The word on the street is that Pascal is out. Gone. No longer a part of The Mandalorian. He left mid-season because they refused to give him scenes with his helmet off. Ya gotta give it to Star Wars. This franchise loves drama.

How weird is this development? Well, it comes after learning, in the first season, that Pascal wasn’t even around for the show. They had John Wayne’s son in the Mandalorian suit instead (this is real! Look it up!).

So you’ve managed to make someone quit… who wasn’t even officially on the show. Only Star Wars, man. Only Kathleen Kennedy.

But let’s get to the trailer for season 2. Was it any good? It was pretty good. The Mandalorian is the closest thing so far to the original trilogy so it’s got that going for it. I love Baby Yoda putting up his “stroller shield.” That was fantabulously cute. I like the opening shot of a damaged ship. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before in a Star Wars property (not done like that, anyway). There isn’t a money shot but the trailer is solid. All Star Wars trailers are solid.

If you remember, I soured on The Mandalorian for two reasons. The lack of story connectivity was frustrating. Making this a pseudo anthology series goes against the connective tissue that helps make Star Wars so great.

But more frustrating was this choice to recruit second-tier Star Wars concepts from such shows as the animated “Star Wars: Rebels.” You’ve got our series villain now wielding something called the “dark sabre” which is such a dumb weapon concept I refuse to beleive it came from anyone over the age of eight.

The Mandalorian didn’t market itself that way. This is the series that started off with storm trooper helments on stakes. This is the series that opened up with a decapitation scene in a bar. Now we’re importing ideas from shows where every other character chimes in with a “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” before commercial break?

Star Wars is better than that.

And yes, I realize this is the franchise with little booping robots, characters named “Dooku,” and a giant slug for a villain. How is the dark sabre any different? I don’t know. I just know it is. This is why Star Wars has been so hard for so many creators to nail down. There are these indefinable variables that each fan has worked into their own “This is what Star Wars is” equations.

I will probably watch the series because the episodes are short and there’s bound to be one or two good episodes in the mix. Oh, and since Pascal is no longer around and there’s a rumor that Boba Fett is back from the dead, it might be fun to have Boba Fett kill the Mandalorian and slip into his armor moving forward. Talk about dramatic irony! We know this is Boba. But nobody else does.

That could get me back permanently. :)

I’m going to be hard at work all weekend on the newsletter so there’s no time for a Showdown today. But do not worry. I’ll be doing Second Chance Showdown next weekend. As for what to expect with the newsletter, I can confirm now there won’t be any Star Wars in it. For those of you who get angry whenever I talk about Star Wars, rest assured the newsletter is Star Wars free.

However, as long as we’re on the topic of Star Wars, I found out that Leslye Headland is making a Star Wars show for Disney Plus. Headland wrote the movie, “Bachelorette,” about a bunch of mean women being horrible to the soon-to-be bride. More recently she made time-loop show Russian Doll for Netflix. I suppose some people will like this news. But there is nothing in this woman’s work as far as I can see that would indicate she’s right for Star Wars. Star Wars is not mean. It’s not harsh. It doesn’t have angry people walking around being angry at everyone. To be honest, this choice is baffling. What criteria are they using to greenlight stuff over there? And why does Kathleen Kennedy still have a job?? It’s madness I tell you! MADNESSSS111!!!!

Okay, sorry, I had to get it out of the way. I did that so I wouldn’t have to include it in the newsletter so you’re welcome.

Let’s leave you with some screenwriting theory to ponder. A common mistake I encounter in the screenplays I read is the act of convincing yourself versus convincing them. As writers, when we want something to work, it’s very easy to convince ourselves that it works. But you’re not the person you have to convince. You have to convince the reader. And the reader has a much higher bar than you do.

