TITLE: Lost Continent
GENRE: Action/Adventure
LOGLINE: A treasure hunter is in a race against the man who murdered his father to find the lost kingdom of Atlantis and the incredible power that it harbors.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’m actually shocked there haven’t been as many movies made about Atlantis as there have been about the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians.  It’s freakin’ Atlantis!  There’s so much story there and it’s ripe for a proper adaptation.  I’ve been reading the site for years (awesome work by the way) and tweaked and improved this script using much of the great advice that’s been doled out.  Recent rewrites have focused on deepening characters and creating people to care about throughout this globe trekking adventure.  This is one of the few scripts of mine that has escaped the dark and deep hole I’ve dug in my backyard where dreams go to die.  If it sucks, please don’t take it as an indictment to the excellence of Scriptshadow.

TITLE: The Tallest, Darkest Leading Man in Hollywood
GENRE: Based-on-a-true story
LOGLINE: The never-been-told, hard-to-believe but nevertheless true story of the making of the original King Kong and the maverick filmmaker who made Hollywood’s first blockbuster.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Just the other week, Legendary Pictures announced a King Kong prequel at Comicon. I’ve written a script about the making of the original King Kong and thought it would be a good time to try to shop it around.

TITLE: The Cargo
GENRE: Action, Thriller
LOGLINE: Wrongfully accused of treason, a disgraced soldier earns a shot to clear his name. His task? Protect a passenger train and its mysterious cargo from anarchist terrorists.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I wasn’t alive when the first “blockbusters” came out in the late 70s and early 80s, but to me, they represent the filmmaking ideal: crowd-pleasing genre pieces that boast edgy, cerebral themes. “The Cargo,” my first feature script, is me emulating that format. It’s a topical, politically astute action story that weaves recent cybersecurity controversies into its set pieces. It’s also my first time opening my work to public judgment, and I’m ready to do whatever it takes to improve as a writer.

TITLE: Swedish Lesbian Vampire Wonderland
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: To save his scandal-plagued career, a sex-addicted footy star enters an experimental Swedish rehab facility that is actually a castle of machismo-draining vampires.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: You’ve read the title, right?

TITLE: CODE BLACK
GENRE: Action/Thriller
LOGLINE: When a vicious crime boss seizes a hospital to secure a heart transplant for his dying father, an aging firefighter must leap into action to save the chosen donor — his daughter.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I have an interesting problem for someone who loves to write — I’m dreadfully bored by about 85% of the amateur screenplays I delve into. They’re usually top-heavy and don’t muster much in the way of forward momentum. CODE BLACK is intentionally lean, barreling forward as much as possible. If a psychotic JOHN Q was the villain in DIE HARD I think it’d look a little something like this, and I hope your readers enjoy it.

The market is changing. Because this is America, a company isn’t doing well unless it’s growing. Stock prices must continue to rise. Dividends must continue to… … divvy.  And that’s putting pressure on Hollywood to deliver product with more upside. Obviously, there’s only so much a single film can do. Only so many toys it can produce. Only so many tie-ins it can manufacture.

For awhile, the studios had a solution for this. They called them “sequels.” Clever idea, right?  Sequels allowed a studio to keep making money off the same property. But sequels can take 2-3 years to make. Growth, once again, was stagnated by a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

Enter the “universe” phase. Universes not only allow you that original movie plus its sequels. But now you can have SPINOFF films. Have a super-hero or secondary character everybody loved? Give him his own movie! Conceivably, you can now release a movie from your franchise EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Marvel proved this was a viable business model with their Avengers franchise. Pretty soon, Star Wars jumped on the bandwagon, then Universal with their horror characters, and DC/WB with the Justice League, though they seemed a little confused by the whole notion (“Universe? Ohhhh-kaaayyy.  Yeah, we’ll do that.”).

Now whether this model will work for an extended period of time is another question. The reason they didn’t do this kind of thing before was because they assumed people would get sick of seeing the same old shit. But with Marvel’s dominance, we’ve surprisingly witnessed the opposite. People want more of this shit!

The result is that intellectual property drives the majority of studios’ decisions now. And if your intellectual property can spurn more intellectual property, even better.

