Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) After a shooting at a police funeral by a suspected militia member, a recluse ex-cop and fellow militia man must interrogate the suspected gunmen in his own militia before copycat attacks start a nationwide war between cops and militia.
About: This script finished on the 2015 Black List. The film will star current Walking Dead villain, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The writer, Henry Dunham, will also be directing. Dunham first made waves with his short, The Awareness, which you can watch here.
Writer: Henry Dunham
Details: 105 pages

Just want to give everybody a heads up. Yet ANOTHER female John Wick project is going into production, this one starring Alias vet, Jennifer Garner. The script is being written by Chad St. John, whose Scriptshadow interview you can check out here. Not going to mince words, guys. If you’ve got a female John Wick script, ya better finish fast. I sense that the end of this trend is coming, especially with the so-so box office of Atomic Blonde.

On to today’s script, which actually contains an ORIGINAL premise. Imagine that. A concept that isn’t following any trends but is rather blazing its own trail. I’ve always been fascinated by the militia. We basically allow people in our country to come together and form their own personal armies. How is that okay?? It was for that reason that I picked Militia up. Let’s find out if it rewarded my curiosity.

40 year-old Gannon lives out in the wilderness. He’s in the midst of smoking a deer for dinner when he hears automatic gunshots in the distance. These gunshots are followed by three explosions. Gannon immediately gets on the phone with a dude named Olsen and the two agree to meet at “The Safe House.”

That safe house is a reclusive lumber warehouse where Olsen and Gannon are soon accompanied by a trickling-in of militia members. There’s Beckman, the techy of the group, Morris, the giant Alpha Male with a chip on his shoulder, Hubbel, a slovenly mountain man, Keating, a deaf-mute, and Noah, the only guy here who looks reasonably presentable.

As the group listens in on the radio, they learn that someone has attacked a cop’s funeral and shot up a good 20 cops in the process. This is bad news because the first people they’re going to suspect in this shooting is the militia. And that’s where the meeting begins – how to make it clear they weren’t involved.

However, when they check their supplies and learn an automatic rifle and several grenades are missing, they realize they WERE the ones involved, and now it’s a matter of smoking out the guy who did it. Gannon takes the lead with the interrogations, convinced that the antagonistic Morris is their culprit.

But it quickly becomes clear that not everything is as at seems. And when word comes in that there have been TWO MORE major militia attacks in neighboring states, they realize that this is way bigger than just one guy. In the end, it’ll be up to Gannon to figure out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth before the police find them, raid the warehouse, and kill them all.

UGH!

I so wanted this to be great! I loved this setup.

So here’s a great tip for screenwriters looking for a big concept that can be made on the cheap. As we’ve discussed before, when your script is cheap to make, you increase the number of potential buyers exponentially.

To do this, start with a really big idea. It can be anything. A giant monster. A mega-quake. A nuclear war. Whatever. But don’t build the story around the actual subject. That’d be expensive. Build it around characters who are affected by the subject.

What this does is it makes your movie feel big even though it’s small.

That’s what Dunham does here. There’s a big attack on this cop funeral, but we don’t see a frame of it. We hear it. But we don’t see it. Then, the entire movie takes place in a warehouse with these characters trying to figure out which one of them perpetrated the attack.

Do you know how cheap it would be to make this movie? You could shoot it in 2 weeks. And it still FEELS BIG. That’s really smart writing there.

Another thing I liked about this script was that it was a SITUATION. What I mean by that is, we don’t see the attack, watch someone run away, show the cops prepare to catch them, show our attacker hide out, meet a love interest, try to move to the next safe area, get into a chase scene, etc., etc.

That’s not a situation. That’s a series of events.

Militia is a situation. A bunch of dudes in one place. One of them killed some cops. The leader has to figure out which one of them did it. Every person who walks into this theater is going to immediately understand what this movie is about. What the setup is. What the rules are. It’s a clear situation.

Not that non-situations can’t work. Yesterday’s film, Good Time, wasn’t a situation and it was a great flick. But situations tend to work really well for feature films. So if you can think of a good one, write it. Other situation-films include The Shallows, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Saw, The Hateful Eight, The Thing, The Wall, Birdman and The Martian.

Yet another great tip to take away from Militia is the mid-point RAISING OF THE STAKES. Remember that when you go into the second half of your story, you need to make things feel bigger somehow. If they stay the same, people are going to get bored. Especially in a movie like this, where you only have one location to work with.

