One of the worst things that can happen in screenwriting is to write a script and then, 45 pages in, 60 pages in, 75 pages in… you run out of ideas. You don’t know where the story should go. You stare at the screen, you rack your brain, but no matter how hard you try, you don’t see any way to complete the story. Maybe, you say to yourself, the idea was never good enough to begin with. Maybe there was nothing here from the start. And while that may be true, running out of ideas during a screenplay is a common problem. Sometimes the brain just stops working. The good news is, there are ways to combat this.

First of all, the biggest reason we run out of steam during a screenplay is because we didn’t outline. Outlining helps us see if the story has legs. If you’re not a fan of the outline, that’s fine. But I would still implore you to write down four major checkpoints in your script before you start writing it. What happens at the end of the first act (the launching point). What happens at the midpoint (a twist or major event that shakes your story up). What happens at the end of the second act (the lowest point). And your ending.

If you have these figured out beforehand, you’ll always have something visible to write towards. A big reason we run out of ideas is because the void in front of us is too big, too uncertain. We see 60-70 pages ahead of us and there aren’t enough ideas in the world to fill that up. But if our next pre-determined checkpoint is never more than 30 pages away, that feels more manageable. We can come up with enough ideas to get to that point.

But let’s say you’ve outlined your script only to find that, midway through the writing process, your outline was wrong. Or maybe you had a better idea that spun the story in a different direction, and now your outline is worthless. This happens all the time. Storytelling is malleable. You get new ideas. You follow new paths. You find yourself in unexpected territory constantly. So even if you had the best intentions and did things “right,” you can still find yourself halfway in with nowhere to go.

My experience has been that everything comes back to the active character. An active character is someone who is always trying to achieve something at every moment of the movie. The characters in Jumanji are always trying to get out of the game. In Blockers, the kids are all trying to get laid. The adults are all trying to stop the kids. The Equalizer always has a bad guy to take down. The Game Night couples are all trying to solve the murder-mystery first. The mom and the son are trying to escape their captivity in Room. As long as your character is active, they’ll always have something they’re trying to do, which means you’ll always have somewhere to take the story. Conversely, if you build your movie around a passive, reactive, or occasionally active character, it becomes infinitely harder to come up with ways to keep the story moving. Because instead of your hero racing towards something, you’re trying to come with outside factors that give your hero something to do. And that’s a lot harder.

Tully is an example of a script that’s easy to run out of ideas during. The main character is mostly sitting around the house the whole movie. Or a script like Call Me By Your Name. You’ve got two characters hanging around in a town passing time. Now both of these movies were reviewed well, so I’m not saying this is a death sentence. I’m only saying that when you build stories around inactive characters, you will definitely run into more walls during the writing process, especially if you didn’t outline beforehand.

Now that you know this, use it to your advantage. Have your main character be more active. An active character is a goal-driven character. They typically have an overall goal they’re trying to achieve (the goal of the movie) and then a series of goals they need to achieve to accomplish the major goal. So whenever you’re stuck, you simply give your character another “mini-goal” that they have to achieve. This mini-goal could set up your next scene, your next couple of scenes, or an entire 15 minute sequence. For example, in Deadpool 2, the goal is to get the kid. So technically, you could have Deadpool run off and get the kid and be done with it. Instead, they make getting the kid impossible. So Deadpool needs a team. This leads to a new goal – put a team together. This adds 10 pages to your story. As long as you have an overarching goal for your hero to achieve, an active character will always have smaller goals he needs to achieve in the meantime.

Another method for extending the story is to keep throwing disruptions at your hero, leading to their failure, which forces them to try again. There was a famous article over at Wordplayer about how Raiders of the Lost Ark was one giant series of Indiana Jones failures. But it works because Indy gets back up and tries again. He’s active. He keeps going after the goal. In my favorite film from last year, Good Time, the goal is to get the brother out of jail. Out hero’s first goal is to try and get money for bail. But before he can get it, his brother is beat up and transferred to a hospital. New goal. Break him out of the hospital. Our hero successfully breaks him out, only to find out that he took the wrong patient (his brother was wearing a face cast). So now he’s got to save his brother again. If there aren’t a series of goals already in place to get your hero to the climax, keep throwing obstacles at them that force them to try again.

