Genre: TV Pilot – 1 Hr. Drama
Premise: A family is turned upside-down when their flight back from vacation experiences an impossible phenomenon.
About: The high-concept network show is back! We’ve got this one premiering on NBC in the fall. And we’ve got a new zombie show, The Passage, also in the fall, coming from Fox. Manifest is created by Jeff Rake (The Mysteries of Laura) and newcomer, Matthew Fernandez. It’s being produced by Robert Zemeckis.
Writers: Jeff Rake & Matthew Fernandez
Details: 60 pages
Here’s something I’ve never shared on the site.
I’m obsessed with plane crashes. I’m talking, after a plane crash, I will hunt down the black box recording and listen to it repeatedly. I will read accident reports. If there’s a flight that had turbulence so bad it was reported in the news? I will eviscerate the internet to find in-flight cell phone footage of the event. I have watched every single episode of both plane crash shows, Mayday, and Air Disasters.
This may have something to do with my mom being convinced that every plane we were on growing up was going down. Hearing the words, “I have a bad feeling about this flight, I don’t think we should get on it,” was as common a phrase to me growing up as “Do you want me to make you a sandwich?”
This has fueled my morbid curiosity about plane crashes and mysterious plane occurrences (that Malaysian flight was an obsession of mine for over a year), and it’s also led me to want to write or produce or find the ultimate plane-related project. I’m open to pitches. So if you’ve got a good idea, throw it up in the comments. Don’t limit the genre. The best plane-related story to date is plane/horror hybrid, “A Face in the Window,” (from The Twilight Zone movie). If you want to know what I looked like on every flight through my 20s, this is an accurate depiction.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that I’m obsessed with this Manifest show. As soon as I heard about it, I screamed, “I MUST FIND THIS SCRIPT!” I’m such an easy sell with this material that I’d be shocked if I didn’t like it. But it’s a script, so you never know. Let’s check it out.
Ben and Grace, a married couple in their 30s, are at the airport after a Jamaican vacation with their twins, 10 year old Cal and Olive. Cal, we quickly learn, has leukemia, and will be lucky if he makes it past six months. Also with them are Ben’s sister, Michaela, a cop who’s recovering from a traumatic car crash, and Ben’s parents, Steven and Karen.
When the opportunity to give up seats for money-vouchers arises, Ben suggests that him, Cal, and Michaela take them, since the Mayo Clinic is bleeding them dry and a little extra cash will help. So Grace, Olive, and the parents take this flight, and Ben, Cal, and Michaela the next.
That flight is uneventful except for a brief bout of severe turbulence. Once they arrive in Baltimore, they find themselves oddly moving towards a warehouse instead of a gate. A group of federal agents are waiting for them. Once outside, they’re told that their plane disappeared 5 years ago, and that everyone on board was assumed dead. But the real kicker is when he informs them that they’ve all missed their connecting flights.
After a lot of questioning, the miracle passengers are allowed to go home. Olive is now 15 years old, which makes the twin connection between her and Cal a lot weirder. Grace had given up hope on Ben, and can’t believe that he’s returned. Ben’s mother died. Oh, and good news for Cal. In the five years that he’s been gone, they found a breakthrough treatment for his cancer. It’s looking like he’ll be cured.
The rest of the pilot focuses on Michaela, who keeps hearing voices in her head. One voice keeps telling her to “let them free!” and grows louder when she’s jogging past an old junkyard. She eventually breaks into the junkyard, where the voice guides her towards an old shack. She opens it to find two girls who were recently kidnapped and is heralded as a hero.
The only person she can tell about this power is Ben and he tells her to keep it quiet. He has a feeling that the government isn’t going to let these weirdos integrate back into society easily. And if they give them any reason to snatch them back into custody, they’ll take it. And so Michaela, along with the rest of the passengers, begin their new life after this bizarre event.
We’ve talked about this before. The high-concept TV show is a tough one. It gets you eyeballs early. But you have to wonder if a show can sustain itself if the coolest event that happens in the entire series occurs in the first five minutes.
