Many time travel stories have contemplated going back in time and killing Hitler. This one tackles going back in time and saving him.

To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from me – not writer) In an alternate future where freedom is nonexistent, a young woman must recruit her time-travelling great grandfather to go back in time and save Hitler.
About: This one was referred highly to me from the same writer who referred “Rose In The Darkness,” so I was really excited to read it.
Writer: Jeffrey J. Marks
Details: 116 pages

So, um, like, when you live in the future, then travel back to the past, then contact your great uncle who’s originally from the future but currently resides in the present, to help you contact the alternate you in an alternate timeline who exists in both the past, present and future, you must kill yourself in all alternate and current time periods in order to free the world from the past, which is only a problem because of what someone did in the future.

Just like old Georgie Washington, I’m not gonna tell a lie. This script confused the living daylights out of me. I was desperate for Marty and Doc to come in, pause the screenplay, and engage in one of their classic time-travel exposition scenes so I could have some semblance of what was happening.

This is the risk you run when you write a complex time travel script (or really any complex plot). The second your reader can’t follow along anymore, your screenplay is finished. So you have to be careful. You have to do everything in your power to make sure that every potentially confusing plot development is easy for the reader to understand.

There’s some cool stuff in “The Great War,” no doubt. But it just became too hard to follow after awhile, and I was constantly forgetting what the ultimate goal was. You’ll probably pick up on some of that here in the synopsis.

It’s the year 2000. And there are flying cars everywhere.

Say what??

Yeah, that’s the first thing that threw me. Young Megan Wheeler is shocked when her bloody father stumbles into their apartment and tells her that everything she knows about the past is a lie and that she has to find her great grandfather (who’s only a couple of years older than her for some reason) and go back to the past to fix everything! Are you still following me?

Cut back to World War 1. We’re in the middle of one of those ugly trench battles where soldiers are shooting mustard gas at each other. It’s ugly. But ugly turns to bizarre when a Blackhawk helicopter appears out of nowhere and starts gunning everyone down, both the Germans AND the Allies. Equal opportunity killing!

The helicopter is being commanded by Colonel Jack Bowman, a guy who loves the smell of mustard gas in the morning. But the one who got him there is a geeky little guy named James Wheeler. Yes, Wheeler as in related to Megan! This guy invented time travel so that they could go back, kill Hitler, and prevent the Holocaust from ever happening. Not a bad idea.

Except Bowman has other plans once he gets a look the place. Oh sure, he kills Hitler all right. But then he takes his place, and creates a United World Front led by, well, HIM! And then his son. And then his grandson.

Flash back – err, I mean forward – to 2017, where Megan is now 28. She’s kept her promise and has been looking for Jim Wheeler for two decades now. And she’s found him. He works up in Wisconsin trying to create synthetic milk. She grabs a friend, heads up there, and confronts him, explaining that he (or some alternate-time version of him) created time travel and she needs him to bring her back in time I think so they can kill Bowman so he doesn’t rule the world for the next 100 years.

Wheeler doesn’t believe this chick and it doesn’t really matter anyway since a couple government dudes tell him he’s been transferred to a 500 story building where they produce water. Milk to water sounds like a major demotion. Bummer. But Megan doesn’t give up. Even though the evil government is after her, she gets to the water tower and makes a second plea to Wheeler, one he finally listens to.

The duo realize that if they have any shot at changing the past to change the future, they will need access to the since-thrown-in-a-museum Blackhawk helicopter that still secretly has a time machine on it. The only time that helicopter is going to be available is at the 100th Anniversary celebration of Unification, and that will be headed by President Jack Bowman III himself, making it nearly impossible to pull off their plan.

Did you get all that? Because I didn’t. I’ll say this. I have no doubt that Jeffrey himself knows what’s going on here. But I think he severely underestimates what we know.

Now if complexity was the only problem, I wouldn’t be so harsh. But there are numerous issues here, starting with the boring jobs Marks chose to give Wheeler. They didn’t have anything to do with anything, as far as I could tell. Putting one of your lead characters in a synesthetic milk manufacturer is so weird it’s practically begging for some major payoff. Like maybe cows are the key to time travel. I don’t know. But there wasn’t. There was no connection to the milk whatsoever.