But let’s say you’ve tried all that and you’re still coming up with nothing. What do you do? Do you give up? Do you put the script away for awhile? When it comes to nuts-and-bolts sitting down to write, this is where the rubber meets the road. It often comes down to how dedicated you are to this script and to writing in general. Because if you’re only half-in, you’re not going to fight when the chips are down. And the chips are down a lot in writing. You’re always battling against a lack of ideas, a lack of creativity. And it takes a steel backbone to muscle through these moments. This is why I always tell writers, make sure you’re PASSIONATE about any script you choose to write. Because, sure, it’s easy to be excited at the beginning. But do you love this idea enough to fight for it on Draft 5 one year from now?

Here are a few things you can do. You can use the vomit approach. That means erase all judgement and, no matter what, keep writing. Coming up with something to write isn’t difficult. Coming up with something GOOD to write is. But if you only write when you have good ideas, you’re going to be spending a lot of time staring at your screen and getting frustrated. So muscling through those shitty “no ideas” moments is one approach. And the good news is that you’re way more likely to come across a great idea if you’re writing than if you’re sitting and trying to come up with it out of thin air.

Another thing you can do is write two projects at the same time. Whenever you’re struggling with one project, you simply switch over to the other one. It’s best if these projects are as different as possible. A horror and a comedy. A feature and a pilot. We spend so much time inside our scripts that we begin to hate everything about them. To be able to jump to a completely different universe with a different set of rules is just the thing the mind needs to stay engaged and creative. I think I read a Jordan Peele interview where he touts this writing approach.

Another method I found useful is to take your phone out, set the timer for 30 minutes, and just write for the full 30 minutes. You don’t have to write ANYTHING after those 30 minutes. Just 30 minutes each day and you’re done. What you’ll find is that a freedom emerges where you don’t feel the pressure to write the perfect screenplay, but rather you’re just accomplishing a task. My experience has been that if you do this for a week or two, you’ll be back on track, with a full set of ideas to get your script finished.

To summarize, the main reason we run out of ideas during a script is because we didn’t plan ahead of time. Outlining is a screenwriter’s best friend. The next biggest problem is an inactive main character. It’s hard to push the story forward when your hero doesn’t have an objective. So write inactive heroes at your own risk. And finally, if you’ve done everything right and you’re still stuck, blunt force may be the only option. This is not a fun way to write, but it’s important to remember that writing isn’t always fun. It’s often work. So get to work, push through those tough moments, and hopefully there’s some fun on the other side.

Genre: Action/Adventure
Premise: When a teenage boy comes across a map for a treasure buried on a remote island, he joins a motley crew to retrieve the treasure, only to realize that the crew has other plans in mind.
About: Today’s script landed on the 2015 Black List. It’s based on the 1883 novel, Treasure Island, which is one of the most adapted stories in history. The script was written by James Coyne, who was supposed to write Sherlock Holmes 3 before they backed off and decided to do one of those writers’ rooms. Coyne more recently sold a sci-fi pitch called “Cascade” to Paramount, although not much is known about that project. Treasure Island was originally written by Robert Louis Stevenson who was a bona fide writing celebrity when he was alive (I wish they’d bring those days back!). In addition to Treasure Island, he wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Writer: James Coyne (based on the book by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Details: 120 pages (Draft 1.1)

So yesterday, Sony officially announced a Fantasy Island movie (“Da plane da plane!”). That got me in Island Fever mode, so I decided to check out Treasure Island, an adaptation of the famous book I’ve never read. Islands are one of the best places to set a story because there’s nowhere for your characters to go. They have to confront the antagonist if they’re going to make it off the rock alive. Throw in some treasure hunting and you’ve got yourself a story.

This also falls in line with my advice that old IP is always on the table with studios. Tell them you have a romantic comedy set in Nashville and their eyes roll. Tell them you have a new take on a Charles Dickens or Shakespeare tale and they lean forward, rapt with attention. Case in point, just yesterday a new take on Romeo and Juliet sold, this one set in Brooklyn with sword-wielding Capulets and Montagues.

