Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy (TV Show – Episode 4)
Premise: As evil twin Mae searches out another Jedi to kill on a forest planet, her good sister, Osha, joins the Jedi in the hopes of stopping her before she gets there.
About: You are looking at THE most talked about TV show of the year behind Baby Reindeer. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons. To understand why The Acolyte is creating so much darkness in the universe, you must remember when it was greenlit. It was greenlit at the height of every social movement in the US. So it was a no-brainer season committal at the time for Lucasfilm. But, four years down the road, that vision of humanity doesn’t feel as fresh anymore. And hence, the show is getting attacked more than any other show in history. Today’s writers, Claire Kiechel and Kor Adana, have written for some good shows! Watchman, The OA, Mr. Robot. Can they counter the evil forces of online hate?
Writers: Claire Kiechel and Kor Adana
Details: About 30 minutes

What Disney has done – and what all the big studios are doing nowadays – is create divisions devoted to fake social media accounts so they can counter online dissension.

So it’s no surprise that Disney is going all in, online, trying to combat the hate being levied at The Acolyte. This is just one account that popped into my Twitter timeline today.

I learned something very early on at Scriptshadow. Which is that you can’t beat the internet. If the internet wants blood, you can’t pretend they don’t. Disney is giving it their best shot because they have enough money to do so. But they’re going to find out the same thing I did.

You can’t make people think something that isn’t true. You can’t seriously convince us that The Acolyte is an amazing show. I can buy some people thinking it’s a decent show. But a great show? Come on. Now we know you’re some AI bot deep inside Disney’s digital farm.

If you’re one of those people who’s struggling with The Acolyte, don’t worry! I am going to tell you how to fix Star Wars TV just as I fixed Star Wars movies on Monday.

But before we go there, let’s recap this episode.

Osha says bye to the one friend she made within the Jedi group, Jecki. Seems like there’s a potential love story brewing there. But before she leaves, Master Sol (Squid Game dude) learns that her evil sister Mae is headed off to kill the Wookie Jedi, Kelnacca (played by the same actor who plays Chewbacca by the way). They’re going to try and stop her and believe Osha can convince Mae to stop her serial-killing ways.

The episode, then, follows a dual storyline. Mae and her goofy friend, Qimir, head into the forest to look for Kelnacca. Sol, Osha, and the other Jedi get to the planet a little later and begin their hunt for Mae before she can do any damage.

Along the way, Mae has a realization that she doesn’t want to be bad anymore. She’s going to turn herself into the Jedi. So she allows Qimir to get caught in a trap and leaves him! I’m not sure why she does this. It’s not like he was making her kill Kelnecca. And this is where you start to see some cracks in the storytelling (potential spoilers follow).

Later in the episode, both the Jedi and Mae meet up to find that Kelnacca has already been killed… BY A LIGHTSABER SLASH! They turn around to see Mae’s evil masked up mysterious master (say that five times fast) arrive and pull out his lightsaber. Smilo Ren then force dust-attacks the Jedi and we cut to black. In other words, the reason we nonsensically left Qimir in his trap was to split those two up… because Qimir is secretly Smilo Ren.

All right. I’m trying to use my powers of screenwriting analysis to see through all the Acolyte hate and judge this show fairly.

What does today’s episode do well?

Well, we do have structure here. We have a goal: Mae is going off to kill this Chewbacca-like Jedi. Does that goal have stakes? That’s not as clear. I mean, we know she wants to kill it. But do we sense the importance of her needing to kill it? I don’t think we do. And if we don’t see why something is important, it’s hard for us to care.

Also, Mae is bad. So her goal is bad. Audiences aren’t as excited to get behind a character pursuing a negative goal as they are a character pursuing a positive one. These are things you have to think about as a writer. Because, if you don’t understand that the audience might not be onboard with your character’s goal, you need to figure out how to counteract that.

Which, to the writers’ credit, they do. And this is what I believe Leslye Headland is bringing to the series. She understands screenwriting. So, she adds this dual-goal narrative where we have the Jedi (including Osha) going after Mae. Their goal *is* a positive one. It’s to stop this killing of a fellow Jedi.

And that second journey does contain stakes, or at least higher stakes than Mae going after the wookie. We’ve met Kelnecca. We kind of like him. So we don’t want him to die! That gives the reader some desire to keep watching the story.

But is it enough?

It isn’t because I still didn’t care as much as I needed to for the story to work.

Why don’t I care enough about what’s happening?

That’s a great question that should be applied to any screenplay you write. If you’re a screenwriter who sends a script out and the script’s strength is the plot, yet readers still aren’t responding to it, it almost always means that they’re not connecting with the characters.

What sucks about that problem is that there are levels to what “connecting with the characters” means. Sometimes, I think the characters in a script are solid. I connect with them to the tune of 7 out of 10. Which is pretty good. But 7 out of 10 gets you a pat on the back and a dog treat at the end of the script. It doesn’t get anyone saying, “Oh my god! I have to tell somebody about this script now.” Or, in this case, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to break this episode down in my script review.” To get there, you need 8 out of 10 characters or higher.

