I remember a few years ago when they leaked some information about how Brave New World was going to have a dozen hulks. And I said, “Hell yeah!” I want me a dozen hulks. Hulks are awesome.

But I guess making hulks is one of the most expensive things in the Marvel computer-generated world. So they only gave us one hulk. And now Brave New World has fallen to under 30 million dollars for its second weekend box office take. Which means it’s probably making less than 500 million total throughout the world.

That number is relevant because the benchmark for Marvel success is a billion dollars worldwide. So, if you’re only making half that, that’s a problem. It’s a problem for the movie and a problem for the franchise as a whole.

But let’s get back to those hulks for a second. If this movie had 12 hulks, would I have gone? I would’ve. Seriously, that would’ve made the difference. Because when I go see a Marvel movie, I want something bigger and badder than the last Marvel movie. And the last Marvel movies have given me three Spider-Mans and the iconic pairing of Deadpool and Wolverine.

You did this, Marvel. You raised my expectations. So when you only give me a subpar superhero and one hulk, no, I’m not coming to your movie. You were the face of raising the bar. Every movie either released a new superhero we wanted to see or gave us something bigger. Brave New World does neither.

So they’re going to have to figure that out. They’re close to having to pick their Avengers lineup and I don’t know if there’s anyone to pick. We’re at risk of She-Hulk making the team. If I were them, I would pay Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and Tom Holland each a billion dollars and make them the leaders of the team.

From superheroes to super screenwriting, we are in Week 2 of The White Lotus and I’m hooked. It’s a darker hotel than usual but I’m here for it. I loved the second episode.

What’s funny, though, is that the excellence of the writing, here, is so nuanced that it’s hard to explain why it works so well. Because someone said last week, “I’m surprised you like this show, Carson, considering it goes against everything you preach on the site.”

I sort of understand what he’s saying. He’s saying that my screenwriting template for success is GSU (goals, stakes, and urgency) and really great structure. White Lotus doesn’t really use either of those things. Or, I should say, when it does, it does so in less obvious ways.

But, the reason that I love White Lotus despite it not having GSU and despite a less-than-obvious plot, is that it aces the other half of screenwriting, which is building interesting characters and creating interesting relationship dynamics.

Because it’s perfectly possible to write a good scene that doesn’t have GSU. The way you do it is you create conflict. If you can create an interesting line of conflict in a scene, the reader will be hooked by the desire to see resolution to that conflict.

Think about it. If I put two characters at a table and had them talk about their days, and each of their days were mildly entertaining. Each of them laughed at each other’s summary. If I wrote that scene, that’s not going to be a very good scene. Seeing two people remember and agree has no drama to it.

But, if one of those characters just found out that his 100 million dollar company back home is about to fall apart and there’s a good chance that when he gets back, he’ll be sent to prison. And, also, if that character (in this case, the father) goes to talk to his family and they’re all having fun and trying to include him in that fun, but his mind is somewhere else entirely? Now we have a scene!

Because we have conflict. We have an unresolved issue – in this case, with one of the main characters – and that means that, until that issue is resolved, he’s (the dad) going to bring conflict into every scene he’s in. That’s drama.

That’s a somewhat complex version of conflict but Mike White isn’t above using simple forms of conflict to create drama in a scene. In one scene, for example, the three 40-something girl friends are passing our weirdo family at the breakfast table and one of the friends realizes that she’s met the mother before.

So she stops at the table and says to her, “We know each other.” And she pitches this whole weekend that they shared on a mutual friend’s baby shower. In the scene, the mother just stares at the woman. She gives her nothing. Which forces the friend to try harder. She explains that they spent so much time together and that she’s still in touch with the baby shower mom. Which only results in the mother acting less interested.

It’s a simple scene. One person wants to connect. The other person doesn’t. But it’s effective. You watch that scene and you feel the cringe for the friend. That’s all conflict. Something is out of balance and we watch in hopes of it coming in balance.

