infected zombie city in the world. It could be a doctor who hunts and captures the infected, then brings them back to his lab in the pursuit of finding a cure.

The key question you’re asking when searching for an angle is “Does this fit well into the feature film format?” And I’m going to tell you right now that the more focused your angle, the better your movie is probably going to be. A group of people holed up in a house is likely to be a better movie than cutting between three families in three different parts of the world.

Why?

Because films work best when the boundaries are strong. It’s easier to manage a group of people in a house than it is people in three different locations on the planet. The more contained the space and the time frame is, the better feature story mechanics will work.

Let’s go back to Jurassic Park for a second. It isn’t taking place in all of America. It takes place ON AN ISLAND (contained space). It doesn’t take place over a full month. It takes place over a couple of days (contained time).

Jurassic Park has always flirted with – and even tried – the idea of moving the dinosaurs onto the never-ending geographic location of the United States. But it’s failed because the boundaries are gone. And with that, the structure has weakened.

Look no further than Steven Soderbergh to see what happens when you have a bad angle. Remember that movie Contagion that he made? Of course you don’t. Unless you’ve seen it pop up recently in the wake of the Corona Virus news. But before it started getting marketed again, I’m going to bet that you can barely remember anything about that movie.

That’s because its angle wasn’t feature-friendly. Soderbergh decided to cover multiple people getting infected all over the world. As a result, we didn’t get to know anyone that well, care about anyone that much. And by disjointing the narrative, it becomes harder to engage in each separate storyline.

Does that mean this omniscient angle can never work? No. It’s just not feature-friendly and therefore the difficulty level is higher.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of the few movies I’ve seen that took a scattered angle, covering the alien invasion from numerous different points of view across the globe, and still worked. But even Close Encounters eventually zoomed in on Roy Neary’s storyline of getting to the ship landing.

So we have our directive.

Pandemic. Movie idea.

How do we obtain our angle?

START ASKING QUESTIONS

To find the angle, start asking big questions.

WHEN? When is our story taking place? Does it take place right at the early stages of the pandemic, before full panic has set in? Does it take place when the first stages of fear are setting in? Does it take place as things are starting to get scary? Does it take place AFTER the worst has already happened? Or does it take place long after the pandemic occurred (making it a post-apocalyptic idea)? Each of these is a different movie.

WHAT? What is the threat? Is the threat the flu, then death? Or does the threat turn people into raging killing machines, a la 21 Days Later? Obviously, the answer to this question will vastly change what your movie is.

HOW LONG? How long do you want the movie’s inner timeline to be? Is this like “The Road” which takes place over weeks? Or is like my Manhattan idea above, which takes place in one day? If you’ve been paying attention, the tighter the timeframe, the more movie-friendly your concept is going to be.

WHERE? Where this takes place is probably the second most important question of all. It can take place in a house, in multiple houses, in multiple countries, on an island, on a boat, in a city, at the top of a skyscraper, in a locked down medical facility where the virus seems to be spreading to new departments every hour.

WHO? Who’s involved is usually the most important question. Is it a group of people who don’t know each other? Or is it a family? Is it two people on their honeymoon? Is it four people out on a double blind date? Is it a group of kids in a limo who just left their prom?

FIGURE OUT YOUR CHARACTERS

Once you have your location and a general feeling for the length of the journey, you need to find your characters. This is going be HUGE. I have seen so many good concepts destroyed by forgettable characters. We don’t want that to happen to you. Something to keep in mind is that if you create compelling characters, they’ll work regardless of their surroundings. Even if your concept loses its steam or the plot gets predictable, strong characters keep audiences invested throughout. That’s why Contagion didn’t work. It didn’t allow us to spend enough time with any particular group of characters to ensure that we cared about them. So you really want to get this part right.

IRONY – Usually with big ideas comes the opportunity to inject irony into the characters. And irony is one of the superpowers of storytelling when done well. Look at Guardians of the Galaxy. These are literally the guardians of our galaxy and the leader is not a strong mature natural leader, but rather a zany goofball who makes it up as he goes along. Irony is surprisingly hard to get right outside of comedies. But if you can make it work, it’s the thing that puts your movie over the top.