There isn’t a single character in The Acolyte who is higher than a 7 out of 10. The twin sisters are where Headland has focused the majority of her energy and they just aren’t that interesting. Mae locked her sister in a room and tried to kill her in a fire, which felt overtly forced and therefore false. Which is the kind of stuff that weakens the characters in the audience’s eyes. If you’re not being trutful with what characters do, we stop seeing them as real people.

Star Wars thrived specifically because it leaned into crystal clear archetypes. The naive young hero with big dreams (Luke). The old mentor (Obi-Wan). The trickster (Han). The “Shadow” (Vader). The characters in this show are way more nebulous. We do have a trickster, in Qimir. But I couldn’t tell you what archetypes Osha or Mae fit into if you offered me a million bucks to do so.

The reason why that matters is because the more muddled a character’s essence and purpose is, the less invested in them we become. Cause we don’t understand them. It’s easy to convince yourself, as a writer, that vagueness equals “complexity.” But you can use whatever word you want. If we’re not clear on exatly who these characters are, we don’t give a crap about their goals, about their journeys.

Like Mae in this episode says, out of nowhere, “I don’t want to kill this Jedi. I changed my mind. I want to go help the good Jedi instead.” That’s the kind of thing an unclear character would say. Because if you understood who this character was, then something way more intense then a fleeting change of heart would cause an action like that.

What’s interesting about that is that Headland pitched this movie as “Frozen” in the Star Wars world. And we clearly see that with these two sisters. But Frozen actually didn’t have a well-conceived broken-sister relationship at the heart of its story. Elsa ran away because she was afraid her new powers might hurt her sister. It’s not like they hated each other or anything.

Then the movie was about bringing them back together. But the reason that movie is a classic has little to do with the conflict in that relationship and more to do with the greatest soundtrack for a Disney movie in over a decade.

Which means Acolyte is using that same weak sister-division story engine except without all the great music to hide that relationship’s deficiencies.

So how do we fix this and Star Wars TV in general? Well, I can’t fix this show. It’s too late. But I can fix future Star Wars shows. Oh, yes I can.

Star Wars has always been strongest when there’s urgency at the heart of the story. It was there in Star Wars and there in Empire. It was also there in Force Awakens.

It’s part of the franchise’s DNA.

I’ve noticed that these shows are weak mainly because there’s little momentum to them. We’re never moving forward fast enough, like the movies. Now, this is a problem that TV deals with with every show. And the way it handles this problem is by leaning into character conflict as much as possible.

So, you may watch a scene that barely moves the plot forward in a TV show. But we’re still into it because there’s tons of conflict built into the dynamics of the characters. That’s why one of my favorite shows ever, Lost, worked so well, despite its plot having to slow down so much. There were tons of characters who had unresolved conflict with each other. I always loved, for example, when Jack and Sawyer had a scene together.

But there’s a caveat to that working. You actually have to give a crap about the characters. And we don’t have that here. It’s not for lack of trying. I know for a fact that Leslye Headland tried to create the best show possible. But she built that twin relationship on a faulty foundation. Is there anyone who really cares whether these two twins make up or not? Come on. Be real.

So, what Star Wars needs to do on the TV front is pull a “24.” Not literally. But they need to build a show around urgency. And that way, it’s going to feel a lot more like Star Wars.

Cause they still haven’t figured out how to have two Star Wars characters casually talking in a scene and it work. Star Wars wasn’t built for “casual.” Watch the very first scene in this episode to understand how that plays out. Osha says bye to Jecki after her Jedi practice. The scene is the definition of casual and something we don’t need. But they need to fill up that episode somehow so they put it in there.

Some of you will be happy to hear that it is officially my last Acolyte review. I’m morbidly curious about what happens next but I’m no longer going to subject you to these experiences. May the Force be with you. Always.

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

What I learned: If you feel like you’ve got a good concept, a strong story, and an exciting plot, yet people tell you your script is boring or slow – an analysis that makes no sense at all? That almost always means they’re not connecting with your characters. Don’t settle for 7 out of 10 characters. They won’t get you anywhere. What does a 10 out of 10 character look like? Both the characters in Baby Reindeer. Ken in Barbie. Logan Roy. “Wonka” has about 8 characters who are an 8 out of 10 or better. If you want people to really be engaged, that’s what you bring to the table on the character front.

Can Fukunaga pull off his version of Heat?

Genre: Period/Crime
Premise: Set in the dirty streets of Manhattan circa 1977, a summer when a serial killer known as the Son of Sam was terrorizing the city, a group of cops try and rob the three biggest gangsters in the city, all in one blackout-filled night.
About: This was a hot package that sold at Cannes this year. It’s got James Bond director Cary Fukunaga directing from a script he rewrote. It also has Tom Hardy and Mahershala Ali in the lead roles.
Writer: Cary Joji Fukunaga (based on script by Frank John Hughes)
Details: 127 pages

What do I always say?

