Today I review the Number 1 Black List script!

Genre: Drama
Premise: Under the cruel guidance of a mysterious coach, an ambitious high school wrestler struggles to become a state champion while battling a bizarre infection in his ear that both makes him dominant in his sport and threatens his sanity.
About: This is the number 1 script on the 2021 Black List! You can see my reaction to all 60 Black List loglines here. The writer, Daniel Jackson, recently won the 2021 Script Pipeline contest. He went to NYU’s Tisch for film school. And he writes for Thrillist.
Writer: Daniel Jackson
Details: 98 pages

I’m sure you’re all just as excited to get into this as I am so let’s not waste any time! A quick warning. There’s a fairly significant spoiler in the first act which I have to include in the plot summary so if you don’t want to know what happens, go read the script first!

14 year old 106 pound Adam Karr has just joined a new private school where he plans on becoming one of the only freshman wrestlers in history to win the state wrestling tournament. Adam immediately befriends fellow wrestler, and junior, Jason, who shows him the ropes.

Jason makes it clear that the team’s secret weapon is Volkov, a mysterious 70-something assistant coach who used to be in the Russian KGB where he learned all types of fighting styles. But he only coaches juniors and seniors. He’s never even looked at a freshman.

Determined to change that, Adam makes a plea to Volkov to teach him and Volkov agrees to give him a trial private lesson at his house. While the two are sparring, Volkov has a heart attack and dies. Adam runs out of the house, telling no one he was there.

In the following days, Adam starts hearing a voice in his ear (which has been infected from wrestling) and quickly figures out it’s the ghost of Volkov! Volkov’s ghost starts coaching him in his matches, telling him exactly when to move out of the way, or when to go for a tackle. With Volkov’s help, Adam starts destroying his opponents.

But soon Volkov starts coaching him in his love life (“Get rid of your girlfriend”) and social life (“Frame your best friend”) in an attempt to eliminate any distractions so that Adam will have a clear path to the state title. It seems that the more infected Adam’s ear gets, the more negative Volkov gets. Will Adam survive long enough to win state? Or will Volkov’s ear be his downfall?

The number 1 Black List script always brings with it high expectations and those expectations are probably unfair, since it’s hard enough to impress a reader with no expectations. The reality is that, these days, the majority of the writers on the Black List are amateurs. Some of you might push back on that since the writers all have representation. But representation doesn’t mean anything when you haven’t made any money with your writing.

I bring this up because it’s easy to go into these scripts thinking they’re going to redefine the medium. But the reality is that these writers are still figuring out how to be screenwriters. And that’s pretty evident in Cauliflower, an uneven screenplay that bites off more than it can chew (going with the ‘cauliflower’ theme here – roll with me).

There were two things that stood out in the script. (Spoiler) The first was the twist at the end of act one, when Volkov dies. I was so certain that Jackson was going to lean into the Mr. Miagi role with Volkov that I didn’t know what to do with myself when he suddenly died. It reinvigorated my interest in the script, making me excited to go into the second act.

The second choice I liked was inserting Volkov’s soul into Adam’s cauliflower-infected ear and turning it into a demented Obi-Wan Kenobi force ghost. One of the disadvantages writers have these days is that they’re competing against the biggest cinematic juggernaut in history – superhero IP. Every character we create seems tiny in comparison to a superhero trying to save the world.

Well, here, Jackson’s figured out a way to create an indie superhero. Adam’s superpower is his ability to know exactly what to do at exactly the right time. The ear’s voice tells him when to dodge, when to attack, when to pounce. It tells him the answers to his teacher’s history questions. It even tells him the right time to make a move on his girlfriend. It’s his own little spidey-sense.

But there were issues here I couldn’t get past.

The dialogue was a big stumbling block as much of it was on the nose. Here’s an example: “He gets me psyched up. When I listen to him, I feel like I can run through a brick wall.” I suppose you could argue that freshmen in high school don’t have the most sophisticated vocabulary. But you should always look to avoid cliche phrasing like “run through a brick wall.” As a writer, you want to come up with new stuff, not depend on the old stuff.

Another random example: “You’re lucky. You don’t even need to be coached. I watch you out there. It’s like God’s pulling the strings.” This was a line from Jason to Adam. We’ve got another cliche phrase: “It’s like God’s pulling the strings.” More importantly, this is a tell don’t show line. Writers write it when they don’t have confidence that they’ve done the job though the character’s actions. So they write a line of dialogue to drive it home. “You are the most amazing wrestler I’ve ever seen!” If you properly SHOW this, you never need a character to say it.

But things really start to get messy when you delve into Adam’s home life. To be at the top of any sport, you need your parents pushing you. It’s not like you’re voluntarily signing up for wrestling classes at age 10. It’s your parents who have to choose that and then commit you to it. Anybody here who’s been an athlete will tell you – the best kids in their sports always had parents who pushed them into that sport at a young age, made them practice an ungodly amount of hours every week, and usually got them tons of private coaching.

So for Adam’s parents to barely know he was on the wrestling team felt completely false. If he was this good, they would’ve been a part of that.

Then you had the private school angle. For reasons that weren’t made clear, Adam had always been in public school. Except for now, as his parents had just enrolled him in a private school. A private school that cost a lot of money. However, we’re also told that Adam’s father can’t find work. Why would you sign your son up for an expensive private school for the first time when one of you is unemployed? Logically, it made no sense.

We also have an awkward religious subplot. The family had either just become religious, or the parents were already religious and Adam wasn’t for some reason. But now Adam wanted to be religious and asks his parents if he could come to church with them. It wasn’t clear why he wanted to be religious or why he all of a sudden had an urge to go to church. I don’t know. The whole thing felt really loosey-goosey. It wasn’t clear who was religious, who wasn’t, how big of a role religion had played in the family up until now. None of it felt convincing. You can’t do that with religion. It needs to be clear where people stand.

Then, on top of that, you had this Youtuber Adam was obsessed with – Dirk Ironside. Sometimes Dirk Ironiside would appear in Adam’s ear and give him advice. Which was confusing because we’d already built this entire story around Volkov being in his ear. So we now have two ‘magical versions of people’ giving him advice? It felt unnecessarily complicated.

And then when we get to the ending, the main character has gone so insane that we don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I’m not going to rant about this since I’ve spent way too much time over the years on it already. But my basic issue with it is that it allows you to cheat your way out of any corners you’ve painted yourself into. Amazing writers can sometimes get away with this (they did it in Black Swan, for example). But, like I said, there was so much messiness already that I didn’t trust the writer enough to take me down that path.

The script does end on one hell of a shocking image. And, like I said, I thought the Volkov stuff was interesting. But there were too many half-formulated ideas here. The bar for these scripts is Magazine Dreams. That’s the level of sophistication you’re competing against. In the end, I felt that Cauliflower was too messy.

