This week started off on a bad note.
It: Chapter 2, a movie I once proclaimed had the potential to be the best movie of the year, turned out to be a big stinking bag of garbage. You know what kind of garbage I’m talking about. The kind where you clean out your fridge into the garbage bag but you still wait a few days before taking the bag out? Yeah, well It: 2 was SO BAD that if I were given the choice to either smell that bag for thirty minutes or sit through that 3 hour movie again, I would choose the bag.
However, then, like an angel coming down from the heavens, the Joker script arrived. How amazing was this script? It received a “double impressive!!!” I’ve given out four “double impressives” in the totality of Scriptshadow. What was interesting about reviewing these stories back to back is that I was directly able to contrast why one plunged and the other soared. Joker was great due to its utterly simple structure. It followed one man on a simple and clear journey. “It 2,” meanwhile, covered an endless number of characters, which sent the narrative in a million different directions, leaving us with a sprawling mess of a story. This, I proclaimed, is why you should always favor SIMPLE STORIES.
But there were a number of you who argued that there are lots of movies with multiple protagonists that are great. The first “It” had multiple characters and it did well. Then you have Avengers, Guardians, Fast and Furious, X-Men, Star Wars, Toy Story, Glass, Good Boys. It could be argued that Hollywood FAVORS the multiple-protagonist approach. Well hold on there, Sally. We still have John Wick, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Aladdin, and Shazam! to name a few of the big movies this year. But there is truth to the idea that more movies contain larger casts with sprawling stories. And that if you want to be a big-league writer – I’m talking one of these A-listers making 7 figures an assignment – you need to know how to write big sprawling complex scripts.
So let’s get the obvious out of the way. A script with a single hero is going to be easier to write. Period. If you have one hero, you only need to worry about one plot goal and one character transformation. Therefore you can focus all of your creative energy on making those perfect. That’s what Joker did. Arthur wanted to be a famous comedian. That’s his goal. His transformation revolved around an inability to connect with the world and the lengths he would go to make that connection. Boom. Perfect.
Once you move to a property like Avengers, you’re having to worry about that x 7. But let’s get something clear. Marvel is an enigma. It has two advantages nobody else has. It’s dealing with characters with 50+ years of history who the average person already knows. And they treat their films like TV shows, not movies. They’re connected. This means that by the time we get to an Avengers movie, we know everyone intimately. And that means the writers don’t have to spend precious time setting characters up or giving you important backstory, all of the things that can weigh a screenplay down. All they have to do is convey the plot clearly and occasionally check in to make sure you know what’s going on.
Bringing this back to today’s argument, you’ll never have that Marvel security blanket if you yourself write a multi-protagonist script. You’ll have to meticulously set everyone up, which will take seven times as long because you’ve got seven main characters instead of one. And then, once that’s over, you’ll have to set up what your characters are actually trying to do. And once that’s over, you have to bounce back and forth between each storyline in a way that keeps all the storylines going without us forgetting about or getting confused about what’s going on. You are also battling the juggernaut known as pacing. This is what destroyed It 2. Technically, we knew that each of the characters was trying to get their individual artifact. So there were clear character goals for everyone going into our second act. But each storyline was so similar and so monotonous that it began to feel like a relay race with the school’s slowest runners. Now it’s your turn to be see something scary. Now it’s your turn to see something scary. Now it’s your turn to see something scary. When I talk to people about that movie, that’s the section where they all say they checked out.
The problem that they run into and that you’ll run into when you try and write a big sprawling script, is that, inevitably, three or four of your characters won’t be that interesting. So now you’re stuck giving uninteresting characters full on scenes and it isn’t working because the characters are inherently flawed. Who cares about the fat kid turned hunk? Who cares about Eddie? Who cares about grown-up Beverly Marsh? She’s a dud. When you’re writing a single-hero story, you can put all of your time and effort into making that character the greatest most compelling most interesting character ever so that we’ll want to be around them every single second. This is how scripts like Nightcrawler get written.
HOWEVER, if you absolutely must write a big sprawling complex story with lots of characters, I have a few tips for you. First, use a MacGuffin. Create one thing that everybody is after. Greatest MacGuffin ever? The Ark of the Covenant. If you have a great MacGuffin, it ensures that the audience always knows what your characters are after. Whether it’s in minute 20 or minute 80, we know they’re still after that MacGuffin. And that makes up for one of the complex movie’s biggest weaknesses – its lack of focus. With a big clear MacGuffin, you can make your complex movie almost as focused as a John Wick.