Everyone who gets into this screenwriting racket is doing so for one reason and one reason only – to rewrite their favorite movies.

Fukunaga wants to make his “Heat.”

How did he do??

It’s 1977, New York City, a notoriously scorching year in The Big Apple. Like a Global Warming preview. That Son of Sam guy is out there killing women left and right. Hey, it could be worse. Could be Game of Thrones and he’s killing kids.

Our story focuses on best friend cop partners Ray Butler and Eddie Boyle. Ray is a recovering alcoholic who is weeks away from finishing his self-imposed 6-month sober goal which will allow him to move back in with his wife and daughter. For the first time in a long time, Ray is back on the straight-and-narrow.

Irish cop Boyle has a kid of his own coming soon. But, unlike Ray, he’s not afraid to spice it up now and then, mostly through taking bribes. Hey, it was the 70s! Bribing was a thing back then.

The problem is, New York is falling apart. This super hot summer has led to a boiling point with the people in charge. In a week, they’re going to indict every dirty cop in the city. And both Boyle and Ray are on that list. Their careers are effectively over after that.

So Boyle’s got an idea for while they’re still cops. Steal from the three biggest crime names in the city, all in one night. Sammy Yin’s gambling parlor. Mob boss Carmine Galante’s safe house behind his pizza joint. And drug lord Nicky Barnes’ money pickup van.

Their plan is simple. Ray, Boyle, and three other guys are going to walk in with their faces covered but their badges up, which will cause all of the bad guys to freeze, and they’ll take the money without any pushback. That’s the PLAN mind you.

They head out early in the night to begin the robberies and that’s when THE ENTIRE CITY EXPERIENCES A BLACKOUT. Half of the guys want to bail but Boyle thinks it’s a sign from God. Tonight was supposed to happen. So… away they go!

The first question I want to ask you guys is: Is this a good hook for a movie?

The blackout thing.

My take on hooks is that they should introduce something clever into the story – something that, when you hear it, you get goosebumps. Take Back to the Future for example. If it’s “A high school kid accidentally takes a time machine to the past and has to find a way back again,” there’s no real hook to that.

The hook is that he disrupts his mom and dad’s meeting, making his mom fall in love with him rather than his father, threatening his very existence. He now has to convince his dorky dad to grow some balls and get his mom back, all before it’s time to go home. That’s the clever part.

When the big hook hit in this script – the blackout – I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. That indicates it’s not clever. Does darkness help with cover? Does it mean that the targets are all going to be easier to access? I was at a loss.

Now, once we see the crime on the streets start rising… then I understood the blackout thing better. This is going to make things difficult for them. Which is good! That’s what you want to do to your characters. You always want to make things harder for them.

But let’s back up for a second. Because today’s script, ironically, had a similar problem to yesterday’s House of the Dragon season premiere. Setup. Lots and lots of setup.

How much setup?

Let’s put it this way. We don’t even discuss the 3-Ring Robbery until page 50! Normally, you want to hit that around page 15. At the latest, page 30 (end of the first Act for a 120 page script).

But this script had 30 characters it needed to set up. When you have that many characters, it takes time. Let this be a warning to all of you with high character counts. It takes time to set up all those characters. And unless you’re a master at setting up characters, whereby every one of them is set up in some entertaining way, then most of those character intros are going to feel like setup (aka, boring). They’re not going to be entertaining for us to read or watch.

Which is a shame because I think this could be a good movie if they got everything moving along quicker.

It is said that the error of the spec writer is that he moves everything along too fast – because he’s trying to keep bored readers from closing his script. But the error of the writer whose feature is being made, like this one, is that he moves everything along too slowly.

Why keep the plot moving when you know people are stuck in the theater watching it regardless of whether the story’s fast or not? Also, there’s hubris when you’re talking about a writer-director with Fukunaga’s success. You start to believe your shit smells like Lysol and you don’t think you’re beholden to the classic rules of storytelling. “I’m going to take my time because I’m a genius.”

That gets you in trouble every single time. Never underestimate how quickly audiences can get bored. And Fukunaga is testing that with his, ‘wait until page 50 for the inciting incident’ gamble.

Things DO get exciting after that point. We’re building suspense before the big night. So we’re invested then. And, of course, the 3-pronged robbery itself is fun. The question is, will people mentally check out before that arrives?

Fukunaga would probably say, “You know what Carson? F&^k off. I’m making a cool movie here.” Which I get. This *IS* a cool movie. And he’s obviously tapping into the way movies used to be made. This is a 70s/90s crime action cop thriller. It’s going to look really cool.

I just get annoyed when writers inflate their first acts to ridiculous sizes because they’re shooting themselves in the foot. You could have something so much better if you picked up the pace.

