And in one of the oddest movie crossovers I’ve ever seen on the Black List, we have Promising Young Woman meets Just One of the Guys

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When a college student is sexually assaulted by a frat guy who faces no consequences, she and her best friend rush his fraternity undercover to get revenge – only to become the unlikely stars of Delta Iota Kappa’s pledge class and get in way too deep.
About: This script finished number 3 on last year’s Black List. The script appears to have been developed at Berlanti/Schechter Films, which has a first look deal with Netflix.
Writers: Read Masino & Cassidy Alla
Details: 116 pages

I’m thinking the writers would love an actress like Nico Parker in the lead role

My plan is to read all five of the top 5 Black List scripts and pray that one of them is good. Because if all 5 are bad, the Black List is in a lot of trouble. Cause that’s never happened before. Typically, I love one of the top 5. And then there’s usually another solid script in the bunch.

So far, I’ve read the two top vote-getters, and each has fallen short in its own way. This is script number three on the list and the stakes are high. If it doesn’t land, only two chances remain.

Let us all briefly pray to the script gods. I would love nothing more than to read something great today. It makes my job so much easier!

Here we go…

Daisy is a freshman at college and one night, when she’s really trashed at a fraternity, the head dog of the frat house, Brad, picks her up and brings her to his room. He then starts forcefully making out with her, leading to heavier groping, leading to maybe full-on sexual assault (the sequence isn’t described very clearly so it’s hard to tell exactly what happens). Then, out of nowhere, Daisy projectile vomits over both of them and a grossed out Brad bails.

Daisy tells the story to her best friend Maddy, a lesbian who doesn’t go to college, and the more they talk about it, the more the wheels start spinning. Eventually, they come up with a plan to infiltrate Brad’s fraternity as male versions of themselves and figure out a way to collect evidence that Brad did this then take him down.

With the help of Maddy’s brother, the two create their male personas, Derek and Max. They then head over to the frat, where they learn that it’s pledging season. So they pledge. Along the way, Daisy meets hottie pledge Jake and starts to fall for him. Of course, it’s tricky because she’s not a woman when she’s around him. And Maddy falls for a stuck-up girl named Stephanie, who she romances as Max, even though she knows that Stephanie is not into women.

Along the way, they keep looking for opportunities to sneak into Brad’s room and look for “evidence.” But while Brad is always bad, he’s never bad enough to take down. So they decide they need to catch him when he’s at his worst. Hence, they target the frat’s big party of the year. There, he will almost certainly assault someone. And they’ll be there when it happens!

Let’s start here:

Why the white folk stray?

I want to know what goes on in a writer’s head that they think it’s a good idea to take a shot at any group of people. On the very first page of their script, no less.

It’s so hard these days to get anybody to back your screenplay. Why would you intentionally alienate half your readers?

I don’t get it.

But anyway, this script has problems beyond its low-key racism.

“Rush” wants to be Promising Young Woman but funny. So the central question becomes: Can sexual assault be funny?

“Rush” certainly tries.

But the script is stuck riding this delicate line of celebrating Superbad-level humor while continually having to come back to this uglier sexual assault plotline.

And the worlds never come into alignment.

It really is true that 90% of a script’s problems can be traced back to the concept. If the concept has any weakness at all, you will not be able to hide it in the screenplay. It’s usually the opposite that happens. That spotlight grows even brighter and lights up every crack in the foundation.

The thing is, the solution to Rush’s problem is simple. Replace the sexual assault storyline with something else. Getting back at the guy who dumped you, for example. Because the real hook here – the thing dominating this story – isn’t the sexual assault. It’s two girls pretending to be guys in a fraternity. That’s the whole movie. The sexual assault stuff only pops up every once in a while.

You want to find a concept that supports the best part of your idea. And the best part of this idea is the two girls pretending to be guys and infiltrating the frat house. When the writers focus on that, they have some success. There are some legitimately funny scenes here.

In this scene, Maddy forgets that she’s dressed as Max, a guy. So when she approaches a girl on campus, she thinks she’s approaching a fellow girl. But all the girl sees is a creepy guy coming up to her. And Maddy gets her first dose of what happens when a girl makes an assumption about you because you’re a man.

There’s also a later scene where Maddy and Daisy have to go on dates to a party where they must, at various times, present as both their male and female selves. And that scene is pretty clever.

But the script has to always come back to this bummer sexual assault storyline and it never works. One moment, we’re reading this really goofy 2025 version of She’s The Man. And then, out of nowhere, it’s rape talk. It’s weird.

This thing becomes way more marketable if it’s just a movie about a girl trying to get even with the boyfriend who left her, sort of a modern take on Legally Blonde. And if the response to that is: the script becomes less interesting cause it’s not dealing with anything “serious,” there are other serious things you can work into the story. And there are other more natural story setups to explore sexual assault in. After the Hunt is a great recent example.

No matter how you slice it, sexual assault and She’s the Man is a very inorganic crossover. One side of the script is always going to feel like it’s in the wrong movie.

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

What I learned: It’s unfortunate that the concept for Rush was faulty, because these writers are the only ones among the top three entries who know how to write scenes. Go back and read the scenes in Equity then read the scenes here. You’ll notice that Equity rarely enters scenes with a clear point. Scenes are mainly used for exposition, with little structure or form.

Here, however, there are several scenes with strong form. Achieving this isn’t difficult. One of the simplest ways is to give your characters a problem and see whether they escape it or not. If the situation itself is funny, you’ll get a strong scene out of it.

There’s a scene where a fraternity hazes pledges by asking personal questions about one another (“Who did Joe lose his virginity to?”). If they answer incorrectly, they have to strip off their shirts to be humiliated. Obviously, if that happens to Derek or Max, they’re screwed, so the stakes are high. When Brad finally questions them, his frustration builds as they answer every question about the other pledges effortlessly because, of course, they’re women and actually listened during their conversations with the other pledges.