A HERO WITH A STRONG CONNECTION TO THE IDEA – Your hero and your concept need to be connected, both conceptually and thematically, if possible. If you make a movie about a man who’s forced to tell the truth for 24 hours, you don’t want him to be a farmer who’s thinking of moving to the big city. You want him to be a lawyer who has the biggest case of his life on the day that he can’t lie. If you’re making a movie about Hollywood in 1969, centering it on a struggling actor as opposed to a brain surgeon is probably a good idea.

RELATIONSHIPS THAT NEED FIXING – Emotion is your friend when creating characters. Ideally, you bring people into your story who have some unresolved issue with each other. This is why choosing characters who have history with one another (often family) is better than picking people who have no connection whatsoever. That doesn’t mean you can’t do the latter. But turning that relationship into something emotion-based at some point in the story is a good idea. Maybe your two main characters just met and, over the course of the story, fall in love (Brokeback Mountain). Or they form a friendship (Jerry Maguire and Rod Tidwell). Or they come to an understanding with one another (Fury Road). But to center on a storyline with characters who don’t know each other, and you never breach any sort of emotion-driven character subplots, it’s going to be hard for the audience to invest in your movie on anything other than a surface level. A big reason why A Quiet Place did so well was because it followed a family fractured by the death of their son as opposed to four random people.

SO WHAT’S OUR MOVIE?

Okay, so we’ve identified our criteria for coming up with a full movie concept. What’s our movie about the pandemic going to be?! Here’s my take. The movie will be titled, “Catalina.” It’s been 3 months since Patient 0. The virus, which has an 88% kill rate, has obliterated most of the cities, which have descended into chaos. Catalina Island, a small island just off the coast of Los Angeles, has become the one remaining medical center fighting to find a cure. Getting on or off the island is near impossible due to fear of the virus. The movie focuses on the lead doctor at the facility who finds out that his 11 year old daughter, who’s also on the island, has just tested positive for the virus. Knowing she’ll be killed if found out, he must figure out a way to get her off the island to safety.

Hmmm… it’s an okay idea. I think it could be better though. Feel free to improve it. Or pitch me your best idea for a pandemic movie in the comment section!

Genre: Thriller/Period
Premise: After finding themselves stranded on the wreckage of a Helldiver bomber in the middle of the ocean, an American aviator and a Japanese Kamikaze pilot must work together to survive their greatest threat yet — a 22-foot great white shark.
About: This script finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List. Like a lot of writers on last year’s agency-absent Black List, this is writer Ben Imperato’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Ben Imperato
Details: 91 pages

If you’re anything like me, you’re still reeling from the beating Barb put on Madison last night. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that would be because you have a life. If you do know what I’m talking about, OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT HAPPENED? I thought the whole family was going to break up by the end of the night. I think we can all agree that the real winner was Hannah Anne.

Anyway.

World War 2? Sharks? Hero and Antagonist working together? Sounds like the perfect spec script to me. Let’s find out if it’s any good.

Edward Moretti’s plane spirals out of the sky and into the Pacific, landing upside-down. He and his gunner, David, are barely able to get out of the cockpit without drowning. But within minutes of their miraculous survival, David realizes he was shot during the air battle. He dies within minutes, leaving Edward all alone.

Not to worry because Edward has his good friend, Flashbacks, to keep him company. We cut back to right before the war where Edward and his perfect pregnant wife talk about how great their future is going to be.

Four days into this nightmare, Edward receives another guest, Hiro, a 17 year old Kamikaze pilot who happens to be the one who shot them down. Unfortunately, he got hit during the battle and ditched his plane as well. Furious that Hiro killed his friend, Edward battles Hiro, who takes him on with his katana sword. The fight ends in a stalemate and the two draw a line along the bottom of the plane and make a rule that each person has to stay on their half of the line.

Just after things calm down, a giant angry shark begins circling the plane. At one point, it’s able to grab onto Edward’s leg and tear half of it off. Feeling bad for Edward, Hiro starts to work with him, trading some water he has for a fish Edward caught. We flash back to Hiro’s past as well and learn that he was kinda conned into sacrificing his life to help the Emperor win the war.