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

What I learned: Use descriptive exaggeration to better convey a visual. You can always depend on the nuts and bolts way of describing something, of course. For example, if you’re describing your hero running, you can say, “He sprints as fast as he can.” And that will do. But if you want to drive the visual home, you’ll have to do better than that. That’s where descriptive exaggeration comes in. You’ll say something in such an exaggerated manner that it conveys a much more powerful visual. Here’s the way Jackson describes Adam running. “Sprinting as hard as possible. Like he’s trying to escape his own body.” When I read that, I FEEL how hard he’s running. Where as, with the more generic, “He sprints as fast as he can,” I don’t feel anything.

As you all know, the Black List is a mess. The way the votes are tallied is a highly flawed process. Scripts that were only seen by 20 people are going up against scripts that have been seen by 100 people. There are certain genres that get preference over others. Politics has started to influence voting in recent years. All this results in a bunch of vote tallies that are almost arbitrary at this point.

Which is why you’re lucky to have me. :)

Because I’ve read most of the scripts on the list which means I can give you the TRUE RANKINGS. And yes, I accept the disclaimer that taste is subjective. I am not the end all be all. But I’m pretty close! And I’m guessing all of you want to know which scripts from the list you should be reading anyway.

A couple of things to note before we get started. The way I’m going to be ranking is by memory. I’m not going to go strictly on my rating at the time. Scripts that got ‘worth the reads’ but lodged themselves in my brain will get graded higher than scripts that got ‘impressives’ which I’ve since forgotten.

Also, there are still a chunk of scripts from the list that I haven’t read yet and so those will not be appearing on the list. They are If You Were the Last, Enemies Within, Gusher, Bikram, Borderline, What If, Annalise & Song, Viceland, May December, Horsegirl, Fish in a Tree, Mouse, State Lines, Good Chance, Here Come the Bandits, Occupied The Sauce, Frenemy, Get Lite, Suncoast, Handsome Stranger, Margot, Tin Roof Rusted, and Yom Kippur.

If it makes you feel any better, I know I won’t like the large majority of those scripts (I still want to read Angela’s script and a couple others) which makes these 50 screenplays the real list. You ready to get started? Let’s go!

50 – REWIRED (10 votes)

Logline: Harvard. 1959. A young Ted Kaczynski is experimented on by Dr. Henry Murray during a secret CIA psychological study that may have led to the creation of the Unabomber.
Writers: Adam Gaines, Ryan Parrott
Reason: This script just isn’t my subject matter so that definitely played into the low rating. But even then, I felt that nothing much happened in the script. They didn’t choose an angle to best take advantage of this person’s story.

49 – DUST (7 votes)
Logline: A young mother in 1930s Oklahoma is convinced that her family is threatened and takes drastic steps to keep them safe.
Writer: Karrie Crouse
Reason: An entire script… about dust. Dust is the main character, the antagonist, the plot, the twists, dust, dust, and more dust. I have disliked some scripts before but this one got under my skin for some reason. I wanted things to happen and they just didn’t.

48 – MY DEAR YOU (11 votes) (Can’t find the review)

Logline: Based on a short story by Rachel Khong. A love story set in the afterlife about our struggle to let go of the past, even when our present is heaven… literally. Tess keeps searching for the love of her life without realizing he’s right there next to her the whole time, helping her look.
Writer: Meghan Kennedy
Reason: I know I read this script but I don’t remember anything about it. I think when the logline focuses more on feelings than what the actual plot is about, the script is in trouble.

47 – CHANG CAN DUNK (28 votes)

Logline: A young Asian-American teen and basketball fanatic who just wants to dunk and get the girl ends up learning much more about himself, his best friends, and his mother.
Writer: Jingyi Shao
Reason: There may be no script on this list that frustrated me more than this one. When you see this many votes, you’re expecting something special. But this was just some goofy little comedy with a kinda funny concept. I feel like there are 100,000 writers out there who could’ve written this exact same script.

46 – EMERGENCY (21 votes)

Logline: Ready for a night of partying, a group of Black and Latino college students must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an emergency.
Writer: KD Davila
Reason: A tonal mish-mash of epic proportions. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? No one knows!

45 – THE WOMEN OF ROUTE 40 (7 votes)

Logline: A struggling single mother must confront dangerous forces – and sins of her past – when her world collides with that of a serial killer. Inspired by the true story of Delaware’s only serial murderer, the Route 40 killer.
Writer: Erin Kathleen
Reason: I think the writer felt really passionately about the subject matter, which ultimately blinded them from writing an entertaining story. You have to learn to separate yourself from the material in order to come up with the best plot.

44 – CRUSH ON YOU (10 votes)

Logline: Summer on a secluded campus takes a dark turn for three college girls when a supernaturally sexy mystery man begins haunting their dreams.
Writer: Shea Mayo
Reason: You know I came across another review online of this script and the reader really liked it. So maybe I’m the crazy one. But this script felt half-baked in its best moments. A very lazy narrative that never intrigues or scares.

43 – EARWORM (9 votes)

Logline: A former music therapist is recruited to use a mysterious machine to dive into the memories of a serial killer on death row.
Writer: Austin Everett
Reason: Definitely one of the more interesting concepts on the list which is why I think it was one of the first scripts I reviewed. But it fell apart quickly. You could sense that the concept was too complicated and the writer wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

42 – GABI SEEMS DIFFERENT (7 votes) (can’t find review)

Logline: After spending several years recovering from a devastating car crash that pulled her out of the spotlight, Gabi, a famous pop star, gets ready to perform again for the first time. But with the pressure mounting and her memory failing her, the young woman begins to doubt who she really is — and if Gabi really survived the crash at all.
Writer: Victoria Bata
Reason: This script exists like a fuzzy dream in my head. If I remember correctly, it was one of those “what is and isn’t real” type scripts, which, if not executed with a deft pen, can quickly get away from you.

41 – BLOOD TIES (10 votes)

Logline: Based on the New Yorker article by Nathan Heller. A true-crime thriller based on the story of two brilliant college lovers convicted of a brutal slaying. An obsessed detective investigates the true motives that led to a double homicide, and the decades of repercussions that follow.
Writer: Aaron Katz
Reason: Remember when True Crime was all the rage? What happened? I think the bar has been raised so when you get a script like this one that tackles a rather mundane true crime story, it doesn’t feel like it’s doing enough.

40 – RIPPER (15 votes)

Logline: London, 1888: When their friends begin dying at the hands of a brutal killer, an all-female crime syndicate, The Forty Elephants, must work together to take down the predator stalking them – Jack The Ripper.
Writer: Dennis MaGee Fallon
Reason: Another Jack the Ripper script. Is this number 82,567 for the decade? The logline sounds exciting but the script itself was rather tame. When you play in sandboxes that thousands of other writers are playing in, you have to bring something groundbreaking to the table.