So the midpoint news that it wasn’t just this one funeral attack that happened, but that there was a coordinated attack against cops across three separate states? That’s when I was like, ooooh, this is good. The movie was growing beyond its original setup. That’s always a good thing.

But all was not perfect with Militia.

My big issue with it was that the character-to-character interactions felt a little… phony. I didn’t get the sense that the writer really understood what militia men were like. And this is a common issue in screenwriting. You pick an idea because you like it, but you don’t know anything about the actual subject matter.

So you have a choice. You can do some research and combine it with what you’ve learned through similar movies that you’ve seen, or you can really do the hard work. That means doing a fuck-ton of research. That means finding and locating an actual militia member and talking to them. Learning what their day-to-day life is like.

Nobody likes to do this. So the more common route is the former. And, unfortunately, when you do the former, there’s a lack of authenticity to the proceedings. And I’m not saying it was insufferable here. Some of the interactions felt real. But there were enough moments where I wondered, “Would this really be happening this way?” that it affected my enjoyment of the story.

With that said, I love this setup and I have a feeling that with some rewrites, these authenticity problems can be fixed. So I’m going to recommend Militia. It’s a fun script.

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

What I learned: If you really want to make your descriptions pop, use analogies. When you have a guy with a deep voice, you don’t want to say, “His voice is deep and throaty.” That’s boring. Do what Dunham does. Here, he describes mountain man Hubbel’s voice with an analogy: “Every word from Hubbel sounds like gravel being raked.”

I thought I was walking into a post-Twilight trainwreck. Instead I think I just saw the next Trainspotting.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: When his brother is thrown in jail after a bank robbery gone bad, a low-life street thug will do anything to bail him out by the end of the night.
About: Good Time is the second feature from the Safdie Brothers (Ben and Josh), who call Good Time their “first real movie.” Robert Pattinson, who stars in the film, reached out to the brothers after seeing a still image from their first project and basically begged them to be in their next movie. The brothers reluctantly cast him, unsure if he could handle the role. The film premiered at the Cannes film festival, where it received a 6 minute standing ovation.
Writers: Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie
Details: 100 minutes

What if I told you that I saw the next Trainspotting?

Would you believe me?

Because I think I just did.

Last week, I was dragged to an early screening of Good Time. I say dragged because the only reason I went was because a friend of mine is a huge Robert Pattinson fan and Pattinson is in the movie. “A Robert Pattinson indie movie?” I said. “Seriously? That’s like, guaranteed bad.”

I know what you’re going to say. He was in Rover and Cosmoplis and Lost City of Z and blah blah blah. But does anybody actually remember those movies outside of festival going cinephiles who check movie websites 12 times a day?

Adding to the potential suckage factor was that I’d never heard of the directors before. That’s typically a bad sign. I was preparing for your average 2 hour experimental indie flick with no story and less direction, a student film on crack.

What I got instead was… well… something wonderful.

Good Time follows Connie (Pattinson), a low-life piece of shit who keeps his older girlfriend around specifically to squeeze money out of her whenever he needs to get out of trouble or score his next high. The only good thing Connie does is take care of his mentally challenged older brother, Nick.

At the beginning of the movie, Connie rips Nick out of a center for handicapped people, furious that these assholes keep trying to institutionalize him. Ironically, Connie then preps Nick to rob a bank with him (was he really worse off at that center)? Everything goes smoothly until the dye pack explodes on the money, resulting in a dash for freedom. But the cops end up catching Nick.

Connie then must find 10 grand to bail his brother out of jail, who will be helpless otherwise. He tries to get his girlfriend to pay up but her credit card is declined. In a stroke of good luck, Nick is beaten up in jail, and transferred to the local hospital. Connie then breaks into the hospital and rescues him.

I won’t tell you what happens next but I will say that everything goes to shit and that the first half of the movie, which was relentlessly paced, is nothing compared to the second half, where things truly get fucked up. Connie will go to the limit to save his brother, and that means nobody will get in his way.

Here’s the thing that surprised me most about this screenplay: URGENCY.

Every damn indie film I watch is devoid of urgency. They’re all wrapped in “Feelings” and “Serious” molasses, strolling down slow-as-shit lane, trying to make points about the world or the human condition or whatever. And then something like Good Time comes along and shows you that you can do all that but STILL ENTERTAIN AUDIENCES.