That “out of balance” formula can extend to positive feelings as well. One of the oldest TV writing tricks in the book is putting two characters around each other who are not together – but who we (the audience) want to see get together.

If you write a TV show and you don’t have that storyline in your show somewhere, you’re doing it wrong. Cause it’s such a reliable storyline. You have so much time to fill in a show, you can’t afford not to put it in there because audiences eat these storylines up. Ross and Rachel. Jim and Pam. Mulder and Scully.

Here, we have these two workers at the hotel. The guy, a guard, is clearly in love with the girl. But she seems like she’s more on the fence. Boy do I want him to get her. I want them to end up together. That “will they or won’t they” tug of war that takes place in every scene they’re in?  That’s conflict.

It’s also how you keep a show going. You have to create multiple unresolved dangling carrots that viewers have to keep watching in order to eat.

So, if the formula for success is that easy, why do so many shows fail? Because there’s an essential ingredient to the dangling carrots that, if not met, the carrots become rotten.

WE HAVE TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS.

That’s what Mike White does so well. He makes you care about these people first. THEN he starts weaving in these plot elements, such as the dad’s company falling apart, that create these fresh carrots we want to sink our teeth into.

What happens with bad writers is that they create thinner characters than White. They don’t establish the characters well. They don’t make it clear what each character’s flaw is. They create weak character personalities. They create uninspired seen-it-all-before relationships between the characters that feel stale the second they’re introduced.

Therefore, when they try and dangle carrots, we don’t care. Cause we don’t even care about the donkey walking the carrot.

I continue to be amazed by Mike White. I think he’s a genius. I was worried that he couldn’t pull off the three-peat. But so far, he’s pulling it off with flying colors. Mighty impressive considering his last name is White.

And remember that the First Page Showdown is next weekend! If you want to submit, details are below!

Just a reminder, next Thursday is the deadline for First Page Showdown! And then, over the weekend, the top 5 submissions will compete for your votes. Here’s how to submit…

What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Okay, now it’s time to prepare you!

A lot of screenwriting people will tell you to write a great first scene due to the fact that you want to grab the reader. But, actually, you want to start even earlier. You want to write a great first page.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much the reader is judging the script during that first page. And it’s not that they’re doing it overtly. They do it subconsciously because they’ve read so many scripts and the large majority of those scripts are bad. They’re hoping and praying that this is the one that’s going to be good.

So, actually, they’re picking up on the bad things reluctantly. They’re hoping they don’t pop up. Cause if they encounter 2-3 red flags on the first page, it’s a 99% probability that the script will be bad.

What is it they’re judging? They’re judging if the writing itself is good (the sentences are pleasing to read). They’re judging if they like the writer’s voice (is it strong and assured). They’re judging if the page is building towards something. They’re judging if they like the scene you’ve started off with. They’re assessing whether you’re a storyteller, someone who understands the tools required to tell a good story. They’re assessing your confidence. They’re assessing what level you’re at.

I know. All of that is overwhelming. To be honest, if you tried to check all of those boxes, you’d probably write a bad scene. So, today, I want to give you a simple template that gets you the best chance to hit all those beats. Actually, with this template, you don’t even need to hit all the beats. You only need to hit the most important one, which is to be a good storyteller.

We’re going to do that with an example from the first page of one of the Oscar-nominated scripts, Conclave. It’s not perfect, which proves my point. You don’t have to be perfect to write a strong first page. Let’s take a look at the page and then we’ll discuss what it does well.

Before we get into the analysis, let me ask you a question. What is the most important aspect of a first page?

Anyone?

Here’s the answer: That it makes you want to turn the page.

Nobody can read the rest of your script if they don’t read page 2.

Now that you know that, what do you see within the first page of Conclave? Hopefully, I don’t have to point it out to you.

For the people in the back, the scene starts WITH SOMETHING HAPPENING. Actually, let me recontextualize that. It starts with something OUT OF THE ORDINARY happening.

If something was just “happening,” like a man eating dinner, that’s not enough to get people’s eyes to move down the page. It has to be something that doesn’t happen often. That’s what makes “the happening” unique and worthy of reading.