For example, let’s say you’re writing Parasite (spoilers if you haven’t seen the film). You know that you want an ending where Poor Dad kills Rich Dad. So you need to come up with a reason for why that would happen. The “convince yourself” writer writes a single scene before the climax where Rich Dad yells at Poor Dad because he forgot to gas up the car. In the Convince Yourself writer’s mind, he’s done enough to justify Poor Dad raging out and killing Rich Dad.

The seasoned screenwriter, however, knows that that’s not going to fly. So he goes back into the script and writes five separate scenarios where the Rich Dad becomes increasingly disgusted by the Poor Dad’s smell. We see, in each instance, the Poor Dad getting angrier and angrier about the matter. So when he snaps at the final party, it makes sense to us.

This may seem obvious but I run into this issue at least once in every amateur script I read. It’s clear that the writer only worked hard enough to convince himself and didn’t put in the effort to make it believable on the reader’s end. And the reader’s end is the only end that matters.

HAPPY WEEKEND!

It is Day 11 of the 2 Week Script Challenge.

I’ve asked you to write 8 pages a day. Which would mean, if you’ve been good, you will be writing pages 80 to 88 today.

Now here’s the good news if you’ve gotten this far. The last 30 pages of your script are the most structured of the entire screenplay. Your script is ending which means all you have to do is write a series of scenes that build to a climax.

If your script is between 100-110 pages, this will likely be where you introduce your LOWEST POINT. Your lowest point is where your heroes experience their biggest fall in the movie up to this moment. It looks as if there is no chance they will survive or succeed.

Notable LOWEST POINTS from films include Darth Vader striking Obi-Wan down in Star Wars.

There’s the house flooding scene in Parasite. A huge storm sweeps into their lower-than-ground-level home, making it unlivable.

The attempted suicide scene in The Invisible Man. Our heroine is in a mental hospital. It doesn’t look like there’s any way out except for death. And so that’s what she tries to do.

In A Quiet Place it’s when the dad is killed and the family is left to fend off the monsters on their own.

The lowest point scene is usually one of the more fun scenes to write because it’s such a big moment in the script. So this is always an exciting moment in the writing process for me. Well, anything where I’m able to leave the second act behind is an exciting moment.

From there, you’ll have your “dwell on what’s happened” sequence. This can last anywhere between 1-4 scenes depending on genre, pacing, and just the overall story you’re telling. We have to feel the effects of what just happened to your hero.

After that they have a rebirth, put together a plan to achieve their goal, and off they go to the climax. Easy, right?

Most stories have a goal to begin with, which makes the ending easy to figure out (the goal in Raiders is to get the Ark of the Covenant!). But sometimes scripts don’t have obvious goals. Romantic comedies are famous for that. It’s more about the relationship than the plot. This is why so many rom-coms end up at the airport with someone leaving. Whenever your ending isn’t built into your plot, you lean into the only other structure you know – which is scenarios that have worked in other movies.

But there’s still hope for you non-goal oriented screenplay writers. I learned this one from Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, the writers of Wedding Crashers. They said that they toiled over how to end their script for months until the obvious answer came to them. It’s a movie about weddings. The climax needs to be a wedding!

So look at your subject matter and that’s typically where you’re going to find your ending. If you’re writing about two chess players who fall in love, your ending shouldn’t contain any trips to the airport. It should probably take place at the national finals of the chess championships.

Very proud of everyone who’s made it this far.

KEEP. ON. WRITING!!!!

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Premise: Rey, Poe, and Finn must come together to find the evil Emperor and stop his “Final Order” plan to take over the galaxy.
About: It’s finally here! After many many months, the much talked about “final Star Wars film” has hit theaters. Already, there are mumblings of “failure.” The movie made 175 million this weekend, which is 25 million less than predictions. Last Jedi made 220 million its first weekend. Force Awakens made 247 million. It will likely be the nail in the coffin for Kennedy, who never really understood the franchise, resulting in numerous missteps. But none of that has anything to do with whether the movie is actually good. Is it? Let’s find out!
Writer: Chris Terrio/JJ Abrams (George Lucas)
Details: 2 and a half hours long

Duh duhhhhhhh duh duh duh DA da. Duh duh duh DA DA duhh duhh duhh duhhhhhh!