I think that’s why Trainspotting stood out so much when it debuted. When you write something with this kind of urgency, it’s impossible not to take notice. These movies will always stand out.

But it wasn’t just the pace that impressed me. Let’s look at one of the classic screenwriting dilemmas, which Good Time faces in spades: A terribly unlikable main character.

I mean, this guy is just a bad dude on every level. There’s a scene early on where Connie shows up at his older girlfriend’s house (played awesomely by Jennifer Jason Leigh) and as soon as the girlfriend’s mom sees him she starts screaming for her to close the door. She knows what Connie means. Connie means, “I’m here to take more of your money.”

He wrestles his girlfriend away and, on the way to the police station, slowly and heartlessly manipulates her. It’s truly awful behavior.

So why do we still root for someone like Connie? Do you want to take a guess? C’mon. Those of you who have been reading this site should know. I’ll give you a minute to ruminate.

Because Connie loves his mentally challenged brother more than anything. If you want to make a bad protagonist likable, that’s all you have to do. No, you don’t have to write in a retarded family member. But place a family member in some sort of a weakened state (someone’s trying to take advantage of them), have your protagonist fight to the death for that character, and we’ll like him. We’ll root for him NO MATTER WHAT.

But the screenwriting good times didn’t stop there. Whenever you have a full-on super-paced thriller script, where you’re racing from start to finish, there will always be one section, near the midpoint, where you stop, rest, and recuperate. This section always lasts about 10-15 minutes.

I can tell if a writer knows what he’s doing by how he approaches this section. Because 9 times out of 10, this section will consist of one character telling another character some sad backstory, which is the most boring choice you can possibly make.

If you can somehow make this section unexpected and interesting, I know you’re a badass screenwriter. Because it’s hard to make the one slow section in your script stand out from the rest of it.

In Good Time, this section has Connie getting stuck in some Jamaican woman’s home (he’s hiding from the cops). Connie starts hanging out with this woman’s underage granddaughter. The two have this awkward energy and you just know things are going to get weird. I won’t go into detail about what happens. But we’ll just say that when they’re watching TV and Connie’s face comes up on the local news, Connie does something nontraditional to get the girl to overlook that a criminal is in her house.

And I haven’t even gotten into the score, which is freaking amazing. It’s this constant pulse-pounding beat accompanied by these blaring eighties synth-chords that often become the focus of the scene. I haven’t experienced a soundtrack that’s added this level of atmosphere to a movie since Blade Runner.

I’d say that film was a clear influence to the Safdie’s, along with Drive and Trainspotting.

After the film, there was a question and answer session with the directors and Pattinson. These things are always a little awkward, and this one was no exception. Pattinson told a story about how he reached out to the directors after seeing the poster for their first movie and told them he wanted to work with them. The brothers openly discussed (right in front of Pattinson) that they had no intention of e-mailing him back because he wasn’t a good enough actor for the kind of movie they wanted to make.

But they ended up taking a chance on him and it’s looking like a good one for everybody involved. This is easily Pattinson’s best performance and this is the kind of movie that whether you like it or hate it, you will never forget it. It’s a neon-infused nightmare thriller that introduces the world to two talented directors who will be around for a long time.

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

What I learned: In a thriller, your midpoint will almost always consist of your characters resting and recuperating for 10-15 minutes. This section is needed to allow the audience to take a breath and get ready for the second half of the film. However, don’t slack in this section. Try to do something interesting with it. Throw a few unexpected choices in there. And definitely don’t have your protagonist tell some other character about a story from their past. EVERYBODY does that. Instead, tell us about your character THROUGH THEIR ACTIONS AND CHOICES RIGHT NOW, IN THIS SCENE.

Genre: Adventure/Comedy
Premise: After two fame-seeking Millennials are outed for their plans to fake a sailing adventure blog, no one believes it when they really are ship-wrecked and lost at sea.
About: The first half of the story pokes fun at our obsession with fame and lampoons our dependence on smart phones. In the back half I play with what might happen when you take away the phones. Do we remain tethered to societal whims and expectations? Or do we gain clarity about who we are and what we really want?
I took some chances with the back half. Yes, indeedy. Curious if it works.
Thanks ahead of time to all who check it out!
Writer: Stephanie Jones
Details: 89 pages (this is an updated draft from Amateur Offerings)

The weekend is only hours away!