In this case, a man is sleeping, his window cracks, waking him up. Then he gets a phone call. We then cut to him walking through Rome. And there’s a key word there that you need to include on a first page – “QUICKLY.”

He’s walking “quickly.” That tells us something about that phone call was important. Especially because he left his home in the middle of the night. Something big has happened.

Another key word occurs in the slugline: “VATICAN.”

He’s not quickly walking through Costco. He’s walking through the Vatican.

Not to get sidetracked but this is where concept comes into play. You want your movie ideas to feel big. That way, you have more to work with on the page. If your script includes the Vatican, that’s going to feel bigger than if your script includes Costco. And I’m not saying you can’t write a great script about Costco. There are probably several hilarious comedies you could write with the store as a backdrop.

But in this game where you’re trying to keep peoples’ attention for 2 hours, the more high-powered your weapons are, the better the chance you have of striking your target.

The main reason this page works is because we’ve been thrust into a big situation where we want to find out what happens next.

Now that we know that, let’s look at the scene more specifically. Cause what you’re going to find is that it’s imperfect. But I’ll remind you why that doesn’t matter.

We start in a quiet neighborhood in an apartment, with a window pane that cracks. Now, on the surface, I like this. It creates curiosity. Again, something is HAPPENING. The sooner you can make something happen on your first page, the better. Cause readers then have to figure out why the pane cracked.

The thing is, I don’t think we ever learn why it cracks. So it’s a bit of a cheat. Yeah, I guess it could be “God,” but if it is, the script does a very poor job at making that argument, especially because there isn’t a single other act of God in the script.

From there, the phone rings. That’s another good beat. Phones that ring in the middle of the night usually don’t bring good news. So, again, something is HAPPENING. Something out of the ordinary.

The writer then takes a unique approach to the call – he doesn’t show the character answer the phone. This is a small thing but it’s something that tells me I’m dealing with, at the very least, an above-average screenwriter.

The beginner screenwriter probably includes the conversation from that call. The advanced writer says, “I don’t need it.” Or, he says, “It creates more mystery if I don’t include it.” But even the fact that he didn’t have the character pick up the phone tells me this screenwriter doesn’t waste ink. And that’s usually a good sign.

From there, we have the character speeding down the tunnel in the Vatican and now, as a reader, I don’t have any choice but to turn the page. Seriously. How can I NOT read the next page? It would be stupid to not at least check it out. Cause I want to know who called him and why he’s felt it important to get up in the middle of the night and run to the Vatican.

That’s the big tip that I want to get across to you here with first pages. You want to create a question within that first page that doesn’t just make the reader curious, but makes it impossible for them not to read the second page.

And you do that by throwing us into the mix of something happening that’s out of the ordinary. It’s very hard to screw up a scene like that.

By no means is this the only way to write a first page. I went through the opening pages of all the Oscar screenplay nominees and nearly all of them approach their first pages differently. But if you want to get the best bang for your buck, do it like Conclave.

Can’t wait to see what your first pages have to offer! :)

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A senator and his estranged son must fight to survive when they’re stranded
at a hunting ranch where mythical beasts from global folklore are genetically
engineered as dangerous game.
About: This script finished with 16 votes on the Black List. Grillot has one other Black List script from a year ago called The Tooth Fairy. Here was that logline: A drug addict returning from rehab kidnaps her daughter from her father then tries to skip town, only to end up at an old BnB chased by an evil tooth fairy determined to take her daughter from her. – The guy clearly likes his high concept ideas!
Writer: Chris Grillot
Details: 108 pages

Today’s script reminded me of 1997 Hollywood where every single person you met in Los Angeles had a screenplay and 99.9999% of them were sky-high concepts.

American Monsters leans into that old school approach. You can’t get any higher concept than this. The only problem is, is the pitch “Aliens meets Jurassic Park” still relevant?

It is if the script’s good. And fun! Please, after yesterday’s anger management meltdown, give me a fun screenplay experience! For crying out loud!