This script does not have to be 127 pages. But Fukunaga probably looked at the running time of Heat (2 hours and 50 minutes!) and said, “I’m going to do exactly what they did.”

By the way, quick funny Heat trivia: Al Pacino’s cop character in the movie is a coke-addict but they decided, after they shot the film, to cut that part of his character out. The problem was, Pacino’s entire persona was created as this coked-up insane cop. So anybody watching the movie is flat out confused why this cop is acting insane the whole movie for no reason!

After watching that last Acolyte episode, I have to have some consistent standards in the way I rate these things. That got a ‘wasn’t for me’ and this is so much better written than that. So it’s a ‘worth the read.’ It just needs to get its act together quicker!

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

What I learned: For a character’s dialogue, use the name they are called most often by everyone else. So if your character’s name is Eddie Boyle, and everybody calls him “Boyle,” don’t use “EDDIE” for his dialogue blocks. It’s confusing to the reader. This is why all of Eddie’s dialogue in this script is denoted by his last name, “BOYLE,” yet all of Ray Butler’s dialogue is denoted by his first name, “RAY.” Cause those are the names everybody calls them in the script. It can get confusing if nobody ever calls Boyle “Eddie,” yet all his dialogue blocks start as “EDDIE.” We’re like, “Who’s Eddie? Nobody ever says “Eddie” so who could he be?” And if you think we’re going to magically remember all first and last names that you introduce and therefore always be clear about who’s who, then you have never read a 128 page script with 30+ characters in it before.

What I learned 2: (MAJOR spoiler – don’t read if you plan to see the movie) If you want to attract those big movie stars who also consider themselves “serious” actors to your script (guys like Tom Hardy, Denzel Washington – not guys like Tom Cruise or Will Smith), kill them off in the end. Serious actors LOOOOOVE dying at the end of movies. I can almost guarantee that the second Tom Hardy read that Boyle died, he was in.

And a review of House of the Dragon!

I was watching The Critical Drinker talk about The Acolyte yesterday. By the way, it’s impossible to trust these guys anymore. They make SO MUCH MONEY from trashing Star Wars that it’s in their best interest to trash it whether it’s good or not.

But, anyway, he was asked what he would do if he ran Lucasfilm. He said the first thing he would do is fire everyone. Get rid of the rot. As over-reactionary as that sounded, he’s probably right. A lot of the people in Lucasfilm right now aren’t focused on the most important thing for Star Wars – which is to make the best Star Wars stories possible.

I think that most of them do care about good stories. But to varying degrees, they’re also focused on things like diversity and using stories to promote alternative lifestyle choices. Which is noble. But what people in Hollywood constantly forget for some reason is that – THIS STUFF IS HARD.

It’s really really really hard to write a good story. REALLY HARD. The more I do this, the more I realize just how difficult writing something good is. And if your focus isn’t 1000% committed to that, and that alone, you’re probably going to fail.

I don’t think Acolyte is that bad. The last episode is actually pretty well-structured. It’s just that it’s constructed within a flashback that you don’t need. So the whole episode feels unimportant.

But I do think that Leslye Headland and, to a certain extent, Kathleen Kennedy (since she greenlit this show so vociferously) are more committed to the overall message behind the show than they are writing the best story possible. And because they’re focused on that, they’ve written a show that doesn’t attract male viewers and, according to a lot of the data, isn’t attracting straight female viewers either. So who’s left to watch the show?

Which is why I think Critical Drinker is right. You can’t have this message-first thinking if you want to write good Star Wars movies. You just can’t. It’s hard enough to write something good WHEN THERE ARE NO RESTRICTIONS. So, yes, you probably need to fire everyone. Even Dave Filoni. I know everybody loves him. But I think we’ve all realized at this point that his talents are relegated to animation. Not live-action.

But what then? We’ve fired everyone? What next?

I actually don’t think who you hire to replace Kennedy is a big deal. As long as they’re someone whose only goal is to make good Star Wars movies, that’s what matters. Because, then, every decision they make will be motivated by that directive. That alone will result in better movies and shows than have been made under this regime.

But here’s the golden ticket. Here is what’s going to lead to the success of Star Wars going forward. You need a great new trilogy. None of these one-offs that are floating around, and then, if they work, maybe we do more. That’s mostly how the last trilogy was made.

Instead, you bring in the top 50 writers in Hollywood and you have them all pitch their next Star Wars trilogy. You then hire the writers of the five best pitches. You tell them, this is going to be a Battle Royale. Over the next 2-3 years, you will develop all five projects individually. At the end of 3 years, whoever’s project rises to the top, that’s the trilogy we go with.

Now you may say, “Do you really think A-list screenwriters are going to dedicate themselves to a 3 year development process where it’s not even guaranteed that their movie will be made?” Yes, you know why? Cause you’re going to pay all of them 5 million dollars each. Trust me. They’ll do it. And you can do that because you’re Lucasfilm.