39 – MURDER IN THE WHITE HOUSE (9 votes)

Logline: The President is murdered during a private dinner, and Secret Service agent Mia Pine has until morning to discover which guest is the killer before a peace agreement fails and leads to war
Writer: Jonathan Stokes
Reason: You gotta have the discipline and cleverness of Agatha Christie to write these whodunnits. If you take your foot off the gas for even a second, all the plates fall to the ground. The messiness in the plotting here was too much to overcome.

38 – THE NEUTRAL CORNER (13 votes)

Logline: Logline: A Nevada court judge who moonlights reffing high-profile boxing matches must face his demons when he’s assigned to the Olympic fight of an ex-con he’d previously sentenced for murder.
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Reason: I had to dig deep into the recesses of my mind to remember this one. From what I can recall, I was disappointed due to the fact that it’s a good concept that the writer didn’t exploit enough.

37 – FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE (19 votes)

Writer: Emma Dudley
Logline: On the way to her father’s wedding, a young woman still stuck in the closet hooks up with a female flight attendant, only to later find out she’s her father’s fiancé.
Reason: 19 votes? Come on. This is a standard concept that we’ve already seen before. It has a few nice moments but never rises above average.

36 – SATURDAY NIGHT GHOST CLUB (17 votes)

Logline: After being haunted by a terrifying entity, a twelve-year-old boy teams up with his eccentric uncle and three other misfits to form their own ghost club, investigating all the paranormal sites in town so that he can find and confront the ghost that’s tormenting him.
Writers: Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman
Reason: For one of the more fun-sounding premises, it was a bummer to read this and find out it didn’t deliver. Execution was sloppy. Not imaginative enough.

35 – RUBY (7 votes)

Logline: After her husband is attacked, assassin Ruby is lured into the open to hunt down those responsible, leading her back to the boss who wants to keep her in the fold at any cost.
Writer: Kat Wood
Reason: This is yet another Jane Wick script with average execution but it’s certainly more entertaining than half the scripts on the Black List, which is why I rated it number 35.

34 – NANNY (9 votes)

Logline: Aisha is an undocumented nanny caring for a privileged child. As she prepares for the arrival of her only son, who she left behind in her native country, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, jeopardizing the American Dream she’s carefully pieced together.
Writer: Nikyata Jusu
Reason: This script has some good character moments between the nanny and the fractured rich couple. But it never quite figures out what it’s trying to do.

33 – THE BLACK BELT (15 votes)

Logline: Eighth grader Simon Paluska dreams of being a Taekwondo Black Belt, but he’s not allowed to take lessons. So he buys a Black Belt on Amazon for twenty-five bucks. Then, he has to use it.
Writer: Randall Green
Reason: This logline was funny but the execution never pushed the envelope. Be careful of “just good enough” execution. It’s a script killer. Push yourself!

32 – THE PEAK (7 votes)

Logline: A troubled young surgeon travels to a desolate peak to climb the mountain where her father suffered a mental breakdown years earlier, only to realize halfway up the rock wall that she might be subject to the same fate.
Writer: Arthur Hills
Reason: Maybe it’s because I’d read a couple of better versions of this idea already, but this never found a plot beat to elevate it above what was, for the most part, a tame idea. Great ideas need good execution. Decent ideas need great execution.

31 – HIGH SOCIETY (9 votes)

Logline: A depressed, progressive woman stuck in a conservative small Texas town starts micro-dosing the entire town with marijuana to make them all get along.
Writer: Noga Pnueli
Reason: Starts off promising then goes smoky. A little weird to have the main character actively drug an entire town. In a script that’s trying to make a morally superior political point through its main character, I’m not sure that was the right move.

30 – TWO-FACED (25 votes)

Logline: A high school senior attempts to get her principal fired after observing racist behavior, but she quickly learns he won’t go down without a fight.
Writer: Cat Wilkins
Reason: This is a pretty serious subject matter that’s dealt with so lightly I’m not sure the script ever found the proper tone. It just wasn’t as good as it could’ve been.

29 – COSMIC SUNDAY (9 votes)

Logline: A small percentage of the population is stuck in a time loop and have had to create a society that functions within the same day, repeated day in and day out. One man struggles to find himself for the first time in ages amidst a society clinging to a sense of normalcy.
Writer: MacMillan Hedges
Reason: I liked that it took an overused trope – the loop movie – and found a new way into it. Unfortunately, there are too many rules to this loop world and, as a result, the script became too messy to save.

28 – REPTILE DYSFUNCTION (11 votes)

Logline: A chemical leak in a local water supply in Central Florida wreaks havoc on the invasive population of pythons, leading a family to the fight of their life to survive.
Writer: Creston Whittington
Reason: The one thing I’ll say about this script is that it has a really fun setup. The problem is the execution isn’t good enough. Writer seemed too new to the game. Had so much potential!

27 – EMANCIPATION (8 votes)

Logline: Based on a true story, a runaway slave has to outwit bounty hunters and the perils of a Louisiana swamp to reach the Union army and his only chance at freedom.
Writer: Bill Collage
Reason: This one starts out really good then gets harder and harder to digest. Not light subject matter by any means. Have to be in the proper head space to read.

26 – THE BOY WHO DIED (10 votes)

Logline: A young girl creates a robot version of Harry Potter while her father simultaneously is treating Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe for a terminal disease.
Writer: Monisha Dadlani
Reason: I will just say this. This is one of the WEIRDEST ideas I’ve ever come across. And it almost works. But the weirdness becomes so overly weird that it can’t rebound from all the weird.

25 – NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY (26 votes)

Logline: An adaptation of David Sharp’s book The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation that chronicles the clandestine CIA operation that risked igniting WWIII by recovering a nuclear-armed Soviet Sub, the K-129, that sunk to the bottom of the ocean in 1968.
Writer: Dave Collard
Reason: It’s an interesting story but gets bogged down by a lack of urgency. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I remember that the thing takes place over like ten years or something. If this script could figure out its lack of urgency issue, it could be good.

24 – THE U.S.P.S. (11 votes)

Logline: Following in his murdered mother’s footsteps, Michael Griffiths enlists in the United States Postal Service… only to discover a mail route full of surprises and a job that means maybe, just maybe, saving the world.
Writer: Perry Janes
Reason: This script was way over the top. And I didn’t like the mix between the postal service and a secret agency. It felt unnatural. But it’s being made by Amazon so maybe I’ll eat my shorts in the end!

23 – I.S.S. (7 votes)

Logline: At any given moment in time there are roughly six astronauts living on the International Space Station (ISS). The station itself is divided into two segments one half Russian, one half American. When a world war event occurs on Earth, America and Russia find themselves on opposing sides. As such, both nations secretly contact their astronauts aboard the ISS and give them instructions to take control of the station by any means necessary. The six astronauts must each secretly choose between their friendships with each other and their allegiance to their country.
Writer: Nick Shafir
Reason: I’m such a sucker for sci-fi that I’ll basically read anything in the genre. This script doesn’t deliver for reasons I get into in the review. But something about it stayed with me enough that when I was ranking the scripts, I remembered it.