Next – make sure the setup behind your characters’ motivations makes sense. The worst thing that can happen in a big sprawling movie is for the audience to start questioning why the characters are doing what they’re doing. This is what separates the great “It” from the terrible “It 2.” In the first movie, they’re kids who are STUCK IN THEIR TOWN when an evil clown starts hunting them. Think about that for a second. Kids can’t leave their homes. They are prisoners to their town until they’re old enough. This is why “It” worked so much better. Our characters had no choice but to fight the clown.
Contrast that with It:2 where the characters are all adults, and therefore can leave whenever they want. Now I know what a few of you are thinking. “No Carson. If they leave the town, they’ll die.” Says who? How do they know that? Where’s the proof? There isn’t any. The only reason you’re saying that is because a character said it. And the only reason a character said it is because the writer realized they had to come up with a reason why these people didn’t just hightail it out of here. So MAYBE if they try and leave, they die. Maybe. Cause somehow Pennywise has that power. Maybe. — When you start forcing desperate shaky reasoning into your character’s mouths to cover up plot holes, I got news for you buddy. Your script is in major trouble. You want your logic and motivation built into the story’s foundation, like “It” had.
Finally, if at all possible, avoid fractionating your characters. JJ Abrams hasn’t talked about Rise of Skywalker much. But one of the things he made very clear was that all the characters were going to be on an adventure together this time. This is because JJ understands that the more you divide your characters up, the more potentially confusing and rambling your story gets, and the more likely you’re going to come up with a dud sub-plot, like Canto Bite. So here’s the rule. Keep all your characters together if possible. If you’re going to split them up, limit it to two groups. It’s still possible to come up with two awesome parallel plotlines in a single movie. However, if you decide to divide your big group into three or more sub-groups, you might as well call your local funeral home and ask them if you can get an early discount on a casket. It’s not that it can’t be done. And I’m not talking about splitting individuals up, which is often done during the climax of, say, a horror film. But if you’re writing one of these big sprawling movies with multiple plotlines and multiple groups of characters, the level of screenwriting expertise required to pull that off is higher than you can imagine.
This is why I tell every aspiring screenwriter: Don’t write The Godfather before you’ve proven you can write Rocky. Don’t write The Departed before you’ve proven you can write Taken. Don’t write Inception before you’ve proven you can write The Terminator. And don’t write The Dark Knight before you’ve proven you can write “Joker.”
Yo, do you have a logline that isn’t working? Are those queries going out unanswered? Try out my logline service. It’s 25 bucks for a 1-10 rating, 150 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. I also have a deluxe service for 40 dollars that allows for unlimited e-mails back and forth where we tweak the logline until you’re satisfied. I consult on everything screenwriting related (first page, first ten pages, first act, outlines, and of course, full scripts). So if you’re interested in getting some quality feedback, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “CONSULTATION” and I’ll get back to you right away!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: An inexperienced Coast Guard Captain is put to the test when a simple submarine drug bust nets her one of the most notorious drug lords in the world.
About: This script finished low on last year’s Black List and comes from newbie writer Alex Sohn, who adapted the story from a Men’s Journal article titled, “DRUG WAR ON THE HIGH SEAS: BEHIND THE COAST GUARD’S BILLION-DOLLAR BUSTS.”
Writers: Alex Sohn (based on the aforementioned article by Hunter Atkins)
Details: 116 pages
Hey, look at me. Look at me. I am the captain now.
Three cheers to any script that inspires you to say that out loud to your nearby confused pet. What’s happening right now? Are we really going to get two IMPRESSIVES in a row? What is this, 2010, when I loved anything that had time travel or a talking animal in it? Okay, I still love time travel and talking animals (has there ever been a script with time travel AND talking animals??). But usually when you get down to the Black List basement, you find a bunch of clingers (“clingers” – adjective – definition: screenplays desperately holding onto the bottom of the Black List despite displaying no inherent skill other than knowing how to use Final Draft).
I knew right away that this script had a chance from its logline: “An inexperienced Coast Guard Captain…”. Had the word “inexperienced” not been here, I wouldn’t have opened the script. Why? Because that’s the whole movie right there. That’s where you get your main source of conflict. And identifying a source of conflict that’s going to last you an entire movie is one of the keys to writing a great script. If this is just a regular captain who gets stuck in this situation – or worse, a well-equipped captain – well then we’re pretty confident that they’re going to figure it out. People watch movies to find out what happens next. If you already know what happens next, there’s no reason to watch the movie.