The reason paying 25 million bucks to write one great trilogy is financially smart is because a good Star Wars movie can make 25 million dollars in a third of a day at the box office. So you’ll get that money back and a lot more.

The issue with all these Star Wars projects is that you announce them 3 years ahead of time and then, whatever script you come up with, even if it’s bad, is what you’re stuck with. This eliminates that problem. Not only are you not stuck with a bad script, but you get 5 choices.

This is the way.

It is the only way. Because The Acolyte is causing massive damage to the Star Wars brand. It is trending for all the wrong reasons. Screenwriting is here to save the day if you let it. Will you let it, Star Wars? Or are you going to put your head in the sand and pretend like none of this is happening?

There’s been a lot of talk about bad Star Wars writing lately.

But people say that and 99% of them have no idea what it means. They vaguely point out that the “dialogue” is bad and that’s their definition of “bad writing.”

So a good way to create context around “good” and “bad” writing is to show what good writing looks like. And to understand why it’s good.

That’s the attitude I had going into tonight’s viewing of House of the Dragon, Season 2, Episode 1.

I wanted to be able to point to something that definitively conveyed good writing. Was I able to find it? I’ll tell you in a sec.

Most of my viewing experience of the premiere had me trying to remember who was who and how everyone was related. What makes it tricky is that when I see blond-haired people, I expect them to all be one family. And when I see brunettes, I expect them to all be one family. But the brunette kids in this show are members of blond-haired Rhaenyra’s clan and the blond kids are Queen Alicent’s. Or, at least, they’re part of her kingdom.

So that was confusing. But anyway, writer Ryan Condal took a huge gamble this episode. The entire episode is setup and exposition. We’ve got a lot of people in small rooms (sometimes big ones) talking about the upcoming war between the two kingdoms.

As I was watching it, I was thinking, “Come on guys. You need to give me a scene that I can point to and say, “This is clearly better than the writing in The Acolyte.” But I wasn’t getting it.

There was the hint of a good scene early in the episode when the new king flirts with a “Joe Pesci in Goodfellas Do I Make You Laugh” moment. He nearly makes one of his cabinet members embarrassingly take his young child for a pony ride during the meeting. But they stop before it happens. I don’t know why. I think it’s because this new king isn’t Joffrey. He’s supposed to be kind of good.

Which leads to my first complaint about the show, which is that there’s nobody who’s bad!!! This is the exact mistake Star Wars has made. Every character lives in the middle now. They’re all “gray” rather than good or evil.

But Star Wars flourished when it was clear who was good and who was evil. Its downfall is connected, in a lot of ways, to everyone being gray. The audience loves to root for the good guy and against the bad guy. That’s what takes us on that roller coaster of emotions that all good stories achieve. If our emotions always live in that middle area, we’re never really feeling anything.

I was getting more and more frustrated about this as the episode went on. But then, as those of you who saw it know, we got that whopper of an ending. Believe you me, this was a calculated move by Condal. He knew he could not write one hour of exposition and setup unless he gave us the ending of all endings. Which is exactly what he did.

(Spoiler) If you haven’t seen it, Prince Daemon hires two dumb assassins to kill the 18 year old heir to the throne. These two idiots infiltrate the castle and get to the sleeping quarters. But there’s no heir there. There are, however, two young children sleeping, one a boy, and therefore the 4th heir. The killers decide that one of them will do. But since they’re young, they don’t know who the girl is and who the boy is. So they demand the mother tell them. The mother then must choose who to save basically (she can lie if she wants). A true Sophie’s Choice.

And unlike in other shows, nobody comes at the last second to thwart their plan. A 4 year old kid gets his head cut off. Luckily we only hear noises. But they’re not pleasant!

By the way, they use a clever little writing trick here. They prep the audience for something they’re okay with. Killing this 18 year old dude isn’t going to move the “grossed out” needle. So we feel safe in a way.

Then, when we get to the room and we see the kids, we realize this is waaaaayyyy worse. And that’s when we internally say to ourselves, ‘Nooooooooo. They’re not really going to do that. Noooooooooo. No no no no no way.’ If Condal had prepped us for this moment, we would’ve been more ready. It hits us hard specifically because he waited to spring that on us at the last second.

So, I’m on board! They did it. And even though I didn’t get my scene that I wanted to use to demonstrate good writing, I got something close – a writer who clearly understood how much exposition he had to pack into the first episode, and what he would have to offer the audience in order for them to excuse that exposition.

Can’t wait til next week! :)

We are about 5 weeks away from the first ever MEGA-SHOWDOWN (I will start accepting submissions Saturday, June 29th — I’ll keep you updated on how to do that with numerous posts here on the site. So start checking in 2 weeks!).