Nipping at the heels of the “universe” IP approach are YA novel adaptations. Twilight, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, The Giver. Publishing houses are starting YA novel brands with the explicit purpose of getting movie deals out of them. So crazy has the YA novel craze gotten, you can’t even option YA books that have 5 reviews on Amazon anymore. Desperate producers have already beaten you to the punch!

After that, you have the toy properties (Transformers, G.I. Joe, The Lego Movie), the traditional sequel franchises (Planet of the Apes, Fast and Furious), high-profile book adaptations (Lord of the Rings, World War Z) the animation properties (mainly Disney and Pixar), and the occasional ultra-concept film (Godzilla, Super 8).

So what does over-dependence on IP mean? It means fewer and fewer slots on the calendar for original spec screenplays. Which is why you’re seeing less and less screenplays being purchased. Now I’ve been reading a lot of the specs out there, the ones making big enough waves to get noticed, and the biggest reason they’re not doing well, in my eyes, is because they’re not good enough.

This stems from the majority of writers assuming their scripts only have to be as good as the movies they see on a typical summer weekend. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The top films at the box office were all born out of intellectual property. In other words, the people on the other end of the pitch already knew what the writer/producers were talking about. When someone hears, “Godzilla,” they know who Godzilla is. They don’t have any idea what your script, Chocolate Frank and the Huckleberry Dancers, is about. It’s just a pile of digital paper.  That means the big IP project shoots to the top of the priority list while Huckleberry Frank gets stuck up chocolate creek without a paddle.  The only way your script is going to get picked over a project like Godzilla is if it’s exceptional, not simply “as good as.”

Intellectual property has taken over and you, the screenwriters with original ideas, are being pushed out. Should you throw in the towel? Give in? Of course not. Adversity is the harbinger for some of the greatest creations in history. We must adapt! We must change our tactics. But I shall warn you. Not all of this advice here is sexy. We’re looking at cold hard facts so we need to consider cold hard solutions. Throw all your preconceived notions about how to make it in this industry in a box and slide it under the bed. It’s time to put on your reality pajamas and make some tough decisions.

How to compete with IP…

Solution 1: Make your own movie – Far from earth-shattering advice. But this continues to be one of the fastest ways to break in because you bypass all the bullshit gridlock Hollywood’s famous for. Movies are getting cheaper and cheaper to make. The amazing Blackmagic camera can be had for under two grand. And since you’re on this site, you already have a HUGE advantage over your competition. One of the biggest weaknesses in any low-budget film is a bad script. But you guys are writers! You know how to write a script. So write something cheap and shoot it cheap and get it out there!

Solution 2: Write comedies or thrillers. These two genres seem impervious to the IP plague. The great thing about thrillers is you can write them in multiple genres (horror, sci-fi, action, psychological), so you have a lot of range there to find subject matter you like. And comedies don’t need IP to be funny. Again, if you can come up with a clever concept (Neighbors), you can be looking down at the rest of us from your house in the hills at this time next year. These two genres are the best genres to write in if you’re writing specs, point blank.

Solution 3: The “spec universe” – The next option is one that hasn’t been proven yet, but with the “universe” approach gaining steam, I think it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the next big thing in spec screenwriting. It’s basically what “Moonfall” writer David Weil did. Off the buzz of Moonfall’s success, he used his meetings to pitch a 7 movie franchise based on The Arabian Nights.

Now there’s two things going on here. First, Weil is using an “IP” property that’s in the public domain. This allows the studio to get all the benefits of IP without having to pay for it. Secondly, he’s using the “universe” approach here to pitch the property. He didn’t come in with a single tiny spec to sell. Remember, studios have to think bigger now. They need more to bring to their investors. They want properties that are going to deliver over a longer period of time.

So look back through those public domain properties and see if anything sparks your imagination. The Count of Monte Cristo, a great book, is a popular older property that keeps getting remade. Can you come up with a franchise version of that? Of something else like it? I mean obviously you don’t want to force a “universe” onto an idea that can’t support it. But if the opportunity’s there, why not take it?