Ditto with the water job. It was random. I kept waiting and waiting for something plot-related to come out of it. Like maybe Bowman was going to keep water from all the people unless they did what he wanted.  But it never happened.

More concerning to me, though, was the deja-vu jailbreaking of Wheeler. We go through this whole thing of getting him out of the milk factory. But then he’s transferred over to a water factory and we have to go through the exact same thing all over again. It would be like in The Matrix if, after they snagged Neo and brought him onto the ship, they accidentally dropped him back into the Matrix and they had to start all over again, with us enduring a second 30 minutes of them looking for Keanu.

It was around that time that I just gave up. I was still reading but my concentration was sapped, especially when we started talking about alternate timelines and if the current versions of the characters would disappear if they successfully killed the previous versions of the bad guys. My mind didn’t want to go there. It hurt so bad.

I did think the 3rd act idea of going back to the past to SAVE Hitler in order to save the world was a clever one, but there were so many things to keep track of by that point that I couldn’t fully appreciate the irony.

If I were to boil my difficulty with this one down to a single word, that word would be: Confusion. I was constantly confused. That’s the big piece of advice I’d give to Jeffrey moving forward. Simplify the story and try to explain things a little clearer.

Script link: The Great War

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If any plot points in your script are taking a really long time to explain, that’s a sign they may be too complicated. Consider going with something simpler instead. This does NOT mean dumbing down your story. Quite the opposite. Clever story twists and big payoffs work mainly because the writer was able to convey all his plot points simply. It’s because we always understood what was going on that the twist (or unexpected plot development) worked so well.

What I learned 2: Stay away from this female character description: “Her tough exterior does little to mask her natural beauty.” I’ve read that description a billion times. It’s very generic. Go the extra mile and give your female character a unique description, something no one’s read before!

Let’s try not to be this guy.

Something that’s been working really well lately is including amateur screenplays in my weekly newsletter.  The feedback has really helped me determine which scripts to review and raised the quality of Amateur Friday immensely.  That’s not to say I don’t want to ever review a bad amateur script again.  You can learn a lot from reading a bad screenplay.  In fact, it’s one of the more underrated ways of improving your screenwriting.  When you read something good, the screenwriting world is all roses and bunnies.  Everything seems easy and it’s impossible to do wrong.  But when you read something bad, you more easily identify similar mistakes in your own writing.  “Ohhh,” you realize, “that’s why the love scene between my blind protagonist and his autistic boss doesn’t work.”  It’s a chore to get through those scripts, I know, but I promise you’ll be a better writer for it.

The success of the amateur newsletter has given me all sorts of ideas on how to expand the hunt for material and continue to give writers more opportunities to break through.  But it’s only going to work if you guys participate.  So if you’re on the newsletter, take a minute and download the amateur scripts.  Read until you get bored, whether that be on page 1 or page 120.  Report back to me on what you thought and, if you stopped reading, why.   You could be the person who notices a quality screenplay, resulting in a review, and maybe getting that writer noticed by the industry.  You could make a difference!  And I promise you, making a difference is one of the best feelings you can get in this business.

If it all works out, days like these will have even better scripts, since you won’t be picking from completely random screenplays, but rather screenplays that have already been approved by your peers!   Now for you vets, you know how today works.  For you newbies, I’m including the first ten pages of 10 amateur screenplays that have been submitted to me for Amateur Friday.  Read anything that sounds interesting (or doesn’t) and share your opinions in the comments section.  Any script that gets a fair share of positive feedback will probably get reviewed on the site.  Enjoy!

Title: The Plea
Genre: Drama
Logline: Patrick McQuaid comes from a tough, working class, South Boston-Irish Catholic family. He finished at the top of his class in law school, recently passed his bar exam but has never tried a case. That changes when he takes an in-house counsel position at a Boston Free Clinic, where he has to defend an Iraqi vet suffering from PTSD, who’s on trial for the attempted murder of a Boston Police Officer.
Extra details: Included in my latest newsletter, some of you reported back that this one was pretty good.

Title: Thread
Genre: Crime/Musical
Logline: Set in a fictionalized Los Angeles, over run by a sprawling favela called “Paradise City,” Vale, a young man, joins Paradise’s notorious kidnapping gang to exact revenge on a system that failed him.
Extra details: A couple of people have told me that this one has something to it.  Others have told me it’s unreadable.   I like bizarre scripts that take chances.  And we never have musicals on here.  So even though I haven’t read it myself , I’d like to get more feedback on it.  If this one’s good, it could be a fun one to review.