If you look at shows like X-Files – that show ensured that every episode would be high-concept. Then there’s Lost. The brilliance of that show was that the exciting plane crash was only the beginning. The island itself was the real star.
I’m not convinced that there’s much of a story here beyond the awesome teaser. The only character with anything going on is Nostradamus Michaela. And my problem with that is, her premonition power doesn’t evolve organically from the event on the plane. I mean, you can explore premonitions without a 5 year plane trip, can’t you?
As is the case with every TV show, the characters need to be great. That’s the key to adding longevity to your show. I would go so far as to say you should spend just as much time writing backstory for your six biggest characters as you spend writing the pilot itself. And when I say that, I mean EACH character. Not combined.
You may balk at that but what do you think is going to happen if you slap some half-realized characters on the page? The reader can tell. Trust me. It’s so easy for me to tell when a writer has put a lot of work into someone, when they’ve put barely any time into them, and when they’ve put in just enough.
That’s definitely how I feel about these characters. Who’s the stand-out here? Michaela I guess? And even she’s vague (when we meet her she’s unsure if she wants to get married, yet when she arrives in the U.S., she’s devastated to find out her fiancé has moved on to someone else). Cancer Boy has no personality or development outside of the fact that he has cancer. Cancer can’t define a character. There’s gotta be more there.
And yet… dammit… because I like plane stuff and weird sci-fi stories, this still kept my interest until the end. The moment early when the family decides to split onto two planes – that was a pro screenwriter move right here. Most writers would’ve had the family on the plane together. It was so much more interesting to split them up and see the family reunite afterwards.
I just question whether they have enough to move forward. This needs more mysteries. It needs more questions. Either more characters needed the premonition power or each character needed their own unique power. I hope I’m wrong. I still miss the trippy WTF world of Lost, where you never knew what was coming next week. Is there a mind out there that can recreate that excitement? I hope so.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Network TV shows (and all TV shows to some degree) need to embrace their soapy elements. TV is about character. Which means plots are going to be dictated by character. That means things like death, cancer, cheating, pregnancies, characters romantically getting together – these will fuel a lot of your plot points. Not all at once! You will spread them out over the course of the season. But when something big needs to happen, soapy reveals are usually your go-tos. So here (SPOILER), a late reveal is Grace (the wife) having a hushed call with a man. We realize that she’s fallen in love with someone else, and is deciding when the best time to tell Ben is. It sounds a bit hacky, but TV thrives on this stuff as long as you don’t overdo it.
Genre: Action-Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) When a veteran hitwoman is mysteriously poisoned on her last assignment in Tokyo, she has 24 hours to track down her killer before she dies.
About: Before today’s script made the bottom half of last year’s Black List, it got a 25 million dollar production commitment from Netflix… WITHOUT A DIRECTOR OR CAST. Wow. That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Actually, I don’t think it’s ever happened. It goes to show that Netflix, in its bid to become the ultimate entertainment destination even if that means going bankrupt, is willing to disrupt any and all models they can. The writer, Umair Aleem, just made headlines yesterday for getting the high profile gig, “Danger Girl,” a comic book inspired by Charlie’s Angels, James Bond, and Indiana Jones, if that’s possible.
Writer: Umair Aleem
Details: 120 pages
I have a feeling today’s script is going to make some of you angry. I mean, it’s another Jane Wick spec – aka, the most unoriginal trend in Hollywood history. But I encourage you to see the light at the end of this tunnel. Writer writes spec. Writer gets direct commitment from Netflix. Writer gets high profile gig in the same vein as his spec. I’d hope everyone would champion that seeing as it means THESE SORTS OF THINGS HAPPEN. And therefore it could happen to you. And as much as spec sales rock, they don’t come anywhere CLOSE to production commitments. Who cares if you sell a spec that never gets made?
Kate is the best hitman/hitwoman who’s ever held a gun. Seriously? Isn’t that always the case with these movies? When are they going to make a movie about an average hitman? Anyway, we open on Kate telling her longtime handler, Varrick, she wants to retire after this hit. He doesn’t like it but he promises to talk to the Firm and see if they’ll release her.