After a few more battles with the shark, three Americans in two rafts pick Edward and Hiro up. These men have long since gone crazy. And if you needed proof, they’re carrying along with them the head of a Japanese soldier they killed. When they try and go after Hiro’s head as well, Hiro fights back and Edward helps him defeat his own men! The two head back to the plane, and after a couple of final flashbacks, take on the shark in a climactic battle.

This is a good idea for a movie.

I like whenever two people on opposing sides have to work together. And like I always tell Scriptshadow readers: If in doubt, add a shark.

But a setup is just that. It sets the concept up. From there, it’s up to you to execute.

I want to highlight an early line in the script because it was a telling moment for what was to come.

David, the gunner who’s been shot, is dying in Edward’s arms. This is what he begins to say: “Hey Eddy… My wife. My kids. Tell them…”

When these moments come up early in a script, my ears go up like antennas. Because it’s a common scenario. The soldier who’s dying in another soldier’s arms and wants the other soldier to tell his wife/girlfriend/family/kids one last thing. It’s here where I learn whether this writer understands how to give me something new or whether he’s going to repeat the same lines that we’ve always heard.

So how does David’s line end? Here’s the full exchange: “Hey Eddy… My wife. My kids. Tell them… Tell them I tried to get back.” “Tell them yourself.”

Sound familiar? Yes. It’s the same exchange we always hear in these interactions. And when I read that, a small part of my script-reading self died. Because I know from experience that if a writer can’t even give me a fresh take on a line, then how are they capable of giving me a fresh unexpected story experience?

How SHOULD you handle a line like this? First off, I would avoid writing the exchange in the first place. If there’s a moment in your script that’s so cliche that comedy films have made fun of it, that’s a good indication you should avoid writing that moment. Didn’t they have an entire scene making fun of this in Tropic Thunder?

Anyway, moving on.

The flashbacks confirmed to me that this wasn’t going in any direction that was going to be entertaining. Flashbacks are always a sign in movies like this that the writer can’t think of enough story to fill up the present so they pad it with flashbacks.

That’s not to say flashbacks couldn’t have worked. If each character’s past would’ve been engaging and unique and shocking, I would’ve been all for them. But both Edward and Hiro’s flashbacks were as straightforward as you get. Blah blah blah wife has a miscarriage. Blah blah blah, Hiro’s too young to join the Navy but does anyway. It’s clearly padding.

What this script probably needed was to focus on this relationship on the plane. That’s your concept. That’s what brought people to see the movie. So the more time we’re spending with these two facing problems and troubleshooting them together, the better.

The best moment in the script happens when the crazy American officers arrive because it was the only time in the script that went off the obvious narrative path. If you were making a short film from this movie, that’s the sequence you would build the short around.

With that being said, I can still see this getting made. I can still imagine the trailer. I can see people watching the trailer and getting excited over the movie. But this needs an A-List screenwriter who knows what he’s doing to put in a full-on rewrite to bring out the parts of this story that make it such a fun idea.

I will say one thing. Years ago, there weren’t a lot of places that could make a movie like this. It would’ve been a mid-budget 40-50 million dollar deal because you’re shooting on water. And water is both unpredictable and expensive. If you shot on a real body of water, it’s a logistical nightmare and you’re constantly at odds with the weather. If you shot in a tank, you’d have to fake the backgrounds and that never looks realistic in the daytime.

However, with this new Stagecraft technology you can probably shoot a movie like this for 3-5 million dollars. The reason that’s important to note is because when you write a screenplay, your odds of selling it are directly linked to how cheap it would be to make. The cheaper your script is to make, the more production houses there are you can sell to. Go study how Stagecraft works because it’s opening up opportunities to make movies that used to be pipe dreams. Certain conditions have to be met (A central still location like a floating plane is perfect for Stagecraft) but as long as they are, there are huge opportunities for indie filmmakers that were not there 10 years ago.

Helldiver wasn’t a bad script. The execution was just bland and predictable. The idea needed to be pushed and it was only nudged.