Title: Scion
Genre: Supernatural
Logline: A naive young man’s dreams of a normal life is hijacked by a charismatic “faith healer” and a powerful media tycoon when both become hell bent on exploiting the young man’s amazing gift…the power to raise the dead. — This one comes from a writer who’s optioned a couple of scripts but hasn’t yet broken through.
Extra details: Of all the amateur scripts I’ve sent out recently, this one is getting the best response.  I’ve decided I’m already going to review it, but thought I’d put it up anyway to see what you guys think.

Title: Hamsters
Genre: British darkly-comedic caper-thriller.
Logline: A writer’s inadvertent bag-swap with a pair of BDSM aficionados, one of whom is a would-be blackmailer, leads to murder … and hamsters!
Extra details: I just had to give this one a shot because the author’s e-mail picture is actually him holding a hamster.

Title: The Great Belzoni
Genre: Historical Adventure
Logline: The Great Belzoni is based on the life of Giovanni Belzoni (1778-1823), a 6’8″ circus strongman who journeys to Egypt in 1815 and becomes the greatest buccaneer in the history of Archaeology. Using modern scientific methods, he robs the Pharaohs tombs and fills an entire wing of the British Museum.
Extra Details: From the writer on why you should read the script: “My inspiration for this script is Raiders of the Lost Ark. To me, it’s a perfect movie, one of the greats. I know everyone on Script Shadow loves it as well. But when I send the script out to Agents and Producers, all I hear is how much they like the writing but because it’s a period piece and they’re afraid to touch it. A period piece? Raiders, in case they forgot, was a period piece AND the greatest action movie ever made! — Even though The Great Belzoni is set in 1815 and is based on actual events, I tried to make it a slam-bang action movie in the pulp style of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It has bar fights, chase scenes (on land and water), shoot-outs, sword fights, duels, scientific displays, tomb openings, tomb robberies, warehouse robberies, treasure maps, dastardly villains, damsels in distress, friendships, love and the pursuit of immortality.

Title: The Life Intended
Genre: action/drama/fantasy
Logline: A wrongfully institutionalized teen and the father she never knew must navigate a cross-country road trip littered with assassins to pass on a supernatural family legacy and control of a billion dollar foundation.
Extra Details: Writer is moving his family to LA to pursue the dream. Now that’s putting it all on the line!

Title: Cow Cross Calling
Genre: Period/drama/action
Logline: A condemned-to-hang London thief discovers he has more in common with his enemies than his masters when he’s gang-pressed into a secret frontier war in early Australia.
Extra Details: I gave the writer notes on this one. Has one of the more gruesome opening scenes I’ve read!

Title: Aquaman: Redemption Hour
Genre: Action/Comedy (How can an Aquaman movie be anything BUT a comedy?)
Logline: Aquaman retires when he is fired from the Justice League for being a “lame superhero.” But when mankind’s safety is threatened by a natural disaster and a dangerous adversary, he is the world’s only hope. Unfortunately, he must battle his own insecurities first.
Extra Details: Included in the e-mail: “I think that you should read my script because it is basically the “Anti-Superhero-Movie” movie. It is inspired, funny, and unique. Where else would you find a script about a superhero who interrogates a shark, has a goldfish for a best friend, and kicks a dolphin’s ass?”  This writer sounds funny.  Interested to see if the script is the same.

Title: Princess Park
Genre: Drama
Logline: When a teenage girl claims the Virgin Mary is appearing to her in a Seattle park, a media circus ensues and the Vatican is compelled to send in an investigator to learn the truth.
Extra Details: Writer got a callback from Bruckheimer Films about TV ideas after reading the script.

Title: The Serial Killer’s Apprentice
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A terminally ill serial killer selects an apprentice to carry on his work. But when his protege spirals out of control and targets the mentor’s estranged daughter, the mentor must stop the monster he’s created.
Extra Details: Writer’s reason for us to read: “I think you should read THE SERIAL KILLER’S APPRENTICE because it has fascinating, unconventional characters, a unique sense of humor and compelling irony with resonating, universal themes of mortality and regret. It isn’t afraid to take risks which, in this day and age, is a breath of fresh air.”