Before Kate, who’s in Tokyo, executes the hit, she has sex with a male prostitute. Then off she goes to assassinate a prominent Japanese something-or-other. Right before she pulls the trigger, she feels an unimaginable pain all over her body. She refocuses, but the pain only gets worse. Somehow, she’s able to kill her target, but she passes out before waking up in a hospital.
They tell her she’s been poisoned with uranium and has less than 15 hours to live. Oh, and her death will be unimaginably painful.
There ain’t a whole lot to do during the last 15 hours of your life than figure out who poisoned you and kill them so off Kate goes, starting with Varrick, crossing him off the list, then the prostitute, satisfied he didn’t do anything. So then it’s time to check the heavy hitters. The Yakuza.
She works her way up to the two biggest families in town, the Sumiyoshis and the Kozakuras, killing entire armies of men to get to the top brass and question why they wanted her killed. But everyone she talks to has no idea what she’s talking about.
Along the way, she saves a 12 year old girl named Ani who, coincidentally, was being used as bait to lure in, guess who? That would be the mark she killed earlier. So now she’s walking around with the girl who she’s just made fatherless. But the two form a close bond, and therefore when Ani gets taken a second time, Kate will have to make a decision what to do with the last hour of her life – find out who her killer is, or go save the girl. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll achieve both.
I constantly preach on this site – GO SIMPLE! Write a simple easy-to-understand plot. A group of people go to a dinosaur park. The dinosaurs get loose and the people must escape. Simple, right?
But when is simple TOO simple? Is a woman who’s been poisoned looking for her killer enough to keep us engaged for 2 hours? Or is there a floor for how simple a concept can be?
A premise is too simple when, despite a clear goal, stakes, and urgency, you don’t do anything original with the execution.
That means either your characters have to be really interesting or you need a location that we haven’t seen before or a situation that’s fresh and unexpected or a plot that takes some risks or you need to have a voice that’s unlike any other writer out there.
Otherwise, if all you’re doing is giving us a generic, “Hero needs to get from Point A to Point B or something terrible happens” plot, it’s going to be too simple.
I’ll give you an example of another hitwoman script that got this write. It was called Ballerina. In that script, we end up in a weird Swiss Alps town and find out that everybody who lives in this town is a hitman, and they’ve been breeding hitmen for centuries.
Weird? Yes. A choice that works for everyone? No. But at least it was unique. At least it was something I hadn’t seen before. And that’s what you should be looking to integrate when you have an absurdly simple concept, like “Kate.” At several junctures during the story, we’ve got to feel that this is different from what we’ve seen before.
So was Aleem able to achieve this?
Well, his voice is a little different. He writes in the Walter Hill style of screenwriting, where the action is short and single-spaced. This fragmented style gives the script a unique feel right off the bat, which helps offset some of the simplicity of the premise.
The setting is a little different as well. I’m not sure we’ve ever had a female action-thriller set in Tokyo. I don’t know how much credit I should give for this since we’ve obviously seen plenty of male action scripts set there. But I admit it helped things feel a little different.
And Kate herself, while hardly a world-changing heroine, is a cold-hearted sociopath who had a double mastectomy to prevent the future possibility of breast cancer. I’m not sure how much I liked that choice. But it’s different. And it’s the kind of thing I can see an actress being excited to play.
Finally, I liked the choice of having the girl she saved be the daughter of the man she killed. I say that as someone who’s read lots of similar plots where the kid our hero saves has no connection to them whatsoever. And how that makes the relationship a lot less interesting.
All of these choices helped elevate “Kate” beyond amateur status.
After that, however, it’s standard stuff. We go question Suspect A. He mentions Suspect B. So we go see him. He mentions Suspect C. We go to him. He mentions suspect D. We go see him. It was a very linear repetitive narrative. And once you get in a rhythm like that, the reader gets too comfortable. They know that the next guy you visit is just going to tell us to visit the next guy. Because that’s what you’ve been doing for the past 45 pages.