Senator Remy Chatelain is up against reelection and it’s not looking good. He recently got caught using dirty tricks to smear his opponent. So maybe it’s good that his old friend, hunter Lane Marlow, shows up and asks him on a weekend trip. He can even bring along his 17 year old son, Zach.

Remy and Zach head to Lane’s highly remote Wyoming compound where he’s secured thousands of acres for his new venture – hunting monsters. Lane is also a bit of a scientist and has figured out how to bioengineer approximations of all the monsters we’ve read in books.

We’ve got chupacabras, ushi onis, giant bat things, and the real prize of the establishment – Yetis. Lane has created a giant hunting ground where you can kill your own monster. And this weekend, he’s going to take Lane and Zach into his creation where they’ll both be able to bag a Yeti. It’s going to be wonderful!

The trip requires going up into the mountains and it doesn’t take long for Remy to realize that Lane doesn’t have it all figured out. He falls into a sinkhole where a giant bull-spider thing easily could’ve killed him if it wasn’t so timid.

And don’t even get Remy started about the Yetis. The Yetis were created to be dumb. But since their creation five years ago, they’ve started to clump into packs. They’ve even created little villages. All of this is starting to feel very wrong to Remy.

Remy also learns why Lane brought him out here. It wasn’t just to catch up with an old friend. Remy has major influence on an upcoming bioengineering bill that, if passed, will shoot Lane’s business into the stratosphere. If the bill fails, however, Lane’s dream, along with the tens of millions of dollars already invested into the venture, will be toast. Sure Lane. First let’s focus on getting off this mountain without being slaughtered by a pack of Yetis!

Something I want you to take note of right off the bat with American Monsters is Lane’s motivation.

When I read bad versions of scripts like this, characters like Lane don’t have motivations. They’re just some knob that the writer uses to open a door for our characters to enter the movie.

The bad version of Lane is a guy who says, “Come on in” and “Let’s hunt.”

The good version of Lane – the one that’s being used here – is much more elaborately constructed. The reason he’s bringing Remy here is because Remy can help him pass a bioengineering bill that will infuse his operation with money. Money that he desperately needs.

Not only does this make Lane a stronger character (due to the fact that he has a goal with high stakes attached) but it infuses all interactions between Lane and Remy with an extra layer of subtext.

If Remy has a scary moment and wants to call the hunt off, and Lane says, “Trust me, what just happened was random. There’s no way it will happen again.” Well, because we know how badly Lane needs this to work, we know that there’s a whole other layer to that assurance. He’s probably lying about it because he needs Remy to buy into his pitch.

Lane is the character who sold me on this script. I can tell that Grillot put a lot of work into him. He’s got a lot lines like this one: “We might not have money, but we’ve got plenty of reach. I’ll pull in Outdoor Alliance, the Ag Coalition, the oil and gas roughnecks, police and fire unions… You fucking name it, I make the call… I bet your opponent drops before the election.”

Lines like that tell me RESEARCH has been put into this character.

He reminded me some of Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thorton) on Landman. The reason that show works so well is the insane amount of knowledge the creator has about that world. So, whenever I feel like characters are smarter than me, I know I’m in good hands.

Cause, for the large majority of scripts that I read, there isn’t a single character who’s smarter than I am. Or as knowledgeable about the subject as I am. I’m serious! I’ll read a script about a nuclear apocalypse and I’ll know more about the science of the fallout than the writer does. That’s when you know the writer is barely putting in an effort.

Whatever the specific world it is that you’ve created for your screenplay, there better be at least one character who knows more about that world than Wikipedia and ChatGPT combined. And that includes pretend worlds.

If there’s a weakness to this script, it’s the competition. Every studio has a “big animals” franchise. And it seems that the bigger the animals, the more lucrative the franchise is. These animals are big but not enormous. On the plus side, our “monsters” are just different enough. If these were straight lizards and gorillas, it wouldn’t work. We’re putting in new variations of these animals and, from there, it’s up to the public to decide if that’s enough to get them interested.