SPOILERS DROID: “BEE-BEEEP BOOOOP SPOILERS BELOW, I HAVE SPOKEN”

I’m hopped up on Sudafed, Advil, and Vitamin C so WATCH OUT! You’re about to get a review for the ages.

I’m going to get right into it.

I LOVED THIS MOVIE. Absolutely positively loved every second of it. There is literally nothing I disliked.

And let me take a quick detour because there’s something going on on the internet that’s infuriating me. Tons of Youtubers realized that they got 10x as many views as they’d ever had on any video when they trashed The Last Jedi. It’s not hard to figure out how those same people are going to approach their reviews for this movie. “Money or truth? I’m going with money, buster!” This is why you see so many Star Wars reviews on Youtube that say, “WORST MOVIE EVER!” and “A CATASTROPHE!”

I have no issues with people who disliked this movie. But if you’re going to try and convince me it’s the worst movie ever or “a catastrophe,” I’m going to tell you you’re a straight up liar. This movie was one of the most entertaining movies ever made. And there’s no way you didn’t have at least a little bit of fun watching it.

My viewing experience started off confusing because I’d heard all these reviews saying that the first 45 minutes were awful and confusing. The first 45 minutes were great (LIGHT SPEED SKIPPING!) I kept waiting for them to get bad and waiting for them to get bad and they never did. A lot of people were confused by the multiple McGuffins, Sith planet finders and daggers – but all of that made perfect sense to me. It’s a hidden planet so they’re going to have to go on a galaxy-wide hunt to find it. Duh.

From there, it only got better. And it started with Rey and Kylo. I was lukewarm on Rey in Force Awakens. I straight up despised her in Last Jedi. But here, she’s awesome. There’s so much conflict within her in every frame. She really earned the title of strongest Jedi in the galaxy through this movie.

And Kylo, who’s always been a great character, was at his best here. I loved how JJ and Terrio advanced the “Force Skype” power so that objects could travel between them. I thought that was well set up and it was also well paid off. And I loved the chemistry between the two. I’ve been a little weirded out over the Reylo fan fiction stuff online but by the end of this movie, I was rooting for it. And I was one of the people clapping when they kissed.

Now when it comes to “the group” (Rey, Finn, and Poe) and how a lot of people turned on Rian Johnson for splitting them up, I was never in that camp. In the second movie, you have to split everybody up so that the audience wants to see them back together again. Could Johnson have done it like Empire and had them together at the start and also at the end? Sure. But then you risk looking like you copied Empire. So that didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that Finn’s mission was dumb and Poe’s was lame.

However, now that I see how much chemistry these three actors have with each other, I agree with everyone else. You needed to put these three together in as much of the trilogy as possible. They’re the reason this movie was so fun. Their dialogue was funny. Their action scenes were great. They’re people you want to be around ,you want to be friends with. I think writers forget that simple tip. Give us characters we’d want to be friends with in movies like this.

Yet another accomplishment is that I’ve never seen a movie this long that plays this fast. We are SCREAAAAMING through this plot. Someone said online that the movie takes place over 16 hours of time? That was another strong choice by JJ. He knew he was in a desperate situation coming off the plot mess that was Last Jedi. So he went back to one of oldest screenwriting tricks in the book – KEEP IT MOVING. Make sure characters always want something whenever we come into a scene with them. Make sure they want that something NOW. Not at some later date. If you’re cutting between 3-4 storylines with that kind of pace, your movie is going to move.

A lot of people are upset about the fan service. Not me. I loved every single fan service moment. I liked Harrison Ford showing up. No idea that would happen! I liked the callback of Kylo saying he needed to do something but didn’t know if he could do it then throwing his lightsaber away (he needed a new one anyway – that one was too cumbersome), I LOVED Luke catching Rey’s lightsaber and telling her to hold onto it. The highest profile “FU” from one director to another we’ll ever see. I loved that Luke was happy again! That we finished Luke’s character on a happy note. I loved that he levitated the X-Wing like Yoda did. Awesome.