I wrote an article once about In and Out. The idea behind the article was you want equal amounts of your hero imposing herself upon the story (“Out”) and the story imposing itself upon your hero (“In”). The move from one suspect to the next was all Out Out Out Out Out Out. It wasn’t until the girl arrives, which was after the midpoint, that we got an In. Aleem could’ve used more Ins.
With that said, I genuinely didn’t know who poisoned Kate. And I was surprised by just how much I wanted to know. And when we finally get the answer, I was satisfied (for reasons I’ll get into in the What I Learned section). For that accomplishment alone, this is worth the read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
POTENTIAL SPOILERS!
What I learned: Whoever the killer is in your murder-mystery, you must 100% eliminate them as a possibility early on. You can’t trick audiences these days. There are only so many suspects to choose from. We’re going to figure it out. So what you do is you create a scene or a scenario whereby we know, for a fact, that your killer isn’t your killer. If you look back to Kevin Williamson’s “Scream,” there was a moment where we thought the killer was the boyfriend. But soon after, the boyfriend is with our hero, Sydney, while the next killing happens. We now know, for a fact, he’s not the guy (but then he ends up being the guy). Here, [The Killer] is the first person Kate goes to. She sits him down and asks him if he’s involved. It’s just a scene of them talking, but afterwards, we’re convinced this guy would never hurt Kate. Of course, in the end, it turns out he was just a really good actor.
Genre: Action/Adventure
Premise: (from IMDB) When the island’s dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen and Claire mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event.
About: Three years ago, Jurassic World took the world by storm. The movie nobody thought they wanted became a mega-hit, grossing 1.6 billion worldwide. In a strange twist of fate, the first film’s director, Colin Trevorrow, was fired from his Star Wars Episode 9 job, allowing him to come back and spearhead the back end of the new film in a producing capacity. The sequel is directed by J.A. Bayona, who directed one of my favorite horror films ever, The Orphanage. The sequel grossed 150 million this weekend.
Writers: Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow (based on characters by Michael Crichton)
Details: 128 minutes
Jurassic Park has always felt like a hard franchise to embrace. For the longest time, I wondered why that was. After watching Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom this weekend, it hit me. Unlike franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel, Indy, Harry Potter, etc., Jurassic Park has always been about the dinosaurs. And as awesome as dinosaurs are, they’re not people. They’re not characters we can emotionally connect to. This is why no matter who we plop down into the park, we’re left feeling empty. The characters have always been interchangeable in this universe.
Fallen Kingdom tries to solve this issue with “Blue,” the velociraptor who Chris Pratt’s character, Owen, trained as a raptor pup. Maybe, the theory went, they could turn him into a Disney animal, like reindeer Sven from Frozen. But the problem with these darn dinosaurs is if you make them too cute and cuddly, they come off as dishonest. These are predators and you have to stay true to that. Which means we can only feel so close to them.
The plot for Fallen Kingdom isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. After the events of the previous movie, a volcano on the island has become active. Once it erupts, it’s likely that all the dinosaurs in the park will die. There’s a debate going on about whether we should save them from extinction, or “let nature take its course.” After an impassioned speech by Jeff Goldblum (who never liked us “playing God”), nature wins. It’s decided that they should be left to die.
The estate of the Jurassic Park’s creator, Hammond (the old guy who always said, “No spared expense”), doesn’t want this to happen. They’ve found an island to sneak the dinosaurs off to and let them live in peace. They can do most of the work themselves, but if they’re going to find the elusive “Blue,” they’ll need someone who can find him. Claire says, “I can’t catch him.” And they say, “But you know someone who can.”
So Claire recruits Owen to go to Jurassic World to help lure Blue, only to find out it’s all a sham. There’s no second island. They’re going to take these dinosaurs back to the mainland and sell them off to the highest bidders! After being jailed at the head mansion by the bad guys, Claire and Owen orchestrate an escape, and run to the room where the auction is taking place. Of course, a few dinosaurs get free, and then all hell breaks loose. Now it’s back to basics. Get the hell off this compound without getting eaten.