Unfortunately, so are those box office receipts for The Dark Tower, which, by all accounts, is dead on arrival. I’m surprised they made The Dark Tower, actually. I always found it to be the least appealing of King’s work, a mish-mash of an experiment masquerading as one giant story. In my experience, when something isn’t clear in written form, it doesn’t translate well to movie form. Movies need focus.

Which is actually a great segue into today’s script. Let’s Be Famous tackles the ubiquitous millennial desire to be famous without having to earn it. The question is, does it focus enough to convey that theme? Let’s find out, mateys!

Susan works at an office downtown where she spends the majority of her time watching Youtube videos of internet-famous people. Fred, her boyfriend, hangs out all day at home with his cat, “Cat,” and the two occasionally make videos for his Youtube Channel about cat communication.

Susan and Fred yearn for a better life, a life that includes actual excitement.

That’s when Fred gets an idea. Why don’t the two of them hop on a boat, travel around the world, and vlog about it? They’ll be famous. Susan isn’t into it, but it sounds better than staring at Youtube videos all day. So the two hit up their parents for money, buy a boat, and quickly learn that they have no idea what they’re doing.

No problem. They’ll just tell everyone they’re traveling the seas, go out just far enough to make it look like they’ve left, then sneak back to shore when no one’s looking. Take a few sea-selfies, post them on the site over time, and “voila,” it’s like they really are traveling the world!

Unfortunately, a huge storm hits the second they leave harbor, and they’re forced onto a life raft. Soon after, the man who sold them the boat, “Captain Caboose,” arrives to save the day, but not really, since he kidnaps Susan and boots Fred back onto the life raft (with his cat). Susan then begins an S&M relationship with Captain Caboose (no, I’m not kidding). Will Susan come to her senses? Will Fred and his cat survive? Will the two of them ever become famous? Check out Let’s Be Famous to find out!

Whoa.

This was a wild ride.

Okay, where to get started…

This isn’t the movie I thought I was being pitched. I thought this was going to be about two friends who want to be famous. Like young versions of Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. Instead, it was about a couple. I don’t know why that didn’t work for me. But something about a relationship felt less funny.

Maybe if Fred and Susan’s relationship were easier to grasp, I’d change my mind. But I could never get a handle on it. Did they like each other? I never read a genuine moment between them. And, if anything, Susan seemed to despise Fred (there’s a moment early on during a dinner date where she’s annoyed by pretty much everything he says).

So I kept asking, why is she even with him if she doesn’t like him?

This had a ripple effect on the rest of the script because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking for from their relationship. For example, had we established at the beginning that they were on the verge of breaking up, but they decided to go on this trip as one last attempt to fix their relationship, I’d understand the dynamic. These two are either going to figure it out or not.

Instead, the relationship was vague, to the point where you could’ve easily categorized them as friends. In my experience, when relationship dynamics are unclear, the rest of the script is unclear. And that’s kinda what I felt.

I mean, at a certain point, Susan starts an S&M relationship with Captain Caboose mere hours after her “boyfriend” (again, I’m reluctant to use that term since I’m still not convinced what they are to one another) is booted back out onto a life raft. Susan did hit her head. And I think it’s implied that that’s the reason she’s not being herself. But, like a lot of the script, I was never 100% sure.

That was another problem. The writing was so manic, the story never has a chance to breathe. This was particularly problematic in the setup, as I would constantly find myself a couple of minutes behind the writer. We’d arrive at a scene and I’d be asking, “Wait, how did we get here?”

For example, there’s a moment where Fred and Susan are about to begin their voyage, and out of nowhere, there were these – I guess internet reporters? – there to document the event. I realized, “Oh, they must’ve told these guys to come here to get it on record that they really did leave on this trip.”

But why was I only finding this out now? We needed that scene six pages ago where one of them said, “We need to document this so that people believe us.” “How do we do that?” “We’ll call some people. From the smaller Youtube channels. Get them here so that they see we’re really leaving.”

But virtually none of the script is set up like that. We’re just SLAMMED into scene after scene and it’s our job to keep up.