And I loved the new stuff too!

BABU FRIK!!!

My biggest laugh in the theaters this year was C-3P0 saying, “Hello, my name is C-3PO, human cyborg,” and Babu Frik’s nearly throwaway line, “Hello, I am Babu Frik.”


I loved D-O. Wish there was more of him. Zori Bliss didn’t get enough time but her and Poe had great chemistry together. You know something is working when a character gets three minutes of screen time mid-movie and then comes back in the end, has an interaction with another character 40 feet away with no dialogue, and it gets a big laugh (Poe motioning if there’s any chance for that kiss – her shaking her head, nope!) .

I want the Adventures of Baby Yoda, Babu Frik, and D-O on Disney Plus. Robert Iger, are you listening???

The Emperor.

A lot of people have a problem with The Emperor in this movie. If you have a problem with The Emperor, blame Rian Johnson. He’s the one who killed off the big baddie and left JJ with nothing. So he did the only thing he could do. He brought back the biggest bad guy of them all. This is also the genius of JJ. Six months ago, we thought we were watching the first trailer for Rise of Skywalker at D23. Wrong. JJ had one objective and one objective only with that trailer: GET PEOPLE USED TO THE IDEA THAT THE EMPEROR IS BACK. If he would’ve sprung that on us in the movie itself, it wouldn’t have worked. We heard a million times over that the Emperor was coming back so it didn’t take long to get used it. I bought it right away. That’s part of Star Wars’s secret weapon – the opening crawl. You can throw something in there (“THE EMPEROR IS BACK!”) so that we can get into the story right away.

I LOVED THE JEDI HUNTER WHO WAS AFTER LUKE! I want to see a whole movie about him.

I LOVED THE KNIGHTS OF REN!!!

I loved the cheesy line when they pass the stormtroopers. “Knights of Ren. Cool.” That’s what Star Wars was missing in Last Jedi – Star Wars humor. Cheesy but fun dialogue. There were so many spot-on Star Wars humor jokes. Like Poe hopping in between Rey and Finn, “When do you want to talk about it? When Poe isn’t around?” Nobody called the First Order up and pretended to have a bad phone connection and then made ‘your mom’ jokes in this movie. This movie, more than ever, highlighted why Rian Johnson was so bad for Star Wars.

General Hux! I loved that JJ gave him a big moment cause he’s another character who got screwed in Last Jedi. He became so unimportant that JJ had to introduce a new ranking character above him to be scared of! So I love that Hux was the spy.

The Snoke reveal was a little weird. But it kind of made sense to me. The Emperor is extremely manipulative. He is the ultimate puppet master. He’s creating things to pull Kylo’s strings. Do I think JJ planned for Snoke to be the Emperor’s clone all along? No. But JJ and Terrio did the best they could with what they were given. And that’s another thing I loved about this movie. JJ addressed everything. He made sure that Star Wars fans felt heard. That’s something the previous director had no interest in which is why so many people dislike his Star Wars vision.

I actually think this movie could’ve been EVEN BETTER if they weren’t hampered by the late Carrie Fischer footage. They really had to stretch all believability to get any sort of cohesive storyline out of that. The fact that they made it work is another feather in JJ’s and Terrio’s caps. They were burdened with such a difficult task and they somehow, some way, pulled it off.

There was only one missed opportunity and that’s when Rey was down in the Emperor’s room and she heard all the whispers of Jedis from the past. They should’ve put all the force ghosts in there. Not just one or two. But 30. 50. I heard they were thinking of doing this but scrapped it and I suspect that they wanted this to be about Rey overcoming this moment and not Rey plus 50 other people. That’s an old screenwriting trick. If it’s possible to have your hero save the day, have your hero save the day. The only time you want multiple people helping your hero in the climax is if that’s part of the theme. For example, wasn’t the theme “friendship” or “togetherness” in Guardians of the Galaxy? So there, it made sense that they all came together to defeat the bad guy.