It’s a fun scene, but more importantly, it demonstrates that the writers understand what a scene is, something I can confidently say neither of the top two Black List writers did.

Is the number 2 script on the Black List a must-read??

Genre: Thriller
Premise: After an ambitious pharma founder sells a portion of himself to a charismatic billionaire magnate, his world spirals into a high-stakes battle to buy back control of his company, his future, and his life.
About: This script finished NUMBER 2 on last year’s Black List, a list of the best scripts in Hollywood. The script was acquired by Killer Films, who most recently produced The Materialists.
Writer: Ward Kamel
Details: 117 pages

Elordi for Adel?

If there’s one thing I’ve been hearing a lot lately, it’s that movies need to step it up. I agree. There are way too many things competing for our attention these days. Half-ass studio efforts such as 1986’s Gung Ho, which used to be staples on a studio’s slate, aren’t going to cut it anymore.

To get people in the theater, you have to give them something that feels special and unique. Like they’re going to have an experience they can’t get anywhere else. That starts with the script. It’ll be up to people further down the line to create the hype around your movie, like the marketing team of Marty Supreme. But you gotta give them something to work with.

In the past, the Black List has been a place where you can find that material. It was this corner of Hollywood that was more imaginative than the people working at the studios. But that hasn’t been the case for a while and the Black List is on a new journey where it’s trying to find its footing again. Let’s see if Equity is the pair of shoes it needs to get back on track.

30-something Adel Rahma runs a medical startup called Yuca that has designed a gummy that can hold any medicine and therefore make it very easy for people to take their medications.

He debuts the product on Python Pit (Shark Tank) and catches the eye of the oddly named Mike Mukhtar (described as “Mark Cuban meets 2012 Elon”). But Mike says to him, “I don’t want Yuka. I want YOU.” He offers Adel half a million for 8% of him. It’s a weird offer and, for some reason, Adel takes it.

Cut to later on where Adel has his lawyer look over the contract. It’s all such new verbiage that it’s hard to see potential problems in the future but she tells Adel, yeah sure, go ahead and sign it. Adel really needs the money to keep Yuca afloat so he signs onto the deal.

Everything seems to be okay at first but then Mike blindsides him with an app that allows people to buy more stock in Adel. Not to worry, Mike says. It’s still up to you on whether you want to offer more stock. Still, this is the first moment where Adel realizes he may be in over his head.

Even his girlfriend, Cecilia, is starting to get uncomfortable. She’s wondering, if she marries him, will *she* be liable for whatever happens in this deal? Adel’s company then needs more money so Adel starts selling stock in himself. Just 20%. He still owns the large majority of himself. And he believes that it’s worth it if he can bring Yuca to market.

Then, one day, Adel wakes up to find that he only owns 20% of himself! Because of some loophole in the contract he signed, Mike was able to split the stock (or something – a bunch of techno-jargon I didn’t understand) and sell all these new shares of Adel. Which means that now Adel is over half owned by the public!

What does this mean for Adel? Um… I DON’T KNOW! I didn’t ever know. Which is the perfect transition into my thoughts on this screenplay. :)

One of the main things you learn on your screenwriting journey is that a movie idea isn’t any good on its own. An idea is only worthy when the screenwriter comes up with an angle that maximizes the potential of the idea.

Let me give you an example. Cloning dinosaurs. That’s a movie idea right there. But there are a million angles to that story. Someone could’ve written a version of that idea where a kid finds a dinosaur egg and raises it in his bedroom. Someone could’ve written a version about cloning dinosaurs in secret and one of them gets loose and the army has to retrieve it. Someone could’ve written a version where the entire movie is the lead-up to the very first cloned dinosaur.

The person who came up with the ultimate cloning dinosaur idea, though, was Michael Crichton.  He added the theme park element and, just like that, one of the biggest movie franchises in history was born. Why? Because Crichton found the angle of that idea that created the most entertaining story.

Until a screenwriter learns this skill, they end up writing a lot of scripts that people want to read – because the idea is intriguing – but that immediately become a slog – because the writer explored a weak angle.

That’s Equity.

This is an interesting idea at its core. That, in the future, we’ll be able to buy stocks of people. There’s definitely potential there.

But boy is this a boring version of the idea.

I actually don’t know if I could’ve come up with a less engaging version of the idea than this. It’s all drawn out boring company techno-jargon, like a poor man’s Succession. We’re talking about Adel’s boring business. And then we go over Michael’s equity stake in Adel from a thousand different angles. There seem to be 30 scenes dedicated to people having opinions on what this contract means for Adel and his life.

The only entertaining moments seem to appear as accidents. There’s a nice little conflict-filled scene when Cecilia says she doesn’t want to get married until she sees the contract Adel signed. Or there’s a brief burst of adrenaline when Adel learns that he barely owns any of himself anymore.

But for the most part, this script drags through repetitive scenes with Adel feeling lousy about the mistake he made signing this deal. Just endless scenes about that.

Beyond the unimaginative take on the idea, the script has zero GSU (goal, stakes, urgency). I suppose the goal is for Adel to succeed with his company, Yuca. But the goal-post for “succeeding” keeps moving throughout the script. And, as anyone who’s read this site for a long time knows, it’s nearly impossible to create stakes and urgency when you don’t have a clear goal. Because the goal is what creates the importance of meeting it (the stakes) and the timeline that must be met (the urgency).

People always ask me when I give low grades to these high-ranking Black List scripts, “Well, if it’s so bad, why did it make the Black List?” And my answer these days is, “I have no idea.” What I can tell you is that I trust the Black List way less today than I did ten years ago. Too many industry people have learned how to game the system. So, a little bit of that might be going on?