22 – A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE (9 votes)

Logline: Journalists race to expose how Boeing knowingly misled regulators, pilots, and airlines to cover up a problematic flight software system on the 737 MAX, leading to two major airplane crashes and the deaths of 346 people. Based on real events.
Writer: Terry Huang
Reason: Ugh, it crushes me so much to prop up true stories. I want original stories, dammit! But, as far as true stories go, this one’s pretty interesting as it investigates how Boeing tried to pass blame on its own screw-up, which killed a bunch of people.

21 – A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY (14 votes)

Logline: After both attending the same wedding solo, David and Sarah embark on a big, bold, beautiful journey with a little help from their 1996 Passat GPS and a little bit of magic for the road trip of their lives.
Writer: Seth Reiss
Reason: This script has problems but I give it points for taking chances. If you like non-traditional love stories like 500 Days of Summer, you’ll love this

20 – ST. SIMMONS (11 votes)

Logline: When a very fat and possibly gay boy from New Orleans is visited by an angel called Barbra Streisand, he sets out on a holy crusade in daytime television to touch and save the soul of every obese person in America before his demons consume him – if only to make his daddy proud. It’s the true gospel of Richard Simmons.
Writer: Greg Wayne
Reason: Free Richard Simmons! This follows one of the most fascinating characters to ever become a celebrity. Does a good job delving into some of Simmons’s secrets and demons.

19 – 1MDB (10 votes)

Logline: The incredible true story of the multi-billion dollar Malaysian government corruption scandal which led to the conviction of Prime Minister Najib Razak and almost $5 billion in settlements paid out by Goldman Sachs.
Writer: Scott Conroy
Reason: To be honest, I just liked learning about this weirdo imposter who stole all this money and posed as a big shot… only to get away with it.

18 – BRING ME BACK (22 votes) (can’t find review)

Logline: When a woman on an interstellar voyage falls in love with someone during a cryosleep simulation, she attempts to discern whether the man is a real passenger on the ship or just a figment of her imagination.
Writer: Crosby Selander
Reason: Bring Me Back is probably the most high concept script on the list. And I certainly was intrigued by it. The problem is that it spans so much time and tries to do so much that it never quite finds its groove.

17 – BUBBLE AND SQUEAK (21 votes) (review no longer up)

Logline: Two newlyweds traverse a fictional country on their honeymoon but slowly realize they’re yearning to take separate journeys.
Writer: Evan Twohy
Reason: As someone who reads a lot, I appreciate when writers give me something different. And, holy cow, is that the case with Bubble and Squeak. This script is really weird. I’m not sure it all comes together in the end. But you can see why people remembered it enough to vote for it.

16 – WAR FACE (7 votes)

Logline: A female U.S. Army Special Agent is sent to a remote, all-male outpost in Afghanistan to investigate accusations of war crimes. But when a series of mysterious events jeopardize her mission and the unit’s sanity, she must find the courage to survive something far more sinister.
Writer: Mitchell Lafortune
Reason: I really loved the setup for this script. It gets a little crazy towards the end. But the ride getting there is fun.

15 – HEADHUNTER (29 votes) (review no longer up)

Logline: A high-functioning cannibal selects his victims based on their Instagram popularity, but finds his habits shaken by a man who wants to be eaten.
Writer: Sophie Dawson
Reason: I think Mayhem (Sophie) is a revelation. All of us love her here on Scriptshadow. She’s always delivered weird totally bonkers scripts. Headhunter is no exception. A bit too much like American Psycho for my taste but a killer (no pun intended) execution.

14 – THE MAN IN THE YARD (14 votes)

Logline: When a dangerous stranger shows up at her front door, a depressed widow must confront her own past in order to protect her two children.
Writer: Sam Stefanak
Reason: This one probably shouldn’t be as high as it is. But I can’t get this image out of my head of this guy whose features we can’t quite make out standing in the back of the yard, unmoving. That’s one of the most terrifying things I can imagine. Not the best execution but I would like to see this movie.

13 – EXCELSIOR! – 9 votes

Logline: The true story of the meteoric rise (and subsequent fall) of Marvel Comics and the star-crossed creators behind the panel: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby.
Writer: Alex Convery
Reason: When I die, make sure that they do a study on my brain to find out why I included a biopic in my top 20. But in all seriousness, come on, it’s Stan Lee! And the story behind his fallout with Jack Kirby is really interesting. This was an unexpected treat.

12 – PLUSH (8 votes)

Logline: Sex, money, and one schoolyard fad that took a nation by storm. Based on the true story of Ty Warner, the enigmatic entrepreneur behind a ‘90s toy craze that sparked madness, murder, and a billion-dollar empire.
Writer: Alexandra Skarsgard
Reason: I’m not Mr. True Story Guy by any means but the main character in this script was odd enough that I wanted to know more. And, of course, there’s the cutesy irony of becoming a billionaire by making tiny little stuffed animals.

11 – UNCLE WICK (8 votes)

Logline: An action comedy wherein Benji Stone, a lovable but deeply unpopular sixteen year old, is pulled into an international assassination plot by his uncle, a retired undercover assassin charged with babysitting Benji for the weekend.
Writer: Gabe Delahaye
Reason: Best pure comedy on the list. Great concept. Can see this movie being a hit tomorrow!

10 – POSSUM SONG (16 votes)

Logline: After discovering his secret songwriting partner dead, a country music star struggling to record new material makes a Faustian bargain with a family of possums who have taken up residency within his walls.
Writer: Isaac Adamson
Reason: This script took me back to the old Black List days, when every other script was dominated by animals! This one is bizarre in mostly a good way. Expect yourself to go through a lot of “WTF” moments with Possum Song, but, afterwards, being glad that you took the journey.

9 – SHARPER (17 votes)

Logline: A chain of scam artists goes after one wealthy family with the perfect plan to drain them of their funds. But when love, heartbreak, and jealousy slither their way into the grand scheme, it becomes unclear whether the criminals are conning or the ones being conned.
Writers: Brian Gatewood, Alessandro Tanaka
Reason: Okay, this one’s a little messy but as far as con scripts go, it’s the best one I’ve read in a while. The cons are fast and furious all the way til the last page!

8 – LURKER (11 votes)

Logline: An obsessed fan maneuvers his way into the inner circle of his hip hop idol and will stop at nothing to stay in.
Writer: Alex Russell
Reason: I started off rolling my eyes. I finished eagerly ripping pages away to find out what happened next. A great stalker story that feels very 2020.