Someone on the internet said it best. This is the Star Warsiest Star Wars movie ever made. If you love Star Wars, you will love this movie. It’s so darn fun and it makes you feel so darn good. I left this movie on a high unlike any movie this year. I’m not going to go so far as to say it’s the best movie of the year. That’s Parasite for me. But it’s up there. This is the epitome of how to make a crowd-pleasing blockbuster.

Babu Frik!

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

What I learned: If characters work well together – if they have good chemistry on the page – that’s a rare thing and therefore something you want to take advantage of. Even if you have characters that you didn’t initially create a bunch of scenes for, once you identify that their scenes sparkle, write more scenes for them. That’s what I learned here in regards to Rey, Poe, and Finn.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

This is the single most important Star Wars trailer of all time.

The Star Wars brand was destroyed in the hands of Rian Johnson. Everyone knows it now. Only a few Twitter users on an island try to make the case that it “wasn’t that bad.” Ever since The Last Jedi, the franchise has been stumbling. Solo bombed. An entire trilogy was canceled (Rian Johnson’s). Another one is close to being canceled (Benioff and Weiss). You’ve got Kevin Feige throwing around Star Wars ideas now, as if they’re so desperate for good press they’ll force their way-too-busy Marvel president to make a flick.

And that’s the thing. This trailer doesn’t just have to end the 9 film nerfology. It has to whet the appetite for Star Wars films moving forward. As much as we’ve heard Star Wars is eager to move away from the Skywalker Saga, the truth is, it’s still its best moneymaker. After this, you have to create all new iconic characters that people will want to watch through multiple movies. And if anybody thinks that’s easy, they’ve never written a screenplay before.

To achieve this feat, the Episode 9 trailer needed to be one of the most memorable trailers of all time. That’s not hyperbole. They’re hoping Rise of Skywalker will make 2 billion plus at the box office. To do that, you need to “Star Destroyer level” blow us away. You need to give us moments or shots where we seriously consider putting ourselves in an induced coma so we can get to opening day faster. Now that the trailer is FINALLY out, we have the answers we’ve been looking for.

How did it go?

First, let me share my immediate observations.

The opening shot with the training cap dropped is made to look like it’s Rey. I don’t think it’s Rey and I’ll leave it at that.

The choice of voice over is interesting. I’m not clear on who that is. Is it Poe? I’m sure everyone in the world will know by the time I post this so I’ll accept looking like an idiot. Still, the voice over had a crisper cleaner feel to it compared to previous voice overs, which I found refreshing. Anything to update this dusty franchise!

The first good shot is of the Resistance packed into a room with Lando at the center. I really liked that. Unfortunately, it was followed by an unnecessary shot of Rose which is only there because SJWs start whining on Twitter whenever the Star Wars brand doesn’t feature her.

Next we get the best shot of the trailer – when Kylo emerges from the water with his lightsaber. The shot is turbo-charged by the fact that he’s the only remaining character from the new trilogy who stirs up any emotion in us.

The Emperor segment where we see his chair and we see his ship rise from underground (or is that water?) is pretty cool. I’m into the Emperor returning. I know some people think it’s stupid but due to the Rianator killing off the big baddie in Episode 8 for all of 5 seconds of audience shock, JJ didn’t have a choice. I suppose you could’ve created a new villain. Or maybe matured Kylo into something way worse. But as long as his return makes sense, I’m down with it.

I liked the dolly shot of them running down the corridor. This is where JJ reminds me of a modern day Lucas. He still captures the essence of Star Wars, but adds something a little modern with that fast backwards dolly, a shot Lucas wouldn’t have thought of.