But I don’t let how many votes something gets ever affect my rating. I never have. If the script is good, I’ll tell you. If it’s not, I’ll also tell you.

If you pushed me and said, “Was there anything at all good about it?” I would say that the presentation is professional. And I do think that interesting ideas, like this one, get graded on a curve. I don’t think that’s wrong. That’s always been the case in Hollywood. Good ideas work as deodorant for bad execution. It’s why movies like Fight or Flight get made. So, maybe there’s some of that going on here.

But, if they’re hoping to turn this into a movie, it needs a page 1 rewrite. As in, a whole new angle. Cause this angle is boring. And it’s a bad omen for the Black List. Cause scripts number 1 and 2 were both weak. We need to step it up here if we want to save Hollywood.

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

What I learned: Don’t make references that nobody can relate to and, therefore, nobody can understand. Here’s a character intro in Equity: “HAMILTON TRAN, a first-gen Vietnamese American 30-something bro — the kind of guy that invites his Raya dates to his squash tournaments.” Less than 100,000 people are on the dating app, Raya. I’d imagine even less attend squash tournaments every year. This type of writing alienates you from the reader, as they have no idea what you’re trying to say.

Today, I will share with you a key screenwriting lesson that’s easy to overlook

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: In 1952, America’s fast-rising ping-pong star, womanizer Marty Mauser, attempts to defeat rising Asian dominance in the game, but must first navigate being a broke-ass in New York City.
About: This film has been killing it at the box office, defying all current expectations for an indie movie with a niche concept, pulling in 48 million. The film is the first solo effort from director Josh Safdie after his devastating breakup with his longtime collaborator, brother Benny Safdie (whose own sports-themed film, The Smashing Machine, bombed this summer). The film stars Timothee Chalamet, who was so all in on this character, he came on as a producer to help shape it.
Writer: Josh Safdie
Details: 2 hours and 30 minutes!

First of all, how awesome is it that this movie is kicking ass?

Do you know how difficult it is right now to do well as an indie movie? It’s basically impossible. And this movie made 30 million bucks on its opening weekend! That’s so insanely hard.

I have to give credit to Timothee Chalamet. There is no such thing as new movie stars anymore. But he doesn’t care. He’s determined to destroy that limiting belief and he seems to be the only young movie star who understands how to do it. The ease at which he can get attention for his films usurps all the other actors of his generation (Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Paul Mescal).

I asked several groups of people at the showing I was at why they chose to see this film and nearly all of them said either Timothee Chalamet or the stuff Timothee Chalamet was doing to promote the film.

But Timothee Chalamet was NOT the reason I went to see the film. I had an ulterior motive.

I can’t handle the possibility that One Battle After Another wins Oscars. And this was basically the final movie that had a shot at taking it out. Even beyond that, this year didn’t have that one great stand-out movie. I was hoping this film was going to be it.

If you haven’t seen Marty Supreme, it’s about this guy, Marty Mauser, who lives in New York in 1952. He gets this girl, Rachel, pregnant. He then goes off to and makes it to the finals of the ping pong world championships, losing to Koto, who plays for Japan.

The whole way Koto plays is different from everyone else which an insanely arrogant Marty insists is the only reason he lost. Now that he knows what to expect, he’ll beat him next year at the championships, which are in Europe.

But there’s a problem. Marty doesn’t have any money! Like ZIP ZERO NOTHING. He finds his mark in former movie star actress, Kay Stone, who’s married to pen magnate, Milton Rockwell. Marty starts having sex with her, then uses her proximity to Rockwell to pitch him on investing in the “Marty” brand.

Rockwell eventually gets on board, pitching Marty to come to Japan for a rematch with Koto. However, Rockwell is hoping to expand his pen empire to Japan and, therefore, wants Marty to lose. Marty agrees only because it will get him overseas so he can compete in the championships. But Marty hates Rockwell so much, he decides to use the promotional match to humiliate him instead.

Let me start by saying, I love the way Josh Safdie directs. Everything he does has so much energy to it. It’s so fun to watch. One of my favorite things about him is how he casts movies. Talk about flexing with your casting choices.

We’ve got Fran Drescher, aka, the Nanny, in this movie. We’ve got Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank playing a major role. I even spotted this one guy down in the ping pong den who looked very familiar but I couldn’t place him. Afterwards, I looked him up and realized he was this former voice over actor turned homeless man who went viral when an influencer helped him get a job and put his life back together. You can tell that Safdie isn’t interested in traditional actors. Half the people you see onscreen are real people. 

Another thing I love about Safdie is his musical choices. He juxtaposes his music against his stories in really interesting ways (this is set in 1952 yet several of the songs on the soundtrack are from the 80s).

These things are what help make a Safdie movie feel different from anything else you watch at the theater.

BUT….

As I was watching this movie unfold, something felt off. And I couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, it hit me. And to understand where this mistake was made, we have to go back in time. So, take a trip back to 2019 with me, when the Safdie Brothers debuted their first official film, Good Time.

It’s a great movie – a frenetic tension-filled race about a bank robber.

They followed that up with the amazing, Uncut Gems — a frenetic tension-filled race about a gambling addict.

What was the common factor in both of those films? A gigantic ticking clock. Each movie was super urgent because it was taking place in, essentially, real time. The first film takes place in under 12 hours and the second film takes place in under 24.

Why does this matter in regards to Marty Supreme?  Cause Josh Safdie wants to do the same thing he did in Good Time and Uncut Gems, which is create this chaotic frenetic movie that races along from start to finish.