 

Download these pages and tell me what you think. Also, if you’re one of these writers and your script doesn’t seem to be getting any mentions in the comments section, ask the community why. What is it that’s keeping them from reading or commenting on your script?  This is probably the best way for all writers to learn what goes into the process of selection. Good luck. I hope we find something great! :)

How does this art-house darling about a paraplegic look on the page? Pull up your wheelchairs and find out!

Genre: Drama
Premise: When a woman loses her legs in a killer whale accident, she engages in a strange friendship with a street fighter.
About: This is a Belgium film that’s heating up the indie circuit and is as an Oscar contender in the “Best Actress” category for Marion Cotillard. The film is directed by Jacques Audiard, who directed the hit 2009 French film, A Prophet. Audiard has been writing for film and television since the 80s. This is the promotional version of the screenplay being used for Oscar consideration, so I assume it’s the shooting draft.  I’ve also been informed that the movie is in French (didn’t know that when I read it) which means this is a translation.  However, it’s unclear who translated the screenplay to English, and why they wouldn’t format it properly upon doing so…
Writer: Jacques Audiard
Details: 125 pages – August 16th, 2011

Whenever you’re sitting around and someone says, “Oh my God. Have you seen xxxxx? It’s amaaa-zing,” you don’t forget that movie title. You place that one up there on the mental “must-see” list. That’s what happened a few months ago when I heard someone raving about Rust and Bone. I knew then I had to see this movie.

But let’s be honest. The title “Rust and Bone” doesn’t exactly have you microwaving a big bag of popcorn and melting down a half stick of butter to coat it in. It’s the title for a movie you watch alone in the dead of winter when your life is spiraling out of control and the only way you’re going to feel better is to watch something that’s more miserable than you. Sort of like the movie version of Hoarders.

I know, I know. That’s “title stereotyping.” I shouldn’t be doing that. For all I know, Rust and Bone is about two best friends who win the lottery and buy a candy factory.

Orrrrrr…..maybe not. Turns out this one is just as dreary as its title. Hold on to your Paxil people. Shit’s about to get depressing.

Rust and Bone introduces us to Ali, a sort of tough-guy brawler who’s yanking his tiny little kid, Sam, through the forest. After a few phone calls, we gather that he’s just stole Sam away from his ex because of her lousy parenting skills (which include using him to smuggle dope). After a long train ride, the two arrive at his sister’s, who’s not happy to see her bro but allows them to stay with her as long as they pay their way.

This forces Ali to get a job as a bouncer for, I think, boxing matches, though the writing was consistently vague when it came to anything important so that’s actually just an educated guess. It’s there where he meets Stephanie, a loner party-girl with an attitude. When she gets beat up in a fight, he ends up driving her home, where the two have a really awkward disinterested conversation.

The next day we learn that Stephanie is a killer whale trainer at a European version of Sea World, and during the very first stunt of the day, there’s a whale collision (I think??) that results in her losing both her legs. Stephanie goes through a depressing couple of weeks accepting her new life as a paraplegic, then decides to call her old bouncer buddy out of the blue, even though she seemed to hate him at the time.

Ali is surprisingly blasé about Stephanie’s lost legs, and agrees to fuck her if she’s ever horny, since there aren’t many stand-up guys looking for paraplegics (sorry, I had to go there). She goes along with this agreement and, soon, the two start to actually like each other. Ali eventually gets pulled in to the very boxing matches he’s bouncing, starts winning a bunch of money, and the two end up happily ever after – or as happily ever after as two can be when one person doesn’t have any legs.

Whoa. Where do we begin?

I was so dismayed by this screenplay that I couldn’t write a review without doing some research on the film and finding out how anyone was able to make it out of the theater alive. Things started to make sense when I found the trailer, which is actually really good. If that was my only reference to the movie, I would want to see it. I also found out it was from the same director who did The Phophet, which is one half of an awesome movie. And even though it eventually wanders into total randomness (Go watch it if you haven’t yet. It just keeps going and going and going), there’s no doubt that the director is extremely talented.