Solution 4: True stories, known quantities and IP sneak-arounds – Hollywood loves true stories. They love’em! So go out there and find a captivating true story to tell. You have 10,000 years of recorded history to draw from. I guarantee there are a few thousand amazing true stories that haven’t been told yet. Another option is a “known quantity IP sneak-around” approach. You find something that’s real and that everyone is familiar with, and you build a story around that. This is how Aaron Berg sold Section 6 for a million bucks (about the origin of MI-6), and I’m sure it played a role in F. Scott Frazier’s recent sale about an agent who worked for the agency that would later become the CIA. The idea here is to find sexy subject matter that people have heard about, and build a story around it, so it’s an easier sell, both from writer to studio, and studio to moviegoer. Once again, this is a way to write about something known without paying an IP price for it.

Solution 5: “If you can’t beat’em, join’em.” – Basically, throw out the idea of selling a spec. Instead, figure out which kinds of movies you love above all others, the kind of movies you’d die to get paid to write the rest of your lives, and write a script in that genre. So if you love movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, write a big crazy space opera. If you like Godzilla, write or make a movie about big monsters. The script will serve more as a writing sample for what you’re capable of doing, and get you out on meetings with the kinds of people who make the movies you want to write. You may not get that big splashy sale, but you get to play in the sandbox you always dreamed of playing in, and isn’t that the ultimate goal?

Solution 6: If you can’t join’em, leave’em. And write a pilot. – Pilots are so much easier to sell than specs these days. Everybody wants them. I heard even the Weather Network is jumping on the original programming bandwagon. Anybody have a spec titled “Light Rain?” As a movie lover, this used to be unthinkable to me. Who cares about TV! But TV keeps getting better and they treat writers like kings compared to the feature world. So pour through all of your movie ideas and see if any can be adapted into TV shows.

Solution 7: Write a great script. – No, I’m serious. If all else fails and you don’t like any of these options, write an awesome script about anything you want and I PROMISE you, you’ll get noticed.  Just keep in mind that if you go this route, the script has to be better than if you go any of the other routes.  You have to knock it out of the park.  To achieve this, make sure you are BEYOND PASSIONATE about your idea. Because if you’re not passionate, you won’t pour your soul into it, and if you don’t pour your soul it, there’s little chance of it being great.  If it’s not great, you’ve got no shot at competing with all those big IP properties.  Also, make sure there’s a good story here. Don’t write about an entitled 25 year old white male who’s depressed because his trust fund was taken away from him (unless it’s a comedy!). Give us a real story and tell it well.

What about you folks? What do you think writers should be writing in this new era? Is there something I’ve forgotten? A future trend you see coming around the corner? Share and debate in the comments section!

Genre: Horror
Premise: When a family moves into their new home in the country, they find a hidden room with a terrifying secret.
About: If you’re anything like me, you were there every Monday night for another episode of Prison Break. Imagine The Great Escape meets Lost meets Orange is the New Black with men. At the head of it all was our hero, Wentworth Miller.  But once Prison Break ran out of prisons to break out of, Miller disappeared, and didn’t reappear until a couple of years ago when he came out with two super-specs that took over the town. To ensure he didn’t taint anyone’s opinion, he sent the scripts out under an alias. The first script, Stoker, went on to a not-so-successful indie run.  The Disappointments Room is Miller’s second script, and supposed to be more traditional. The last I heard, it will star Kate Beckinsdale and be directed by DJ Curoso.
Writer: Wentworth Miller
Details: 126 pages (1st Draft)

Wentworth Miller

The Disappointments Room was about to be one big disappointment until Wentworth Miller went all Travis Bickle on us the last 20 pages. Rarely have I witnessed a script go from so average to so memorable in such a short period of time.

I’m not saying this script is great. I’m just curious why Miller played it safe for so long before he channeled his inner serial killer. Instinct tells me it may be a first draft issue, although everything else in the script is so polished, it’s hard to see why the structure isn’t.

The Disappointments Room starts out a lot like The Conjuring. You have a normal family, led by wife Dana, with husband David and son Jeremy rounding out the cast.  They’re moving into a giant house in the middle of the country with plans to start anew.

But something about the house’s energy is off. At least to Dana. An architect who’s trying to get back in the game, Dana notices an attic window from outside the house that isn’t there on the inside. She goes up to inspect it, and finds a hidden room that only locks from the outside. Someone was kept here.