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

What I learned: “I love you.” Another cliched line we’ve heard a million times in movies. So how do you make it work? Also, how do you make the response work? Shall we take a trip down Star Wars memory lane to find out? When Princess Leia says, “I love you,” the original response from Han Solo was written as “I love you too.” They tried to shoot it. It didn’t work. So they tried rewriting the line. Didn’t work. Rewrote it again. Didn’t work. Take after take after take, new lines written, same reaction. Didn’t work. Finally, Director Irvin Kershner told Harrison Ford to say whatever. Ford, exhausted by this point and wanting to go home, hears “I love you” and replies, “I know.” The line becomes one of the most famous film lines of all time. But it would’ve been boring and cliche had the line been delivered as originally scripted. How they came about “I know” is the same way you should go about your writing during common moments. Whatever you come up with first is probably going to be lame. Whatever you come up with second is probably going to be almost as lame. It’s only when you keep digging deeper and deeper that the response becomes something totally unexpected, maybe even nonsensical, and yet it will be a million times more original than your first pass. That was my issue with the “Tell my family I tried to get back,” “Tell them yourself,” exchange. It is the epitome of a first pass. Seasoned writers don’t make that mistake.

Genre: Japanese Manga – TV Pilot (One Hour)
Premise: Based on the manga comic, numerous pirates sail the seas in search of the famed treasure known simply as “One Piece.”
About: I’m told One Piece is the most successful selling manga comic in Japanese history. And since only Disney and Sony have superheroes, everyone else needs to find their fantastical subject matter from elsewhere. It was only a matter of time, then, that someone, in this case, Netflix, would take a big-budget chance on a manga comic. And if you’re going to go for it, you have to go big. So of course they have to adapt the best manga of all time.
Writer: Matt Owens (based on One Piece by Eiichiro Oda)
Details: 57 pages

So far, I am yet to understand any Japanese adaptation of anything I’ve ever read or seen that is not horror. The Cowboy Bebop script was indecipherable from a phone book written with sluglines. When the Wachowskis adapted Speed Racer, I stared at the screen in bafflement for 30 minutes before dropping a five ton brick on my remote control power button to make sure I would never risk seeing the film again. For a while, I tried to get into famous Japanese novelist, Haruki Hurakami. I reluctantly traversed past the 200 page mark in a couple of his novels before I realized that there was no point to either of them (I dare anyone to make an argument that IQ84 makes sense). Most recently, I made the mistake of watching the movie, “Your Name,” and found it the most hackneyed simplistic boring piece of cinema that anyone had made that year.

Clearly, the Japanese view storytelling in a different manner from the rest of the world. My theory is that they care more about the animation than the story. And when they do tell stories, they’re not interested in goals or points. It’s more about the experience of the people’s lives. Which is great if you love boredom. But someone’s going to have to explain to me why people like these movies. If you could give me anything I could latch onto to help understand the popularity of this comic and every other Japanese comic or animated film, I’m game to learn. While you do that, I’m going to review One Piece.

One Piece begins with a pirate being marched through the Town of Beginnings on a remote island. This man is brought to an execution platform in the middle of town. The Mayor wants to make an example of him that pirates are bad people. Just as he’s about to be killed, someone in the audience yells out, “Where’s your famous treasure!?” And the pirate says that every treasure he’s ever found was put together into “one piece” and just before he can reveal where this one piece is, they kill him.

This sparks a massive pirate uprising where everyone now wants to be a pirate so they can search for the “One piece.” 12 years later we meet Shanks, a red haired pirate who is the leader of the Red Haired Pirates. While his crew drinks at a bar, a little 7 year old kid named Monkey D. Luffy pleads to be part of Shanks’s crew. Shanks keeps telling him he’s got no shot and to stop bothering him.

While no one’s looking, Luffy eats a weird fruit in Shanks’ storage chest and then – get ready for this – becomes super-stretchy kid. If you hold onto his arm and walk around the room, his arm will follow you, stretching out endlessly. Yeah, that’s what we’re working with here. Shanks is furious that Luffy ate this prized super-powers fruit cause now he can’t sell it. But before he can yell at him, a criminal named Higuma shows up with his crew and start yelling at Shanks’s guys.