I think most writers and producers in Hollywood attempt the “same but different” formula. You just never know how ‘same’ or how ‘different’ the audience wants. The target is always moving. Would I have thought a basic ‘guy with a gun’ movie like John Wick would become one of the biggest franchises in the industry? No. But it turns out it had that perfect balance of the same (guy with a gun) and different (this light hitman mythology).

This movie is going to open huge. In 1998. Can it open huge in 2025? I don’t think so because the lore and the mythology is not quite up to Jurassic Park standards. With that said, it’s strong! Stronger than most scripts I read in this lane. So I could see this being a big streaming movie. And, these days, that’s what we spec script writers should be gunning for. Get that big streaming feature paycheck and celebrate like it’s 1998. :)

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

What I learned: There’s always a more creative line of dialogue available to you if you take the time to find it. On page 35, Lane is telling Remy that he needs money. He explains that his current investor is running out of cash. If you were having Lane tell Remy this, what line would you write? Most writers say the first thing they think of. Something like: “The problem is, Ko’s (his financier) running out of money.” It does the job, but it’s not very creative. Instead, here’s the real line that was used: “Look, I’ll let you in on another secret, alright? Ko’s deep pockets are getting pretty shallow.” Clearly a more thoughtful line. That’s how most dialogue should read. You can learn all sorts of great dialogue tips like this in my dialogue book. So go get it!

Genre: Drama
Premise: Mary, a hair trigger pool hustler, has her hedonistic lifestyle all figured out until
she meets Ray, a fellow pool shark. Will she change her ways and let herself fall in
love? Or just kill him and make a break for it…
About: This script finished with 24 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Ryan Brennan
Details: 114 pages

When you’re tasked with creating characters a day after the reviewer watched the master at creating characters, you’ve got a tough act to follow. Let’s see how today’s writer did.

30-something Mary is an extremely angry person. How angry? Well, she hates men more than anything on the planet. She not only uses them for sex but she steals all the stuff in their homes afterwards. But she doesn’t stop at men. Early on, we watch as she antagonizes a female restaurant customer for no other reason than she can.

Mary is a pool hustler. She walks into a pool hall, pretends to be decent but mostly lucky, luring in potential marks, before betting a bunch of money on the final game and taking them to the cleaners.

It’s not an easy gig that Mary has. She has a deep set hatred for all of her opponents and thinks that everything on earth is disgusting, evil, terrible, or all three. She’s not above shooting any of her opponents who come after her after losing and though no kills have been confirmed, you can bet your bottom dollar that a dude or two has died at Mary’s hand.

This begins to change once she heads to Texas and meets Ray.  At first, she sees Ray as a mark. But as one game turns into two, two to four, and four to eight, she senses that maybe she’s not as in control of this situation as she thinks she is. In the end, Ray takes her for a cool 5 grand.

Infuriated, it’s now Mary chases after a man for the first time, which then leads to a night of wild sex. Mary won’t admit it to herself yet but she’s starting to like this guy. She has to admit it the next day though when, at a new bar, jealousy swells up as she watches Ray flirt with a female mark.

For the first time in a long time, Mary dates a dude. This is a foreign concept to her so when she begins to experience full on feelings of love, she freaks out. Now, when you or I freak out because we’re falling in love, we might send too many text messages. Not Mary. Mary asks Ray to participate in a fun game of pretend rape in a bar parking lot. When Ray plays along, pushing when Mary says stop, she pulls out a gun and shoots him three times.

Mary then goes on the run to Vegas, assuming Ray is dead. But Ray survives! And he recruits his pool buddy, Hal, to find Mary and get his revenge. They both head to Vegas and eventually find her. But before Ray can kill her, Mary is so happy to learn that she didn’t kill Ray that she claims she’ll do anything for him. The two (along with Hal) agree to crash the glitziest pool hall in Vegas and burn it down in a single night, hustling as much money as possible. What could go wrong?