7 – FLIGHT RISK (9 votes)

Logline: An Air Marshal transporting a fugitive across the Alaskan wilderness via a small plane finds herself trapped when she suspects their pilot is not who he says he is.
Writer: Jared Rosenberg
Reason: I love scripts like this. Tight quarters. Multiple secrets. High stakes. Twists and turns. This is a great little screenplay that contained enthusiasts will love.

6 – THE CULLING (10 votes) (newsletter review only – sign up at carsonreeves1@gmail.com!)

Logline: When a former priest returns home after an extended absence, he encounters the demon who killed his mother and must kill it before it possesses him.
Writer: Stephen Herman
Reason: This is a cool little horror film that uses a physical monster as a metaphor for the main character’s alcoholism. A good example of how to write a low budget single-location horror movie.

5 – GENERATION LEAP (7 votes)

Logline: After a global pandemic causes NASA to send a crew of astronauts into deep space to find another habitable planet, the crew is unexpectedly awoken from hypersleep and must survive a mysterious new threat that comes from the future generations they sought to save, and the one place they never expected – Earth.
Writers: John Sonntag, Thomas Sonntag
Reason: I probably shouldn’t have liked this one as much as I did. But I did. The concept is really clever, and once you realize what’s going on, you can’t help but anticipate who’s showing up next. Best pure sci-fi script on the list!

4 – THE GORGE (8 votes)

Logline: A brazen, high-action, genre-bending, love story about two very dangerous young people, who despite the corrupt and lethal world they operate in, find a soulmate in each other.
Writer: Zach Dean
Reason: This script isn’t perfect but I’ve never seen a setup like it before. And then it morphs into a love story, before morphing into a sci-fi horror adventure. Weird and uneven, but highly memorable. Writer Zach Dean, of course, just wrote Amazon’s biggest original movie, The Tomorrow War.

3 – MAGAZINE DREAMS (9 votes)

Logline: A Black amateur bodybuilder struggles to find human connection in this exploration of celebrity and violence.
Writer: Elijah Bynum
Reason: Dark. Very very dark. Not for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure. However, if you like scripts where you go deep into the psychosis of very unstable people, this one is a truthful portrayal of a warped mind. Uncomfortable but powerful.

2 – TOWERS (8 votes)

Logline: A businessman’s obsession with his competitor leads him down a rabbit hole of self-discovery, fantasy, and delusion.
Writer: Aaron Rabin
Reason: This script did an amazing job of keeping me guessing. It was offbeat, unexpected. The world we were in was weird and unpredictable. For writers trying to understand what a unique voice looks like, you’ll want to read this script.

1 – BIRDIES (16 votes)

Logline: When Tabitha, a struggling foster kid, wins a contest to become part of the BIRDIES, a popular daily YouTube channel featuring the radiant and enigmatic Mama Bird and her diverse brood of adopted children, she soon learns that things get dark when the cameras turn off.
Writer: Colin Bannon
Reason: The most original script on the list. The most timely script on the list. It was quirky but in an endearing way. The main character was so easy to root for. The villain was unique and interesting. This script hit all the marks and should’ve been voted as the top script of the year!

Final note: Have you read any of the scripts that I haven’t reviewed yet? Were they good? Should I review them next? Let me know in the comments!

This weekend I watched two movies, Shang-Chi and Red Notice. Although I don’t live and die by Rotten Tomatoes scores, I did check the two RT scores for these movies and saw that, for Red Notice, it got a 40%, and Shang-Chi a 92%. I’m going to use today’s post to make an argument why those scores should be reversed. The problem with Red Notice, in my opinion, is that people (critics, in particular) didn’t realize what it was trying to do.

First, it’s giving you an alternative to big fun superhero movies. The superheroes in Red Notice are the outsized personalities of its three leads. Everybody is funny, everybody is charming, and everybody, of course, has a ten gigawatt smile. Second, everybody involved in this movie wanted only one thing: to make audiences feel good. We’re living in a tough day-to-day environment with a lot of polarization and a lot of anger. These guys said, “Let’s make everyone forget about that for two hours.” And, for the most part, they succeeded.

The film, which I’d pitch as Rush Hour meets The Da Vinci Code meets Raiders of the Lost Ark, follows FBI agent John Hartley (The Rock) as he tries to capture the most notorious art thief in the world, Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds), who is attempting to steal three bejeweled eggs that belonged to Cleopatra, the entire set being worth 300 million dollars. As the story unfolds, Hartley and Booth must work together to stop a third thief, The Bishop (Gal Gadot) from obtaining those three eggs.

Red Notice got me thinking about a Hollywood movie mainstay: The “Turn Your Brain Off and Just Enjoy Yourself” movie. A lot of cinephiles haaaaaaaaaayte this type of movie. They want their Moonlights. They want their Spotlights. Anything that doesn’t challenge the mind is a waste of their time. But you have to remember that the large majority of moviegoers don’t watch those movies. They just want to be entertained. Which Red Notice does.

Now all “Turn Your Brain Off and Just Enjoy Yourself” movies are not created equal. There are good versions and there are bad versions.

Good Version: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Bad Version: Geostorm

Good Version: John Wick
Bad Version: 6 Underground

Good Version: Shazam!
Bad Version: The Do-Over

The question is, what is the difference between the two? If you’re setting out to write one of these movies, how do you make sure you write John Wick and not 6 Underground? And I think I know the answer. Laziness. The bad versions of these movies always seem to have more cliches in them. Always seem to have less thoughtful plot beats in them. They seem to be less creative in all the key areas. For example, the whole Continental Hotel thing in John Wick really helped set that movie apart because it built a bigger mythology into the assassin world than your garden variety spy flick.

To put it more succinctly, the bad versions of these films feel like they never got past a second draft. For those of you new to screenwriting, the second draft of a screenplay is where you’re still figuring out how your story comes together. You’re using the second draft, mostly, to fix all the sloppy stuff in the first draft. Then, once you’ve painted a lot of that dry wall, you can start to decorate the interior. But you’re probably not going to finish those decorations until the sixth draft. There’s a whole lot left to figure out in the story.

(Random Star Wars reference ahead) This is why The Phantom Menace was such an oblong clunky experience with little good and a whole lot more bad. It’s because George Lucas famously only wrote one draft. Screenwriting doesn’t favor the lazy. It is a craft that rewards writers who challenge every scene and plot beat and character they’ve written and ask themselves, “Can I make this better in the next draft? And then the draft after that. And then the draft after that.”

Red Notice isn’t a perfect movie but it’s perfect at what it’s trying to do – which is give you 2 hours of pure entertainment. Get to the stuff at the end when World War 2 comes into play and tell me you don’t become giddy. It was like a comedic version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I had a blast watching this and unless your heart is made of rock, I expect you to like it as well. It kind of has that old-school “line up around the block early 2000s Hollywood” vibe that’s been missing from the industry for a while.