Of course, you don’t have to go with a new take. You can do what today’s writer did and stay true to the source material. Either way, old IP gives you a leg up in pitch meetings. That’s for sure. Let’s see what Coyne’s done with this classic tale.

15 year old Jim Hawkins is devastated after his father passes away. But he doesn’t have time to mourn. That’s because a band of pirates led by the evil “Black Dog” have sailed onto shore and are headed to Jim’s Inn. What neither us nor Jim know is that a Captain who lives at the Inn has a map to Flint’s Island, where an enormous treasure is hidden.

Black Dog’s crew bursts into the Inn and starts killing everyone, prompting Jim and his mother to sneak away, but not before they stumble upon the captain’s map. Somehow, the two are able to escape, and head to a local port where they commission a ship to obtain the treasure. But then Black Dog, who’s secretly followed them here, pulls Jim into an alley to kill him. Just before doing so, a sword appears through Black Dog’s chest. This sword belongs to the charming Long John Silver, who so happens to be a part of Jim’s crew.

On the way to the island, Jim overhears his new supposed friend, Silver, say that he and the crew are going to take the treasure for themselves then kill everyone on board. After Jim tells the Captain, the other passengers must pretend like they don’t know the plan. Once they get to the island, they’ll leave the crew and get the hell out of dodge. The clever Long John Silver senses something is amiss, however, and refuses to go exploring without Jim.

From there, Jim must figure out a way to escape Silver and his vagrants, get back to the boat, and get off the island. But as new wrinkles emerge, and an overall greed for the treasure surfaces, getting off the island for anybody becomes more and more unlikely.

Man, I can’t remember the last script I read that has this much action. As you guys know, this is how I say to do it when you’re writing period stuff. Let us know immediately that you’re here to entertain.

I would say that the opening act here is one of the best opening acts I’ve read this year. It’s relentless. The way we establish our hero, Jim, then we cut to the pirates, coming ashore and preparing to attack. Then we cut to the local militia, who’s gotten word of the landing. The way Coyne jumps back and forth between these three parties during this attack is captivating.

And it isn’t just the intensity. It’s the characters. These characters are so well drawn. The ragged shadowy Pew, who has no eyes. Black Dog, who’s all business and determination. The Iroquois warrior, River, who is a battling beast for the militia. Ruthie, the giant of a man who can’t be taken down. Squire, an aging soldier who refuses to let age define him. Obviously, these are all Stevenson’s creations. But boy do characters this rich make a difference. It’s rare that I encounter one character this memorable in a script. Much less the dozen in Treasure Island.

But I want to draw your attention to an important detail here because beginner screenwriters miss this. This action-packed first act doesn’t work unless we set up the character of Jim beforehand. Coyne (or Stevenson – not sure if this plays the same way in the book) starts the story with Jim’s father dying. It’s a brutal scene. His father is sick in bed, down to his last few minutes. The doctor tells Jim that if there’s anything he wants to say to his father, he needs to do it now. Then we get their final conversation.

To understand why this is important, you have to imagine the first act without this scene. Say we meet Jim waking up and the next thing you know, pirates are raiding the Inn. We’re not as invested in Jim’s escape because we don’t know him. By spending that one intense emotional beat with Jim, we want this kid to survive more than anything. Which means that all this action has a purpose – to create doubt about whether this character we now love escapes or not.

And for those of you who say, “Ah, but Carson, we know he’s going to survive. He’s the hero!” Let me tell you something about this script. You never know what’s coming next. It was full of surprises. (Spoilers) They escape the pirates, they go to the port, Black Dog, who we thought was gone, reappears, tries to kill Jim, who’s saved by Long John Silver, who we fall in love with, only to later realize is a bad guy, but who later still turns out to be a good guy! The script constantly kept me off-balance. And we’re talking about a 150 year old story.