If you haven’t hung out here in a while, we’ve spent this entire year writing a screenplay. We are in the rewrite process, belting out 3 rewritten pages a day for 6 days of the week, giving us a total of 18 rewritten pages per week.  The 2-Week Mega Showdown will be the culmination of all that hard work. So keep rewriting those scripts. I don’t care how hard it is. DO IT!

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
Week 13 – Moment of Death
Week 14 – The Climax
Week 15 – The End!
Week 16 – Rewrite Prep 1
Week 17 – Rewrite Prep 2
Week 18 – Rewrite Week 1
Week 19 – Rewrite Week 2
Week 20 – Rewrite Week 3
Week 21 – Rewrite Week 4

Today, we’re going to approach rewriting a little differently. Well, actually, it’s going to be Star Wars related so… maybe it won’t be so different. :)

When it comes to rewriting a script, the process can be overwhelming. There are so many things that need to be upgraded that you’re not sure where to start. And general instructions on how to rewrite a script only give you some guidance, since every script is unique and therefore has its own individual issues.

Because Star Wars is on the brain this week, I thought I’d take a look back at The Phantom Menace, a script that was never rewritten. The reason for that is that George Lucas hates writing so he notoriously wrote only one draft of the screenplay

I see this as a fun experiment: What if George Lucas HAD rewritten The Phantom Menace? What improvements might he have made? And what can we learn from those improvements that can help us rewrite our own scripts?

The first scene of The Phantom Menace is a great example of first draft writing. In it, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jin head to a trade ship orbiting the planet of Naboo to discuss a trade dispute. One thing that’s very obvious is that there’s no sense of detail to this Trade ship. The rooms are all generic. There’s nobody around at all. It feels empty and vague.

This is what happens in first drafts. You don’t yet know what things look like so you latch on to the generic – a conference room here, a controller room there. Contrast this with the Death Star or Cloud City. In both those cases, you felt like every single foot of those structures had been mapped out by the writers. They felt specific and they felt real.

When you can’t fully visualize something, you will revert to writing basic bland scenes, which is exactly what we get in that Phantom Menace opening. There’s no sense of structure or detail in any moment. It literally feels like the writer is making things up as he goes along, which is the principle identifier of a first draft.

The next thing that Lucas needed to do for the good of the screenplay was eliminate Jar-Jar Binks. Jar-Jar is a character you start with in your first draft. He’s not a character who should make it to the final draft. You figure out, with each successive draft, that the character isn’t working. It always feels like a battle when you have to write a scene with him in it.  It’s hard to write dialogue for him.  You’re always fighting with the character to make him work.

That’s the screenwriting gods telling you, you have to get rid of that character. So why didn’t he? Well, the character was tied to some major plot points in the screenplay which was this race of amphibious aliens who would be needed to fight the Trade Federation in the climactic battle.

This is what separates good writers from bad ones. Good writers accept when something isn’t working and are willing to tear down everything associated with it, even if that’s a big chunk of the screenplay. Bad screenwriters are often lazy. They see that as a bunch of work. So they instead double-down on their mistakes, putting as much lipstick on the pig as possible in the hopes that, at a certain point, it becomes pretty.

Some of you may say, “But you eventually have to commit to what you have.”

Well, Jar-Jar Binks was so goofy that his tone never matched up with the rest of the characters. Everybody else was playing to the 10-40 demographic. Jar-Jar was playing to the 2-4 demographic. Therefore, every single scene he was in, he was ruining. That’s why it’s so important, if a character isn’t working, to get rid of him. Or massively change him.

As far as how to know if a character needs to go? You know. If you’re being honest with yourself, you know. The only reason you’re holding on is for emotional reasons. You put all of this effort into it and created this character. You don’t want to kill them. But you have to.

This should not have been a hard decision for Lucas. Jar-Jar was not a main character. That’s when rewrites get REALLY HARD: when main characters don’t work. This was just an ancillary character. Either get rid of him or completely reimagine him.

Another common thing that happens in first drafts is we just sort of go where we want to go and we don’t think much about how smooth it is or if there’s enough logic to it. We’re not concerned about that in the first draft.

But in the rewrites, you have to smooth all that stuff out. The Phantom Menace was a total mess in terms of the journey. We go to this planet. We find out they’re in trouble. We try to head back to the main planet, Coruscant, we get stuck on Tatooine, we have to partake in a race, we finally go to Coruscant, we partake in a Senate hearing. We go all the way back to where we started. We fight in a battle.  It’s a mess.

Compare that to Star Wars, which was so elegant. We try to go to Alderran to deliver R2-D2’s message. Alderran has been blown up by the Death Star, which sucks them in. They escape the Death Star and head to the secret Rebel Base, where the final battle happens.  Imagine if Star Wars ended where it started, on Tatooine.  It would’ve been a mess.

Always look to smooth the journey over. If you can connect the dots a little more elegantly, a little more effortlessly, your story is going to feel whole. It’s not going to feel random and disjointed, which is exactly how so many first drafts read.