26 year old Andi Mitchell is an Operations Commander on a Coast Guard ship. After the ship picks up four members of a drug boat carrying 400 kilos of cocaine, Andi’s captain delivers her some bad news. A hurricane is coming down the pike and all Coast Guard ships will be needed for rescue. However, they can’t rescue anyone with 4 drug dealers on their boat. So they’re shipping in a first generation iPhone type Coast Guard ship to hold the passengers until they clear extradition.
In other words, while the Coast Guard gets to go off into the hurricane and be all heroic, Andi has to babysit a bunch of tired drug runners. So Andi is given a ragtag B-crew of 10 men and told to hang tight. Not long after the Coast Guard leaves, however, Andi spots a pipe sticking out of the water. It’s a narco sub. Once the sub surfaces, her and her men board it and capture a mysterious man who just happens to be carrying a million dollars with him.
Not long after they bring the man onboard, their radar picks up a dot. A boat coming towards them. Then a second dot. Then five dots. Then ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Andi decides very quickly that THEY NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE. They redline the ancient boat but the drug boats are gaining. After a chat with the Coast Guard, Andi learns what all the hubbub’s about. They’ve just picked up Salvador Morales, the biggest drug lord in Guatemala.
Out of nowhere, their boat shuts off. It’s too old to handle this Miami Vice sh&%. And with it goes the radio. Not only are they cornered, but they’ve got no way to tell anyone that they’re cornered. Andi charges down to Morales to find out what’s going on. He informs her that these men are not his friends. They’re his enemies. And they’re going to do anything to capture him alive. And if that fails? They’ll just blow up the ship. It will be up to the inexperienced Andi to make sure that doesn’t happen.
When I read a script, I have to have at least one scene I know is going to play like gangbusters in the trailer, and one unforgettable set piece that’s going to play like gangbusters in the movie. “Coast Guard” aces this test. The trailer moment is when the dots start appearing on the radar. One, two, five, ten, twenty, thirty. I love that THAT’S when we realize who they just picked up. They’re not told at first. It’s those dots appearing. That’s when we know this is serious.
The set piece is when they realize they’re going to die unless they can call for help. And Andi gets the idea to swim to a small boat that they’ve managed to take out. Everyone on that ship is dead and they have a radio. So she swims there without being seen, gets on the boat, realizes one of the men is still barely alive, calls for help on the radio, only for the boat to be boarded while she’s on it, forcing her to hide under one of the bodies, and somehow, some way, gets off of the boat alive. A great tense 10 minute set piece.
There’s some fun character work as well. I’m all for big hidden character secrets that are revealed late. But if it’s a random secret, it won’t land. It has to connect with the story in some way. For example, if it turns out Andi accidentally killed her kid in a car crash a year ago – dead child reveal is a VERY COMMON reveal I read in scripts – that can be in any script because of how non-specific it is, and therefore it lands with a thud. But what we learn here is that Andi used to be a major drug addict and gang member. It works because the whole movie is her angrily wanting to take down every single drug runner. So when that reveal comes, we finally understand why.
KYSM. Know Your Subject Matter. I knew I was in good hands right away after reading this line. “They have to stay in international waters until their extradition clears. That could be days. Or weeks.” It might seem like a nothing-line to the casual reader. But I’ve read all the lazy writers who would write a script about the Coast Guard and have no idea what extradition is or how it works. That line gave me the confidence that the writer was on top of this world.
And guys, research isn’t just to placate readers like me. The more you know, the more plot avenues are available to you. Extradition creates a very unique plot situation here, which ends up getting them into trouble. They can’t leave international waters until the extradition clears. So they’re stuck here. Had the writer not known about extradition, then Andi can bring the criminals back to the U.S. and the movie’s over.
And finally, can I just say how great water is for a movie? It traps your characters, infusing your script with drama before you’ve even written anything. You just have to make sure when you write something on water that the execution is great, like it is here, since it’s really hard to shoot on water. There are men and women in Hollywood still scarred by the productions of Waterworld and Titanic. So make sure your script is killer.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whenever your script hits a lull (you can feel it as you’re reading it back to yourself), introduce a NEW TICKING TIME BOMB. This will create the script equivalent of a double shot of espresso. Here, we’d been in this standoff with the drug ships for 30-40 pages. It wasn’t getting boring. But the script definitely needed a spark. So what they did was they had one of the boat hands realize that the drug runners were waiting for the cover of nighttime. That’s when they were going to strike. This created an entirely new sense of urgency since they now needed to execute a plan before nightfall.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Can it be? Do we have ourselves a rare [x] impressive script? Or, oh my god, wait. Could this actually be BIGGER than impressive? Read today’s review to find out!
