Genre: Period
Premise: A young man is made a slave by the Spartans just as they begin preparing for a war against the mighty Persian army.
About: George Clooney fucking loved this book (going so far as to say it’s better than Gladiator!), immediately snatching it up after publication for his production company. He would later hire David Self to write the script (Road to Perdition) and field monthly calls from Bruce Willis, who was dying to be in the film. Things got so hot, Michael Mann (Heat, Last of the Mohicans) attached himself as director, and everything was looking like a go. But ultimately, the drafts weren’t good enough to get the film into production. I hear that the book tackles some controversial topics, such as the Spartans bisexuality during training. But none of that is present in the script, which is too bad. This script needed something worth talking about. Some controversy might’ve spiced things up.
Writer: David Self (based on the novel by Steven Pressfield)
Details: 137 pages (2011 draft)
I’m not sure what the endgame was with this one.
Five years prior, 300 had come out, covering the same territory. If I were to guess, Mann wanted to make a realistic (as opposed to ‘comic book’) version of that famous “300” battle.
Unfortunately, Mann’s choices have become questionable over the last decade. This is a man who used to be one of the top 5 directors in Hollywood. He was the David Fincher of his time – cool and hip, the style every director emulated. Christopher Nolan and Ben Affleck routinely credit him as a major inspiration.
If you’ve never seen Last of the Mohicans, make a night of it. It’s amazing (especially those last 20 minutes!). The way Mann brings together imagery and sound and score and acting and direction – it’s top-notch. So it’s hard to target where he went wrong in his career. Although I suppose his last five films leave some clues.
Ali – This one was hard to judge because all anyone talked about was Will Smith’s turn as a serious actor. I remember it looking beautiful (like all of Mann’s films) but don’t remember much else.
Miami Vice – This never knew what it wanted to be. It had one foot in the show and the other in something that had nothing to do with the show, leaving most audiences confused.
Collateral – This was probably the best of his last five movies, and a big reason for that was the tight premise. It goes to show what happens when you stay focused (an issue we’ll talk about with today’s script). Still, there wasn’t anything here to latch onto. Mann had made a fun but forgettable film, something he’d never done before.
Public Enemies – A lot of the same problems as Miami Vice in that it wanted to cover a lot of ground and yet, in doing so, covered very little.
Blackhat – I remember reading this script and thinking, “What is this even about?” So I wasn’t surprised when the trailer came out and everybody asked, “What was that even about?” And less surprised when no one saw it.
I think Mann’s script problems boil down to being more interested in moments than the big picture. He loves when a character drives down a street, sees a wolf, stops, and he and the wolf exchange stares – symbolism and subtext fucking each other harder than first date sex. Pulling those intense moments together into a cohesive whole, however, is his achilles heel. Speaking of Achilles, let’s head back to Roman times for our plot breakdown, shall we?
It’s 480 B.C. at the Phokian Border in Greece, also know as “The Gates of Fire.” It’s here where we meet Zeones, who’s been rendered immobile after a bloody battle. He’s snatched up by a passing Egyptian army, who, had they come a day later, would’ve found Zeo dead.
They ask Zeo to tell them how he ended up here and he goes into his story, a la Old Rose in Titanic. When Zeo was a young man, the Argives came to his home and killed his family. Zeo survived, and would later stumble upon the Spartan army, who at the time were in an ongoing war with the Argives. They kindly take Zeo in as a slave.
From there, he learns the strict ways of the Spartan code. Strangely, Zeo doesn’t participate in any of these activities. He spends most of his time on the bench, watching the big boys dunk and alley-oop.
Meanwhile, there is a growing sense that the Persians, who at the time ruled half the known world, were going to invade Greece and turn the Spartans into Spartan mashed potatoes. This sucks because the Spartans haven’t even conquered their own country yet (the Argives), which means they have to battle them before they can mount a defense against the Persians.
This whole time, Zeo watches on with a mixture of curiosity and fear (mostly fear). Oddly, almost every other character has a more interesting story than our hero. Some want to be traitors and join the Persians. Others have fathered babies with friends’ wives. Some chose to die by Spartan ritual rather than admit weakness. The most Zeo does is listen real good.
Everything culminates when the Spartan Army crosses the mountains to head the Persian army off, and finds that famous wedge in the rocks where they can mount their historic defense.
It’s never a good sign when you’re 50 pages into a script and you don’t know what it’s about. It’s actually not uncommon for professionals to make this mistake as some of them will assume that whoever reads the script will be told the premise ahead of time (in this case, that it’s about the famous Roman-Persian battle) and let that pitch act as the reason to keep reading.
But I’ll always contest that a script must work on its own. You can’t assume forces outside the pages will do the work for you. And that’s one of many problems with Gates of Fire. There is no clear story evolving. And there is no clear structure present either.
I never got a sense of when the first act ended or when we hit the midpoint. Inciting incidents and lowest points must have been grounded at the time this was written. And while it’s fair to say, “Not every script should adhere to the Hollywood 3-act structure,” you need SOME structure to focus your story. This had none.
A big reason for that was the main character, Zeo. Not only did he have zero goal (this from a guy whose family was slaughtered – could a clearer potential goal have been presented??) but no clear motivation either. It’s a bad sign when your main character is the weakest character in the story. Zeo was not active. He was quiet. He was weak. He had no personality. He never made a choice (all the other characters made choices for him). The only reason he seemed to be in the story was to see all the other characters do interesting stuff.
There’s a very simple test to know if your main character is compelling or not: Imagine pitching the part to an actor. If you have to say things like, “He’s timid.” “He rarely speaks.” “He’s weak.” “He has no personality – he doesn’t get mad, sad, angry. He isn’t funny. He’s bland.” “He watches others do things while doing nothing himself.” I mean, in the first giant script battle, Zeo spends the entire scene watching from the sidelines. Do you see any actor wanting to play that part? Of course not. Which means it’s time to rewrite the character.
In that sense, the solution to this screenplay was clear. It needed to focus on someone else. Anyone other than Zeo. I get that the main character’s job, most of the time, is to act as a stabilizing force. He needs to be grounded. But if you dig him into the ground too deeply, we won’t be able to see him anymore.
This speaks to a bigger issue, which is that sometimes, when you want to write something epic, you forget to zoom in. You think, “This has to be BIG!” And so all you focus on is the bigness. But if you don’t connect us to a few characters on the micro level, then nothing that happens on the macro will matter.
That’s what James Cameron did with Titanic. He knew if he only jumped back and forth between a bunch of people on the ship, we’d never care about the tragedy. You might as well read the summary on Wikipedia. So he made us fall in love with two of the characters, ensuring that we felt what the people on that ship felt.
I’d go so far as to argue the bigger the stage, the more you need to zoom in. So if you’re telling a story about World War 2, find a very specific story within that subject matter. Once you’ve done that, make us fall in love with and care for two (or three, or four) specific characters in that predicament.
We never got that here, which is unfortunate. Gates of Fire did have some interesting moments. Just nothing to hold them together.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I hate when heroes are on the sidelines for major moments in a script. I hate it. This is your hero! If there’s a major battle going on or a huge set-piece and your hero isn’t in the scene? You should probably rewrite that scene to include them. And if your response is, “Well, the way he’s written, he wouldn’t be in that scene.” That would be the argument here, I’d assume. Zeo is a slave so he wouldn’t be able to participate in a battle. If that’s the place you find yourself in, you’ve probably picked the wrong character to lead your story.