I can’t figure out if this is Steph’s writing style or if she simply wrote this script too fast. Whatever the case, this would be the first note I’d give her. SLOOOOOOWWWWW DOOOOWWWWWNN. Take your time setting up the characters. Take your time setting up their relationship dynamic so that we understand it.

I mean we don’t even get a proper scene where we see that these two desire fame above all else. Without that scene, it doesn’t make sense that they’re going through all of this hubbub in the first place. And I suspect that that scene wasn’t written because this script was written too fast.

For me, personally, my checkout point was the S&M stuff. While comedy has no rules (whatever makes someone laugh makes them laugh), I need some logic to my comedy. If it’s literally ANYTHING GOES and there’s no rhyme or reason to any decision whatsoever, I don’t think that works. Why would a woman let her boyfriend die in some lifeboat while simultaneously agreeing to engage in sexual fantasies with some disgusting old weird man she’s known for 30 minutes? It’s just odd.

Something tells me this script wasn’t properly outlined. And when you don’t outline, you just go wherever the pen takes you. And while that can feel exhilarating as a writer, it rarely feels that way for the reader.

A friend of mine growing up used to love going out on a boat and dragging an inter-tube along the back. He’d send me back on that tube then drive around the lake like crazy, whipping and snapping, zigging and zagging, desperately attempting to get me to fall off. That’s exactly what I felt like reading Let’s Be Famous. Being dragged around like that can be fun for 2-3 minutes. But longer than that and it gets exhausting.

If Steph wants to continue with this script, I would build the story around friends, not a relationship. I would take time to set the story up. I’d let the scenes breathe. I would establish what each character’s main issue was (they want fame). And I would focus more on the theme of fame and what it does to people, rather than bring in a joke character (the captain) who works at the expense of your script’s theme.

That’s just me though. What did you guys think?

Script link (new draft!): Let’s Be Famous

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

What I learned: The other day we talked about saying NO to your characters. When you say no, it creates conflict. That forces your character into action, which almost always results in a better scene. So in Let’s Be Famous, both characters need money to buy a boat. They each go to their parents and what do the parents do? They hand over money without hesitation. They said YES instead of NO.

A script without a theme is like a photograph without a subject. The picture can be well-composed, colorful, sharp, and yet the experience of looking at the photo feels empty. You get no sense of what the photographer was trying to say with the image.

“Trying to say,” is a nice way to define theme. When you write a story, you should be trying to say something. You don’t have to. But it helps fill in the emptiness. It helps give your story meaning.

Today, I want to talk about how to find your theme. And not just for your own projects. When you break into the big leagues, being able to discuss theme in a pitch room will be one of the determining factors for you getting the job. When you’re angling for that million dollar Emoji Movie assignment, you better have an idea of what your theme is going to be going into the pitch or I promise you, you won’t get it.

Despite the term being one of the most abstract in the craft, theme isn’t as difficult to identify as you might think. In fact, most of the time, it’s right under your nose.

A few weeks ago, Steph Jones sent me her logline for a consultation (the script was also a part of last week’s Amateur Offerings). Her script was about two fame-seeking millennials who start a fake travel adventure blog. Going off that one-sentence breakdown, let’s see how we figure out the theme.

The driving force behind Steph’s story is clearly fame. That’s what these characters are looking for. Therefore, our theme should revolve around celebrity. So maybe the theme is about our culture’s obsession with celebrity without actually having to earn it, and the ramifications of that.

Keep in mind that simple/universal themes resonate best. And that a good theme teaches the characters a lesson after it’s all over.

Continuing on, let’s look at yesterday’s script, Murder on the Orient Express. Here’s the logline: “When a murder occurs in the first class cabin of the Orient Express, a world renown detective must figure out which of the travelers committed the crime.”

This one is tougher as the logline is too broad to imply any obvious themes. However, if you were writing this script yourself (spoilers!), you would know that the murdered man is an escaped killer, and that the travelers have decided to kill him for it. This opens up a more obvious theme, which is that of vigilante justice. If a man has done something inarguably horrible, is it okay to take justice into your own hands, or do you gamble on the risky nature of official justice, where the man might go free? This is one of the most common themes in film. You see it in Westerns, in superhero movies, and in revenge thrillers (John Wick).

Okay, let’s up the difficulty level. Dunkirk: “An army of 300,000 men, trapped on the beach, desperately await rescue while a surrounding German army decides whether to attack or not.”