So, how could we have fixed this? I would say that one planet had to go. Probably Coruscant. Coruscant was boring. It was all political gobbledygook that didn’t make a lot of sense. You could’ve waited to introduce all the Jedi Temple stuff in the second movie, Attack of the Clones.

And I know some of you are gasping right now but remember, the original draft of Star Wars included the Emperor and the “wookie” planet of Endor and Yoda along with his planet. Lucas eventually realized (or was convinced by actual screenwriters) that he couldn’t keep all that stuff in a single movie. He had to push it off to other movies.

You could’ve brought relevant characters who were on Coruscant to Tatooine. It would’ve been difficult but that’s what rewriting is. It’s figuring stuff like that out. The Phantom Menace’s narrative was always messy. It needed simplifying.

One of the easiest first-draft mistakes that could’ve been fixed in The Phantom Menace was the Queen Amidala/Handmaiden issue. If you don’t remember, Queen Amidala sends her “handmaiden” along with Qui-Gon’s clan and, for the rest of the movie, we’re supposed to not know that the handmaiden is Queen Amidala. We get the big “reveal” at the end before the Naboo battle when the handmaiden reveals who she truly is.

The moment had so little impact, even Liam Neeson broke character to roll his eyes at this reveal since he knew that the audience already figured it out 2 hours ago.

This is what we do in the first act, guys. We write stuff that doesn’t make a lot of sense. And our job is not to hold onto that stuff. It’s to get rid of it. It’s to fix it.  It’s to improve it.  Just have the queen tell Qui-Gon that she’s coming with them and they all agree that they tell everyone they meet that she’s a handmaiden. Problem solved.

But let’s get real now. The Phantom Menace made a critical error that George Lucas couldn’t write himself out of if he had a 100 drafts. Anakin Skywalker didn’t work. He was too young. We saw that in the ridiculous scenes where they try and have him flirt with the queen. When your most memorable line is “Wheeeeeee,” that character isn’t working.

So, what could they have done here? Well, I know that Lucas was sort of locked age-wise in a couple of directions. But he should’ve figured out a way to make Anakin 12. At 12 years old, you’re in “Stand By Me” age territory where you can deal with some deeper stuff and it not feel stupid.

Making Anakin just a little bit more sophisticated would’ve made him easier to root for. Easier to like. Easier to identify with. That movie was just destroyed by how young the character was. Seeing him win a 300 mile an hour race? The kid had the dexterity of a handicapped sea lion.

That may seem like a nitpick but you should ALWAYS be thinking about age in your rewrites. You are a different person at 25 compared to 18. You are a different person at 35 compared to 25. You have different responsibilities. You’re more established in your career. You’re usually married as opposed to in a relationship. Your money situation is different. All that stuff changes people so you want to be asking yourself if an age-change would improve your characters.

There are many more things I could get into (“Now that’s podracing!”) but you get the idea. The rewrite is where you get rid of problematic story elements and you smooth out everything else.

Just one more week of rewrites and then we start our polishing!

Rumors swirled online all week that this would be the episode to end Star Wars. Yoda doing weird dances? The Force designed by women? A witch’s brew?

Genre: Science-Fiction Adventure
Premise: We head back in time 16 years when twins Osha and Mae were being raised by a coven of witches. But when the Jedi find out about this illegal activity, they come to retrieve the girls.
About: The writers of today’s episode are fairly inexperienced. Jasmyne Flournoy has never written a television episode or feature film in her life. Eileen Shim did write one episode for House of the Dragon (the show debuts this Sunday by the way!).
Writers Jasmyne Flournoy and Eileen Shim
Details: 42 minutes

I’ve tried my darndest to stay away from the online chatter of The Acolyte because I know it’s all about divisiveness and how there can’t be fire in space or something. None of that has any effect on anything AS LONG AS THE STORY IS GOOD. And, so far, the story is good.

However, despite my best efforts, I could not avoid hearing that today’s episode was going to create a firestorm. I mentally prepared myself. But I’m committed to judging this series on the story and the story alone.

And look, just to be clear – for the people who are saying this series is stupid and it’s making all these dumb choices. Dudes. Star Wars has always been a bit silly. Little teddy bears are responsible for defeating the Empire. You can’t slam Star Wars for being a little silly.

The only time I get mad in Star Wars is when things get sloppy and, as a result, the storytelling suffers. If you’re putting 100% in and you have some modicum of talent, which Leslye Headland does, you’re going to write some good Star Wars episodes.

Famous last words, right?

Here we go!

**Carson watches Episode 3 of The Acoylate.**

Osha and Mae are 9 years old in today’s episode. It’s 16 years in the past and they’ve both been found by a coven of witches. The two head witches, who are also married, argue extensively about how to raise the children.

There is a big ceremony in a couple of days called “The Ascension” which will officially make these two witches. There are going to be a few challenges that are force-related so they do their force exercises whenever they can fit them in.

