Genre: Action/Period/Heist
Premise: A unit in the American army in World War 2 goes AWOL in an attempt to steal looted treasure from a Nazi train.
About: This script sold for a million dollars back in 1989. Disney snatched it up the second they read it. Unfortunately, the writing team, Rick Jaffa and Doug Richardson, would nearly come to blows after the sale and never wrote another script together. But Richardson would go on to write Die Hard 2 and Jaffa would become one of the most successful screenwriters in the business. You may have heard of a little movie he penned called, “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
Writers: Rick Jaffa & Doug Richardson
Details: 128 pages
Suits’ Gabriel Macht for Mac?
Today we’re going to discuss an overlooked screenwriting topic – the faulty premise.
The faulty premise should be up there in the top 5 of every screenwriter’s “avoid at all costs” list. This is because a faulty premise cannot be fixed through rewrites. So what ends up happening is that you rewrite and rewrite and rewrite the script, to the point of almost perfect execution… but it doesn’t matter. Because the premise is still faulty.
We’ll talk about this in more detail after the plot synopsis.
It’s World War 2 and the tide is turning for the Allies. It’s looking like evil will be usurped. But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t a lot of gnarly battles going on.
We meet universal problem-solver and effortlessly cool, Mac Mccann, when he’s blowing up a train tunnel to stop any future Nazi trains from getting through. Mac’s superior, a guy named O’Connor, HATES Mac, mainly because Mac doesn’t play by the rulebook (he’s the only guy in the military with long hair) yet always wins in the end, getting all the glory.
After liberating a small Italian town, Mac and his unit – which includes Sewage (big and dumb), Hands (great with his hands), Lips (can talk himself out of anything), Rex (an actor), and Pope (religious) – have been revealed to have hit up a local Italian bank and stolen all their money. It turns out Mac and his crew are using this war to line their pockets.
So it’s not surprising when they hear that the Nazis are loading up on treasure from the Jews and anyone else they can steal from, that Mac has the brilliant idea to rob the train all this treasure will be transported in. This’ll ensure that when they get back stateside, they’ll be drownin’ in monaaaaaaay.
There isn’t much resistance from his crew so off they go – DIRECTLY INTO GERMAN OCCUPIED TERRITORY. This requires them to steal a German truck and dress like German soldiers. And it turns out that, except for Rex, none of these dingbats is very good at pretending to be German. They’re identified at the very first checkpoint they cross.
But they somehow escape, keep traversing, meet up with a marooned all-black tank crew, have to steal another tank from a local village, before they’re able to head the Treasure Train off at the pass and enact their final plan. But will they be able to execute said plan? And what happens when one of the cars turns out to be carrying something more than treasure?
Okay, did you note the faulty premise?
Actually, you should’ve spotted it in the logline.
You can’t have the primary goal of your heroes be to steal treasure that comes from innocent civilians in World War 2. Maybe you could pull it off if this was set in the modern day. But a lot of this is Jewish treasure. To have your heroes stealing from Jews in World War 2…. I’m sorry but there’s no way you can make us root for those characters. It’s too big a hill to climb.
The way you do it is the way Indiana Jones does it. He steals treasure and gives it back to its rightful owners.
Now, whenever I see a writer do this, they always try and backtrack later on in the script. So, in the case of “Hell Bent and Back,” once Mac and his team are on the train, they discover that one of the cars is full of children. Which leads to Mac having to decide whether he wants to save the children or take the treasure.
Of course, he chooses the children. And it’s actually a well-executed character arc. This guy has been all about the Benjamins for two hours. But he finally changes, realizing that helping others is more important.
The problem is, it doesn’t matter because you’re still subjecting the reader to two hours of your character wanting to steal Jewish World War 2 treasure for himself. You can’t make up for that.
Which is too bad because the script is actually fun.
It has a bunch of well-done set pieces. There’s an early one where Mac’s unit, dressed as German soldiers in their German truck, come across a checkpoint and the real Germans inspect the truck. The Germans suss out that something is off and the next thing you know, it’s complete mayhem.
I love when writers do this. Because what usually happens in the scripts I read is that the writer will protect his protagonists. He’ll make sure, when his characters get to this checkpoint, that the bad guys never get too close to figuring them out.
In writing, you never want to help your protagonists. If anything, you want to be your protagonists’s worst enemy. You want to make their lives a living hell. If they’re at a checkpoint, don’t take the easy way out. Have the Germans realize who they are. I guarantee your scenes will be way more exciting once you adapt that principle.
The script definitely has an old-school feel to it. In that sense, it does things that I miss. There’s this entire set-piece in a small town where Mac’s unit is trying to secure a tank – and the writers take their time, set it up, build it, cover it from multiple character angles – so by the time the Germans figure out what’s going on, it results in a giant climax that’s emphatically earned.
You don’t see that in today’s movies much. We move in and out of these big sequences without the requisite setup, without the use of suspense. It’s slam, bam, thank you crayola crayon, and, therefore, it feels empty. Like it’s over before it started. Don’t be afraid to build up your set pieces. The reader will afford you as much time as you want as long as we feel like we’re building towards a big cool moment.
This script reminded me of a really REALLY early prequel to Guardians of the Galaxy, as strange as that may sound. Mac is Starlord. Sewage is Drax. Lips is Rocket Raccoon. The characters even start out in prison. It goes to show how dependable this formula is. I just wish they’d have found a non-faulty premise. Cause that’s clearly why this movie never got made.
Script link: Hell Bent and Back
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re ever lucky enough to get your script as far up the food chain as Hell Bent and Back, one of the biggest things that will be scrutinized is: Will we root for these characters? And if the characters are doing something reprehensible, then the studios are not going to pull the trigger. It’s too risky. If you want to write more interesting material where your heroes exist in that moral gray area, that’s fine. But you’ll have to write stories that have a much lower budget. Cause if you’re writing something that costs as much as Hell Bent and Back? I guarantee you they want their protagonists to be likable.
