Is Karma the next Matrix, the next Wanted, or the next Assassins Creed?
Genre: Action/Supernatural
Premise: After an aimless woman wakes up from a short coma, she begins exhibiting special abilities.
About: David Guggenheim is one of those writers who experienced the screenwriting dream. It’s one thing to sell a script. A lot of writers have done that. But to get a script made into a movie is a rare thing. When Guggenheim sold his first script, Safe House, it just happened to be exactly what Universal Studios was looking to make at the time. So they fast-tracked it, and 8 months after Guggenheim sold his screenplay, his film was being made. That’s insane. And the thing is, when you get a produced credit from one of the big studios, you’re set for the next decade at least. And probably for life. Because writers who get stuff made are highly coveted. People think if they’ve done it before, they can do it again. So you’re going to keep getting work. Guggeneheim would eventually parlay his success into the show, Designated Survivor. On this one, he’s partnering with super-producer, Simon Kinberg.
Writer: David Guggenheim
Details: 128 pages
It’s the first spec sale of the year!
And if it’s going to be the first, it’s gotta be big! Big concept. Big page count. Big rating on Scriptshadow, though? Let’s find out.
Rachel is a 30 year old grade-school teacher who’s sleepwalking through life. It’s not that she isn’t motivated. But she has no direction. Her one love – painting – is something she happens to be terrible at. Her younger sister thinks she’s dying of boredom and wants Rachel to move to Chicago with her.
Meanwhile, we get a look at some Indiana Jones motherf#$%#r running through caves and throwing ancient daggers at people. This is Boone. Boone is a force to be reckoned with, according to Aegis International, a private security company that has dedicated all its resources to capturing Boone, something it’s been unable to do.
But that’s about to change. One day Rachel gets blindsided by a car, then a few days later wakes up in the hospital just as the doctor is trying to decide what to do with her. Rachel makes a suggestion, citing, word for word, an operating procedure from a 1915 English medical journal. Huh? How did she know that?
But that’s not all Rachel knows. A couple of days later, in the elevator, she has a fluent conversation in Arabic. But Rachel doesn’t know Arabic. Freaked out, Rachel heads home, only to have Aegis CEO John Gartner burst into her apartment with a team of men. He explains that she needs to come with them now! A minute later, a car BARRELS THROUGH THE WALL. It’s Boone! Who starts shooting at Rachel. Chaos ensues and Rachel flees!
John finds Rachel later and explains to her that she’s special. And if she wants to find out how special, she’ll come with him. He flies her to Aegis in France, where they begin the training sessions! You’re a “past-lifer” he explains to her. Someone with the ability to recall your past lives. This means that any skill anyone in your past lives had, you can obtain. “How?” She asks.
“Follow me.”
Rachel is placed in the “womb,” which allows her to be guided through an advanced form of regression therapy. Here, she can go directly into her past lives. And with every life she experiences, she retains their skills. Magician, samurai warrior, pianist, chess prodigy, you name it. Get in my way and I’ll check-mate yo a$$. Most past-lifers can only access up to 15 of their past lives. But Rachel is special. She completes 15 in her first day!
A newly energized Rachel is now ready to take on her nemesis – Boone. Aegis locates Boone hiding in Germany. So off they go. Oh, but if you think you know what’s going on, think again. When Rachel finally comes face-to-face with Boone, he tells her that it’s all a lie. That he isn’t the enemy. John Gartner is! Hmmm, is Boone just trying to protect himself? Or is he telling the truth? I know one thing’s for sure. Ya better protect your queen, b#$%h.
CHESS CHAMPION!
Okay, so let’s talk about this idea because it’s uncanny that I’m reading this after yesterday’s post about the next Amateur Showdown genre. For those who didn’t catch it, the next showdown is for HIGH CONCEPT scripts. “Karma” is the DEFINITION of a high concept. Here, the writer takes an idea that was accessible to everyone – past lives – and sexes it up. What if you could access those post lives? What if you could access the abilities of the people who lived those lives? You would be… superhuman. And just like that, you’ve got a high concept.
A common through-line with high concept ideas is that, when you hear them, you wonder why you didn’t come up with the idea yourself. We’ve all read that news story about the person who wakes up from a coma and all of a sudden starts talking fluently in a language they don’t know. Why didn’t we ask how to turn that into a movie? Guggenheim did, and he’s reaping the benefits.
It’s also an example of how to come up with a high-powered movie ready version of an idea as opposed to a boring variation of that idea. Cloud Atlas was also about past lives. But instead of packaging it in a cool action format, it expanded it out into a three hour drama. Which of these ideas do you think an audience is more interested in?
So Guggenheim gets an A+ in that department.
But I have the same issue with this script that I do with a lot of Guggenheim’s scripts. The execution is too by-the-book. I understand that these Matrixy concepts need to go a certain way. But if I’m predicting things that are happening 60 pages ahead of time, that means you’re not taking any chances. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still fun. But there’s a difference between those summer movies you see once then never watch again and the ones that you keep coming back to. The ones you keep coming back to are the ones where the writers took chances.
The writers and scripts I’m most impressed by are the ones where I’m reading them and thinking, “I could never do that.” I mentioned The Misery Index yesterday, a semi-finalist in my contest. When I read the dialogue in that script, I knew that if you put me in a library with all the greatest writers of all time teaching me how to write for 50 straight years, I still could not be able to write dialogue like that.
Yet, in Karma, I feel like the top 30% of writers here on Scriptshadow could write it just as well as Guggenheim. I’ll give you an example. One of the major components of this screenplay is the past lives. So the writer has to come up with all of Rachel’s past lives she’s lived. Here’s a sampling of what we get… Feudal Japan, Renaissance Painter, World War 2 pilot, Shaolin Monk, a blacksmith, ancient Egypt, Sherpa on Mount Everest, pre-historic man.
In other words, past lives that you could’ve come up with after literally 30 minutes of research. There’s nothing unique here that another writer wouldn’t have come up with. I want to stress that because it’s important. Your job as a writer is to come up with things that the rest of the world and your competition (other writers) couldn’t come up with. Or else why do we need you? If you’re giving us what we already thought of, well, that’s lame. We, the audience, are supposed to be creatively inept compared to you.
So that bothered me.
But mark this one down on the list of why concept is king. Even with its weaknesses, it still works, because the concept is so fun.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Often times, high concept is about taking a cool ‘what if’ scenario and placing it inside a high octane genre. Writers get this wrong all the time, so pay attention. Past lives is not a high concept idea on its own. It’s just as capable of being low concept in the wrong hands. You could write a movie about a guy who discovers he had a past life as a sheep farmer and becomes inspired to leave the city and live a self-sustainable life in Wyoming. You’ve technically got yourself a past lives script. But is it a good idea? To get the sexier logline, take your ‘what if’ scenario and plug into a bigger flashier genre, like Karma did (supernatural action). Big flashy genres include action, thriller, sci-fi, and horror. Those genres always make the idea feel bigger.