Meanwhile, I checked out Shang-Chi because it was free on Disney +, and I can’t say I felt the same way about it. It started off strong. I loved that out-of-control bus scene inspired by Spider-Man 2. I was digging the main character, Shaun. He played the underdog role well and he was funnier than I thought he would be.

But the whole movie went to Garbage Town as soon as they traveled to the sacred forest. All of a sudden there were dragons and random big dog monsters and about 60 scenes in a row of people sitting around, talking in rooms about their daddy issues. It went from this really cool movie to the world’s most boring superhero flick (not including The Eternals, of course). They even brought back one of the most disliked characters in the Marvel Universe, that dumb Mandarin guy from Iron Man 3.

But the biggest problem with the film was that Marvel, once again, displayed its achilles heel, giving us a 200 million dollar CGI ending it paid 20 million dollars for. You had dumb dragons flying around, as well weird mini-dragons. And people trying to break into some giant cave door. It was so dumb and pointless. This same CGI overload was a problem in Black Widow and Black Panther. The difference is that those movies were good enough to withstand those endings, whereas Shang-Chi was not. They should’ve kept this movie back in San Francisco. That’s where it was working. A huge Marvel letdown.

On the TV side of things, I checked out two shows. The first was the Will Ferrell Paul Rudd Apple show, The Shrink Next Door. You know how when you start watching something and you can tell immediately that it’s not going to work? There’s either a shot or a scene or a character that lands with a big thud? Something about what you’re watching feels disjointed, uncalibrated, off.

That was this show.

We start off with this pointless behind-Will-Ferrell walking scene where he’s in a beekeeper suit and I immediately knew. “Here we go! Quirky for quirk’s sake opening!” And then we cut to Paul Rudd at a party playing this over-the-top persona he clearly isn’t right for. I knew right then that whatever they were attempting to do with this show wasn’t going to work. I kept watching but every subsequent scene only confirmed what those first couple of scenes told us – that this was going to be Lame City. It’s too bad because I really like both actors. But this show is not worth your time.

Which leads me to a show that IS worth your time if you love interesting screenwriting stuff – the show “You” on Netflix. “You” is about a more charming version of Christian Bale’s American Psycho character, a New York bookstore owner named Joe Goldberg. Joe falls in love with a girl who comes into his store, Beck, and starts stalking her, learning everything about her, and then strategically placing himself in situations where they’ll meet so as to, ultimately, become her boyfriend.

The reason this show makes me all slobbery for screenwriting is because it tackles two huge screenwriting pillars. The first is dramatic irony. If you don’t remember what dramatic irony is, it’s one of the most powerful storytelling tools a writer has in his toolbox and basically gives the reader more information than one of the main characters.

“You” is the most aggressive use of dramatic irony I’ve ever seen. I’m going to spoil a few things here, but nothing past the third episode. Joe clones Beck’s phone so that he has access to all her texts, all her social media, all her e-mail, all her calls. He knows everything about Beck as soon as she knows it. Joe is also a killer. He kills Beck’s hookup buddy so as to clear a path to become her boyfriend. And when her best friend starts getting in the way as well, he looks for ways to eliminate her too.

This creates one of the more interesting relationship shows you’ve ever watched because when Joe and Beck are together, we know that there’s this entire other world going on beneath the surface that’s paved the way for this relationship to happen. It makes every single one of their conversations exciting because there’s always an element of subtext involved (that’s a dramatic irony bonus – it automatically creates conversation subtext).

If you’ve ever underestimated what dramatic irony can do for you, check this show out. Because it’s dramatic irony on nitroglycerin. There is never a moment where there isn’t more going on in a scene than just a conversation. There are always several layers UNDERNEATH.

The other crazy thing about this show is it demonstrates just how far you can push a character and still make him sympathetic. Despite everything I just wrote, you will root for Joe and Beck to be together. How is it that a writer can make you root for a character who does such despicable things? Well, watch the show. Because it shows that, with several clever writing tricks, you can make almost anybody sympathetic.

In this case, the guy that Beck was hooking up with was the world’s biggest jerk. He was mean to her. Didn’t care about her. Said a lot of nasty things to her. Only called at 2 am when he was drunk. So when Joe kills him, we’re actually happy. We like Beck a lot and we didn’t want her to be with this guy. And then, with her friends, they’re bad as well. One of them, in particular is super-controlling and manipulative and uses Beck and also keeps her from chasing her dream. So we want Joe to get rid of her.

Another thing that really helps when you have a bad person is voice over. “You” has more Joe voice over than it does regular dialogue. Joe is always taking us through his thought process. Sometimes it’s creepy. But mostly, it’s motivated by good intentions. The more we hear someone talk about why they’re doing things, the more likely we are to understand them. Whereas, if there was no Joe voice over and we saw him kill people, we’d probably hate him.

And they do cheap ‘save the cat’ things as well. There’s a kid who lives in the apartment next to Joe whose step-dad is abusive and Joe helps the kid cope, always giving him books from his store and giving him a shoulder to cry on. It’s audience manipulation at its finest but, hey, it works. Who isn’t going to like a character who helps a kid living with an abusive family?

So from a screenwriting perspective, this show is worth checking out because it does things you’re not supposed to do and has figured out a way to make them work – mainly that the protagonist is a stalker-slash-serial killer and we still want him to end up with the girl. I haven’t run into too many movies or shows that have been able to pull something like that off. Which is why I’m so impressed. Check it out if you can!

Genre: Biopic
Premise: Harvard. 1959. A young Ted Kaczynski is experimented on by Dr. Henry Murray during a secret CIA psychological study that may have led to the creation of the Unabomber.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 10 votes. Both of these writers have done a little TV work as well as written some indie features.
Writers: Adam Gaines & Ryan Parrott
Details: 91 pages

Asa Butterfield for Kaczynski?

One of the most common things you’ll be tasked with as a working screenwriter is finding angles on topics that have no business becoming movies. Hollywood is so focused on snatching up life rights, biographies, and IP that they don’t actually ask if the ideas are something worth turning into a movie.

The Empty Man, which I spoke about yesterday, is a perfect example of this. It was some dumb comic book that nobody read. Yet someone decided to buy it. And then they pitched it to director David Prior, who went off to read it, came back, and said, there is no way I will make this movie because this comic is stupid as hell (paraphrasing). But I will keep the title and make my own movie. They wisely said, ‘fine.’

The problem with making a movie about Ted Kaczynski is that he’s an unpleasant wacko who possesses zero qualities that would make him a good movie character. He’s a disturbed weasel who sends bombs to people with crazy-person messages attached. That character can never ever be a protagonist.

And yet, here is the sickness that permeates the industry. Everyone is so desperate to get movies through the system, they’re willing to pluck these unpleasant, but popular, topics, off the idea tree, thinking that a sad bleak boring name is better than no name at all. And so we get a screenplay about Ted Kaczynski.