A common thing I keep running into with these Black List scripts, especially post-2017, when the cultural climate became more intense, is anger.

And here’s the funny thing. Most writers are already angry. Not all of them. But, generally speaking, writers tend to be a frustrated lot. And they use their stories as an outlet to get that anger out. Which is good if you know how to manage it.

But when you add this additional post-2017 dose of ‘angry’ to an already angry individual, you get scripts like this and Don’t Borrow Trouble. There’s too much anger to come back from. Or, to put it in screenwriting terms, you can’t redeem a character who’s unredeemable.

Mary is an awful person. On top of her hating everyone and being mean to everyone, she attempts to murder the man she loves for no other reason than she’s angry for making her love him. Why would you think we would say, “Man, I really want to hang out with this woman for another hour and see her get better?” No. At that point, I want her to meet her demise.

And while there is a template for telling these types of stories – they’re called tragedies due to the fact that the character dies in the end due to an inability to change – they’re incredibly delicate stories that are hard to pull off.

One of the most famous ones is Taxi Driver and when you look at that story, Travis Bickle was not introduced to us as this hateful angry person. He was more of a lost soul. That’s something people can relate to. Which is why they got on board with him. If Taxi Driver would’ve introduced us to an already mohawked Travis Bickle, the movie would not have worked because we would’ve hated him.

Which is the issue here. We hate this woman so much that nothing you can do in the writing is going to change that.

I actually respected the late story creative choice of Mary shooting Ray because it was so unexpected. It put the story on this new non-formulaic path. And he does take that storyline to its logical conclusion (spoiler) with Ray getting his revenge. But is it really that satisfying to see your protagonist, who you never liked in the first place, die? It all feels a bit… super depressing.

I don’t know if I’m becoming too goodie-two-shoes. Maybe we grow out of all this dark stuff as we grow older and we want lighter fare that makes us happier. But I’m not convinced that’s what’s going on here. I like dark stuff that’s written well. I liked Kinds of Kindness. I liked Strange Darling. I liked Speak No Evil and Furiosa. This just introduced me to a character I hated so much that I could never get past that. This seems to be this ongoing problem with Black List scripts, where the writers are laying on the anger too thick and not considering how it affects the reader.

Because remember, how you introduce a character contributes to 80-90% of how the reader sees them. Here are some early moments with Mary. Here she is talking about men: “99.9% of these walking, talking, fucking, sucking monsters we share the earth with care about one thing and one thing only: themselves.”

And then: Mary, BORED, decides to PUSH HIM OFF and FORCE HIS FACE DOWN between her legs. He takes the cue and GOES DOWN ON HER. After some hair-pulling instruction from Mary, she ORGASMS. He comes up kissing her, but she’s CLEARLY DONE. MARY: “Ugh, that was great. I’m sorry I’m so… tired all of a sudden. But you’re welcome to finish yourself off. G’night.”

And then: Puts her clothes on, and deftly goes through his apartment, STEALING EVERYTHING SHE CAN. Clearly a routine procedure.

And then: As Mary walks to her car, DAVE FOLLOWS HER. MARY (V.O.) “Just don’t forget, boys and girls, shriveled dicks can be real sore losers. So always come prepared.” He looks like he’s going to BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF HER. But as he GRABS HER BY THE SHOULDER, Mary spins around… …GUN IN HAND. FIRES TWO SHOTS: BANG! BANG!

And then after verbally assaulting a woman at a restaurant for no reason: And just as Mary opens her mouth to verbally TEAR THIS WOMAN A NEW ASSHOLE (which she’s fully capable of)… Just then, a SQUAD OF POLICE CARS BLARE BY, SIRENS and all. No doubt headed for the wreckage Mary left behind. TIME TO GO. But Mary certainly won’t let Neighbor have the satisfaction of feeling like she won this interaction… MARY: “EXCUSE ME, WAITRESS? Sorry, I’m gonna go ahead and pay. This woman just will not stop bothering me.”

This was all within the first 7 pages. That pretty much says it all.

