Genre: Science-Fiction
Premise: (from Hit List) An Air Force cargo plane on a routine delivery breaks up over the desert. The survivors can’t radio for help, but they pick up a mysterious signal. They aren’t alone.
About: This script finished with 25 votes on last year’s Hit List. It is the feature adaptation of a short the writers made. Take note ye young writers. If you can put anything on film, anything at all, it’s better than nothing. Once you have a script or an idea, you become a promoter. And you must figure out ways to promote your script. Starting with a short movie is a great way to do this. — Writing partners Daniel Stewart and Noah Griffith wrote some episodes on the Spike adaptation of The Mist. They have a couple of other sci-fi projects in development as well.
Writers: Daniel Stewart & Noah Griffith
Details: 90 pages
I’m still pretty pissed about yesterday. I’m not sure who I’m more mad at, the director or the company that greenlit a terrible script (Netflix).
But a funny thing happened today. I was taking a Lyft home (I don’t do Uber) and I got into a conversation with Larry the Lyft Driver about Netflix. I’m always interested in what non-industry people think about movies. And Larry loved Netflix so I asked him, “What do you think when you see a movie that’s branded as a Netflix Original? Are you more or less likely to watch it?”
He answered without hesitation, “More likely.” I asked him why. He said he felt like the Netflix brand was a seal of quality he couldn’t get from other movies. He liked How it Ends. He liked Extinction, as well. It was a reminder that people like myself who live inside this industry bubble don’t see things the same way regular movie watchers do. I’ve been convinced that Netflix is dumping shitty movies on their viewers for two years now. But if their customers are anything like Larry the Lyft Driver, they don’t feel the same way.
I bring this up because today’s script is the ultimate Netflix film. I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix stole this from Sony at some point. The main difference between this Netflix film and other Netflix films, though? This one has a chance of being good.
We’re on a C-130 Cargo plane with four Air Force soldiers – the good-looking carefree Carter, the blue collar lover of lit, Swodzinski, the skinny nervous kid of the group, Freeman, and the beautiful and intelligent, Taylor. Out of nowhere, the plane is hit with turbulence and seconds later, they plummet towards the earth.
The group is able to parachute out in time, and end up in a desert. Swod is injured, so the first order of business is finding him a medkit. Carter and Taylor head to the wreckage, and after locating the kit, notice a giant antennae farm in the distance, which is pumping out a grating signal to their walkie-talkies. Oh, and they also find an old sign buried in the sand. “Quarantine.”
After Taylor decides to look for more stuff, Carter heads back to see a group of soldiers on horses ride up and kill Swod and Freeman! Those same soldiers are then attacked by an 8 foot tall creature! Freaked out, Carter makes a run for it, eventually running into an old Cold War facility with a bunch of dead bodies inside. The creature corners him there, but he’s saved at the last second by Taylor.
Or, at least, who he thinks is Taylor. Once safe, Taylor reveals herself to be a 7-years-older version of Taylor, and she regales Carter in a shocking tale. You see, they’re just clones. And they’ve been grown here, over and over again, to tangle with this alien in the hopes of jamming its signals so that it can’t phone home and order an invasion.
Utterly gobsmacked, Carter realizes that unless he wants to keep getting regenerated forever, he has to take down the alien beast once and for all.
A long long time ago, I wrote a time travel script. In this script, I came up with a scenario by which the time travel was being generated by aliens. When I sent the script out, every reader reacted the same way. “As soon as you mentioned aliens, I was done.” I didn’t understand this at the time. I thought the idea was awesome. What could be better than one trippy sci-fi element? How bout two! What I eventually learned is that readers tend to give you one outrageous conceit and that’s it.
This isn’t always the case. For example, if you set up two conceits right away, readers may go with it. But if you introduce a second outrageous conceit late in the screenplay, most people won’t. And that was a big issue with Fragment. As soon as they said, “We’re clones,” I threw up my arms. I was upset because until that point, the script was good. But that instantly killed my suspension of disbelief.
Remember, all suspension of disbelief is, is your story devolving into something so unbelievable that the reader becomes aware the script is written. A script is successful only when the reader forgets that they’re reading a story. That should be the goal of every writer.
I suspect this script is a casualty of not outlining. I say that because it displays all the signs of writing into a corner and then hoping you can come up with a brilliant idea at the last second to explain it all. Which is always when you end up with endings like, “They’re all clones.”
That’s not to say nothing here works. This is a great setup for a movie. You can cut a great trailer to this. You can market it easily. A director’s going to want to direct this. Most importantly, producers are going to want to produce this. Even though the script’s execution isn’t there yet, producers are willing to get it there because they know audiences like these kinds of movie.
It’s a dirty little secret screenwriters hate to admit. The more marketable your concept, the less critical producers will be of your execution. I can speak to this myself. I’ve read some really bad scripts from amateur screenwriters where I thought, “You know, if I had a production house and a studio slush fund, I might buy this.” That’s how much I believed in the idea. What I’d then do is buy the script, then get a writer I like and have them write the script. And this is what good producers do, guys. It’s easy to buy the slam dunks. It’s harder when you have to shape the coal into a diamond yourself. So I’ll always remind writers that a marketable concept gives you a huge advantage in the script game.
I wish I liked this more. I used to love these movies. I just felt like this execution is sloppy. Too many dots to connect. The explanation went on for too long (a good sign that your climax is convoluted). Then again, does my opinion really matter? I suspect Larry the Lyft Driver would love this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Mix giant sci-fi tropes at your own peril. Once again, you can sometimes get away with it if you introduce both conceits right away. One of my favorite scripts is Robots vs. Zombies. Two major disparate tropes. But it works because the writer establishes both tropes within the first ten pages. We get it with Edge of Tomorrow as well. We establish the aliens and time-looping within the first act. Much better than writing yourself into a corner then trying to escape with a giant cliche sci-fi explanation.