But there’s a huuuuuuge difference in Marty Supreme (and here’s that lesson I hinted at at the beginning of the post) which is that there’s no ticking clock. The time period of the movie occurs over 9 months, the time it takes Rachel to get pregnant and have the baby.

That’s not to say Safdie doesn’t attempt to add shorter ticking clocks within the narrative. But there is no overall ticking clock like there was in his last two films. And it kills the movie. Because Safdie is always fighting against the impossible – he wants to race along like he did in Good Time and Uncut Gems, but he has no choice but to slow down due to the fact he has to wait nine months for his final plot development (the baby being born) to happen.

There’s a key early scene that demonstrates this. It happens when Marty comes home to his apartment and a cop is waiting for him, handcuffs him, and says he’s going to jail. Marty’s uncle appears and says to Marty that he stole money from him (Marty took money to fly to the first ping pong championships) so now he has to go to jail for it.

Marty quickly sniffs out that the Uncle and the cop know each other and they’re just trying to scare him. So he says that to his Uncle. His Uncle finally concedes. He tells the cop to let Marty go. The cop un-cuffs Marty, and Marty heads to his room. The Uncle and cop share a few final laughs. They then check on Marty. But Marty is… JUMPING OUT OF THE BUILDING VIA THE FIRE ESCAPE!

The cop leans out the window and yells to his partner. “There he goes! Get him!” The two cops then pursue Marty through the streets of New York in a frenetic scene with a lot of urgency EXCEPT FOR ONE THING…………

There’s nothing driving the urgency.

The Uncle and the cop already let Marty off. They admitted they were just trying to scare him. So why, all of a sudden, do they want to catch him again?

The answer is simple. Because Josh Safdie wanted that racing scene through the streets of New York. He wanted that urgency, the frenetic craziness that guided his first two films. Except in this film, it doesn’t make sense. Because there is no organic urgency built into the storyline. Which means Safdie has to occasionally manufacture it, or just throw it in there (like this scene) even if it doesn’t make sense.

The other issue in the movie is Timothee’s depiction of Marty Mauser. Half the time Chalamet is trying sooooooo hard to create an iconic character that the character feels like he’s going to blow up right in front of our faces. Every scene is an opportunity to make Marty iconic.  

When he meets Mr. Wonderful for the first time and he’s pitching himself and how amazing he is and how he’s going to change the world as a ping-pong player — it just never felt authentic. It felt like an actor who wanted people to remember the scene. And that makes even more sense when you learn that Chalamet is a producer on the film. When you’re a producer-actor, you have a ton more influence on your character than if you’re just acting in the film. You can tell the director, “No, I want to do it this way.”

If you want to see the difference between doing this type of character well and doing it in a try-hard manner, go watch Jake Gyllenhaal’s Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler. Cause it’s the same character. But Gyllenhaal played the role realistically. I don’t think I looked at one frame of this movie and saw Marty Mauser. I always saw Timothee Chalamet.

It was the combination of those two things — trying to add urgency to a story that takes place over 1 year, and Timothee’s try-hard performance, that did this movie in.

This doesn’t mean the movie’s bad. I’m not saying that. I actually think it’s the most interesting movie of the year.  I love that about it. But it doesn’t make up for the fact that the script was sloppy. The Safdie Brothers talked bout how they wrote 120 drafts of Uncut Gems. Josh Safdie did not write 120 drafts of this script. I don’t even think he wrote 6.

People who know this stuff, like me, can pinpoint exactly why a script hasn’t been rewritten enough. This ENTIRE MOVIE is about how hard it is to get money needed to buy a ticket to fly overseas so our hero can compete in the ping pong championships. You know how hard it is to fly back? A couple of soldiers who watched him play Koto invite him on their military plane. That’s sloppy writing. Why? Because it collapses the central obstacle of the film in under a minute, retroactively invalidating all the tension you spent the entire story building.

I suspect that if the Safdie Brothers were still working together, they would’ve corrected these issues.

I think if you’re a cinephile, this movie is worth seeing just because it’s so unique. But, as a movie, it never quite comes together.

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

What I learned: Movie timelines built around pregnancies are almost always script-killers. Movies work best with timeframes that are 2 weeks or less. The longer you extend your timeline past that, the harder it is to write a good movie, because it’s hard to inject urgency into a months-long story. There are ways to do it, of course. But writing these movies requires THAT YOU KNOW THESE WAYS and understand how to use them. If anybody thinks this topic is important enough for an article, let me know and I’ll write an article about how to keep stories exciting even if they take place over long periods of time.

I’m giving 25% off two screenplay consultations to the FIRST TWO WRITERS WHO E-MAIL ME. So e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you want one of these deals!

I watched a couple of things this past week, both of which I (mostly) enjoyed: The season finale of Pluribus and the Oscar-contending film, Sentimental Value. For those unfamiliar, Pluribus follows the last two people on earth who haven’t fallen victim to a global virus that turns humanity into a hive mind. And Sentimental Value is about a theater actress who has an extremely contentious relationship with her director father, who left the family when she was a child. He comes back into her life and wants her to play the lead role in his latest film.

What stood out to me about both stories was that the writers (either purposefully or ignorantly) were writing on hard mode. Writing on hard mode is the act of choosing a concept that doesn’t generate consistently dramatic scenarios (scenes).

Writing on easy mode is the opposite. It means choosing a concept that naturally generates dramatic situations. The most basic example is a zombie script. Zombies are always after you. They are a threat wherever you go. Because of that, you don’t have to work hard to create entertaining dramatic scenarios. The story can simply introduce the next wave of zombies, or the next survival challenge in a post-apocalyptic world, and the tension takes care of itself.

Writing on hard mode is like writing with one hand tied behind your back. You never get that strong inciting moment that launches a scene in an immediately engaging way. Instead, it’s like placing two characters in a coffee shop and saying, “Be entertaining.” They couldn’t even pull that off in one of the greatest films ever made!