Genre: Comic Book/Drama
Premise: A comedian trying to make a name for himself in the 1980s finds himself inadvertently inspiring a movement to take down the rich.
About: When this project was first announced, it was met with collective skepticism. You’re going to create a second Joker in the DC universe? Won’t that be confusing? And while people were down for Joaquin Phoenix playing the Joker, they weren’t as sure about Hangover director, Todd Phillips, helming the flick. Cut to a year later and “Joker” is the leading contender for Best Movie of the Year and Best Actor of the Year. Just the other day, it won Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. Phillips teamed up with screenwriter Scott Silver to write the script. Silver is best known for writing 2010’s, “The Fighter.”
Writers: Todd Phillips & Scott Silver
Details: 120 pages
I was going to wait until this movie came out to review it. But it’s gotten so much love over the last couple of weeks that I couldn’t help myself. I had to read the script. It puts me in a unique position. Usually, when I read a script, the movie hasn’t even been made yet, much less shown to the public. This will be that rare exception where I’m reading something I know turned out great. Now despite Phillips saying this has nothing to do with the DC universe, there are a handful of story choices that tie this version of the Joker directly into the Batman mythology. So if you want to go into this fresh, you probably don’t want to read the summary. If you can’t help yourself, however, I’ll put a bolded spoiler tag around the big comic book-y spoiler. Okay, let’s get into it!
Here’s the first page:
This story takes place in its own universe. It has no connection to any of the DC films that have come before it.
We see it as a classic Warner Bros. movie. Gritty, intimate and oddly funny, the characters live in the real world and the stakes are personal.
Although it is never mentioned in the film, this story takes place in the past.
Let’s call it 1981.
It’s a troubled time. The crime rate in Gotham is at record highs. A garbage strike has crippled the city for the past six weeks. And the divide between the “haves” and the “have- nots” is palpable. Dreams are beyond reach, slipping into delusions.
40-something Arthur Fleck is living a rough life. He takes care of his ailing mother off his “Rent-A-Clown” salary. And both of them are on tons of expensive medication. Arthur’s most prominent medical condition is that he inadvertently laughs during serious moments. This makes it hard for him to connect with people because if someone, for example, tells him that their child just died, this will set off a raucous laughing fit from Arthur.
Meanwhile, Gotham is getting ugly. The trash collectors are on strike so there’s trash all over the city. And violence is skyrocketing. To the point where his co-worker gifts him a gun. “You gotta be able to protect yourself out there,” he tells him. Giving Arthur a gun turns out to be a bad idea. The next day, as Arthur does his clown schtick at a sick children’s hospital, his gun falls out of his pants mid-act. The horrifying incident gets him fired.
Arthur takes this as a sign to focus on what he really wants to do – which is become a comedian. But on the way home on the train, he’s harassed by some drunk Wall Street meanies. They push him and push him and push him until he finally pulls out the gun and shoots them all dead. He then runs out at the next stop, unknowingly beginning a movement. Kill the rich.
That night his mother, who used to work for Wayne Enterprises 30 years ago as a maid, hits him with a whammy. **spoiler** He’s the illegitimate son of Thomas Wayne (this is set up A LOT better than I was able to convey with limited space). **end spoiler** The next night he asks his lovely neighbor, Sophie – one of the few people who’s nice to him – if she’ll come see his act, which she agrees to. Arthur bombs horribly. It isn’t even that his jokes are bad. It’s that he doesn’t have any jokes. He just talks about random stuff.
Little does Arthur know that someone taped his act that night and sent it to Gotham’s number 1 talk show host, Murray Franklin. When they air Arthur’s act for Murray to make fun of, it gets so much attention that Murray asks Arthur on the show. Thrilled that the world is going to finally see his comedy act, Arthur meticulously prepares for his TV debut. Unfortunately, with both Gotham and Arthur’s mental state deteriorating rapidly, the person who appears on Murray’s show may not be the guy they saw on that tape. It may instead be… The Joker.
Can I just say that after the debacle that was yesterday’s sprawling nonsensical failure of a movie, It Chapter 2, how nice it was to get back to SIMPLE STORYTELLING. I’ll be honest, when I saw this trailer, I was afraid the script might be TOO SIMPLE. That they didn’t have enough story. But Silver and Phillips do an amazing job setting up 4 key characters for Arthur to interact with (his mom, Sophie, Murray, and one of his coworkers) and 4 main storylines (his murder of the Wall Streeters and it starting a Gotham movement, him trying to become Sophie’s boyfriend, his mom’s potential delusions with who he’s related to, and his desire to be a comedian).