She starts doing research on the house and learns it was home to a prominent couple known as the Blackers. The Blackers never had any kids. But Dana’s noticing some strange things around the house that indicate otherwise.

She eventually realizes this room is a “Disappointment” room. Back in the day, if you were a prominent family and had a freak child (with like Elephantitus or something), it was too embarrassing to bring your kid into the community. So these families would lock up these “disappointments” in their own little room where they’d live out their entire lives.

Naturally, Dana wants to find out who lived in the room and so continues her sleuthing. Her journey reveals a dark secret from Dana’s own past, that is so horrifying, it makes disappointment rooms look like 80s arcades. But it isn’t Dana’s shocking reveal of this secret that does her in. It’s what her husband tells her after the revelation. That’s the true shocker.

I experienced déjà vu today, as it was JUST YESTERDAY we were talking about not exploiting your premise properly. Once again, we have this strong uique set up (a “disappointments room,”), but very little is mentioned about it.

There’s the reveal of it as a disappointments room, which happens halfway through the script. Then it works its way back into the plot at the very end of the screenplay. But between all that, we have your typical “something’s making a spooky noise in the other room, let’s go check it out” generic horror flick.

I started to wonder if Miller made Fatal Screenwriting Mistake Number 7. Did he pick a concept that didn’t have enough meat on it to build an entire movie around? Admittedly, the disappointment room is a scary idea, but there’s only so much you can do with one room.

Actually, when Dana got stuck in the room early on and nobody could hear her screaming, I thought we were going to stay there with her for the entire movie. She’d be stuck in the creepy Disappointments Room, where she’d almost certainly die. I’m not sure that would be a better script, but at least we’d be exploiting the premise. But she gets out immediately, and it’s back to your typical procedural storyline. Head to the scary library, look up books on who these Blackers are, and see if you can figure out who this child was.

Then I realized this was probably an exploratory first draft. Miller’s figuring things out as we are. It’s the only excuse for why we don’t find out until page 90 that Dana lost a daughter six years ago. That doesn’t work as surprise information. It needed to be known earlier.

Which is why we rewrite. Rewriting is often the practice of moving the exciting things up earlier and earlier in the story so that your script stays exciting the whole way through.  In the next draft, Dana’s lost baby will probably be moved up to page 60. The next draft, page 30. And I’d bet in the next draft still, we’d open on it, sort of like they did in Dead Calm (Nicole Kidman). A dying baby is the perfect inciting incident to get them to move to a new home. And it sets up the ending better.

Outside of the glacially paced story, I can see why this got Hollywood all hot and bothered. Miller’s got a talent for pulling you into the page, forcing you to hear and feel the things he’s describing, then spitting you back out. In particular, he’s got a strong sense of atmosphere he builds into his prose (“It’s now pitch black and pouring rain. The car SLIPS and SLIDES along a muddy single-lane road, branches SCRAPING the sides as they pass. David hunches forward, squinting through the wipers”).

Or take the opening scene, a presumably boring packing scene that reads anything but boring.  We hear the SQUEAL of the packaging tape as it rolls. Miller increasing the pacing by compressing the description with each box packaged, giving the scene an almost frantic feel. Faster and faster it goes, until BOOM, we’re done. You can’t believe it but you actually feel exhausted. After boxes being packed! That’s good writing, my friends, when you can make boxes interesting.

But if Miller is going to compete with the likes of The Conjurings, he can’t just depend on atmosphere and a creepy hook. He needs to look at this script (if he hasn’t already) as an accordion. The whole thing is stretched out from end to end. He’s got to SQUEEZE it together as tight as he can, pushing the first 100 pages into 30, and then he’s got to give us a second act that’s more concept-focused. Jump scares are fun, but Miller’s proven he can knock your socks off with his ending. He’s got to bring that imagination to the middle act as well. I hope he gets there. Because this could be a really good film if he figures it out.