The only way to make “hard mode” work is through relatable characters, compelling character development, and compelling character dynamics. In short: through character. And the reason that’s so hard is because 90% of all screenwriting results in cliched characters, people we feel like we’ve seen before doing things we’ve seen them do before. Once we feel like we’re watching a tired “been there done that” group of people doing the same old shit, we tune out.

Is there a way to write in “hard mode” and make it work?

Yeah.

It’s just… harder.

You start by creating main characters we can relate to. So, for example, you create a character who’s struggling with their purpose in life. They’re not sure they’re on the right track. A lot of people can relate to that. If you can relate to someone, it’s easy to root for them. That’s why this first step is so important.

From there, you have to make the character feel REAL. This is the hardest part of hard mode. Because if you don’t make the character feel like they could exist in the real world, they will come off as cliched. How do you achieve this? It’s delicate. But, generally speaking, you can’t lead the character. You have to let the character lead you.

Let’s say your hero is running away from a bad guy. And then the hero comes up on a parked car with someone in it. Now, as a writer, you might want to evolve this foot chase into a car chase. If that’s the case, you might have your hero rip the driver out of the car, jump in it, and drive off, with the bad guy getting a car of his own and going after him.

You wrote the character doing that simply because you wanted them to. But you never asked the key question: would my hero actually do this? For example, if your hero is truly selfless, would that person really throw someone out of their car to save themselves? No. In that case, you’re forcing the character to serve your needs, instead of letting the character act according to their own nature and volition.

This is an extreme example but the point I’m making is, your hero will need to make dozens of decisions throughout a story. How many of those decisions are *you making for your character* and how many of those decisions *is your character making for themselves?*

By the way, I’m not saying to never make your character do something because you want the plot to move a certain way. I’m saying that the characters who come off as the least believable and the most cliche are the ones where the writer ALWAYS makes their decisions for them.

The last piece of this puzzle is coming up with compelling character dynamics. You want to think of character relationships similar to how you think of characters on an individual level. You’re trying to come up with the most compelling ones possible.

For example, just like a character who’s battling some inner conflict (i.e. they don’t believe in themselves) is compelling to watch because they’re trying to overcome that weakness in pursuit of their goal (Rocky Balboa), a character relationship can be battling its own conflict (Luke Skywalker sees everybody as good and approaches the world selflessly, Han Solo sees everybody as out for themselves and approaches the world selfishly – therefore every scene they’re in will be a clash).

Doing these three things effectively is writing on hard mode, because you don’t have concept-rich, built-in scenarios like zombies that automatically make a scene entertaining. Even the best writers struggle with this. That’s because there’s a frightening fourth factor you can’t control: character creation luck. Sometimes you can do everything right and a character still doesn’t work. There’s an indescribable X-factor that brings characters to life, and it’s one of the most frustrating aspects of screenwriting.

How do you deal with something you can’t control? Unfortunately, you go with your gut and hope for the best. But if you get those other three things right, the chances of you getting that fourth thing right improve dramatically.

Bringing this back to Pluribus, the final episode is 95% character-driven and, therefore, screenwriting on hard mode. Manousos finally gets to New Mexico to team up with Carol and stop the bad guys. But there’s a problem. Carol has fallen in love with bad guy, Zosia (who, remember, is an accumulation of 8 billion other people).

Hard mode activated.

While it’s true that we do have this sci-fi element to spice things up, the finale doesn’t really explore that sci-fi element. What it explores is that Carol finally has someone to team up with to try and take back the world but she’s fallen in love with someone on the bad guy’s team. That’s your strong character dynamic. That’s the reason the reader wants to keep reading. What is Carol going to do? Will she prioritize love over humanity or will she prioritize humanity over her love?

Now, this next part is beyond the scope of today’s conversation but it’s worth noting because it’s an example of what good professional writing looks like. This is not a straight “A” or “B” answer. If Carol decides to go with Manousos, it’s still a .1% chance that they figure out how to save humanity. The odds are still heavily against them. When you add that variant into the mix, Carol’s decision becomes that much harder. If it was 50/50, it’d be easy. But it’s more like 99.9/.1.

But the point is, everything in this episode is character-driven. There’s very little plot. And because of all the hard work that Gilligan and his team did in creating these characters, we care about them enough individually that we care what happens between them.

In a decision that can only be described as insane, Sentimental Value embraces hard mode and asks, how can I make this even harder? What’s wild is that writer-director Trier actually had the option of writing on easy mode. His concept — an actress daughter who despises her director father being offered the lead role in his latest film — is inherently dramatic and capable of generating plenty of juicy, entertaining scenes. It’s not quite easy mode on the level of a killer robot sent back in time to murder the future resistance leader’s mother, but it is the kind of premise that organically creates conflict. An actress is being directed by someone she hates, yet she forces herself to endure it in order to advance her career.

Except Trier completely abandons that setup and inexplicably imposes hard mode on himself. The story should have centered on a daughter who desperately wants to become a successful actress but can only achieve that goal by working with her tyrannical father, whom she despises. Instead, Trier creates a daughter who has no interest in becoming a famous actress at all and therefore has no trouble saying no to him. It completely undermines the premise.

This choice forces Trier to introduce a second actress, a famous movie star, to take the role, and it immediately deflates the tension. Why should we care about this new, random relationship? He has no history with her, and he doesn’t even need to win her over, since she’s the one eager to work with him. As a result, there’s very little conflict or dramatic tension in their scenes. Trier ends up tripping himself up by setting the difficulty level unnecessarily high.