War allows for the exploration of many themes. So it’s not like you can wrong here. But with the key plotline focusing on one soldier’s willingness to do anything to escape the beach, you could argue that the theme of Dunkirk is, simply, selfishness. At what point does sacrifice give way to looking out for number one? Indeed, this theme is present throughout many war movies.

Since this is Scriptshadow, we can’t go through an entire Thursday post without a Star Wars example. But let’s make it tough on ourselves. We’re going to find a theme for Rogue One: “A group of misfit criminals must join together to steal the plans of the most dangerous weapon in the universe.”

Hopefully you guys are getting a feel for this now, so before I offer my theme, go ahead and try to figure this out on your own. I’ll wait… Okay, so we have a group of people attempting to steal something. Normally, these people operate on their own. So this one is actually pretty easy. The theme is the power of the group over the individual. In life, one person can only achieve so much. But together, the possibilities are infinite.

Remember, themes should have consequences for the characters who deviate from them. Or, at the very least, the threat of consequence. So if one of the characters in Rogue One chooses an action that pits himself above the group, he should pay for it.

Okay, let’s end on the toughest one yet. It’s so tough, I’m not even sure what the theme is yet. Gone Girl. Here’s the IMDB logline: “With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man tries to prove that his wife is inexplicably responsible for what has happened.”

Usually, when the theme for a movie isn’t obvious after you’ve watched it, that’s a bad thing. It means the message didn’t come through clearly enough. And it may be why, while Gone Girl is considered a good film, it’s not one that’s remained in the public conscious. That’s why theme is so important. A well-executed theme helps a movie stay with someone for many years to come.

But I’ll give it my best shot. I’d say that the theme of Gone Girl is our society’s need to try people in the court of public opinion. You’re guilty until proven innocent. What I find interesting about this and similar themes is that while they shine a light on society, they don’t hit the audience on an emotional level. That’s something to keep in mind when you choose your theme. Do you want to make a statement about society or do you want to make a statement about the individual? The former gets critics frothing but the latter stays with audiences longer.

Now bust out your latest script and figure out the theme, dammit!

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations, which go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. And as of today, all logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround time. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Mystery
Premise: (from IMDB) A lavish train ride unfolds into a stylish & suspenseful mystery. From the novel by Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express tells of thirteen stranded strangers & one man’s race to solve the puzzle before the murderer strikes again.
About: Today’s screenplay was written by a writer The Hollywood Reporter just called, “The most famous screenwriter you’ve never heard of.” Never has a statement been more true. Michael Green is on some kind of streak. Once known only for his involvement on the failed Green Lantern movie, Green has been unstoppable this year, scripting Logan, Alien: Covenant, American Gods, Blade Runner 2049, and now this. Murder on the Orient Express will star Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, and Josh Gad. It was directed by Kenneth Branaugh and comes out this November.
Writer: Michael Green (based on the novel by Agatha Christie)
Details: 133 pages (2/20/15 draft)

Murder on the Orient Express is an odd project that probably would’ve remained in obscurity had it not been for Josh Gad’s viral videos asking Daisly Ridley questions about Star Wars Episode 8. In all my years, I’ve never seen a movie find buzz quite like that before. Then there was that now infamous trailer that ended with a severely mismatched piece of music by the Imagine Dragons.

This may seem like nothing to the casual movie-goer. But knowing how hard it is to create buzz for a film if you’re not part of a Marvel or Star Wars universe, the fact that this obscure title can drum up any buzz at all is impressive. I mean, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone last year saying, “You know what they need to remake? Murder on the Orient Express!”

I personally consider this setup to be ingenious. A group of people not just stuck in a room, but stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere? A murder that must be figured out before they get to the next stop? It’s a tailor-made plot for a film. Let’s see how it turned out…

It’s the 1930s and Hercule Poirot is the most successful investigator in the world. And he’s not afraid to tell you that. But Poirot has been solving too many burglaries, too many murders. The dude just wants a vacation. So he hops on the Orient Express to travel to some faraway land and get some R&R.

Because Poirot is so famous, he’s able to get a first class cabin, and he’s joined there by a number of characters. There’s Bouc, an aging partier who works for the Orient Express. There’s Ratchett, a blustery American who buys and sell antiques.