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

What I learned: When trying to come up with scares in your haunted house movies, instead of focusing on the house itself, look to other characters – characters eccentric or unique or who make your hero uncomfortable in some way. One of the most memorable threads in The Disappointments Room is they hire a plumber to fix a mysterious leak in the home. The plumber is intense and scary, but Dana finds herself strangely attracted to him. He senses this, and aggressively puts her in uncomfortable situations, letting her know that if she wants it, he’ll give it. And while she doesn’t do anything with him, she hates that she considers it. That to me is a memorable situation, something I haven’t seen before. It sticks with you a lot longer than, say, the 630th creepy girl in a horror movie trope.

Genre: TV Pilot (Sci-fi)
Premise: Inside a giant city within a spaceship, a former detective is hired to find a dead woman who’s uploaded her consciousness into a robot.
About: AMC wants that next big genre show. We reviewed Galyntine a few weeks ago. Now we look at Ballistic City, a creation from Tron director Joseph Kosinski, and written by Pacific Rim and Killing on Carnival Row scribe, Travis Beacham. The show is being pitched as Blade Runner meets Battle Star Galactica. While he’s definitely got talent, Beacham was one of the lucky ones. While in his senior year at college, he sent his latest script out to a recent graduate who’d gotten an intern position at a producton company in Hollywood. All he wanted was some feedback. A few days later, agents and managers and producers started calling, wanting a piece of this new talent.  That script was Killing on Carnival Row.  Beacham and Kosinski met on their collaboration of the as yet un-made remake of the “The Black Hole.”
Writer: Travis Beacham
Details: 60 pages

Here’s a question for you. How many scripts should a writer write a year? Because when you’re Travis Beacham, one of the most in-demand screenwriters in Hollywood, you’re constantly getting million dollar assignment offers. And success never lasts in Tinseltown. Just ask Val Kilmer. So the inclination is to take everything and get that money while it’s there. Indeed, Beacham seems to be writing everything these days (he’s got projects with JJ, with Cameron, with Del Toro, with Fox, with AMC).

Then you have the other end of the spectrum. When nobody even knows that you write. You don’t have anyone paying you or waiting for your next script. When that’s the case, it’s easy to lay back and putter away, finishing one script every three years or so. Which is not good if you want to work in this industry. Writers and managers want prolific screenwriters.

So that’s my question to you guys. How many scripts do you write a year? And how many do you think a writer should write a year? I’m thinking the top number is three.  Anything more than that and you’re sacrificing quality, no?

Speaking of sacrificing quality, Ballistic City isn’t what I was hoping for. I thought I was getting straight sci-fi, but this is more “Killing on Carnival Row on a spaceship” sci-fi. Some of you are going to love that. But this was so focused on the cricks and cracks of this noir-ish city, I began to wander why it was set on a spaceship in the first place. More on that in a second. But first, the plot.

“Ballistic City” is about a giant city on a huge spaceship that’s travelling between the stars. The journey for this voyage is taking so long that the last member of the first generation on the ship just died.

That’s where we come in, and where we meet Canaan Bendix (lots of bizarre names in this script), a private detective for hire. Bendix is hired by the police to look for the “Geist” of this First Generation woman who died. See, First Generation had a robot that backed up her memory. Therefore, when she dies, she’s still “alive” in this robot. Well, as soon as she died, her Geist ran off into the ship. And police wanna find her and ask why.

Bendix goes into the dirty underbelly of the city and Beacham gets to show off what he does best – create big detailed weird worlds. For example, people have modifiers for skin and hair and eyes to make them look like animals. They take “hits” off each other’s memory devices. You know, weird fucked up shit like that.

When Bendix finally finds Robot Chick (who actually looks like a beautiful younger version of our 117 year old dead woman), she claims that she was murdered. But she doesn’t remember how or by whom. So the two team up and look around the ship until (spoiler), it becomes apparent that no one murdered Robot Chick. She murdered herself.

First the good. This was better than Moonfall!

Of course, I’ve seen cats fall sleep on keyboards and create better screenplays than Moonfall. “Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff” is still an all-time favorite of mine.

Ballistic City was good in that “Travis Beacham atmospheric” kind of way. He’s the screenwriting equivalent of a young George Lucas, filling every little piece of the frame with some cool gadget, a detail to help bring the world alive. Like the kids wearing animal mods. Like gene-modifier drugs that turn you into mold. Like dead people living their lives inside glitch holograms.