Now, that’s not to say the movie doesn’t work. Trier did a great job creating complex characters in Nora and Gustav. And did an even better job creating all this conflict between them. So, when they do have scenes together, those scenes are dripping with dramatic conflict. But because Trier, for whatever reason, designed the story to keep them out of the same scenes for much of the movie, he made what should’ve been a solid dramatic movie setup into more of a meditation on life, which is a nice way of saying “boring.”

But here’s where things get interesting. Remember when I said earlier that you want characters to make choices that are true to who they are, rather than what the writer wants? That’s exactly what Trier does here. You could argue that he avoids the more obviously dramatic version of the movie because it would feel inauthentic to real life. By staying true to the characters he created, Nora says no to the inciting incident, her father asking her to be in the film, instead of yes.

Because of that choice, the characters all feel VERY REAL. And for the people who love this film, that’s a big reason why they love it. Because every character in this film feels like a real person. It can therefore be argued that Trier won the game on hard mode. Not easy to do.

With that said, I do not recommend writing on hard mode. The whole reason I advocate so aggressively for generating strong concepts is because when you come up with a good concept, the script writes itself. If you create a character who’s determined to be the number one nighttime news videographer in Los Angeles (Nightcrawler) plotlines throw themselves at you. You know he has to go on the next run sooner or later. You know there’s always going to be other nightcrawlers trying to beat him to the story. You know his greed is going to drive him to be the best at any cost. That script writes itself for you.

But the second you enter the arena with a soft premise, you make your life miserable as a writer. Your life is already miserable as a writer. Why make it more difficult? I can’t imagine trying to generate scene after scene for a concept-less script like, say, The Banshees of Inisherin. Not saying it can’t be done. But it’s just 10x, 100x, 1000x harder. If you think you have the writing skillz to pull that off, go for it. But I wouldn’t call you a writer, then. I’d call you a masochist.

Write on easy mode by picking a concept that does the work for you. If you embrace this advice, the rest of your screenwriting career will be loads more enjoyable. :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Will this film make the list??

Could this be the last post of the year???

I don’t know.

The truth is, I usually get separation anxiety whenever I don’t post for too long so I’m guessing you’ll see me again.

In the meantime, I wanted to give us all something juicy to talk about for the rest of 2025. And since we’re all so darn opinionated, why not discuss our favorite and least favorite films of the year!?

I can promise you my list is unlike ANY OTHER “Best Movies of the Year” list you’re going to find. My lists are always driven by something I see in the writing, whereas most other reviewers look at the movie as a whole. I do that as well but I always prioritize the writing. What I can promise that you won’t find here is me including any movies I believe I’m *supposed to* include, which is what I’ve always hated about end of year movie lists. I feel like I’m reading lists of people who have been brainwashed rather than getting their true favorite movies of the year.

Let’s start with my worst movies of the year. For me, the biggest disappointment (expectations versus execution) goes to Good Fortune. I thought this film had a real shot at bringing comedy back to the multiplex, but Ansari’s screenwriting felt surprisingly lazy. The story crawls into its second act, never fully exploiting its fun premise.  And while casting Keanu Reeves sounds great in theory, his limited time on set seemed to prevent anyone from clearly communicating what was expected of him. As a result, he often appears unsure of what kind of movie he’s in.  Just an all-around dud.   

Next up has to be Mickey 17. I knew this movie was screwed when I read the book. But people told me that the book was only going to be used as inspiration and not as a direct adaptation. It goes to show that you can’t dress up a story that, at its core, sucks. And, to make matters worse, Robert Pattinson botched his performance so aggressively that the movie turned out not just to be bad, but spectacularly bad.

I think this is the only shot in the entire movie with a real background.

The race for worst superhero film of 2025 is a dead heat between Brave New World and Fantastic Four. It’s a tough call because they’re both bad in different ways. Brave New World is just boring. Whereas Fantastic Four felt different but looked so incredibly CGI generic that you never felt for a second like you were watching something that was really going on. Fantastic Four is probably a little bit better. But this quadro definitely isn’t good enough to be leading Avengers Doomsday, which is rumored to be the case. 

Believe it or not, One Battle After Another is not my least favorite movie of the year. That title goes to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. You have never IN YOUR LIFE watched a movie that is more frustrating than this one. It is an onslaught of abuse. Seriously! I feel like the director could be taken to court for the abuse she puts everyone through who sees this film. And it’s not fun abuse. It’s like she hates you and wants you to suffer for 90 minutes. Avoid this movie at all costs unless you hate yourself.

All right, time to move on to the movies I haven’t seen yet. These are movies that could conceivably make my 2025 Top 10, and therefore, I reserve the right to retroactively add them.  

These movies include F1, Marty Supreme, Predator Badlands, Avatar 3, 28 Years Later, The Long Walk, Warfare, Hamnet, and Good Boy. Of these films, the ones most likely to make the list would be Marty Supreme and The Long Walk.

Don’t worry, we’re getting to the main event. But before the Top 10, here are some movies worth mentioning. I’ll begin with the Philippou Brothers’ “Bring Her Back.” A very odd movie with a completely nonsensical but spooky-as-hell character whose only purpose is to trigger a million WTFs during the film. Shaky and just missed my Top 10.

Next up we have Frankenstein which was easily the most beautiful movie I saw all year. The only reason it didn’t score higher is that I’m not a Frankenstein guy. But it’s very unique and different and worth checking out.

We then have Thunderbolts, which was a big swing. But it was a swing that ultimately failed. Nobody who goes to a superhero movie wants to be swindled into realizing they’re watching an A24 film about depression.  That’s not an exaggeration by the way.  The studio touted that 95% of the crew were A24 crew.

Next we have Naked Gun. This was easily the funniest movie of the year. I only wish they could’ve kept the laughs up for the whole film. The first half is very strong and then it kind of falls apart. But it has some hilarious moments so if you need a good laugh over the holidays, check it out.