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

What I learned: If you’re thinking about writing an angry main character, consider instead writing someone who’s broken or lost. You can access some of the same negative emotions that you want to portray your character to have, but broken and lost is much more redeemable. I mean, look through all the movies where an unapologetically angry main character has worked. One of the commenters here will give you about 10, probably. But keep in mind that’s out of half a million movies.

I wanted to see Captain America about as much as I wanted to be on that plane that crashed into a helicopter a few weeks ago. Marvel hasn’t just lost its mojo. It’s lost its soul. So when the latest Captain America film made 100 million dollars this weekend, I had to check to see if that was good or not.

It’s actually not bad. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made 113 million. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania made 106 million. If you go back to Marvel’s best time period – Phase 3 – Thor Ragnarok made 122 million. I think, these days, that’s what you’re aiming for with a Marvel movie, is to get that 100 million dollar opening, which Captain America achieved.

EXCEEEEPPPPPPTTTT.

It’s one big lie.

What you’ll see buried in all of the box office reports of this film is that this is not a weekend tally, but rather a 4-day tally, as they’re including box office from the tiniest holiday of the year, President’s Day. The real tally for Captain America is 88.5 million.

This kind of garbage reporting annoys me because: just be honest. It’s not difficult to be honest. You can’t make something true just by saying it. 88.5 million is a different tally than 100 million. Cause it shows that there is a downward trend in these Marvel movie box office takes. Telling yourself it’s 100 million when it isn’t is preventing you from being real about your product and making the necessary changes to fix it.

Marvel has run into the same problem that every other genre, over time, has run into – which is that unless you’re giving us something new and fresh, we’re not going to be excited to see your film. This new Captain America looked like assembly-line superhero filmmaking. That’s not good enough.

But you wanna know what I *was* excited about this weekend? White Lotus! Season Three! Premiere episode! Mike White – a master screenwriter AND a master caster – is back. What does he have in store for us this time? And what tasty little screenwriting lesson morsels has he left for us peasants to chew on?

This time we’re headed to Thailand. We have Belinda, the masseuse from Season 1 who’s here to learn and improve her skills. We’ve got Rick, 55, and Chelsea, 25, a couple dominated by Rick’s nonstop negativity. We’ve got Timothy and Victoria Ratliff, a successful couple. Timothy is hiding from his fam a big negative article that’s about to be written about his company back home.

We’ve got the Ratliff’s weirdo children, Piper, Lochlan, and Saxson. Saxson is an oversexed weirdo who just wants to get laid. Lochlan as innocent as newly churned butter and is unsure of what he wants to do in life. And Piper is the whole reason the family came here. She wants to get an interview with the big Buddhist celebrity on the island, an interview the family is only learning now that she hasn’t secured yet.

Finally we have Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie, three childhood friends who lost touch and are reconnecting on this trip. Jaclyn is a TV star. Kate is her cool successful friend. And Laurie looks to be the loser of the group, and therefore is immediately uncomfortable with the trip.

So, question number 1: How does it hold up to the other seasons of White Lotus so far?

I would put it in third place but that’s not as damning a ranking as you’d think. The first two seasons were amazing. This one, so far, is only very good. There are no stand-out characters yet, although there are definitely a few who have the potential to be. Saxson (Arnold Swarzenegger’s son) is super weird and acts utterly bizarre around his siblings. I’m 70% sure that Mike White is setting up an incest storyline between him and one of the other siblings. Things are going to get messy in The White Lotus Thailand!

Like in previous installments, White has started the story in the future, showing or hinting at a death, then jumping back in time. He does this because he knows that this is a character-driven story and, if you don’t add a little bit of jus to character driven stories, they can fell like any other generic TV show. So we hear gunshots in the opening scene, and they’re coming from multiple directions. If I had to guess, I would say that gang activity has spilled over onto the hotel grounds. I don’t think it’s one of our characters who’s shooting.

If you want to get good at character work, watch Mike White play. This guy is like Mozart for character development. Count how many characters are in this story. There are a dozen.