 

But the same problem with the second half of that film is the problem with all of this film. The story is all the hell over the place. I mean it’s a French film, so focus and structure aren’t going to be a priority. But there’s a difference between a script that doesn’t depend on structure and a script that completely ignores structure. This script felt like skin without any bones inside. There’s nothing propping it up.

Let’s start with the kid. Why was he in the movie? We start on him. The implication is he’s important, maybe even the primary focus. His dad having to take him away from his overbearing mom reinforces this. He then proceeds to disappear for 110 pages (spoiler) until he gets caught under an ice lake in the final scene!!! Wtf???

Then there’s Stephanie, who we meet out partying. The next morning, she’s all of a sudden a Killer Whale performer. Just something that seemed totally out-of-character from the person who had been set up (and not in a “that’s the idea” way).  But what was more startling was that one scene later her legs are chomped off during a performance. Don’t we need to establish her life as a trainer first before turning her into a Halfsie? It would be like in Million Dollar Baby if in the very first fight, Hilary Swank fell on that stool and became paralyzed. Not only that, but the scene was so poorly described, I didn’t know it was the whale who bit her legs off until page 95 when it was explicitly stated. At the time, I thought some electrical equipment fell on her legs. That’s how often I was confused while reading this.

Then there was the dialogue. Now, in retrospect, I realize this is translated, but still, the translator should’ve prevented unbearable lines like “Stop this car on the double!”  And when a defeated intern is being scolded for her job performance, she counters, “What are you trying to make me believe, that I wasn’t up to par?” I can’t imagine anyone saying that sentence ever.  If you’re having your script translated for Oscar voters, make sure it’s from someone who knows what they’re doing.

Then there were these elaborately described characters who were presented as potential cornerstones of the story, only to disappear two scenes later. Like Giles, the heavily scarred fellow paraplegic Stephanie meets in rehab. I mean this guy was more well-drawn and memorable than probably anyone except for Stephanie. Yet he’s gone before you can press your scroll button.

I’m still wondering if this is a culture thing. These character-driven movies with floating storylines and zero structure fit better with European audiences who don’t need everything to be so clean-cut, so buttoned-up. Their movies are more like real life (or as real-life as someone getting gobbled up by a whale can be). So I’m really curious what the European (and particularly French) Scriptshadow readers think of this. But I just could NOT get into it at all. I need structure! There’s a fine line between “purposefully unfocused” and “sloppy,” and this felt sloppy to me.  Despite this, I will see this movie based on the trailer.  In winter.  Up in a mountain.  Inside a shack.  With a stack of Hoarders DVDs.  Wish me luck.

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

What I learned: I’m going to be honest. When something isn’t formatted correctly, I completely lose confidence in the writer. Every little misstep or confusing moment or badly described scene or muddled motivation I see after that is just confirmation of what I already assumed, that the script is going to be bad. Rust and Bone has left-margined character names in the dialogue, underlined slugs, lack of spacing between some action blocks. I’m not ruling out that this format may be commonplace in France. But if you don’t already have the movie made (like Jacque) and you’re writing for the American market, good formatting has to be a given. Once I see even ONE PARAGRAPH that’s incorrectly formatted in a script, I think to myself, “They’re not using professional screenwriting software which means they’re not serious about screenwriting which means this is going to be bad,” because that’s what’s happened the last 99 scripts I read with bad formatting. So please don’t make this very avoidable mistake!

One more quick thing regarding the book. There seems to be a misunderstanding regarding the offer I put out in my newsletter, with people believing that I was offering scripts for positive reviews. This wasn’t the case. I did incentivize readers who read the book to give Amazon reviews for two “mystery” screenplays, but I never told anyone to give a positive review. In fact, quite the opposite. This is what I said (caps were included): “I DO NOT WANT YOU TO LIE in your review! Be honest, please. That’s important to me. I’m just aiming for 300 Amazon reviews, good, bad, or indifferent, and I know you guys can get me there.” I hope that clears things up and thank you to everyone who tried to make this clear to those who had the wrong information. Onwards and upwards! :)

Hey everyone. For those of you who read about an offer from me to send you screenplays in return for posting a review of my book on Amazon.com, I need you to know that I can’t provide that exchange. Feel free to read my book and review it, but not with the expectation that I will be sending you any screenplays in return. Thank you so much for understanding.