Coming in next is The Amateur. What’s interesting about The Amateur is that, 15 years ago, this would have been a solid box office earner that would’ve given Rami Malek’s career a big bump and primed him for a shot at leading a high-budget Hollywood film. Now it’s just relegated to a Hulu streamer that barely anybody’s heard of.  But it’s a fun movie that does a lot with its medium-sized budget.

This next one is going to be controversial but I don’t care. I thought Flight Risk was highly entertaining. This is the Mel Gibson-directed Wahlberg film. You guys know me. I love a good contained thriller. And this hits all the beats I require from one. The only reason why it didn’t make it into the Top 10 is because Mel had no explanation for why these two would repeatedly leave the passed-out dangerous murderous criminal in the back and never check to make sure that he was, ya know, STILL PASSED OUT.

Tim Robinson’s Friendship is a frustrating movie because it’s so unique and genuinely different that it immediately stands out from the crowd. Unfortunately, there are too many moments where the writing feels juvenile. It’s sloppy and never rises to the level of sophistication its oddness seems to promise. That same issue is why I couldn’t fully commit to Robinson’s HBO series, The Chair Company.

If you want a film that’s good but that is going to bring up feelings of extreme frustration, to the point where you want to throw something at your screen, Apple’s “Echo Valley” with Sydney Sweeney is your movie. You get so angry at this mom for babying her drug-addicted monster of a daughter. And yet, despite it all, you still want to find out what happens next.

Finally, we have Superman, which was easily the best superhero movie of the year. But it says a lot about how much this genre has fallen that Superman took that title. Because it just wasn’t big enough. Granted, the primary reason why this movie didn’t feel big enough was the hype behind it. But James Gunn built that hype. So, it was up to him to deliver. The film is better than okay. But never reaches anywhere above that.

I’ve made you wait long enough.

Here are my Top 10 movies of the year!

NUMBER 10: NOBODY 2

Nobody 2 is all about one thing: making sure you have a good time. That’s it. And it pulls this off using one of the oldest tricks in screenwriting: we know our hero is an unstoppable ass-kicker, but none of the bad guys do. That creates a reverse dramatic irony that plays out over and over. These fools keep challenging him, and he keeps making them pay.  What’s interesting about the Nobody universe, though, is how it differs from the Equalizer or John Wick franchises. Hutch has to earn every kill. Some people dislike that Denzel in The Equalizer never struggles, that he always wins so easily. With Hutch, there’s always doubt. Even though he’s a badass, he’s twice the age of most of his opponents, so nothing is guaranteed.  The franchise also balances its action with a fun, semi-goofy sense of humor that keeps things light. That combination is what makes Nobody 2 the kind of movie you watch and leave feeling invigorated.

NUMBER 9: BUGONIA

I went back and forth on whether to include this one. In many ways, it’s the opposite of Nobody 2 in that it’s all about you having a bad time, lol. The main character chemically castrates his retarded cousin as a means to accomplish his big kidnapping plan of a CEO. He then shaves the kidnapped CEO’s head and there’s this sexual abuse subplot with a local cop and, needless to say, it’s all a real downer. With that being said, it’s never not interesting. And that’s something I put a lot of stock into – are you being interesting with your creative choices? Creative choices are the one thing you can’t really teach in screenwriting. Does the writer make good ones or not? The only thing you can really teach screenwriters to do is challenge every creative choice they make to see if it’s really the best one they can come up with. This writer never makes the easy obvious choice. And some wild-ass things happen in it. All in all, it’s too interesting to leave outside my Top 10.

NUMBER 8: AFTER THE HUNT

I know I’m on my own island with how much I like this screenplay and movie, and I’m not going to change my mind just because everyone else dislikes it. I still think it has the best dramatic setup of any film this year. The writer constructs a triangle between three characters that is incredibly complex and layered, requiring each of them to think seven moves ahead in order to succeed.  That said, the film also highlights how difficult it is to connect with audiences when none of the main characters are likable. I believe that’s the primary reason it didn’t resonate with viewers. It didn’t bother me because I resonated with Julia Roberts’ character. I understood her guardedness and why she kept others at a distance. While many people disliked her, I found myself rooting for her, which probably explains why I experienced a very different movie from everyone else.

NUMBER 7: SKETCH

Before I saw this movie, I reserved the word “sketch” for the DoorDash guy who suspiciously hung around the inside of my building for 30 minutes after every delivery he made. But now, the word will always make me think of this movie, which is as close to a Spielbergian experience as you’re going to get in 2025. Heck, it was more Spielbergian than Spielberg these days. While it’s true the movie is limited by its low-budget, it somehow still has some of the best effects of the year.  But what really holds it together is the touching, well-crafted story of a family trying to move on from the death of their wife/mother. For that reason, this script is a particularly good script to study for how to write a formulaic movie. It’s a deceptively difficult format to write in because the formula makes everything predictable. But if you can make us love and care about the characters, you can supersede that issue.

NUMBER 6: WEAPONS

I absolutely love that this movie did so well, because it’s a major swing for a horror film. It doesn’t follow a single protagonist, which is always a risk, and it uses a backwards approach to navigating its central mystery. All of this reinforces a point I constantly stress on the site. If you truly want to break through in this industry, you have to take creative risks. The one downside is something I noted when I first reviewed the screenplay. The characters lack depth. The only character who feels fully realized is the villain. If that issue had been addressed, Weapons would go from being the best horror film of 2025 to one of the best horror films ever made.  Even so, Weapons has a sharp, risky edge combined with just enough mass appeal to make it the kind of movie anyone can enjoy.