The plot is by no means perfect. But it’s hard to come up with sequels to “monster-in-a-box” scenarios. You can’t repeat the plot from the first film, even though that’s the only way to make these concepts work. So you’re stuck stitching together plots like these, which have sections that are fun, but don’t add up to a complete experience.
The best stuff in the film, by far, is the stuff on the island. There were four, arguably five, good set-pieces. My personal favorite was running down the hill of the island with all the dinosaurs while a volcano blows up behind them. But the set piece I was most invested in was the drowning scene. Claire and her assistant are stuck inside one of those glass bubble vehicles which has plunged into the ocean and it’s filling up with water. Owen is able to come down and jimmy open the door just in time to save them.
This was a reminder of something I preach all the time here. The simplest set pieces are often the best. There are no dinosaurs in this scene. Just characters. But the scene is so perfectly paced and the threat of death so prominent, that I was holding my breath along with them. Really good stuff.
Ironically, this placed the script in a huge predicament – how do you follow such a strong island sequence? Unfortunately, they failed with their choice, setting the second half of the movie in a mansion. You cannot, under any circumstances, make the second half of your blockbuster action movie smaller than your first half.
Yet that’s what happens. We regress into small rooms and small scenes (time to sell the dinosaurs!). The whole time I kept wondering how they were going to get all the characters and dinosaurs to a final location where the giant climax will be. But it never happened. The movie remains inside the mansion/compound the whole time. The choice was so baffling, I assumed it had to be a budget issue. But who puts budget constraints on sequels to movies that gross 1.6 billion dollars?
Another problem with this dinosaur world is that the writers try to have it both ways. When it suits them, the dinosaurs are nice loving animals that need to be saved. When it doesn’t, they’re cruel heartless predators that you have to run from. This happened all the time. Help the raptor, THEN RUN FROM IT! Help the T-Rex, THEN HIDE! In defense of Connolly and Trevorrow, I’m not sure this is any different from the original Jurassic Park, but I noticed it a lot more here. And it left me confused about what I was rooting for. Are these things good? Are they bad? What am I supposed to be feeling? And if you’re going to say to me, “That’s the point Carson. It’s complicated!” Give me a break. This is Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World. Not Jean-Luc Goddard’s Breathless.
The one big talking point coming out of this film is the ending (MAJOR SPOILERS moving forward). Some people have praised the film for finally “moving the Jurassic franchise forward.” I’m calling B.S. What happens at the end of the film is they let all the dinosaurs free, which allows them to scurry into the mainland, into society. For the first time, Jeff Goldblum post-scripts, man and dinosaur will co-exist.
Mark my words. This will doom the sequel.
Monster-in-a-box movies only work when there’s a monster and a box. You take either one of those away and you don’t have a movie. They’re taking the box away. So what’s the plot going to be? Are we going to cut between Japan, China, the U.S., France, and the U.K., observing how different nations adapt to the dinosaur phenomenon? That may work as a National Geographic series. But it won’t work as a movie, which needs something more contained, both in location and urgency. If you disagree with me, pitch your “Dinosaurs are everywhere in the world now” idea for Jurassic World 3 in the comments. Watch as it gets shot down. And it’s not your fault! There’s no way to make this setup work.
You may say to me, “But Avengers Infinity War, Carson! That took place all over the universe.” But that’s not a monster-in-a-box story. We’re dealing with characters there who have their own goals, their own flaws and fears and conflicts to overcome. That’s the inherent problem with dinosaurs. They’re not smart. They can’t have dino-arcs.
If I were grading this on the first half alone, I would say it’s worth the price of admission. But once we get to the mansion, each sequence is less compelling than the previous sequence. Not only that, but the writers didn’t recognize that while even though the dinosaurs are the stars of the show, the audience needs to connect with the characters. And they don’t give us anyone to connect to.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Never go smaller in your second half. Movies need to build. This was a problem I had with Looper as well. We went from this giant time-traveling world-traveling opus to hanging out on a farm.