One of the tricks with screenwriting is that if you know your characters well and you know your storylines well, you don’t need a whole lot else. You don’t need big twists. You don’t need asteroids heading towards earth. You can just cycle in and out of those storylines because they’re all compelling. One scene with mom, one with stand-up, one with Sophie, back to a scene with mom. Sometimes you’ll mix two together, like when he brings Sophie to his stand-up. And they were all good. We cared. We wanted, even though we knew the odds were a million to one, for him to get Sophie. We wanted to know if his mom’s story **spoiler** about Thomas Wayne was true **end spoiler**. We were horrified yet captivated whenever he practiced his comedy because he’s so weird and we know the chances of his success are less than 1%. And we loved that this tiny character piece actually connected Arthur to Gotham in a much larger way in that people started dressing as clowns and attacking the rich, making everything feel bigger, feel like it mattered.
And Arthur himself was so perfectly constructed. One of the hardest things about screenwriting is creating clear compelling characters. Often times a writer can create a crystal clear character, but they’re boring. Other times a writer can create a weird character with five different mannerisms and mental conditions and issues, but they’re unclear. And when a writer does get those two things right, you still have to give us a character we can root for, which is a challenge whenever you’re writing someone complex. It’s hard to combine all three of these things into a single character but Silver and Phillips did it. They immediately explain what Arthur’s condition is – that he laughs when he’s not supposed to. They make it very clear what his goal is – to become a famous comedian. And they do an amazing job building up sympathy for him right away. He gets beat up by a bunch of kids early on. And in a few subsequent scenes, everyone from his co-workers to his own mother put him down (“You want to be a comedian?” “Yes.” “But don’t you have to be funny to be a comedian?”). So we’re instantly rooting for this guy. Every aspiring screenwriter who wants to create a compelling main character needs to read this script.
And really that mastery of character extends to the story itself. There’s so much assuredness on the page of what they’re trying to do. Looking back at that great first trailer for Joker after reading the script, I can totally see why it’s so good. It’s because these guys knew EXACTLY what kind of movie they wanted to make. There’s no guessing here. That was the problem with yesterday’s script. You could see the writer and director trying to work out their story on the page. There’s so much indecision, from the jumping around in time to the never-ending short horror films to the story’s confusing rules (they remember their town but they also, um, don’t remember it?) to the clumsy execution of the never-ending climax. Joker is the antithesis of all of that. It is the culmination of simplicity and clarity. Unlike yesterday, where I was constantly asking, “Why are we in this room right now?” There’s never a moment like that in Joker. You always know where you are and why you’re there.
I honestly don’t know if I have a complaint about this script. I suppose if you’re a DC Comics geek, there are a couple of choices that will get you hot and bothered. But Phillips himself says this isn’t directly connected to the Batman mythology so I say have fun with it. I know I did.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[xx] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: What I was most impressed by with this script is how the writers used some of the simplest most time-tested devices to get us to care. For example, having bullies beat up Arthur early on immediately puts us on his side. And here’s another technique you can use that’s a huge cheat but, for whatever reason, nobody picks up on on how much you’re cheating. Early on, put your character in a therapy session. What this does is it allows someone to ask your hero very personal questions and therefore we get to know him intimately quickly. Here, it’s not a therapist, it’s a social worker. But it’s the same device. And in a movie where it could be confusing to understand what makes this odd man tick, that scene got us into his head and helped us understand him immediately. This script is such a huge win for the power of simple time-tested storytelling techniques. I’m thrilled that it’s going to be celebrated all the way until March, when it will take home all the awards.
What I learned 2: Never write a character who’s “crazy.” Crazy is too general. It is undefined. Your character will be a huge failure if you try to write “crazy.” Arthur is just a guy who wants to connect with the world and doesn’t know how. Phillips and Silver also give him a laughing condition that adds another layer of complexity to the character. But that’s it. That’s all that’s going on here. And that’s a huge reason why this character works so well.
Genre: Horror
Premise: The “Losers Club” comes back to their home town of Derry 27 years later to destroy the evil presence known as Pennywise, who’s returned to feast on more children.
About: It Chapter 1 became the biggest horror movie of all time, grossing 123 million domestically in its first weekend and topping off with 700 million worldwide. So the industry was a little surprised when they saw a number south of 100 million this weekend for the sequel (it grossed 91 million). It’s still a big success. But not as much of a success as everyone was hoping for. Might Carson know what the problem was? I think he might. Warner Brother’s tip-top horror scribe, Gary Dauberman, who writes all the Conjuring movies, came back to pen the It sequel.
