Just 24 days left. The contest is FREE. Winner gets their script optioned by Grey Matter. There’s no better contest deal on the planet! Submit now!

The schizophrenic 2015 Summer box office refuses to go away! Neither of this weekend’s contestants, Terminator: Genisys or Magic Mike XXL, finished in the top two. Those spots went to stellar holdovers Inside Out and Jurassic World. The studios responsible for the new entries, Paramount and Warner Brothers, are trying to blame a weird July 4th weekend layout (where July 4th didn’t fall on a weekday), but come on, let’s be honest here. Nobody wanted to see these films because of a simple reason: they didn’t look that good.

I mean Terminator: Genisys did so bad, it finished 20 million dollars below Terminator: Salvataion’s opening weekend box office, a movie that famously found a way to make a post-apocalyptic world dominated by killer robots boring. What’s strange is that every single person on the planet knew this movie was dead in the water EXCEPT for the Terminator producers and Arnold Schwarzenegger. How can a group of people be so out of touch?

Well, I have a counter-argument for that. I believe that if the script for Terminator: Genisys was good, and that script translated into a good film, word-of-mouth and slamming reviews could’ve saved this film. So why didn’t that happen?

Well, the writers of Terminator: Genysis made an age-old screenwriting mistake. They wrote a complicated time travel story. I’m going to say something here that I BEG all sci-fi writers heed for the remainder of their writing careers: COMPLICATED MAINSTREAM TIME-TRAVEL MOVIES DO NOT WORK.

Time travel is one of the trickiest sub-genres to get right. That’s because they intrinsically don’t make sense. If you travel back in time to stop something and it doesn’t work, you just travel back and try it again. The genre is a black hole for plot holes. And the more you keep travelling around in time, the more of these plot holes keep popping up.

Terminator: Genisys is all about characters travelling back in time to stop moments from previous Terminator timelines. Like an aging Arnold Terminator growing up with Sarah Connor and then fighting his younger Terminator self when he shows up in 1984.

This is a DEADLY but common mistake with young eager sci-fi writers. They say, “Ooh, that’d be so cool. The old Terminator fighting the young Terminator when he arrives in the past!” And it is kind of a cool idea. But if you manipulate a time-travel timeline that’s already iffy as it is solely to accommodate a cool scene, you’ve upset the entire foundation of your story.

When you write anything, whether it’s a complex time-travel plot or a simple coming-of-age film, you must avoid “But wait” moments. “But wait” moments are where your audience pulls out of the movie to ask, “But wait. If that happens, then the other thing doesn’t make sense.” Or, “But wait. If he did this then how come he couldn’t do it earlier?” Time travel movies are cess pools for “But wait” moments.

For that reason, when you write a time travel movie, you keep the time travel stuff as simple as possible. It’s why the original Terminator worked so well. A terminator came back from the future to kill a woman. The whole movie, then, was not about Sarah Conner jumping through time portholes to escape the Terminator. It was a chase movie. Plain and simple. No gimmicks. That’s why it worked.

James Cameron knew this going in for the sequel as well. He didn’t add some silly time-travel plot. The only thing he changed was adding a new Terminator. There was some stuff about trying to destroy Skynet before it could take over the world, but that was still easy to understand and buy into.

Another example of time travel screwing up a movie was Back to the Future 2. Now I can already hear some of you guys grumbling. “Back to the Future 2 was great, Carson!” No, it wasn’t. The plot was borderline ridiculous. What you liked about Back to the Future 2 (as did I) was that it still had 2 of the most lovable characters in cinematic history, Marty McFly and Doc Brown. Those two are what made Back to the Future 2 watchable.

But the travelling to the future only to find out that they needed to travel to the past to save an alternate present. It was a mess. And I remember Roger Ebert pointing out that even the characters looked confused trying to explain it (needing a chalkboard to do so). And this is yet another reason to avoid complicated time travel movies. They require tons of exposition, which eats up valuable story time.