A reminder that if you want to compete for a featured script review on Scriptshadow, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com and include the title of your script, the genre, a logline, a pitch to myself and other readers on why we’d enjoy your script, and, finally, an attached PDF of your screenplay. Good luck!
Genre: Western
Premise: As a zombie plague spreads throughout the Old West, a reformed outlaw must escort a sick girl to sanctuary while being pursued by his old gang and the undead.
Why You Should Read: The first scene won the Opening Scene Contest right here on Scriptshadow. Thanks to some helpful feedback, both the scene and the script have come a long way since then. The concept is both simple and marketable: cowboys versus zombies. And Hollywood has yet to produce a feature film to mainstream audiences. With additional help from the Scriptshadow community, this could be that film. Thank you, and hope you enjoy.
Writer: Scott Eames
Details: 114 pages
Today’s writer enters into one of the most competitive genres in Hollywood – zombie horror. Everyone’s writing zombie movies so if you want to get your zombie script read, you have to do something unique. Is mixing zombies and the Old West unique? Not entirely. I’ve reviewed – I think – three Zombie Westerns on the site? But in Eames’s defense, it’s been awhile since the last one. So maybe there’s an opportunity to grab a hold of some market share here.
Let’s check it out…
Harlan Ellsworth is a wanted man. Of course, wanted men were as common as Facebook pages back in 1872. Still, our guy Harlan ran with one of the nastiest gangs in Arkansas, the Four Horseman. During one of their raids, he killed a Marshall. And now the whole of Arkansas wants him to pay.
But Harlan’s after something himself – the Marshall’s daughter, Wendy. Having since abandoned the Four Horseman, he now believes that they’re after Wendy, and wants to save her before they find her. If he can do a little good, it might make up for all the atrocities from his past.
Off he goes looking for her in a little town called Stillwater, but finds that the entire town’s been slaughtered, likely by Apache. Except when he gets a closer look, he realizes this isn’t the signature of the Apache. And that’s when the zombie humans come. AND the zombie animals.
During the commotion, Wendy flees out of one of the buildings, he scoops her up, and they make a run for it. They’re able to escape the zombies (as well as a pursuing sheriff), and later Harlan lies to Wendy, pretending to be someone else, saying he knew her father and promised he would save her.
Wendy says they should head to her Uncle at Fort Shepherd. If there’s any place that will be fortified from zombies, it will be there. Along the way, they run into Harlan’s old gang, the Four Horseman, and their fearless leader, Percival Douglass.
Percival kidnaps Wendy and brings her to his fancy riverboat, where he appears to have all sorts of plans for her. Meanwhile, Harlan’s been bitten, and could turn within hours. He needs to get to the riverboat in time, kill Percival, save Wendy, and ultimately tell her the truth, that he’s the one who killed her father.
I can’t remember the last time an amateur script got so much right. From a pure craft point of view, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single error here. We start out with a great teaser. After our two main characters are introduced, a clear goal is established (get to Fort Shepherd). Eames builds the entire central relationship around some shocking dramatic irony (Wendy doesn’t know that Harlan killed her father).
There are a series of fun and creative set pieces. The circus of the dead. The waterfall with the falling bodies. The riverboat. Later in the script, our protagonist gets bitten, adding a ticking time bomb to the mix. The arrival of the Four Horseman add an important goal that must be met (Harlan must save Wendy). This script feels like it was vetted by 10 of the best readers in Hollywood. Virtually EVERY choice makes sense.
And yet that’s probably the reason I wasn’t fully engaged. While I admired the plotting, something about the format felt too perfect. Like when the Horseman kidnapped Wendy. That triggered the thought: “Of course the bad guys kidnap the girl so that the hero has to save her.” It confirmed to me that I was too ahead of the script. There was nothing in the story that was surprising me.