While everyone fights, Higuma steals Luffy away and takes him on his boat to… I don’t know what. Yell at him on the sea? But before he can yell, a giant sea monster swallows Higuma whole. Meanwhile, Luffy falls in the water and sinks because – I’m not making this up – the super powers fruit contains a “can’t swim” curse. So Luffy is about to die before Shanks scoops him back up and saves him.

Cut to 10 years later cause, of course, and we meet the beautiful but mean Pirate Avida, who takes special pleasure in yelling at some teenager she found, Koby. Koby wants nothing more than to escape Avida. Lucky for him, he finds Luffy stowing away in one of their barrels! Luffy, who’s now 17, is really brave and determined to find the “one piece.” He tells Koby to stand up to his slave owner so Koby does and then the new BFFs Koby and Luffy go off to look for one piece together! Yay!

Holy Moses kill me now.

All right, so, it became clearer to me why there’s such a disconnect between myself and a lot of these Japanese animated movies/shows. They feel like they were written by a 10 year old boy. I’m not kidding. A kid eats a purple fruit and gains super-stretchy powers. When faced with death by a pirate, a giant sea monster appears and eats the boy’s captor. We also get dialogue like this: “Whatever. I don’t care what powers you have. They’re nothing compared to mine. I’m not gonna let some no- name punk stand in my way.”

This is stuff I would – no hyperbole here – expect to come out of an elementary school writing contest.

Which is too bad because the pilot actually starts strong. With every TV pilot, you want to come in with a scene that grabs the reader/viewer. Even more so than movies. Because in movies, the audience can’t leave. But with TV, the audience can leave any time they want. So to start this with a perp walk through an old island town, then have an execution, only for the executed man to scream out that there’s a treasure to find – that’s the beginning of a good show.

Then, when we get into the bar and Shanks encounters Higuma and we have a good old-fashioned standoff, I was thinking, “This is good so far.” Especially when Shanks backed down. In 99% of these early-script standoffs, they’re used to show the hero getting picked on and then beating the bigger badder guy up so we know he’s awesome. So to go the opposite direction and have Shanks wimp out was a refreshing choice.

I’m thinking, “This could actually be good.” And thennnnnnnn – purple fruit that turns kid into mr. stretchy pants happens. My head literally fell into my lap. I shook it several times. And I thought – yup, now you’re officially a Japanese adaptation.

But it wasn’t just the nonsensical lost-in-translation issues that made this a bad read. On page 28 we get our second large time jump. There is maybe no better indicator that a feature script or a TV pilot script is going to be bad than the double major time jump. We jumped forward 12 years. More story plays out. Then we jump forward 10 years.

First of all, it’s pure laziness. I understand why it was done. You wanted to see the pirate introduce the one-piece. And you wanted to show Luffy get his powers and then also grow up. But if you’re pushing us through multiple time periods to set up your story, you’re not working hard enough. Time jumps destroy the rhythm of the pilot. It’s hard enough to get the rhythm right when there are zero time jumps. So to start and stop your story TWO TIMES in a single pilot, you’re begging the viewer to turn the channel.

It’s the equivalent of that guy at the party who tells the story who keeps stopping and saying, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. That guy who gets the girl? He wasn’t always rich. He once worked at a dry cleaners and he had to work for a long time and save up money… where was I? Oh, right so he gets the girl and he’s about to ask her for her hand in marriage but first he’s got to meet her parents. Oh, I forgot. These parents? They’re from old money. So they grew up in New Orleans…” That’s the rhythm you’re creating when you’re doing double time jumps.

I give these guys props for taking something that’s so specific to its medium and trying to turn it into live action. I honestly don’t know how you even start to go about executing a goofy manga in live-action form. Something tells me you’re going to get a mix between the 1980 Robert Altman version of Popeye and the first Sonic The Hedgehog trailer. But we’re in a content-desperate industry and that means more chances need to be taken. We’ll see how this one turns out.

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

What I learned: I would avoid the scene in your Western, Superhero, Sci-fi, or any combination thereof, where our hero is challenged early on by the bad guy and then the hero kicks his butt. Usually in a bar. I admired One Piece for not doing that. It reminded me that some beats in a story are so common, writers are incapable of visualizing any other option. But these are the story beats you need to question the most! Because these are the moments where you’re best able to show that your script is going to be different from everybody else’s.

