Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Premise: After clones rise up to rule the world, it’s up to a 22 year old shoe salesman to take back the planet.
About: Today’s script is based on a 2010 book that was preemptively picked up for the movie rights by Dimension Films. Adapting the novel is Edward Ricourt, who wrote one of my favorite specs back in the day, Now You See Me. The original pitch behind the book was that it came from two bioengineering experts who decided to prep the world, in a humorous way, for the impending clone revolution.
Writer: Edward Ricourt (based on the book by Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson)
Details: 122 pages (2011 draft?)
You know, if it wasn’t for the one-two punch of Deadpool and Solo these next couple of weeks, I’d be pretty bummed. We haven’t been seeing a lot of good writing around these parts. Unless you’ve signed up for a karate class in the Cobra Kai dojo. I want to do an article on how that show is the best example IN HISTORY of how to reboot a franchise. I’m dropping hyperbole bombs here. Hit the floor.
Edward Ricourt reminds me of a sweeter time, a time when one could write a clever spec and have it turn into a 350 million dollar sleeper hit that spawned a sequel. Sure, that sequel may have been hijacked by strange Chinese money contingencies that required half the film to appear in China despite the fact that it made no sense whatsoever, ultimately destroying the franchise, but I’d rather be the guy who wrote a movie that had a chance at becoming a franchise than the guy who didn’t sell anything at all.
Here, Ricourt takes on another high concept idea, this one an adaptation. Let’s see how he does.
22 year old Ethan Moss moves back to his small town after a failed stint in New York City. After he’s forced to take a job at a local shoe store, his parents become worried that he’s becoming a loser. So they buy a clone to motivate Ethan. If you’re unsure why buying a clone of someone would motivate them, you’re not alone. But such is the logic of this story.
After Ethan’s clone steals his childhood crush, Ethan’s had enough and tells him to leave. But all this is happening while the “clone version” of Rosa Parks is playing out across the world. A clone is given the death penalty for killing his asshole original. After the verdict, angry clones everywhere rise up, and within 24 hours, they’ve taken control of the planet.
Ethan escapes into the woods, and a year and a half later comes back to find that clones rule the world. Luckily, Ethan finds his old bestie Kyle, who’s been pretending to be a clone in order not to be killed, and they decide that they’re going to find the secret underground cloning plant that’s pumping out thousands of clones and destroy it. Cause it’s totally believable that a 22 year old shoe salesman could achieve such a feat whereas the collective might of the world’s military could not.
Ethan and Kyle run into some girl named Samantha who’s totally badass and maybe a clone, and the three of them go on a search for the facility. Hot on their tail is Clone Ethan, who’s still furious at Ethan for, um, existing I guess. Will Ethan, Kyle, and Samantha save the world? Or will they be stopped by terrible source material?
Let me start off by saying Edward Ricourt is not this bad of a writer. I’m willing to bet this source material is abysmal. With that said, he would not be the first writer responsible for turning bad source material into a good screenplay. It actually happens quite often. One of the ways you survive in this business is to find good takes on bad ideas. Cobra Kai’s success proves it’s possible.
I’m not sure what the hell is going on in this script. I think it wants to be Zombieland. But it takes itself too seriously. And you can’t take things seriously when you have a 22 year old nobody kid doing something that world leaders could not.
That was my first issue. The book feels like it was written by a teenager. The opening tells us that Ethan has just returned from New York after doing everything in his power to make it. HE’S TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD!! This is exactly how a teenager views the world. That the ancient old age of 22 is when people give up on their big city dreams.
The bigger problem, however, is that the concept doesn’t distinguish itself from other post-apocalypse movies. Everybody writes post-apocalypse movies. Robots are taking over the world. Zombies are taking over the world. So if you’re going to play in that sandbox, you have to decide what unique properties your concept brings to the table and exploit them.
What do clones bring to the table that robots and zombies do not?
They can blend in. A clone looks just like a regular person. That makes them sneaky dangerous. You could walk into a room of seemingly normal people and be dead within seconds. That’s the danger of fighting clones. But that isn’t explored at all. It’s a footnote in the revolution. Instead, clones take over the same way robots do. Or zombies do. And we’ve already seen that.
As for structure, I’m at my wit’s end trying to teach writers proper structure because nobody listens and they make the same mistakes over and over again. Movies hate large passages of time. That’s because time jumps obliterate story momentum. Therefore, the decision to cover 2 years of time in this script kills its chances of being good before it even starts.
If you’re writing a movie, I beg of you to use one continuous time frame. There’s a reason that Get Out and A Quiet Place are the two biggest breakout genre films of the past year. They are short continuous time frames. They each have teaser flashbacks at the beginning of the film – which is fine. But after that, they have super short and continuous time frames.
Now before you rage against me in the comments, I’m not saying that all movies must adhere to this rule. All I’m saying is that the screenplay format hates it. So if you incorporate it, you will be fighting a battle with your screenplay all the way until “The End.”
So, is there anything worth celebrating here? Well, maybe we can have a little monologue lesson. The script has a monologue in its first act where Ethan is explaining to his old crush why he left New York. He tells the tale of the investment banker and the fisherman. Here’s the monologue:
“The fisherman’s boat is filled with large yellowfin tuna. The banker asks how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replies, “Only a little while. Just enough to support my family.” The rest of the time, the fisherman spends his day sleeping late, playing with his children, taking siestas with his wife, sipping wine, and playing guitar with his “amigos” — a full and busy life. The investor says “I’m an Ivy League MBA. I can help you. You should spend more time fishing. With the proceeds, you can buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Soon, you would control the product, processing, and distribution! Of course you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Los Angeles and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.” The fisherman asks, “But how long will this take?” The banker replies, “Perhaps 15 to 20 years.” “But what then?” asks the fisherman. The banker laughed and said, “You become rich. The fisherman asks, “Millions. Okay, then what?” The investor thought about it, and replied, “Then you would retire. You could move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
This isn’t the greatest monologue, but it’ll do. You see, writing monologues always used to frustrate me. I didn’t understand how to structure them. I knew they had to sound important or weighty. But I could never shape them into something that worked. They were always elusive.
Eventually, I learned that good monologues are like mini-stories. They should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They should entertain the listener (be interesting). And like any good story, they should have a moral. That’s how you give monologues a point. And this one does a fairly good job of that. So if you’re ever struggling with your monologue, just remember that each monologue is one character trying to tell another character a story.
Unfortunately, nothing else here is okay. This was messy. Thank God Deadpool’s only 48 hours away.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whether you’re adapting a big sprawling book or a big sprawling idea in your head, the first question you should ask is: How can I condense this story to tell it in the shortest continuous timeline possible? Now you may not be able to. You may find that your specific story – like The Martian – needs to be non-continuous. That’s fine. As long as you ask the question first.