I was on my way to giving Treasure Island an “impressive” until we got to the island. That’s when things got sloppy. The script kept up its insane pace, but without the clarity that the first act had. Jim was with the pirates on the island, who he was trying to escape, while the boat itself was constantly moving around the island. For awhile there, I wasn’t clear what Jim’s plan was, or the guys on the boat for that matter (why did they keep sailing to different points on the island??).

Luckily, everything came together at the end, once they found the treasure. I loved how Silver’s team abandoned him, forcing him to team up with Jim. As they fought their way back to the boat, you were constantly wondering, “Is Silver really an ally? Is he going to betray Jim?” The only way to find out was to keep reading. And that’s the name of this game, right? Creating scenarios that give the reader no choice other than to keep reading. They have to know what happens next.

I don’t know where they’re at with this project but it feels to me like a nice successor to the dying Pirates franchise. My only reservation is building the story around a 15 year old. The overall tone has an adult feel to it (a typical line of dialogue: “Tighten up that gallant, it’s looser than a fat tart’s cunny!”). Harry Potter this is not. Maybe if they upped Jim’s age to 20, you’d have yourself a film.

Really enjoyed this.

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

What I learned: Between yesterday and today, we see the power of entering stories during a major transition in someone’s life. In Castle Rock and Sharp Objects, it’s coming home for the first time in decades. In Treasure Island, it’s the death of the hero’s father. Life transitions force characters to reevaluate everything, or at least things they’ve been suppressing. This opens the character up in ways you don’t have access to if you meet them during their run-of-the-mill existence. So consider starting your story during a major transition in your hero’s life!

Genre: 1 Hour TV Drama
Premise: An anthology series that is said to take the entirety of the Stephen King universe and tell new original stories within that universe, with the occasional assist from known King characters.
About: Castle Rock is the long awaited “Stephen King Universe” show that JJ Abrams brought to Hulu. The show is being spearheaded by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason, who created the ambitious but ultimately canceled, “Manhattan.” JJ Abrams was said to be a big fan of the show and had wanted to work with Shaw and Thomason. So when they pitched him this idea, he was immediately on board. The show debuted last week.
Writers: Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason (based on Stephen King’s books)
Details: 55 minutes

I’ve been looking forward to this show since the day they announced it. With “It,” Hollywood finally figured out how to do Stephen King horror right. While King can be goofy and weird, his adapted material works best when it errs on the dramatic side. That’s where JJ’s taken his cue with Castle Rock – a serious jaunt into the Stephen King universe. In fact, I’d call this trip Fargo-Adjacent. Not a bad tone to set your TV show to.

However, I’ve been down this road before with JJ and Hulu. 11/22/63. I thought that show was going to be amazing. But by the fourth episode, I felt like I was watching concrete harden. Which is ironic since that show was about as solid as soft serve ice cream. In retrospect, I realized the concept was flawed. You’re sent back in time to stop the Kennedy Assassination but you arrive two years prior to the assassination. So you have to sit around and wait for two years? Talk about anti-urgency.

But JJ being the genius he is, he knew how to suck me back in. Begin Castle Rock at Shawshank? Shawshank as in the prison in the best movie ever made? Well, duh. Can I be admitted as a prisoner? And in double-dose JJ fashion, we meet the warden of Shawshank as he drives his car off a cliff while hanging himself at the same time. I know, right? wtf???

We quickly learn why he’s done this. It turns out the warden was keeping a kid in a cage in the basement of Shawshank. When that kid, now a young man, is rescued, he says two words, “Henry Devers.” Henry Devers? Who the hell is Henry Devers?

Henry Devers, it turns out, is a lawyer who grew up in Castle Rock. He comes back to town to learn why this tortured kid is asking for him. And that’s when we learn Henry has his own complicated past. When he was a kid, he disappeared for two weeks during the dead of winter, with temperatures in the negatives. Nobody could’ve survived that. Yet Henry shows up two weeks later in the forest, completely fine, with no memory of what happened.

As we make our way to the end of the pilot, the focus is placed on the weird kid who was rescued from a cage. The word ‘creepy’ doesn’t do him justice. And right now, no one knows what to do with him. I mean, he doesn’t even have a name. Then, without warning, all the power in the prison goes out, and when it comes back on, he’s no longer in his holding room. Cut to black.