Writer: Gary Dauberman
Details: 169 minutes
Warner Brothers is busy trying to figure out why the sequel to their monster horror hit, “It,” did 30 million less in its opening weekend than the first film. They don’t need to look far. Just type this address into your search bar: “Scriptshadow.” Because I’m about to tell them exactly what went wrong. Are you ready, WB?
No Chris Pratt.
Paying Chris Pratt 30 million dollars to play Ben Hanscom would’ve gotten you an extra 40-50 million at the box office this weekend. At the very least, it would’ve gotten you even with the last film. Instead we got someone named Jay Ryan who was the acting equivalent of an old bar of soap.
No Chris Pratt was symbolic of a bigger problem here – which was that the casting stunk. There wasn’t a single grown-up character who worked outside of Bill Hader’s Richie Tozier. The actor who played the guy who stayed behind, Mike Hanlon, was criminally dull. Whenever he spoke, I took a nap. The guy who played Eddie was only compelling in that he so closely resembled the actor who played him as a child. It was eerie. Jessica Chastain was supposed to be a slam dunk but ended up being a 20 foot jumper in a game that got out of hand in the 2nd quarter. James McAvoy brought an element of professionalism to these Elizabeth Mestnik Acting Studio rejects, but even he’s fairly vanilla here.
That left Bill Hader to do all the heavy lifting and despite trying his best, he couldn’t do it. “It” is a story more dependent on its characters and their camaraderie than 99% of the movies out there. So if the actors blow it, the movie’s doomed. And the actors blew it. Well, the director and casting director blew it cause they hired nobodies. This is a movie that needed star power. Or, at the very least, it needed proven character actors who we’ve seen before. Here are some names people were throwing out after the first film: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Adam Scott, Mike White, Edward Norton, DJ Qualls. You can’t just throw Dipsy Dan whose last TV appearance was getting slimed on Nickelodeon 30 years ago and expect audiences to embrace it. I’m baffled by these choices. I’d go so far as to call it the biggest bungling of a cast in history.
Despite this gigantic mistake, the movie had a tiny chance to crawl back into respectability if the script was good.
Buuuuut. If you saw It: Chapter 2, you know that that script was very very very not good.
The only part of the script that possessed any structure whatsoever was the first act. And the only reason is because it was so clear what needed to happen. They had to get everyone to Derry. But once they got there, I don’t know if the writer started doing shrooms or everyone on the crew was encouraged to journal their ideas each morning and whichever entry caught director Andy Muschietti’s eye got filmed. But there were literally two and a half good scenes in the second and third acts. Which means there were over 2 hours of awful scenes. The first good scene was Jessica Chastain visiting the old woman. The second good scene was the Pennywise scene underneath the bleachers. And the half was Bill Hader taking on Paul Bunyun.
Outside of that, it was all BAAAAAAD. Really really bad messy uninspired nonsensical jibberish. To the point where I was actually angry with the director.
Let me give you some insight into screenwriting here. 99 times out of 100, when a movie is in that 2 hours and 45 minutes to 3 hour length? It represents a writer and director who have lost track of their story. They don’t know how to focus things because they don’t understand what their story is about. When you don’t understand what your story is about, you throw everything on the screen and pray that the audience does the work for you. “Maybe they’ll figure it out,” you think, even though they never do (by the way, I’m hearing Star Wars Episode 9 is going to be the same length as It: 2 — not encouraging).
This was honestly 20 horror movie shorts that I’m guessing were decided on long before they wrote the script, and the writer was given the directive to stitch them together in some desperate manner that made sense. Well, Operation FAILURE.
I sensed the script was in trouble almost immediately. Actually, I knew it was in trouble in the very first scene. Pennywise eats kids, right? That’s his thing. So why does the teaser have him killing a man? You’ve violated the main rule of your universe in the very first scene. Then you had the the kids flashbacks. Sure, they helped remind us who was who. But this movie had zero momentum. And you were choking the little momentum it had every time you flashed backwards. DON’T FLASH BACK PEOPLE! FLASHBACKS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS BAD.
The script really went into the tank when everyone bizarrely agreed to go off on their own to find their “unique artifact.” It wasn’t clear why they needed to be alone. It would’ve been a lot safer had they worked together. But NOPE – classic beginner horror screenwriter logic – shaky motivation to get the characters alone so we can have some scares.