There’s actually this cool little storyline where Bendix’s old partner killed Bendix’s wife. The partner was convicted, went to prison, and was executed. His memory was placed inside of a hologram, and in accordance with the law, the last week of its life was erased, the week he killed Bendix’s wife. So Bendix goes to meet with his friend every so often, and the partner has no idea he killed Bendix’s wife. He always innocently asks what the last week of his life was like, but Bendix can’t tell him.

Neat stuff like this was scattered everywhere.

But here’s the big reason Ballistic City didn’t work for me. It doesn’t do anything with its premise. And that KILLS ME. We were just talking about this the other week. What’s the point of creating an eye-grabbing concept if you’re not going to explore it at all?? It’d be like building Disney World and filling it with skate parks. Yeah, we’re kind of having fun, but not “Disney World” fun.

Ballistic City may take place on a city inside a giant spaceship, but you wouldn’t know it by how little its mentioned. The ship and its ongoing journey are rarely talked about. And when they are, it’s never in accordance with a plot point. It’s a radio personality blurting out the equivalent of, “This trip is taking too long.”

Whenever you come up with an idea, you first see the material through a macro lens. If you came up with an idea about a future war on Mars, initially, you’d think of the big battles that would take place, all the cool Mars architecture being destroyed, the big beautiful centerpieces of the city.

But as a screenwriter, your job is to find a SPECIFIC vessel to tell the movie through. You must find an interesting character who’s living in this world, is directly affected by this world, who’s directly involved in the problems this world creates, and tell the story through their eyes.

So in our Mars movie, maybe we tell the story of a 20 year old female miner who lives in a dying Mars city.  In fact, the city is almost out of water.  She has the choice of moving to the bigger cities to survive, but if she does, she’ll have to join the army and fight in the war, something she doesn’t want to do. Now we’re tackling the idea through a specific point of view.

Ballistic City decides to make Bendix its specific point of view, and he’s a detective. Okay, I guess that works. A detective will have a new goal each episode (inspect a disappearance or a murder). And a detective will be exploring a big slice of the city, allowing the writers to show every nook and cranny of this unique world.

But if the people whose deaths we’re inspecting have nothing to do with this ship or where it’s going, who cares?? Tell that story back on an earth city. I mean this murder needed to be about someone who knew a secret about the ship, someone who was hiding something and could put a lot of high-powered people in danger.

That way we’d have Bendix, who was previously inspecting a tiny little crime, moving up the ladder to a bigger and more elaborate conspiracy. Plot points should include ship-specific things like a decrease in cabin pressure, slow-downs in engine velocity, the discovery that their course has been changed. This is a show about being on a ship. Therefore, the plot points we encounter need to be about the ship. A show about a robot killing her human self is a different show altogether.

Ballistic City did bring about one good thing though. The question: Would you have sex with a 117 year old woman if she were inside a synthetic fake body? Because Bendix didn’t seem to have a problem with it. But you guys are the final authority on this.  Yes, we’re pushing the boundaries of screenplay analysis here. But if your script doesn’t bring it, we gotta find something to talk about.

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

What I learned: Beacham is a big imagination guy. And a lot of people have asked me if should they should “limit” the imagination in their script to account for budgets. Beacham was asked this very question by Film School Rejects. This is what he had to say: “As a writer, you can easily get stuck in the trap of, “Is this doable? Are people going to pay to make this?” I think you have to bury that. You just gotta try the best you can, and if it’s good and people like it, it’ll get made. With special effects nowadays, you can basically do anything. If somebody likes something enough, they’re going to find a way to get it made. When you’re in the early stages of coming up with an idea, you just have to let it tell the idea tell you what it is.”