This one was a doozy. It was awesome in parts. Slow in others. All in all, it made me a believer, but not without some reservations.

For starters, there’s the “coming back home” template for a show. Yes, it’s used a lot. But it’s used a lot because it works. You may note that it’s the template for the new HBO show, Sharp Objects, as well.

The reason this format works is because you’re immediately dropping your hero into a world of unfinished business. You have to remember that TV shows are about character. Character development, character struggle, character relationships. Way more so than movies. So imagine, then, that you can place a character in a situation where you have 5-10 unresolved situations with other characters right away. Your show is off and running within minutes. That’s what the “come back home” template gives you.

Castle Rock combines this with what JJ does best – MYSTERIES. Every pilot needs to set up a series of mysteries. Somewhere between 1-4 in the opening episode. If it’s one, it needs to be really powerful. If it’s four, you can spread the wealth a bit. Also, the type of mystery will vary depending on the genre. If you’re writing a legal show, the mysteries aren’t going to be as intense as if you’re writing a sci-fi show or a show like Castle Rock.

Now you may say, but the internet told me mystery boxes were bad, Carson! There’s no doubt that mystery boxes can get you in trouble. If all you’re doing is leaving a trail of mystery boxes with no idea of what’s inside, expect to pay the price. But as long as you have a plan for each mystery box, you’re good. And even for those of you who are mystery box adverse, you can’t avoid it in television. You need to give the audience a reason to keep watching the show and mystery boxes are one of the most effective ways of doing so.

Here, we have two big ones: Who is this kid that’s been kept in a cage for the last 15 years? And what happened to Henry Devers all those years ago when he disappeared for two weeks?

Those two mysteries hooked me, especially the kid in the cage.

But I do have a problem with the show, which is that it’s not taking advantage of the “come back home” format enough. Nobody seems to know Henry Devers outside of his mom. They know his story – how he disappeared. But he doesn’t seem to have any relationships with people. It’s almost as if he left town the day after he was found in the woods.

As a result, Henry Devers feels detached from the world surrounding him. We’re not learning enough about this person. Contrast this with Sharp Objects, which has its main character, Camille, coming back home to investigate the disappearance of a young girl (that’s the mystery driving that show). Camille is constantly running into people she knows, old friends, friends of her mom, acquaintances. This allows us to establish unresolved relationships that can now become the engines for each episode.

Castle Rock, I think, wants to wrap its main character in a mystery box. And I’m not sure that’s a good idea. A mystery box arriving in a mystery box? We need something to ground the story, something solid to latch onto. If everything is floating around us, just out of reach, we get frustrated and want to go home.

With that said, I’m still intrigued. The writers have definitely captured the essence of the King universe. And I’m curious what they’re going to do with some x-factors here. Such as the fact that Bill Skarsgård, our “boy in the cage” also happens to play Pennywise the Clown in “It.” Are they going to connect the show with the “It” movies? That would be cool. Or that Sissy Spacek, who played Carrie in Carrie, is Henry Devers’ mother. Might there be a surprise reveal there? This is JJ, remember. And don’t get me started on how cool it is to see Shawshank again. The more time we get to hang out there, the better.

So they’ve got my attention. I’m watching the second episode now and enjoying it. At the very least, this feels like it will surpass 11/22/63.

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

What I learned: The “Come Back Home” template is one of the strongest templates there is for a television show. Just make sure that you have 4-5 unresolved relationships set up and ready to go as soon as your hero touches down.

Genre: Action
Premise: (from IMDB) Ethan Hunt and his IMF team, along with some familiar allies, race against time after a mission gone wrong.
About: Mission Impossible Fallout is, I believe, the sixth film in the franchise (don’t quote me on that). Christopher McQuarrie, who directed the previous installment, is back in the writer-director chair again. The film scored 61 million at the domestic box office, which is the 9th best opening this year. Not great but Mission Impossible always does well globally and this iteration did especially well with the critics, scoring a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie (based on the TV series by Bruce Geller)
Details: 150 minutes

Let me start by saying there is no movie I enjoy going to more than a Mission Impossible movie. Why? Because on the way there, you get to hum… “duh duh duhduh duh duh duhduh dadadaaaaaaa dadadaaaaa DUH DUH DUH-DUH DUH DUH DUH-DUH.”

