The winning script of the Second Wave Showdown – and the long-time Scriptshadow reader who wrote the screenplay – gets a review!
Genre: Action-Adventure
Premise: After one of their own murders a Comanche boy, a skirmish leaves a small group of Spanish cavalrymen stranded without horses deep in hostile territory, facing the dangers posed by vengeful warriors, nature and each other.
About: A few months ago, we had a giant showdown (screenwriting competition). This past weekend, I put up five scripts that just missed making that showdown to see if I had overlooked a gem or two. You guys voted on your favorite one and that ended up being this script, Enemy. I know that the writer, Clint Williams, has been reading the site forever. So it’s fun to see his latest script get featured.
Writer: Clint Williams
Details: 110 pages
I have an inkling that Westerns are going to make a small comeback. I know this isn’t a prototypical Western but it’s Western-adjacent. I believe this because the Superhero genre is limping badly. It may finally be on its way out if they don’t come up with a fresh new superhero franchise soon. And, in the chasm that that genre will leave behind, it only makes sense that one of the most reliable genres in Hollywood history will start churning out movies again.
The year is 1731. We are in West Texas. A group of Spanish warriors, led by Tomas De Torquemada, are up in Texas territory looking to spread the word of the Lord Jesus Christ. But that plan gets interrupted when they encounter a Comanche town. Since the Comanche men are out hunting, Tomas orders his team to burn the town down (he doesn’t kill anybody though).
Later, as they continue up north, they encounter a young Comanche boy. Cristobal, the troublemaker in the group, proceeds to kill him, which pisses Tomas off. Now, he says, they’re going to come after us.
And come after them they do. While camping out in the prairie, a group of roughly a dozen Comanche warriors on horses attacks. There are casualties on both sides but the Spanish lose their horses.
A second round of fighting ensues, ending in a stalemate and Tomas decides it’s time to escape north. So the group heads north into the forest. There, the Comanche, led by Nacona, whose son is the one who was killed, strategically sets fires throughout the forest to push the Spanish where they want them to go. After three days of intense trekking, they end up right back at their old camp. They were tricked!
The two sides gear up for a final battle but, just as it’s about to commence, a new enemy enters the fray, pushing the Comanche towards the Spanish. This showdown was inevitable. Who will win? Who will perish? Only one way to find out (script link below!).
Let me start off by saying what I liked most about this script. I liked the conflict between Tomas and Cristobal. Every time we were inside of this group and the tension between these two rose up, I was entertained.
And it was a smart move by Clint. Cause one of the things I always maintain about screenplays is that you want to focus on the things that give you the most bang for your buck. If two characters are going to be around each other for 80% of your script, and you can come up with a compelling unresolved conflict between them, that’s going to pay dividends in 10, 15, maybe even 20 scenes.
The other conflict in the story, between the Spanish and the Comanche, did not work for me. And I kept asking myself, “Why?” I eventually figured it out. It came down to two things. Number one is that the side that’s done the bad thing (killing someone) is the side we’re asked to root for. The Spanish kill this Comanche warrior’s son yet we stay with the Spanish the whole movie. Why should I be invested in the “bad” side? Why should I want to be with them?
Number two, the hook that got me to pick this script was the Spanish getting stuck in a huge underdog situation. From what I understood, this small group of people were stuck in this overwhelmingly uneven battle where they had no chance of survival. Underdog scenarios are one of the most dependably dramatic scenarios you can write. Audiences always root for underdogs.
But based on what I was reading, this was more of an even battle. There were more Comanches than Spanish but it wasn’t a ridiculously high number. Somewhere around 15 Comanche I think? Meanwhile our Spanish group had WAY BETTER technology. They had guns and armor. The Comanche had bows-and-arrows.
This “even battle” was solidified after the first skirmish when the Spanish took out so many of the Comanche that the Comanche momentarily gave up and decided to collect their dead.
In storytelling, understanding how to craft a collection of variables that make the audience root for who you want them to root for is an essential skill. As writers, you should be able to set up the dynamic exactly how you want and then dial it up or down depending on how intense you want it to be. Unfortunately, we don’t get that here.
I’m going to finish off by saying something some of you may push back on, but hear me out. If this had been 200 Comanche warriors against five Spanish soldiers—that’s a movie I would see. I would not see this current movie. The odds are too even.
In storytelling, the safer we feel about your heroes’ situation, the less dramatic tension there is in the script. And I felt very safe here. But 200 Comanche warriors chasing a group of five? I would feel an unending anxiety throughout the script, which is what you want your reader to feel. You want them feeling that unease. That’s what keeps them reading.
You might counter my suggestion by saying, “Making the Comanches 200 versus 5 is ridiculous. But how in the world would the Spanish soldiers escape?” That’s exactly my point!!! That question you just asked is the same question readers are going to ask: “How in the world are they going to get out of this?” Which is exactly what makes reading the script so exciting! You want to see how they pull off the impossible.
Do you absolutely need 200 Comanches to make this script work? No. There are other combinations of variables to weight things heavily in the Comanches’ favor. My point is that one of those must be established. Because the way this script was constructed, I never feared much for the Spanish soldiers. Even at their worst, I thought the odds were pretty good for them to survive. And the second the reader believes your heroes are safe, you’re done—because they’re not being entertained anymore.
I think this script is okay. It’s definitely cinematic. But I can’t personally recommend it only because I didn’t think it gave me enough. I think you got 60% of what the concept promised. I need that number to be up above 85%. Simply making the odds much worse for the Spanish could do wonders for this story.
Script link: Enemy
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Yesterday I talked about risk. It’s important that we continue to take risks as writers because the lack of risk will equal a predictable screenplay. So, I asked myself, what risk could’ve been taken here? Because it’s not just the risk itself you must take into consideration—it’s the aftermath. The script still needs to make sense. I could have a herd of buffalo mow all the Spanish down, eliminating the threat to the Comanche. That’s a risk. But what would that do to my screenplay? The story would be over. Instead, what I would’ve done here is, at the midpoint (a great spot to take a big risk), I would’ve had Cristobal kill Tomas. And now, the devil is in charge of your group. I would be much more excited to read the second half of the script had that happened than this draft.