Don’t get me wrong. This is one of the HARDEST things about screenwriting. A screenplay has a beginning (the setup), a middle (the conflict), and an end (the resolution). You only have so much room to play around with. And what most writers have found is that when they go outside of that room, it’s a fail. Which pushes them back to the safety of the formula. And this script is definitely textbook formula.
One thing I tell writers when they’re writing something formulaic is to put in 1 or 2 surprise turns in the middle of the screenplay. Do something we’re not expecting. A recent example would be the movie, Good Time., where at the halfway point, our hero goes to the hospital to jailbreak his face-casted brother, only to realize after he’s gotten him to safety, he jailbroke the wrong guy.
But there may be a bigger problem at play.
The more I think about it, the more I realize I was indifferent to our hero, Harlan. It’s not that his plight was uninteresting. He has a really intense backstory. But I didn’t FEEL anything towards him. Something we talked about a couple of weeks ago is that when you feel negatively (or apathetic) towards a character, it almost always goes back to their introduction. And Harlan’s introduction is strange.
We meet him borderline threatening a priest. So already, I’m not liking this guy. Furthermore, the longer he speaks, the less I’m buying the scene. I guess I understand wanting to repent for your sins. But let’s be real. The scene was created for the sole purpose of Harlan being able to drop a load of exposition on us. So you had an unlikable protag combined with Exposition Man. That didn’t sit well with me and likely colored the way I read the rest of the script.
Compare this to a recent Western I watched, High Plains Drifter, with Clint Eastwood. That movie starts with Eastwood riding into a new town, and everyone’s giving him the stink eye. Everyone’s being an asshole. Everyone’s giving him shit. So OF COURSE we’re going to sympathize with this character.! He’s the underdog to all these dickheads.
So perhaps Eames should try giving Harlan an introduction that creates more sympathy. I can’t promise that will work. But there was definitely something about his intro that didn’t click with me. It was one of the weaker scenes in the script.
I’m so torn about this one. I DEFINITELY recommend Scott as a writer. This guy knows what he’s doing. But if I gave the script a “worth the read,” it would be more for that reason than rewarding the script itself. I’ll finish with this. This is the kind of script that is a pebble’s toss away from pushing an amateur into professional territory. I mean, we’re so close, we can bite it.
Script link: Under The Vultures
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I love the use of COLOR in description. Color helps readers visualize better. That means they’re more likely to imagine the image up on the big screen. The opening scene here with its WHITE NIGHTGOWN and its YELLOW EYES and its RED BLOOD. I felt that scene more than any scene I’ve read in the past month. The use of color is a major reason for that.
The main reason this movie works so well is that it has a big concept and a simple execution. I will trumpet this advice until the day I can no longer type – keep your stories simple. A group of people get stuck on an island full of monsters. They try and escape. That’s all this is! This is why so many of the Jurassic Park sequels are bad, because they don’t use this format. And it’s why the most successful sequel in the franchise was a reboot, where, once again, a group of people are stuck on an island and try to escape. Here are 10 more screenwriting lessons you can learn from Jurassic Park.
1) Big movies need big teasers – If you’re writing any sort of blockbuster type film (sci-fi, superhero, action-adventure), you need to open your script with a teaser scene worthy of that idea. Jurassic Park has one of the most memorable opening teasers of any film. A group of men are unloading a mysterious caged animal. When they’re nearly finished, the animal is able to grab one of the men, pull him in, and kill him.
2) Exposition needs to be conveyed while something is HAPPENING – I’ve been seeing this mistake too much lately. Writers put two characters in a room or in a boring setting and have them set up the story for the reader. Pro writers convey exposition WHILE STORY IS HAPPENING. The second scene in Jurassic Park has two men discussing the lawsuit that is going to stem from the death we saw in the teaser. But they’re talking about this as they’re called to a cave, where a group of men have found something valuable, a mosquito encased in amber. In other words, the story is moving forward while the exposition is being given.