There’s no score you can hum that makes you happier. Try it. I’m serious. Start humming the Mission Impossible theme. Try not to feel happy. It’s impossible, right? Mission impossible!

So everyone’s saying this is the best Mission Impossible ever made. It’s a game-changer. It’s the “Dark Knight” of the series. Before we get into all that, let me tell you what I like about the Mission Impossible franchise. I like Tom Cruise doing his own stunts. I like the silly mask stuff. I like the interplay between the team. I like the gadgety stuff. For example, I like that scene from Mission Impossible 4(?) where they’re sneaking down a hallway with a fake projection empty hallway.

Surprisingly, the thing I like least about Mission Impossible is the action set pieces. I’ll get to why in a second. But first let’s break down the plot. Or at least try to.

Ethan Hunt’s mission, which he chose to accept, is to find three portable nuclear bombs before they can be detonated. He goes to British Lady Gaga to buy the bombs, only to find out that she’s not selling. She’s exchanging. She first needs Ethan to recover a mangy-bearded guy in police custody who I think was the villain from the last movie.

Ethan gets his team together and successfully extracts Mangy Beard, who we find out is working for a mysterious guy named John Lark who nobody’s ever met. Accompanied by new team member, Henry Cavill (Superman), the team prepares to exchange Mangy for the nukes. But the CIA, who think Hunt is a bad guy now for some reason, put an end to this rogue mission, which results in a shootout and Mangy Beard escaping.

It is believed that Mangy Beard, the mysterious John Lark, and these nukes, will be detonated at a remote smallpox lab in Kashmir. The resulting explosion will spread smallpox to the highly populated surrounding countries of China, India, and Pakistan, and basically end the world. Ethan Hunt needs to get there in time to stop it all. But can he???

I don’t know why it’s mission impossible for me connect with these big action spy movies. I really want to. I walk into each one hoping, praying, this will be the day. But it never happens.

Upon reflection, I think I need a STRANGE ATTRACTOR to my popcorn movies. I need Godzilla. I need Jedi. I need a clown that eats children. Straight up realism doesn’t work for me. It feels too basic, too standard. That’s the lens I’m viewing Mission Impossible and James Bond and The Bourne Franchise through. It’s a bunch of run-of-the-mill (albeit well produced) action scenes wrapped inside an overly complicated plot that I can never keep up with.

That’s correct. Yet again, I have no idea what’s going on. And in this iteration, my confusion started early.

We get a scene where Ethan Hunt and his team go to buy the nukes from the bad guys. Before the purchase can be completed, someone starts shooting from the shadows, killing all the bad guys but no one in Ethan’s crew. At the end of the scene, there’s a standoff where one of the shooters is holding Ving Rhames hostage. Ethan kills the man, runs over, and after everyone confirms that Ving Rhames is okay, they look behind them and realize that the nukes are gone.

Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Who stole the nukes? Was it one of the surviving members of the group that brought the nukes? Or was it a third party? If it was a third party, why did they only kill the bad guys? You are literally leaving the most capable person on the planet, the person most likely to be able to track you down and kill you, Ethan Hunt, alive. That makes zero sense.

But the biggest fault of the plotting by far is when the CIA thinks Ethan Hunt is John Lark. I mean come on. Really? This guy who’s been saving the world for the last 20 years, the CIA all of a sudden thinks he’s a bad guy? There’s no way that would happen. It’s such a forced false plot point, it borders on embarrassing.

And then there’s those action set pieces.

Actually, before we get to that, let’s talk about Ethan’s super-power. When, exactly, did Ethan Hunt develop a power that allows him to speed through any intersection at 100 miles an hour and always be able to time it so that he never gets hit by six lanes of cross-traffic?