But just as the ceremony gets started, four Jedi show up (including a Wookie Jedi!) saying what the witches are doing is illegal. They know the two girls are force-sensitive and want to give them the Jedi test. If they pass, they will come to Coruscant.

For this reason, their two mothers tell them to deliberately fail the tests. But while taking the test, Osha can’t help but be truthful. So she passes. Mae is so infuriated by this that she locks her sister in her room and starts a fire! Osha is barely able to escape, but all the other Jedi, including Mae, die in the fire. Osha then hops on the Jedi ship and heads back to the Jedi temple.

Today’s episode had a surprise treat in the credits. One of my favorite up-and-coming directors, Kogonada, directed the episode!

That was cool to see.

I did think the episode was well-directed, although Kogonada seems to have been restrained from adding too much of his own style.

But let’s talk about the writing.

As I always say, the third episode of a TV series is where the rubber meets the road. If it’s bad, your series is bad. If it’s good, you could have a show on your hands.

Unfortunately, the series decided to gamble and use episode 3 as a flashback episode.

Flashbacks are more evil than Sith themselves. Not because they don’t work. But because only a tiny percentage of screenwriters understand how to make them work.

CATEGORY 1
Most screenwriters believe that the audience will blindly want to see what happens in the past because of how it will add more context to the characters.

CATEGORY 2
Better screenwriters understand that audiences don’t like going backwards. Therefore, they have to add more than just character context. They have to add a story to the flashback.

CATEGORY 3
The best screenwriters understand that going backwards is a gigantic gamble. It is taking the story away from the present, where the audience wants to be. Therefore, if you’re going to do it – especially a flashback that’ll last an entire episode – it has to be a great story in and of itself. And if they can’t come up with that great story for their flashback, they don’t write the flashback.

Because they know how quickly viewers can tune out of a series. Which, by the way, is 10 times faster than it used to be, when there were only 50 shows on TV. Flashbacks are a “f*ck around and find out” gamble.

So, where do today’s writers fall?

To their credit, they knew enough to get to Category 2.

There IS a legit storyline to this flashback episode. We’ve got the goal – the ceremony, the stakes – they become official members of the coven if they pass, and the urgency – the ceremony takes place in a couple of days.

We then have the complication that throws everything into disarray – the Jedi show up and say they want the children for themselves.

That IS a story. The problem is, it’s only a mildly entertaining one. And this is what keeps decent writers from becoming great writers. Just creating an okay storyline so that you can give us more context about your characters isn’t going to move the needle.

Let me be clear about this. If you fumble in a present-day storyline, the audience will forgive you more than they will if you fumble in a flashback episode. Because when a flashback episode is weak, not only were we not entertained, but the story didn’t move forward at all.

Remember what we talked about last week. Headland had made the smart decision to use what TV does well to create her series: The Acolyte was an investigative mystery. You didn’t do that this week. You went back to the mistakes that all these other Star Wars shows have made which is to force movie-like storytelling onto the TV format.

Movie-like storytelling is built upon the concept that the viewer gets to experience the entire story NOW. If you take away the NOW part, we get movie-like storytelling without all the payoffs.

So does that mean all flashbacks suck? No. I actually did a feature consult recently where the script was about a famous director. And he used flashbacks throughout. The difference was, his flashback story was even better than the main story! So whenever we flashed back, I was excited. Cause I wanted to see what happened next in that story.

That’s the way you got to think of it. You can’t think of it as a second-banana storyline. Try to make it as good or even better than the main storyline and that way we’ll WANT to flash back.

On a personal level, I didn’t like today’s subject matter. I know some outlier Star Wars comic books have witches in them. But witches aren’t Star Wars. So when you put them on screen, you’re losing a LOT of your audience. Probably almost your entire male audience. So I don’t know why they would do that.

Read the room.

It can’t be all about you. “I want witches cause I like witches!” No. Ask yourself if the audience for the subject matter likes witches. If they don’t, you probably want to go in another direction.

I will say that Headland seems to understand the Jedi better than a lot of the previous Star Wars showrunners. I say that because this Jedi group is a cool group. They all feel like Jedi. They act like Jedi. They talk like Jedi. They basically saved this episode.

This episode isn’t nearly as bad as everyone is saying it is. Someone was telling me that they were going to announce that the force was “female” in this episode or something. None of that nonsense happened.

But they need to get their act together for Episode 4 next week.

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

What I learned: If you’ve got backstory you need the viewer to know, do the hard work and slip it into conversations. Show it through character actions. When Han Solo chirps at Luke in their first meeting at the cantina, saying, “And who’s going to fly it kid, you??” Luke says, “You bet I could, I’m not such a bad pilot myself.” That’s how you slip in backstory (that Luke is a pilot). You don’t have to do an entire episode on a coven for us to know Osha and Mae were once part of a coven.