3) One key word in your character’s description can sell the entire character – “Dr. Alan Grant, mid thirties, a ragged-looking guy with an intense concentration you wouldn’t want to get in the way of.” What’s the key word there? “INTENSE.” That ONE WORD dominates Grant’s entire personality throughout the film. When you’re writing a description, try to find that descriptor that personifies who your character is. It isn’t easy. Here’s another description of Koepp’s, which isn’t nearly as good: “Dennis Nedry is in his late thirties, a big guy with a constant smile that could either be laughing with you or at you, you can never tell.” No key word. A confusing sentence (a smile becomes a laugh out of nowhere?). Find that word, guys. The right adjective can help you nail a character description.
4) Use your suspense rope! – When you have something cool at the end of the rope, make us pull on it for awhile. When the island’s creator, Hammond, comes to Grant and Ellie, he doesn’t immediately say to them, “Hey, I’ve got this dinosaur island! Come and take a look.” He remains mysterious, baiting them with, “It’s right up your alley. Why don’t you come down?” This keeps the suspense going.
5) Make sure a character goal is present for everyone – Every character needs to have a purpose in the story. You can’t have Hammond bring our paleontologists there for compliments. It’s not a vacation. Grant and Ellie’s goal is to give their endorsement so that the investors can sign off on the park and Hammond can open it. I see this mistake A LOT. Writers put their characters in a situation simply because that’s the movie they want to write, never asking why they’d actually be there.
6) After getting to the end of a suspense rope, add another one – So the suspense rope we referred to above was finding out that this was a dinosaur park. That rope reached its end when Grant and Ellie see their first dinosaur, a Brachiosaurus. After this, Koepp immediately replaces the rope with a new one, when Hammond says they have a T-Rex. “You have a T-Rex?!” Grant says. “Let’s go look at it.” “Relax, there’ll be plenty of time this afternoon.” This forces the reader to pull on this new rope for awhile before getting what he wants.
7) Simple easy-to-understand set-pieces – One thing I can’t stand about new movies are these overly complicated confusing set-pieces where we barely understand what’s going on. Early Spielberg mastered the art of simple set-pieces. What’s the most memorable shot of Jurassic Park? A T-Rex chasing a jeep. That’s it! That’s the set piece. A T-Rex runs after a jeep in a straight line. And the other T-Rex set-piece is simple, too. Characters stuck in cars with a T-Rex just outside, nudging and trying to get them. Or being stuck in a kitchen with a group of raptors. They’re so easy to understand which is why they’re so effective.
8) Even Lebron needs a breather – Sometimes you want to give your A-story (people visiting a dinosaur park) a rest. You do this by creating a B-story to occassionally cut to. The B-story here is Nedry’s plight to steal the dinosaur embryos and sneak them off the island. Every 4-5 scenes, we cut back to him and his plan. You’re going to gas your A-story if you don’t substitute in your B-story every once in awhile.
9) Be awesome by having your B-Story intersect with your A-Story – Just having a B-Story isn’t enough. If you want to show off your writing chops, look for interesting ways to connect your B-Story with your A-Story. Koepp cleverly has Nedry turn off the safety mechanisms in the park in order to hide his crime. This, in turn, allows for our characters to get stuck during their ride and for dinosaurs to have access to them.
10) External flaws vs. Internal Flaws – A flaw is a character defect that’s holding them back. The movie’s journey is then used to have them overcome this flaw. There are two kinds of flaws. An external one, which deals with stuff we can see (example: fear of heights). And an internal one, which deals with stuff we can’t (example: selfishness). Jurassic Park gives Grant an external flaw – he doesn’t like kids. And if I’m being honest, it’s one of the weaker parts of the movie. I suggest going with internal flaws (arrogance, stubbornness, inability to connect) as they connect on a deeper level.
BONUS TIP: Use weather to add more conflict! Doesn’t matter how bad things are for your characters. A little weather insert can make it even more interesting. Here, they add a storm. But you can throw a heat wave into the mix. Hail. Below freezing temperatures. Humidity. Anything that’s going to agitate your characters more is a good thing.