Sometimes I think of Netflix as the alcoholic divorced neighbor we use as a measuring stick to feel better about ourselves. Their release strategies continue to both deconstruct and baffle the industry. This week I saw Mark Wahlberg and Eliza Schlezenzer on James Corden talking about a movie they did together and all I could think was, “What movie? They’re not in any movies together.” A few days later, I open up Netflix, and there’s a new movie with Mark Whalberg and Eliza Schlezenzer. Oh, I guess that was the movie?

Usually, studios blanket the country with billboards and trailers for their upcoming films so by the time the actors from the movie show up on talk shows, we know why they’re there. Netflix is saying, “No thank you” as they continue to alter every traditional strategy in the book. For what reason? No one knows. Honestly, I can’t figure out if there’s a plan behind this backwards promotional concept or if they’re making it up as they go along.

Either way, Spenser Confidential felt like one of those movies you hear about that has tons of weird lawsuits preventing it from being released so the studio has to keep it in the vault for several years and then when they finally release it, everything about the film feels strangely out of touch. Except in the case of Spenser Confidential, it wasn’t in the vault for 5 years. It was in it for 20. I mean this movie couldn’t feel more dated if it starred Harold Lloyd.

In that sense, Spenser Confidential represents just how much the movie industry has changed. These quasi-thriller dirty-cop dramas used to be a staple in every studio’s diet. But once special effects got better, TV production value skyrocketed, and the movie star died, it was hard to convince people these films were worth going to movie theaters for.

Which is probably why this film is debuting on Netflix.

And for anyone nostalgic about getting these movies back on the cineplex menu, watching Spenser Confidential may burst your bubble. All of the genre’s weaknesses are on display. Cliched characters. Predictable plot developments. Try-hard tough-guy dialogue.

Here’s the thing. It’s not that you can’t make these movies anymore. But you need to find a way to bring them to the modern audience. And the answer was right there in the film for “Spenser.” When Spenser (Mark Wahlberg), a former cop, gets out of prison (because of course he does) he’s forced to room with an on-the-rise MMA fighter.

There’s your modern thread right there. The MMA fighter (played by “US” star Winston Duke) makes the story modern. But they do NOTHING with his plot line. He’s there to nod his head whenever Mark Wahlberg asks, “Do you want to come with?” This movie should’ve focused on him. It should’ve been him getting out of prison. Not a former cop. WE’VE SEEN THE FORMER COP GET OUT OF PRISON ALREADY. Modernize this. I’m not even telling you this new direction would’ve been great. But it would’ve provided you with an opportunity to give this tired setup some fresh legs.

If you’re looking for a screenwriting tip that’s going to elevate your writing, this would be it. Look for old movie templates then find an element that makes them fresh. Because if all you’re doing is rehashing an old format, everybody’s going to react the same way: “This looks dated.” That’s what happened with Spenser Confidential.

Speaking of blasts from the pasts, we also got the mid-life crisis coach flick, The Way Back, this weekend, a script I reviewed last year which was pretty good. The film, which surprised a lot of people with its 87% RT score, had to call time out to stop the financial bleeding, making just over 8 million bucks.

Look, there have been a lot of complaints over the last decade that there’s nothing to see in theaters anymore unless you like Marvel or Vin Diesel leaping from buildings with a car strapped to his back. But who’s really to blame for this? Movies like The Way Back used to be a staple in theaters. You’d get a couple of them a year. Then people stopped going to see them so studios stopped making them. If you want more variety, you have to support these films. Plain and simple.

That’s what I never understood about this complaint. Every seasoned moviegoer is crying that they don’t make movies like they used to. There’s less and less variety. Well what, exactly, is missing from theaters that if they made them again, you’d go see? I’m serious. I’m asking that question for the comments. Steven Spielberg’s next film is West Side Story. Is it that kind of movie you’re missing? If so, are you going to go see it in theaters? I know I’m not.

If there’s a type of movie that used to be made and released that you miss, that’s the perfect opportunity for YOU to do something about it. Follow the formula I laid out above. Identify the movie type that’s no longer made. Come up with a fresh angle that modernizes it. And write it. Because let’s be real. The reason we didn’t go see The Way Back wasn’t because we’ve given up entirely on that kind of film.