I get it if this happens once. You look back. “Phew. That was lucky.” But he does it over and over again. The reason this is relevant is because the whole trick with creating great chase scenes is to milk whether the hero will get caught. If your hero has a cheat code where he can zip through six lanes of cross traffic whenever he wants to ditch his pursuers, we know the movie will always save him whenever he gets into any real trouble. There’s zero sense of doubt.

Writers are supposed to do the opposite of this. You want to make things HARD for your hero, not easy. Remember what the Coen Brothers do. They write their hero into an impossible corner, then hand it to the other brother, who has to figure a way to get the hero out of it.

Back to the action scenes. And here’s where the lack of a strange attractor affects my viewing experience most. I’ve seen 95% of the these action set pieces before. Wasn’t there a big motorcycle chase in the last movie? Weren’t motorcycle chases a big part of Mission Impossible 2? Sure, there were some fun moments like Tom Cruise riding the wrong way around the Arc De Triumph. But the problem with real-world action is that it’s… well, real world. Everything real-world we’ve seen before. On the flip side, I haven’t seen a talking raccoon standing on top of a Tree-Man shooting a machine gun. That’s why I go to the movies. To see stuff I haven’t seen before.

The Mission Impossible action set-piece that sticks out most occurs in JJ Abrams MI (no surprise there). It takes place on an isolated stretch of ocean highway with Tom Cruise running from a drone that’s shooting missiles at him. There’s actually some inventiveness to this sequence. We’re isolated. We’re in a unique setting. We’re trapped. The odds are insurmountable (man with nowhere to run vs. military drone). In Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission Impossible movies, it’s always a chase through a city that we’ve seen a million times before.

Mission Impossible needs to get back to its roots. What’s the defining image of this franchise? When I say “Mission Impossible,” what is the first thing you think of? It’s Tom Cruise, clad in black, arms and legs spread eagle, being held one inch from a white floor. Six movies later and that’s still the image we go back to. Why? Because back then, it was more about being clever than, “WHAT COOL STUNT CAN WE DO HERE!?” It was more about coming up with a cool fun plot than, “I WONDER IF TOM CRUISE CAN JUMP OFF THE EIFEL TOWER ON A SEGWAY.” That white room heist sequence cost 1/100th of one of these car chases yet it was a hundred times more impactful.

Unfortunately, Mission Impossible continues to fall short for me. It’s not as realistic as James Bond. It’s not as fun as Fast and Furious. It’s basically a playground for Tom Cruise to do a real world stunt they can build a marketing campaign around. I was bored.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Major plot points must pass the eye test. While I liked that they tried to do something different with the climax – blowing up a nuclear bomb near a small pox lab so the small pox would spread to surrounding countries – it doesn’t work because it doesn’t pass the eye test. The eye test is what the audience sees. We see a desolate snowy mountain in the middle of nowhere. No matter how destructive you sell us on this situation, if we can’t SEE how this would kill millions of people, we’re not buying it. I didn’t once buy that this was going to affect anyone in China or India or Pakistan. Those nations felt a million miles away from me in these mountains. This is a common writer-director mistake. They liked this location as a set piece so much that they back-engineered the plot to get it into the movie, as opposed to allowing the climax to evolve organically from the story.

NOTE: It looks like Disqus stopped allowing comments on this thread at 4:00pm PT. No idea why. Probably just another dumb Disqus glitch. Just wanted everyone to know that I’m not deleting any comments.

You know what time it is. It’s time to face up to your screenwriting sins! We’re almost seven months into 2018. Have you finished your two scripts yet? Have you finished one? Use this post to stay accountable. Tell us where you’re at. If you haven’t been as productive as you’d hoped, give us your reasons so we can prove to you that they are, in actuality, excuses. Ahh, but seriously. Let us know what’s going on so we can encourage you to keep at it. Screenwriting has always been a marathon, not a sprint. — By the way, Monday I will be reviewing Mission Impossible and Tuesday, Castle Rock. I’ve been desperately looking forward to Castle Rock (JJ Abrams and all). Mission Impossible, not so much. I can tell you that I loved one and disliked the other. But which one was which? Tune in this week to find out. :)