Now some of you might point out movies like Primer as examples of complicated time travel movies that work. But Primer isn’t a mainstream movie. It’s a $7000 indie movie that nobody outside of cinephiles saw and when you make a movie for that kind of money for that kind of audience, you can take risks and play around because you’re not necessarily required to make sense (and it’s debatable whether Primer does make sense).

My point is, time-travel is a plot device that you can get lost in. And I get it. It’s fun to play with. Who doesn’t want to solve a time travel problem by adding more time travel! But I’m warning you as someone who reads A LOT OF BAD TIME-TRAVEL SCRIPTS, if you’re writing a sci-fi movie, it’s best to keep the time-travel plot as simple as possible. You can be complex with character development and the plot itself. But don’t add layers upon layers of time travel unless you want to “But wait” yourself out of a movie.

Speaking of time travel, I bet the producers of Magic Mike XXL are wishing they could go back in time and not make their sequel.

Granted, my understanding of why this movie didn’t work isn’t as complete as Terminator: Genisys, but I have some ideas. For starters, this isn’t a sequel-type movie. Sequel movies are action movies, adventure movies, sci-fi movies, and comedies. There’s nothing about this particular concept that screams “need more of these.” It feels very much like a “one-off.”

The producers didn’t seem to realize this and that cost them. Because even without that issue looming, sequels need to abide by one law. You need to give the audience MORE. Something bigger. And when you watched the Magic Mike XXL promos, it looked like we were getting the same.

This was the same mistake The Avengers 2 made, which isn’t coming anywhere near the domestic box office of the original. They went as big as they could in the original, leaving them no room to go bigger with the sequel. So people said, “That looks the same.” And it was. It was the same movie (probably even smaller). And that’s death for a sequel.

Using Terminator as an example here, Terminator 2 brought in a bigger badder Terminator. That’s why people showed up to that movie. Because we were getting something new. Magic Mike should’ve realized, “We aren’t a typical sequel film. So we definitely need to find something bigger to bring people in.” I don’t know what that would be. The promise of Channing Tatum full-frontal? Based on the audience for the film, maybe. But a carbon-copy stripper film isn’t going to be enough to lure people to theaters.

Unfortunately, next week doesn’t look much better. Minions is the only major film opening. But the following week we get Ant-Man AND Trainwreck, so that should be fun. And remember, screenwriters – following and dissecting box office is an essential part of your jobs. You need to know what’s doing well and what isn’t, and also WHY. Studios are fickle and terrified and reactionary and one major bomb in a genre can change the development tracks of all six studios. For example, you don’t want to go out wide with your complicated time-travel stripper script this week. Table that for awhile and work on something else. Like dinosaurs attacking Los Angeles or something. I’m only half-kidding. It’s not like Jurassic Park has IP on dinosaurs. Man, the more I think about it, the more I think a studio would actually buy that. Anyway, as always, good luck!

Just 26 days left. The contest is FREE. Winner gets their script optioned by Grey Matter. There’s no better contest deal on the planet! Submit now!

Again, Amateur Offerings is when YOU the Scriptshadow readers submit your own scripts in a Battle Royale format. The script that gets the most votes in the Comments section gets a Friday review, where, if the script is good, good things are known to happen. And it’s a special Amateur Offerings post since one of the scripts comes from an idea of mine! Shadows Below is based on an idea I threw out there in an earlier post. Gregory took that idea and he and his partner ran with it. I don’t want to weight script reads though. Try to read as many scripts as you can. Then vote for your favorite in the comments!

Title: Shadows Below
Genre: Action Thriller
Logline: After terrorists attack China on the 4th of July, a submarine commanded by the President’s Daughter and a team of Navy SEALs are all that stand between the US and Nuclear Armageddon.
Why you should read: Hidden around the world are submarines with only one mission: Nuclear Counter-strike in the event of war. Known as doomsday subs for their ability to destroy the world, redundancy protocols give their Captains absolute authority to launch ballistic missiles if communications with command ever stops. — SHADOWS BELOW is a modern day action / thriller that revolves around the President’s Daughter and the US submarine she comes to lead. After American terrorists nuke China’s Naval Command on the 4th of July, a Chinese doomsday sub Captained by a legendary Admiral goes rogue and has just under four hours to start a war by nuking Washington DC. — SHADOWS BELOW highlights every aspect of our Navy, from SEALs to Top Gun Pilots, submarines, and aircraft carriers, all engaging in a desperate battle just off the coast of DC to save America. — It is INDEPENDENCE DAY meets THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER with a female protagonist.