One of the weirdest things about this screenplay is that we’re never told, until the very last line of the script, what Ted Kaczynski did to deserve the treatment of a movie. If I’m 25 years old reading this, all I’m thinking is, “Who is this guy and why are we following him?”

I suppose this could’ve been an artistic choice. But something tells me the writers assumed that everyone would know who Ted Kaczynski was. Which is something you should never do as a writer. I didn’t know even know who Ted Kaczynski was. I thought he was the Oklahoma City bombing guy. While you may spend 200 hours researching someone and therefore know them intimately, a majority of readers will have no idea who they are when they first lay eyes on your script.

“Rewired” focuses on Ted’s life when he was 17 years old attending Harvard in 1959. He was a math prodigy who got recruited by a pretty teacher’s assistant named Barbara Martin into a psychological experiment at the university being run by a psychology professor named Dr. Henry Murray.

Murray asks Ted, along with the 50 other students in the program, to give him a thesis on how to live life and Ted comes back with a paper that basically states too many people in Harvard don’t need Harvard because they’re already set for life. Meanwhile, poor people like him have to scratch and claw just to keep up with their scholarship requirements and then, when they graduate, they’ll have to start all over again, since they don’t have a network of rich people to help them.

Murray then recruits a lawyer from the legal department and tells him to debate everyone in the group, breaking down their life theses, and making them feel as bad as possible about their ideas. His plan seems to be to destroy their beliefs to see if he can then build an entirely new belief system within them.

Halfway through the experiment, Barbara visits Murray’s home, only to discover that he’s babbling incoherently and randomly painting his walls with a long black stripe. Needless to say, this man should not have been conducting any experiments. But it was the 50s so there weren’t a lot of checks and balances.

Barbara tries to warn Ted that Murray’s experiment is evil so Ted goes to Murray’s office to quit. But Murray takes advantage of Ted’s youth and naiveté to convince him to keep going, which basically amounts to a lot more psychological abuse. Ted heads home for the holiday and is violent for the first time to his brother. His parents are concerned that something sinister is going on at the university and encourage Ted to drop out.

I’m not clear on if he did drop out or not because the last few pages of the script are vague. But I think he may have? And then we get a closing title screen that tells us Ted killed three people with mail bombs and injured 23 others. The End.

I mean… (my head drops to the desk)…

I don’t understand why people write these scripts.

This script is so f$%#%ing depressing and sad and rote and boring and nothing happens! It’s two people sitting across from each other for 90% of the movie.

Even the script’s intention doesn’t work – to build sympathy for Ted Kaczynski – because Ted is such a bummer himself. He lugs himself around campus, staring at the ground, talking to no one, when he does talk to someone he’s scolding them or getting upset. Why would we care about this person? They’re extremely unlikable. I don’t mean that in a screenwriting sense. I mean in a person sense. Like, I hate these kinds of people. So why would I care about a movie that follows one of them?

And this goes back to the point I made at the beginning: Not every well-known person in history is meant to have a movie made about them. Just because somebody did something spectacularly good or spectacularly bad does not mean that a film must be made about them. And yet Hollywood can’t help themselves. No soul left behind. No matter how boring or rote or unlikable or annoying or eye-rolling a famous individual is, we must make a movie about their life!

What I’d be curious about here is if any of what I read is documented – if these interactions between Ted and Murray came from a transcription – or if the writers just made them up. Because the conversations certainly felt made up, with the bad guys sounding like mustache-twirling villains from the 70s.

At one point the lawyer says to Ted, “Your father. Average sausage maker. Master bowler.” Ted replies, “How did — how did you know that?” The lawyer says, “Grinding it together as it grounds him down. You must know those casings are made from intestines. Tell me… do you help your father clean the intestines? So he feels like less of a failure?”

I apologize if these words are on record but I sincerely doubt it. They feel made up. If you’re going to tell a story this serious, you can’t just have a bunch of made up gibberish as it undercuts everything you’re trying to accomplish – which is to write a convincing portrayal of how this kid was manipulated. That’s the only thing the movie has going for it, is that authenticity.

Another issue I had with this script is that they’re squaring a Harvard professor off with a kid to challenge his ideas. However, Ted is psychologically weak from the get-go. He’s lonely. He doesn’t have confidence in himself. He doesn’t even really belief in his thesis. For that reason, the conversations are all one-sided.

Psychological battles are entertaining when the two parties are an equal match. Without that, it’s basically like watching a bully come into a room and beat up someone smaller than him again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. It’s masochistic. It’s unpleasant. I just… I’m so baffled about why anyone would think this would be entertaining.

Which brings us back to… yes, you guessed it: the fault of basing your movie on a weak idea. There’s honestly a more entertaining movie in two people trying to figure out how to spell Ted’s last name. We have to stop blindly putting scripts like this on the Black List because it means we will only get more of them.

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

What I learned: This is one more example that you cannot fix a bad idea. Whether it’s a bad fictional idea or a bad subject you’ve chosen. Writers lose years of their lives trying to make scripts work that will never work because the subject matter doesn’t work. This is one of those scripts. Nobody should ever make a movie about Ted Kaczynski. You can’t make him sympathetic. You can’t make the story entertaining. Anything you come up with will be bleak and sad. Nothing about this script works.

Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: A family is entrusted with a planet that produces the most valuable energy source in the galaxy – spice.
About: Dune’s long perilous journey to the big screen is finally over. The film was released in theaters this weekend, as well as simulcast on HBO Max. It pulled in 40 million dollars, the largest post-pandemic haul yet for an HBO Max simul-release. The movie comes from visionary sci-fi director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049). Everyone’s asking the question, “Is a 40 million dollar opening enough to greenlight a sequel?” Well, I hope so considering the first movie didn’t have an ending. Dune is doing pretty well with critics (82%), and a little better with moviegoers (91% on RT and 8.3 on IMDB).
Writers: Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth and Denis Villeneuve (based on the novel by Frank Herbert)
Details: 2 hours 35 minutes

I should’ve been worried when I read this headline over the weekend: “Denis Villeneuve claims Tenet is a masterpiece.” But, if I’m being truthful, I was worried about this film all the way back when I saw the original trailer. My initial thoughts were, “This looks like it has the potential to be REALLY boring.” And, unfortunately, that’s Dune’s biggest battle. Fighting off its fits of boringness.

The problem here is Denis Villeneuve. Denis is a very talented filmmaker. But he wasn’t built to direct big-budget movies. He was built to create smaller artsier fare. There are large swaths of this movie that feel like a Terrance Malick film. And while that works with limited audiences made up primarily of cinephiles. It might as well be nuclear waste when selling it to mainstream audiences.