There’s Caroline Hubbard, a 40-something 2-time divorcee who’s on the prowl for her third husband. There’s Mary Debenham, a young beauty who’s carrying on a secret romance with a black doctor, Arbuthnot. The two are traveling “separately.” There’s a Russian Princess, a Hungarian Count, a formally violent Cuban, and a slew of other characters, all on their way to different destinations.

On the first night, Ratchett arrives in Poirot’s cabin and tells him that the mob is after him and he wants to hire Poirot for protection. Poirot blows him off. Ratchett storms away. And the next morning the train comes to a sudden stop. Everyone’s informed that the train has hit some snow and that they will be stuck there for awhile.

Moments later, Ratchett is found dead in his cabin, stabbed 12 times. Bouc freaks out and says if they don’t figure out who killed him by the time they reach the next stop, the Slavs will use their own sense of justice, randomly pick a killer, and hang him right there in town. To avoid this fate, Poirot will have to come out of vacation and solve his toughest case yet. What he will find during this investigation… will shock everyone.

A couple of years ago I introduced a term on the site: burden of investment. I use this to describe the amount of work the reader must do to keep up with a script’s setup. When the writer inundates the reader with insane amounts of information in the first act, it causes a “reader short circuit,” effectively K.O.ing their mental facilities, throwing them into skim-mode for the rest of the story.

Murder on The Orient Express has a high burden of investment. There are a TON of characters to remember. And each character’s name is unfamiliar, making it even tougher to remember who’s who. All of them are going to unique destinations and have unique backstories and objectives. By the time you get to page 30 of this script, your brain is so scrambled, all you can think about is taking a nap.

Even if you get through this section, the script doesn’t get much better. Part of the problem with “Orient” is that the story is so old fashioned. Which I guess is the point. But you have to find a way to modernize SOME aspects of the story. Or else everything just feels… old.

The writing is stodgy and formal. The dialogue is as well. Here’s an early line from Poirot: “I am of an age and level of experience where I know what I like and what I do not. What I like pleases me enormously. What I do not I cannot abide. For example, the forced pleasantry before what is determined to be a business discussion.”

The whole script reads like this.

But it’s not just the writing. It’s the plotting. It’s very “And now I’ll go question this person, and now I’ll go question this person, and now I’ll go question this person.” It’s repetitive to a fault. Any format that repeats becomes predictable. And predictability is the predecessor to boredom. You need to shake things up. Outside of a fun chase sequence through the snow, “Orient” rarely shakes things up.

There were other dated choices as well. For example, the murdered character was an asshole. These days, when someone gets murdered in a movie, they’re almost universally a good person. Or else why would we care that their murder be avenged? I think back in the 30s, the mystery alone was enough for readers to be engaged. Today, we need to feel some connection to the victim to care.

Likewise, the construction of Poirot’s character is at odds with today’s heroes. The guy is the best in the business. He has no weaknesses. We know, from the get-go, that he’s going to solve the case. I think these days, the hero would be more flawed, more tortured, and probably not as good at his job. All of this would inject doubt into whether he would solve the case or not.

Doubt is drama’s best friend.

However, even if you were to ignore that modernist take, they still had something to work with. Poirot’s ego. Had they explored that as his flaw – his ego being his downfall – that could’ve been interesting. And yet, they decided to play the character straight up. He’s got an ego but who the cares? Not relevant to the story!

The one thing I liked about the script was that the murder on the train was tied to the murder of an innocent family that was set up as backstory at the beginning of the script. I never like something that’s straightforward (a man is dead, find his killer). By including that other murder, it added an extra layer to this murder, almost creating a secondary mystery. That was cool.

Unfortunately, the stodgy storytelling, the pragmatic pacing, and the flaw-less hero made for a less-than-stellar reading experience. All I wanted out of this movie was to have fun. This is a FUN premise. Instead, the whole thing felt like work.

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

What I learned: Broad Stroke Writing vs. Specific Stroke Writing. When you come into a scene, you can give us the broad strokes (Joe stands by the window, staring out. Jane makes coffee). Or you can give us the specific strokes (Follow a deep long crack up a frost-bitten window, the sound of heavy breathing nearby. Moving back, a man stares out into the cold day). The former is if you want to jump right into plot. The latter is if you want to create a mood or set a tone for the scene. You will usually use broad strokes in screenwriting. But when you want us to feel a scene, move to specific. Here’s an early example of specific strokes in Orient Express…