Title: Nerd Got Game
Genre: Teen Comedy
Logline: A high school science prodigy attends a State science convention where he meets a local girl who turns his world upside down.
Why you should read: Nerd Got Game has been through ten plus drafts, including a page one rewrite. The end result is a lean 90 page script that’s ready to go. I love the old John Hughes films from the 80’s and more recent teen comedy efforts like Sex Drive (2008), Easy A (2010) and The DUFF (2015). But teen comedies, like romantic comedies, seem to be a rare bird these days. Time for a comeback.

Title: Sessions of Lead Belly
Genre: Biopic
Logline: A Southern black folk singer walks the line between a violent criminal life and becoming a great American musician.
Why you should read: Inspired by the likes of “Raging Bull” and “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould”, “Sessions of Lead Belly” is stylistic bordering on surreal and strives for quality even at expense of authenticity. — The nonlinear structure throughout different periods in Lead Belly’s life of the early 1900’s is patterned to best draw interest and convey information, exploring who Lead Belly is and why, as well as the futility of triumph and meagerness of survival against all odds. — Every sequence is nearly standalone, playing out as ambitious mini-stories and innovative short films, each with a calculated build and unique style.

Title: The Feed (based on the novel “Feed” by MT Anderson)
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: In the 22nd century, a complacent teenager’s life is thrown into disarray when a rebellious girl shows him that his Utopian world isn’t as perfect as it seems.
Why you should read: Yes, this is another teen dystopian sci-fi story. In 2100s America, our brains have been supplemented with “Feeds”. Feeds are amazing sources of information, communication and connectivity. Yet people are further apart than ever, unable to express anything but boredom and materialism. It’s a script full of big ideas like dependence on technology, corporate control, and big-brother paranoia. But more than any of those things, it’s about people. People who are still people, despite being profiled as consumers, targets, and cogs in the machine. — This is my first attempt at a feature-length script, something I finished working on last summer but was just inspired to submit (as I think adaptations are ineligible for SS250). I’ve written two shorts; one was made into a tiny indie and the other was the recipient of a large cash award within my university. The Feed is based on a novel I truly love, and I hope that the script shows that love for the core story and characters.

Title: LEGACY
Genre: Horror
Logline: A newlywed discovers her family has secretly been hunting down werewolves for centuries and must now choose between the life she has and continuing the family legacy.
Why you should read: This is a dark monster tale with some humorous character interactions to ease the ride. It is a telling of how secrets and betrayals can remold us while perpetuating the cycle of revenge no matter how desperately we fight against it. We are, after all, human. I am a nobody putting my spec out there hoping for an “Immaculate Reception” just to get it read. I have submitted this before to you, and you are probably sick of hearing from me however, I am persistent. Although I thought it was ready for contests, and I did send it to Scriptshadow 250, I highly doubt it will make the cut in any contest, because after I sent it, I found errors (I truly suck at proofing), but there may be other reasons it won’t make Carson’s list, or any list this year. However, since that time, it has gone through some revisions that I believe have removed these reasons, while painfully proofing it, and:

— In June 2015: LEGACY was requested by 2 production firms to read.
— Has nabbed a Wildsound contest WIN for a screenplay read, and is scheduled for August 2015.
— Made the semi-finals for 1/2015 “Table Read My Screenplay” Park City, Utah contest.

So, that’s progress, which I would like to continue by having it reviewed here by the SS community, so I have to ask, Carson, are you my ‘Franco Harris?”

Just 29 days left. Free contest. Winner gets their script optioned by Grey Matter. There’s no better contest deal on the planet! Submit now!