NUMBER 5: EDDINGTON

There isn’t a movie on this list that made a bigger comeback on the Carson Opinion-O-Meter than this one. When I first read the screenplay, my main criticism was simple. You can’t make a movie about Covid. Period end of story.  People want to put that time as far behind them as possible. It was miserable, and nobody wants to be reminded of it. In a way, I was right, because nobody went to see this movie. But it turns out Ari Aster actually did find a way to make a movie about Covid good. In retrospect, I think the location is what made it work. If the story had been set in a city, it would have felt uncomfortably close to home. By placing it in a remote small town in New Mexico, it felt like a world we hadn’t seen before, which helped create a genuinely original moviegoing experience. Aster’s one real flaw here is that he tries to cram too many ideas into the film, and by the end, things start to feel garbled. That said, when it comes to making unexpected creative choices, he always delivers. They aren’t always the right choices, but they’re consistently bold and unpredictable. And the insane WTFIGO climax ranks among the most entertaining large scale Hollywood endings in recent years. You have to go in with the right mindset and expect the unexpected, but if you do, there’s a very good chance you’ll love this film.

NUMBER 4: FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES

Talk about bringing a franchise back with a bang. This movie was insanely entertaining. Just last week, I found myself hovering my mouse over the “rent” button for The Running Man, but I couldn’t bring myself to click it. Then it hit me why. I know for a fact that Edgar Wright has no passion for making that movie. Glen Powell doesn’t either. Wright needed a paycheck so he could keep making more art-driven films, and Powell was looking for a star-making vehicle and thought he’d found one by teaming up with a respected “artsy” director. But neither of them actually gave a shit about The Running Man franchise. The result was exactly what you’d expect: predictable, forgettable sameness. Now contrast that with Final Destination: Bloodlines. Directors Lipovsky and Stein are massive fans of the franchise, to the point that they made a spreadsheet ranking every single kill in the series. Then they asked themselves a simple question: how do we create five kills that are better than anything on this list? And they delivered. This movie was great. It was the best time I had in a theater all year. It’s a perfect reminder that when you write something you’re truly passionate about, you put in the extra work to make it as good as it can possibly be. When the primary motivation is anything else, that level of care just isn’t there.

NUMBER 3: THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND

To me, the true test of good screenwriting is executing a story built entirely around characters. There are no bells and whistles to distract the audience, no robots, monsters, or time travel. It’s just people. If you can write a great screenplay based purely on character, you can write anything. That’s why After the Hunt made this list, and it’s also why this movie did. The Ballad of Wallis Island has the best character arcs I saw all year. Charles, the man who owns the island and hires a once-famous folk duo to come play for him, has one of the most heartbreaking arcs you’ll encounter. He spends all of his money to bring them here because their music was the soundtrack to him falling in love with his wife, who has since passed away. Watching him slide through that grief over the course of the story is genuinely moving. On top of that, there’s the complicated relationship between the band members (also former couple) Herb and Nell. Their dynamic unfolds in ways you don’t expect at all. That’s a theme I’m always looking for in writing. Do you take the expected path and let the audience stay ahead of you, or do you choose the unexpected and stay ahead of the audience? It’s a slow movie, so you need to be in the right indie-film headspace to fully enjoy it. But if you are, this one is absolute magic.

NUMBER 2: NOVOCAINE

Hold up, Carson. Novocaine was your number two movie of the year? You bet it was. And do you know why? It’s a screenwriting reason. I’ll give you a second to figure it out. It’s because no movie did a better job of fully exploiting its concept. A guy can’t feel pain. His girlfriend is kidnapped. He decides to turn what should be his greatest weakness into his greatest strength in order to save her. Earlier, I mentioned what made Nobody 2 interesting was that we weren’t always sure Hutch could beat the bad guys. This script dials that up to a thousand. The main character, Nate, doesn’t even know how to fight, yet he’s up against trained killers. Usually, when I see this in screenplays, the protagonist only survives because the writer bails him out with plot armor. But Novocaine consistently puts Nate in truly fatal situations and then has him use his inability to feel pain to escape in ways that actually feel believable. I thought it was masterful. I’m convinced the only reason this movie didn’t perform better is because the trailer made it look familiar, like a typical B-grade, low-budget action film you’ve already seen. But it’s not. It’s the absolute best version of a B-grade action movie you’ll see this decade, precisely because it’s unique and because it relentlessly mines that uniqueness in inventive ways.  I place it as my second favorite movie of the year with complete confidence.

NUMBER 1: COMPANION

There was no movie this year with a better twist than this one. Much like Novocaine, it does an excellent job of using its unique concept to drive every creative choice. This is a film you’re best off seeing cold, but spoilers are coming, so consider yourself warned. Once we understand that this world includes robot companions, the writer squeezes every possible idea out of that premise. One of the best examples is the reveal that another member of the gang is also a companion robot. You might think that’s been done before, but it really hasn’t, because what makes these companions unique is that they don’t know they’re companions. They discover the truth at the same time we do. That choice opens the door to a deeper, almost existential exploration of humanity, suggesting that for all we know, we could all be living a lie without realizing it. Another thing I loved about the script is how convincingly it makes Iris feel completely outmatched by the villain, her “boyfriend” Josh. He literally remote-controls her. The entire time, you’re asking how this woman could possibly defeat someone who can control her every movement and even her emotions. I love stories where the goal feels genuinely impossible, and this one absolutely does. We care deeply about the heroine and truly hate the villain. The story delivers strong twists and turns, and midway through, a T-1000–like character enters the picture to make Iris’s journey even more daunting. In the end, it’s just a wildly fun movie built around the most inventive concept of the year and it makes for a perfect double feature with Novocaine.

There you have it. Those are my favorite movies of the year.

I’m now really interested in hearing what your favorite movies of the year are!