In Denis’s defense, there are so many things working against Dune as a feature film that one finds it hard to believe it would work in any capacity. The worst part of it is the story itself, which seems designed to be boring. The Atreides family is handed the planet Dune, which produces the main energy source of the galaxy, ‘spice.’ The plot that occurs for the next 60 minutes is anyone’s guess. But it can basically be boiled down to “people in rooms talking,” a screenwriting death sentence for a feature film.

After what seems like forever, the film finally comes alive when the Emperor orders the other clans to attack and destroy the Atreides family. But Denis finds a way to make even that boring, as we’re soon watching Timothee Chalamet and his mom spend ten entire minutes inside an underground tent having the most boring conversations known to man. It is one poor story choice after another here.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the movie ends out of nowhere, as if everyone on the production team realized, all at once, “Um, this story goes nowhere so why continue telling it?” In cutting the movie off so abruptly, they seem to have erased an entire character, the blue-eyed girl played by Zendaya, who was so heavily involved in the marketing that you might have expected her to have upwards of 2 hours of screen time. Try 5 minutes. All of which is in Timothee Chalamet’s dreams.

There are some lessons to learn from this screenwriting disaster. So let’s get into those.

There are way too many “two people in a room talking” scenes. A lot of you gave me crap for bemoaning 2PIART scenes but this movie shows you exactly how dangerous they can be to a story’s momentum. This is a giant production. So why do you have so many 5-6 minute scenes of two people talking in a room?? It’s egregious.

Even worse, nobody shows any emotion in this movie. Every character is muted. Everyone speaks monotone. Everyone looks serious. This is a classic beginner screenwriting mistake. You believe that if you muzzle emotion, your movie will come off as more “serious” and “thoughtful.” But all it does is make every single scene that has characters in it boring.

You can get away with one character being like this. You can’t get away with a dozen characters being like this. At a certain point, people need to show emotion. That’s what audiences connect with because we’re all emotional creatures. When something bad happens, we want the character to be mad. Or sad. When something good happens, we want to share in their happiness. There is no emotion in this movie at all. And when you combine that with the stark lifeless backdrops, it feels like we’re in the world’s biggest indie flick.

Another screenwriting 101 mistake – when you have a major team-up in your screenplay – characters who are going to have a lot of screen time together – you want those two characters to have the most interesting conflict-filled relationship possible. Why? Because they’re going to make up 50-60-70% of the movie we watch. So if there’s no interesting conflict between them, you could have up to 70% of your movie with two characters who have zero interesting moments together. Dune makes the inexplicable decision to team Timothee Chalamet up with his mother. The two have absolutely nothing interesting going on between them. They just mumble back and forth to each other for 150 minutes.

And the thing is, they actually had the opportunity to create some conflict here. One of the first things Chalamet’s mom does is send him into a trial where, if he fails, he dies. Mom trying to kill you is a pretty good starting point for a conflict-heavy dynamic that’s going to need a lot of work to resolve. However, Chalamet holds no ill-will towards his mother after her attempted assassination of him. He shrugs it off and goes back to mumbling.

Another thing I tell writers is that when you’re writing sci-fi or fantasy, stick with two sides: the good guys and the bad guys. That way, we’ll never be confused. However, if you have three sides, or in Dune’s case, four sides, there’s going to be a good chance we’ll be confused by what’s going on. That’s exactly what happens here. The Emperor decides to take down House Atreides. Is the Emperor part of a House himself? No idea. Is he completely on his own? Maybe. When people did start to attack House Atreides, which House were they a part of? Information not available.

I’m not even sure what House Atreides’ job is. Are they only harvesting and distributing the spice? Or do they now own the planet and, therefore, own the spice itself? This matters because if they own the planet, it makes sense that others would want to go to war with them, so they could have the planet themselves. But if they’re just harvesting for the greater good of the galaxy, it makes less sense that anyone would want to attack them.

And this isn’t insignificant information here. This is at the heart of what the movie is about. If we don’t know what the rules are, how can we appreciate the nuances of any sort of attack on them? I know Dune is not trying to be Star Wars. But I understood what the central conflict of Star Wars was within ten minutes. It just seems like nobody sat down and said, “We have to figure out how to make this conflict understandable and accessible.”

Even stuff that should be easy to understand is confusing. Why is spice red but the people who live among it and are supposedly overcome by the toxicity of spice – their eyes are blue? That seems like a no-brainer to make those two things the same color.

It reinforces, to me, that Dune is not meant to be a feature film. I’m not sure it’s meant to be anything other than a novel. But, if it has any chance of being a media product, it definitely needs the length of a TV show to set all of this elaborate mythology up.

The directing in this movie isn’t that good either, to be honest. The movie looks pretty. But I’m not sure that’s the point of making Dune. One thing I noticed was how empty the movie felt. George Lucas was famous for his obsession with filling up the frame. He wanted his world to be so vibrant and exciting that it would seem like there were ten other movies going on in the background of the movie he was telling.

Denis is the opposite of that. He finds gigantic empty rooms and puts two characters in them and has them speak for 10 minutes. After doing this enough times, the world begins to feel so empty as to be insignificant. I mean is all this squabbling that’s going on for a few thousand people? Because that’s what constant empty frames makes it feel like.

Another Denis issue is that he doesn’t make a single exciting choice in the entire movie. I’m no defender of the original Dune. But Lynch makes a couple dozen exciting choices in that movie. Where is that here? For all the lauding of Villeneuve, his sci-fi imagery and his characters are standard. That’s the one area where you could’ve made your movie stand out. Instead you opted to create a boring political indie film with some pretty desktop wallpaper backdrops.

Here’s what an exciting choice looks like – a scene from Lynch’s Dune

Did I like anything in the film? Yes. I liked the sand worm stuff. In particular that first scene where the sand worm is coming and the ship breaks down and they have to improvise. That was a cool scene. And then there are a couple of other sand worm scenes that rocked as well. Denis did a great job of creating that looming dread of one of those things coming your way.

Ironically, I think the sand worm scenes expose what’s wrong with Dune. Which is that, the scenes prove that they’re the only sequences you can actually do anything with in the feature format. Those attacks were built for the big screen. But nothing else was. It’s scene after scene after scene of two characters speaking in giant empty rooms. And it’s proved to me that Denis needs to be making smaller movies. This big stuff isn’t his forte.

Despite my desperation for a good sci-fi movie, I can’t recommend Dune. There’s way more bad here than good.

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

What I learned: Readers need to understand the central conflict of your movie. In Infinity War, it’s Thanos trying to snap half the population out of the universe. In Star Wars, it’s the Empire trying to permanently squash the rebellion. In Dune it’s…. What exactly? That’s right. There is no central conflict. Well, until the Emperor decides to take down House Atreides. But that doesn’t happen for 80 minutes. This is basic stuff. The fact that nobody on the Dune team understood it is somewhat baffling.