I wish I had something good to say about this movie but I don’t have respect for films where they don’t try with the script. All they seemed to care about was the production. And make no mistake, it’s going to cost them. We don’t live in a world anymore where studios can con consumers for 3 to 4 weeks before it’s established that a movie’s bad. The consumer knows instantly now. And there’s no question had the script been better, people would’ve come out of those advanced screenings excited, which would’ve built more buzz, and you would have charged into this weekend instead of stumbled.
I finally caught another horror movie this weekend – Ma – and this film suffered from the exact same problem as It 2. Where you can really see the contrast between what these movies could’ve been and what they were is by watching their trailers. If you watched that first It: 2 trailer, it was EXTREMELY FOCUSED. It was a single scene of Jessica Chastain going to meet a creepy old woman. Yet the movie was nothing like that. It was all freaking over the place. Same thing with Ma. When you watched that trailer, it looked like a group of high school kids who take a wrong turn and get stuck in this woman’s house partying all night, and then that woman goes crazy on them. But the movie was nothing like that. They go to her house, then they go back to school, then they go to the house again the next weekend, then back to school, then they come back there and party sometimes. But sometimes they don’t…
What do I tell you guys? What is one of the precious Three Commandments in screenwriting. URGENCY. If you want instant focus? Add urgency! A huge reason why both these movies rambled was because everyone had all the time in the world! When you can just wander around town looking for scary clowns, of course things are going to get boring! You need a goal and you need that goal to come with a ticking clock. Especially when it comes to horror, which thrives on tight timelines. Just like Friday’s Amateur “worth the read” script, Grisly. They’re not going to be fighting this bear in three weeks. If they were, we would’ve checked out. They’re fighting it tonight. And only one side is getting out alive.
Man, where do we go from here? I think they’re going to try and make more sequels to this movie. But I hope not. You had such a great memory with the original film. This already taints it. I would leave this property be.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s one of the most basic components of a strong story: Focus. And yet time and time again, screenwriters abandon it. I don’t understand. Start with a goal. Add a little urgency. Make sure the stakes are high and clear. Your script will be focused. Start with 7 people. Have them sort of remember their childhood but sort of not. Tell them they have to each get an artifact because the guy who stayed home did a lot of studying and he thinks that’s important, spend the next 2 hours writing disconnected short horror films, spend an hour wandering around a cave – that’s not focus. And that’s why this movie was a disaster.
Might we have another highly reviewed amateur script on Scriptshadow? Read today’s review to find out!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: Trapped in a secluded cabin, a hunter and his daughter fend off attacks from a relentless grizzly bear hell-bent on vengeance for the death of its cub at their hands.
Why You Should Read: I vividly remember the sensation of being stalked by a black bear during one summer visit to the Sierras… Well, stalked is a bit strong – it passed me within grabbing distance. Still, the feeling of power in its gait, the potential explosion of ferocity if it so pleased was unsettling and stuck with me ever since.
Writer: Walon Costello
Details: 84 pages (just to be clear, that this is an UPDATED draft from last week. Walon addressed some of your notes)
I’ve got one question.
Did Walon write this script in one day?
Because Wednesday I reviewed a nature thriller and all I talked about was how a lack of character development hurt the script. I read a nature thriller today and… IT’S ALL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. So either Walon read my complaints and wrote this in a day, or he has the ability to freeze time so that he can take as long as he wants to write a script.
I bet you’re wondering what all that character development did. Would it prove that I was right? Or would it turn out that all character development does is slow down a script to an unbearable crawl? Read on to find out!
Our teaser opens with a deer being chased through the woods by something unseen. Then, just as it makes it to a clearing, it’s SMASHED INTO by a car, which goes careening off the road. The driver, a man, is instantly killed. The woman in the passenger seat is going to wish her death was that quick. Because seconds later, a little bear cub comes in and starts nibbling on her dead boyfriend. Then, seconds after that, a much bigger mama bear arrives. And this woman turns into her lunch.
Cut to a week later and Hank (40) along with his daughter, Zoe (20), are driving through those same woods. They make it to an old gas station, where the car from the teaser is being kept until someone can come along and trash it. It’s here where we learn that that car and the people who were in it are the reason Hank and Zoe are here. The woman is Hank’s drug addict ex-wife, and Zoe’s mother. Since she wasn’t found in the wreckage, they’ve come up here to look for her.
The two head up to the family’s cabin which the mom was staying at. This once regal camping fortress is now a barely standing rotted-out piece of garbage. Hank and Zoe use it as a home base to go out and look for mom. They arm themselves just in case, and after a long search, Zoe notices something coming at her out of the corner of her eye, turns and shoots. She’s horrified to see that she’s killed a baby cub.