He not only sets up all one dozen of those characters within 30 minutes (by the midpoint of the first episode). But he sets up the conflict within each group. I read a lot of pilots. Writers CONSTANTLY struggle to set up a single character that’s memorable. To set up 12 and already introduce the main form of conflict within their groups is genius-level screenwriting.

With Rick and Chelsea, Rick has clearly come here with a plan. There’s somebody he wants to meet and when he learns that that person isn’t on the island, he’s furious. This creates a lot of tension in his relationship because Chelsea thinks they’re here to have fun. And she can’t even get her boyfriend to look her in the eyes.

With Timothy and Victoria, the conflict is more deeply embedded and subtle. They have a happy marriage but it’s clear that the level of love that ignited it isn’t there anymore. There’s a quick moment near the end of the episode where Victoria is trying to cheer Timothy up and she’s telling him how lucky he is with all the stuff he has. She starts by saying, “You have this amazing wife…”. And she looks at him and waits for him to confirm but he hesitates. She looks at him a little more sternly and he says, “Yeah yeah, an amazing wife.” We can already see that she wants more than he does.

Their kids are all really weird. That, in and of itself, creates conflict because nobody is in sync with each other. But really, it’s Saxon, who constantly says or does things that are socially uncalibrated (such as hit on women when it’s inappropriate), which makes his siblings feel uncomfortable.

This is actually a great way to create a character who infuses conflict into a story – build a character who is socially uncalibrated. Pretty much everything they say is going to infuse the scene with an uneven tenor. Scenes can never be boring if that character is around.

With the three girlfriends, there’s this clear hierarchy. Jaclyn is at the top. She’s the TV star. She’s had the most success of the three girls. Then you have Kate, who isn’t famous but her husband is extremely successful, which has given her a lot of power and status. Yet, it’s clear that she’s a little bit jealous of Jaclyn’s success. Finally, you have Kate, who is living a normal life. And that normalcy is being spotlighted now that she’s alone with these two extremely successful women. And it’s starting to eat at her. We can see that she’s the first one who finishes her wine and refills it. Cause it’s hard to stay sober around these two where she’s being reminded of her lack of success.

A great screenwriting lesson to take away from this episode is LOOMING PROBLEMS. You should always be adding looming problems to TV shows because TV shows require a lot more time to be filled up. And, therefore, if you don’t place rewards down the road, the viewers will wonder why they’re hanging around for so long.

Here, we get this scene where Timothy takes an urgent call and learns that the Wall Street Journal is about to publish a very damning story about his company this week. And there’s nothing he can do about it. That’s a looming problem – a reason to keep watching the show. We want to see what happens when that news story drops. Will his entire career blow up?

Also, it does so much work for the character in the meantime. Cause every time we come back to Timothy, we can see the weight of that looming problem on top of him. Whether he’s happy, sad, having a good moment, a bad one, scolding his children, enjoying a fishing excursion – it’s another layer on top of the character.

This is how you create three-dimensional characters, guys. You add these layers so that the character is not just who he’s presenting himself to be in that moment. There are other things going on with him.

Ditto for Rick (Walton Goggins). He isn’t coming into this story naked. He brought a story with him. He’s coming here to do something. We don’t know what it is yet but we know it’s consuming him. Which creates the same effect. Everything he does is complicated by this thing that’s looming over him.

What also amazes me about Mike White is that he was able to set up all 12 of these main characters but then he also sets up 8 other characters! There are smaller characters, such as the two hotel workers who like each other. We have Belinda’s son. We have (spoiler) Tanya’s crazy husband back in the mix! We have a potential female love interest for Chelsea.

I don’t know how he does it.

Even if this wasn’t as good as Season 1 or 2, I was riveted the whole way through. This is easily my number 1 show. I can’t wait for next week. Mike White clearly has a plan here. You can see it in how confident he is in all of these characters. My only real complaint is that the title sequence song isn’t as catchy as the first two seasons.

:)