We didn’t see it because it didn’t bring anything new to the table. I remember reading that script and a particular line of description stood out to me with how shocking it was. Here it is paraphrased: “We lean into the cliche because, why wouldn’t we, we’re going to be hitting all of them by the end of this movie.” THAT WAS IN THE SCRIPT! And I get that the writer, who was writing on assignment, was just having some fun. Maybe making an aside he knew the producer would giggle at. But if you want to know why this movie didn’t perform well, look no further than that line.

One of the hardest jobs of being a writer is refusing to settle. Not settling for average characters, not settling for average plot lines, not settling for average plot developments. Not settling for providing the same story people have already seen. Because let’s be honest. It’s much easier to write whatever comes to mind and call it a day. Those moments where you’re sitting on your couch doubting every inch of your story because you’re convinced the script blows and how nothing could ever possibly save it and you try this and try that and you keep going back to the drawing board and you’re just about to give up for good when – BAM! – an idea pops into your head that immediately makes your story ten times better? It’s not fun going through everything up til the ah-ha moment. It’s not fun beating yourself up for a week. Which is why most writers take the opposite approach and stick something in that they’ve seen work in other films, confident that, at the very least, the choice won’t be “bad.” But if you want to challenge others, you have to challenge yourself.

Finally, this leads us to the other major release of the weekend, “Onward,” Pixar’s latest effort, which has left a lot of people either shrugging or meh’ing or both. The film stars two of the most likable actors on the planet, Chris Pratt and Tom Holland, but we unfortunately don’t get to see them.

Personally, I find the story behind the story of this movie to be touching. The writer never met his father and so decided to write a movie about it. It even does what I just said you need to do. Which is come up with a new angle. Onward is unlike any movie Pixar has released before it. So what’s wrong here?

A couple of things. One of the frustrating cruelties of the artistic pursuit known as writing is that just because you try something different doesn’t mean it’s going to work. Most of the time, it doesn’t work because when you write something that’s off the beaten path, it requires you to be a better writer since you’re navigating uncharted territory. There have been many well-meaning writers who have tried something new but didn’t have the writing chops to execute it. While I’ve only seen Onward’s trailers, something about it I can’t put my finger on isn’t clicking. I think it’s the mythology. It feels too light and fluffy. There isn’t any depth there. With that said, I will definitely see this movie when it hits digital. It looks fun.

The second issue is that mainstream animation is one of the least-forgiving genres when it comes to its targeted demographics. Pixar and Disney movies are generally made for two types of people. Young kids and their parents. Onward isn’t that. It’s targeting 12-15 year olds. And I don’t think many 12-15 year olds go to see animated movies. They’re growing up. They’re too cool for school. Going to a Pixar film risks upsetting their street cred.

If you’re going to try something different with feature animation, it’s best to go way to the other extreme so that people understand the film isn’t meant for kids. Like Sausage Party. 12-15 year olds will want to see that because it’s raunchy and outrageous. I will concede that animation isn’t my specialty so take those thoughts with a grain of pink Himalayan salt. But that’s been my experience observing these films over the years. I think Pixar was trying to make something for all those little kids who grew up on their films who were now older. They learned the hard way that all of them would rather play Fortnite and try to be Tik-Tok stars.

Before we end this Monday mash-up, a final reminder that THIS FRIDAY IS SCI-FI SHOWDOWN! If you have a sci-fi script you want to be featured in the showdown, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com and include the script, a title, a genre, a logline, and why you think your script deserves a shot. Entries are due this Thursday by 8pm Pacific time.

And of course, make sure you’re getting your big daddy scripts ready. THE LAST GREAT SCREENWRITING CONTEST deadline is June 15th. You can find entry details in the original post. I’ve been thinking about the contest a lot and how there are very few breakthrough “Oh my god, the industry just found an amazing new screenplay!” stories anymore. Let’s create one of those! One of you can do it. I know there’s somebody out there with a big idea that’s got a fresh hook and who takes chances and their script isn’t quite like anything out there. Let’s bring this script to the town together and rock the world by turning it into a film. You’ve got three months left, guys. Keep writing!