Space horses running on Star Destroyers. Hmmm… Not sure how I feel about this yet. I’d want to know more about the space horses. If you set up their properties as being specifically proficient for fighting in space, I suppose I could get into it. But you’re playing with fire cause if it goes wrong, you end up in Finn and Rose Tico territory where they’re racing those Harry Potter creatures into the wild.

I want to know what Rey and Kylo shatter into a million pieces. It looked like a Vader statue? I don’t know. But I want to know!

There are too many Star Destroyers and too many Rebel ships. When it becomes that many, they no longer seem important. And then, that over-the-shoulder Emperor shot is intriguing because it looks like some sort of mechanical device is moving him. Me like.

The final shot is Rey with her lightsaber and Luke and Leia saying “the force is with you.” Something tells me… and I’m totally guessing here. I don’t have any idea if this is true. That Rey might be a clone of Leia. But that would mean she’s a clone of Luke too, since they’re twins. Hmm… I don’t know. But I feel like we’re going to get one last big twist. If JJ is really going to pay homage to the franchise with this last film, he’d put a shocking personal twist in there somewhere. We’ll see.

So what did I think?

How do I put this.

The trailer isn’t bad. But it takes the wrong approach. This trailer needed to get us excited. Instead, it tried to tug at our heartstrings. C-3PO saying bye to his friends, for example – that moment is trying so hard to tease our tears. In theory, this is the right thing to do. If you can make people feel something, they’re more likely to hook than if you’re giving them a bunch of great shots.

But that assumes you have the emotional pieces to back that up. For emotion to work, it must be genuine. It can’t just be music and Star Wars shots. Case in point, the C-3PO shot I mentioned. He gets all emotional saying bye to his friends yet he doesn’t even know these people. He met them a few weeks ago. So the emotion is false.

JJ would’ve done better to put everything on the table. I heard somebody talking about how awesome it would be if the trailer showed the Emperor open up a lightsaber and then the camera pans over to see Luke Skywalker open up his lightsaber. I don’t think that’s in the movie. But those are the kinds of shots they needed to show here.

The reason we might not be getting them is because JJ doesn’t like to show anything past the first act in his trailers. He’s all about surprising the audience. So I think all this stuff happens in the first act (minus that Emperor shot). The rest of the film is being saved for the movie. Which means they’re overestimating our interest. People are not going into this with the same kind of enthusiasm they’ve had in the past. If anything, they’re going in skeptically. And so not using every single shot at your disposal is like throwing Lebron James in a game and telling him he can only shoot left-handed.

My biggest concern is that the trailer doesn’t have that WOW SHOT. A great trailer has to have that one shot that sells the movie all by itself. The moment Darth Maul opens up his two-sided lightsaber, for example.

This doesn’t have that. The trailer goes all in on Rey. And while Rey has some cachet as a Star Wars character, if you were to rank every Star Wars character in popularity, she’d be lucky to end up in the top 25.

I understand why JJ did this. It’s not like you can start over again. But one of the issues Rian Johnson was too ignorant to recognize was that when he made Rey a nobody, he took a character who was already average-at-best and made her even less interesting. If Rey’s not connected to this lineage, if she’s just some random outsider, why do we care what happens to her? This is the SKYWALKER SAGA.

There are Rian Truthers out there who will tell you, “It’s good that she’s a nobody,” and tout reasons like, “That means anybody can be a Jedi!” But every real Star Wars fan knows these people are wrong. You took a character who needed a PR makeover in the second film to offset the Mary Sue criticism, and you instead made her even less important. It’s kind of baffling, to be honest.

Now maybe JJ does make Rey’s lineage relevant to the story, slamming Johnson’s dumb idea into the wall and shattering it just like Johnson slammed JJ’s Kylo helmet into the wall to shatter it. If he can do that and it MAKES SENSE? I’ll be thrilled. But there’s nothing in this trailer that gives me hope this will be anything other than an average film. And you know what? Maybe that’s a good thing. Now I’ll go into the movie with super low expectations, which will make it easier to enjoy.

What did you think?