Note: The newsletter will be sent out at 11:59pm (pacific time) tonight (Sunday). Check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders if you don’t see it.  To get on the newsletter list, sign up here.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A group of galactic misfits are forced to work together to stop an evil mad man from destroying the universe.
About: Up to this point, the Marvel universe has kept things pretty conservative, bringing out its most cinematic and popular heroes for display (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor). “Guardians” is the first true risk its taken. Not only has the average moviegoer never heard of Guardians of the Galaxy, but we’re switching genres as well, from Comic Book to space operas. Writer-director James Gunn originally had no interest in directing Guardians. But after The Avengers came out, he saw the opportunity to do something cool (and make a lot of dough doing it!). Gunn’s more of an indie guy on the directing front, directing the 2010 Sundance hit, “Super,” about a regular guy who turns himself into a superhero. On the writing front, though, he hasn’t shied away from studio assignments, writing stuff like Scooby-Doo and Dawn of the Dead. The original draft of Guardians was written by unproduced “neophyte” screenwriter Nicole Perlman. Perlman got the Scriptshadow treatment for her breakout Black List script, Challenger (about the crash of the space shuttle, Challenger). It’s rare to see an unproduced screenwriter working on a project this big, but Perlman was able to get into the Marvel writer’s program early (never knew Marvel had a writing program) and pick up Guardians when no one was interested in it. Guardians debuted to a big box office haul this weekend, bringing in 30 million more than everyone expected it to (93 million total).
Writers: James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (comic book by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning)
Details: 121 minute running time

Is Guardians of the Galaxy the new Star Wars?

It might be. No space flick has come this close in 30 years. It definitely captures the thrill of exploration the original Star Wars had. It nails the fun. It even brings something the original Star Wars didn’t have (but I think modern audiences need). It had attitude.

But before we anoint Guardians of the Galaxy as the next big thing, we should look closer. There’s kind of a “flawed masterpiece” thing going on here. For the first half of Guardians, I thought I was watching a rough cut of the film. The timing of the jokes felt a beat or two off. The characters felt forced (I’m looking at you, Rocket Raccoon). Some of the choices seemed uninspired (how many people need to shoot other people with colorful electrical weapons when they’re running away?). Even Chris Pratt, who going in was the best thing about the film, felt muzzled. Like someone kept telling him to “calm down.”

But here’s the thing about watching something truly unique. You’re not prepared for what you see because you’ve never seen anything like it before. And Guardians is so different (in many respects), you can’t quite process it yet. It’s similar to how I felt after watching my first Wes Anderson film. I couldn’t decide whether I’d just watched genius or a train wreck.

“Guardians” follows former earthling Peter Quill, a galactic scavenger of sorts, who’s been tasked with securing a tiny sphere thing that we’ll later find out has the power to destroy the galaxy. But Peter doesn’t know that yet.

Ignorantly, he tries to deliver the sphere, but is attacked by others who want it, namely Gamora, a hot green chick (when in doubt, just insert a hot green chick into your script).

A chain of events eventually leads them to Rocket Raccoon (a genetically altered human turned raccoon) and his muscle, the giant but adorable Groot (a tree that can only say three words – “I am Groot.”) Finally, there’s Drax, a muscled alien whose species takes everything literally (“Whatever you say goes right over his head.” “Nothing goes over my head. I’m too fast. I’ll catch it.”).

Our ultimate baddy, a face painted nasty dude named Ronan, finally steals the sphere away, allowing him to become super human (or super-alien I guess). He then heads to the nearest planet to destroy it. It’ll be up to our band of misfits then, none of whom really like each other, to put their differences aside and stop Ronan from turning this planet into a galactic parking lot.

Whenever you sit down to write a sprawling sci-fi flick, you need to find your focus. You need something to keep the characters and the plot centered, or else things fall apart quickly. There are a few ways to go about this, but the best way is probably the “MacGuffin Approach” a favorite of one George Lucas. You’ve seen it in films like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Basically, the MacGuffin Approach creates an object of desire that everyone wants. The reason this approach works so well, particularly on the blockbuster stage, is that it simplifies things for the audience. Almost every character has the same goal (get the sphere), which is advantageous if you’re throwing a ton of information at the audience (new characters, new worlds, lots of exposition, lots of rules). If you try to give every character unique goals, it can be hard for the audience to keep track of it all.