They get back to the cabin late and decide to stay for the night. But almost immediately, they hear something outside. It’s Mama bear (“Mama”). She’s come to get revenge. At first, Hank doesn’t give her any credit. She’s a freaking bear. Not John Wick. And even if she was the bear version of John Wick, she can’t break into a house. Well, that may be true. But remember, this isn’t exactly Fort Knox. And Mama starts prying for ways in.
Having left the only guns in the car, the two are forced to move around the cabin to stay clear of Mama, who has the added advantage of being a black bear in total darkness. We’re never quite sure where she’s going to pop up next. Finally, she’s able to get into the house. Zoe moves to the bathroom while the injured Hank finds another spot to hide. I don’t want to spoil anything but let me put it this way. Not everyone is getting out of this house alive.
First thoughts?
Overwritten first page!
I kept having to go back and read it over and over again. Walon was trying to be too cute with the wording. It may sound weird but he was TOO DESCRIPTIVE. And in trying to paint a picture, he painted a Picasso. It was angular and tilted and hard to make out what you were looking at.
So things didn’t start well.
However, once we get to Hank and Zoe, the script gets a lot better. Like I said, Wednesday we had no character development. Here, we have a lot. There’s a ton going on with these two. For starters, their wife/mother left them, became a drug addict/prostitute, and now drives around and robs people to feed her habit, along with whatever co-conspirator she can find.
This makes their search party complicated. Lesser writers would’ve had the mom be the perfect mother – her life robbed by the randomness of some angry animal. By making her a drug addict who’d abandoned her family, their connection with her is much messier. The reason why this tends to work better is because it mirrors real life. Real life is rarely drawn with straight lines. The lines are squiggly. And the color between them is gray. Just that choice alone made this feel authentic.
Also, Zoe is newly pregnant. And one of the ongoing themes here is the idea of, should Hank and his wife have had Zoe? They were way too young. They weren’t ready to be adults. And it turns out that maybe it was a mistake. Mom eventually prioritized getting high over parenting. We also learn that it was Hank who initially wanted the abortion. And now Zoe’s in the exact same spot they were, weighing whether she’s ready to be a mom, and using her own less-than-wonderful time on earth to decide if she wants her own kid to go through that hell.
In other words, THERE’S A LOT GOING ON HERE. And Walon is really clever in how he thematically connects their family troubles to the threat. Here these people are, weighing whether it’s right for their children to even be born, while Mother Bear will stop at nothing to avenge the death of her own child.
Another thing I liked that Walon did was he OPENED UP a portion of the CONTAINED THRILLER. I think that when we write contained thrillers, we get this idea that they have to be contained from start to finish, if only to convey to producers that it will be cheap to make. However, I like when contained thriller writers start their scripts OPENED UP so as to create the illusion of a bigger story. Between the teaser and seeing these two drive in and the gas station scene – it made the movie feel bigger than it was. Had Walon started this script with the two of them showing up at the cabin, I’m not sure I would’ve felt the same way about the script.
There were a couple of things I didn’t love. The script does get a little repetitive at times inside the cabin. There are only so many ways to stay away from a window. But the biggest issue was that dad and daughter don’t have anything unresolved with one another. Despite all of the intense stuff with mom, Hank and Zoe seem to be good. And I kept wondering if that could’ve been improved somehow. In fact, a couple of times I thought, “I wonder if this would be better if Zoe was trapped in here with her drug-addict mom who’d abandoned her?” You can imagine how much more tense those conversations would be.
Despite that, I thought this was a good spec. The best Amateur Friday script this year behind Cop Cam. I could easily see this pitched as “Jaws with a bear.” The problem with all the Jaws clones over the years is that they’re too similar to Jaws. This feels just enough like its own thing that you don’t find yourself constantly comparing it to that movie, which is the last thing you want to happen as a writer. You want your script to be your own, not some lesser version of a better movie.
I battled back and forth on this as far as whether to give it a single or double ‘worth the read,’ and I’m going to settle on a single because dad and daughter didn’t have anything to resolve with one another. And it wasn’t just that. It was that Walon was trying to make it seem like they were butting heads despite the fact that there wasn’t any reason to. For example, she kept calling him “Hank” instead of “Dad.” And all I thought was, “Wait, she likes her dad. Why avoid that title when addressing him?” If future drafts would address that, I could easily see bumping up the score.
But this was solid writing. Good job, Walon.
Script link (new draft): Grisly
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Regarding the first page. Remember, all writers overwrite. But the good ones don’t make it LOOK like they overwrote.