Simplifying the plot was important because Guardians had one of the toughest jobs you’ll find in screenwriting – bringing together five totally unique characters and seamlessly and quickly sending them off on their journey

Now some of you might say, “It’s not hard to bring characters together.” But it really is. In the same way you’ll never see Justin Bieber and Bill Gates at the same venue, in a screenplay like this, where all the characters are different, it’s unlikely you’d find Raccoon Man around Painted Chick Girl. So you gotta come up with reasons they’d cross paths. And then you gotta come up with reasons they’d be at that location at the same time (it can’t be coincidence!). And then you gotta come up with reasons why they’d leave together. And you gotta do that for three other characters as well.

It all seems so easy once you’ve seen the film, but it often takes draft after clunky draft of cramming the characters together before a natural flow emerges. And Guardians didn’t quite get there. If we’re looking at 10 drafts to perfecting this first act, it looks like they made it to Draft 6. The weird Jackie Chan sphere bobble city set piece was way forced.

Chris Pratt didn’t help either. His forced opening dance routine (I swear it was like we were watching one of those leaked actor auditions) felt like 21 suits were behind the camera simultaneously yelling at him to “stop being so weird” until the take we saw, where he was as stiff as a tree.  It’d be like if Captain Jack Sparrow acted only 50% like Captain Jack Sparrow.  You can’t muzzle Captain Jack Sparrow!

Compare Pratt’s mechanical delivery to, say, Han Solo in Star Wars, who never once seemed to give a shit about what came out of his mouth. Solo is so iconic because he let loose. Pratt wasn’t allowed to let loose until the end, likely when those producers finally left the set.

And then something happened. I can’t pinpoint when or where it happened. But out of nowhere, everything finally gelled, especially the characters. They weren’t trying to announce their arrival anymore. They weren’t scared to take chances.  They were just “being.” And once that was the case? Guardians got REALLY good.

And yeah, I’m doing it. I’m announcing Groot as one of the best big-budget movie characters in history. It goes to show how awesome showing and not telling is (Groot is so “dumb” he can only say three words – much of what he offers, then, is through action). There were these great visual moments, like after Groot vouching for Peter, Peter making a point that Groot seemed to be the only smart one here, only for Peter to look over and see Groot eating a flower off one of his limbs.

Groot takes the “Chewbacca” role and makes it even more lovable, if that’s possible. He’s such an earnest goof who only wants to protect his partner (Rocket) that we can’t help but love the guy. One of the best moments in movies this year (spoiler) is when he builds that tree nest in the end to protect everybody as the ship goes down.

What really impressed me though is how Gunn used the theme of friendship to drive the film. I thought all these guys hating each other was totally believable, and the gentle changes throughout that brought them closer together, to the point where they’re actually (spoiler) using the “hold hands” move to save the galaxy (and it working) is a testament to the excellent mix of character development and theme in the film. Shit, I even got teary eyed when Groot says (spoiler) “We are Groot.”

I don’t know if Guardians was shot in order or not, but it’d make a lot of sense if it that was the case. At the beginning, everyone seemed tense and forced (including the director), like they didn’t want to be Marvel’s first big bomb. But as the movie went on and everyone got comfortable, the film started to shine. It’s not perfect, but these types of movies never are. In fact, their weaknesses end up becoming strengths, as they’re woven into the re-watch fabric of the legacy.

And I’m going to say one more thing about this film before I go. Because it’s one of the few times I’ve seen it in the past 20 years. For some reason, at some point in history, summer blockbusters became “one and done” movies. They were made to work for one weekend and that’s it. Gone were the Star Wars’s, movies so rich you wanted to keep watching them over and over again. Guardians is the first summer movie I’ve seen in forever that wasn’t interested in being one and done. It wanted to be rewatchable. It wanted to do more. And I hope its success inspires more summer movies to do the same.

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

What I learned: With a giant blockbuster flick that requires conveying a lot of information to the audience, instituting a MacGuffin (an important item that all the characters, good and bad, are after) is one of the easiest ways to simplify the plot.

What I learned 2: Embedded Goals – Embedded goals are goals your characters need to achieve in order to get back to the main goal (in this case, getting the sphere).  So, early on, our group is thrown into prison.  Obviously, the main goal needs to pause while they deal with this problem.  They must accomplish the embedded goal (escape the prison) to get back to business.  Embedded goals help add texture to the story.  If your characters are only pursuing one single thing for all 120 pages of a screenplay, things can get monotonous quickly.