You can read this almost-franchise sequel for Stallone’s “Cliffhanger” at the bottom of the review!
Genre: Action
Premise: A former Gulf War vet with an axe to grind against America steals a nuke and takes over the Hoover Damn.
About: Since Scott knows more about this than I do, I’ll wait for him to post his notes regarding the script and paste it here. But, basically, it’s the script they purchased to turn into a sequel to the 1992 Stallone mountain-climbing flick, Cliffhanger.
Writers: Jan Skrentny & Neal Tabachnick
Details: 1994 draft – 118 pages (1st draft for studio after script sale)
All this Gen-Z writing is making me angsty. It’s time to jump into our screenwriting time machine and go back to an era when screenwriting was simpler. You came up with a simple premise that would last 15 pages, filled up 105 more, and cashed in a million-dollar check. Actually, screenwriting hasn’t changed much at all. Except for the million-dollar check part.
The good news is that I just read a big script that feels like a Hollywood spec sale from the past, and I’ll be reviewing it in the Scriptshadow Newsletter, which will hit your Inboxes on the 1st or 2nd of February. If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter, do it now: carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Today, we’re tackling a sequel to the Stallone mountain-climbing flick, Cliffhanger. It’s actually quite timely with the success of Free Solo. It’s only natural that we get a mountain-climbing action movie in 2024, right? Let’s see if Cliffhanger falls to its death or uses its ice pick to pull itself up and get to the top of the mountain.
We meet voluntary rescue employees Mike and Carrie as they test a military chopper in the Grand Canyon to possibly use in future rescue efforts. After enduring a gnarly close call with the flight, the two finally get to go on vacation to the Hoover Dam. And while they’re there, Mike’s planning on proposing.
Meanwhile, a dude named Colonel Ezadia Nuff, or, as I like to call him, “Nuff Said,” somehow coordinates a nuclear missile heist from a missile that’s being thrown away by the military. His men not only steal the missile but they drive it right over to the max prison in the desert to pick up Nuff Said. They grab the nuclear innards of the missile and are gone long before anyone can come help.
These two groups of people collide at the Hoover Dam. Nuff Said rolls two semis over the highways west and east of the dam, stopping all cars from being able to get through. He then rigs the dam with explosives. We eventually learn that Nuff Said was left out to dry after capturing Saddam Hussein. And he wants revenge. God Dam revenge.
What follows is a game of cat and mouse as Mike first tries to find Carrie within the dam and then tries to stop Nuff Said himself. But what is Nuff’s plan exactly? Why would he need a nuke to blow up the dam? Could he have something else up his sleeve? The answer may be in nearby Vegas, where our crazy movie climaxes.
One of the biggest challenges with action scripts is conveying the logistics of what’s happening in the story entertainingly and dramatically. Because action scripts are inundated with logistical scenes. Shootouts, car chases, military operations, often happening in or nearby places that the average person doesn’t know a lot about.
That’s the big problem with The Dam. I vaguely know what the Hoover Dam looks like. But if you go ahead and Google it, you see that it’s actually quite intricate with a lot of little stations and areas that are highly unique. You’ve got the top of the dam, the bottom of the dam, and the highway that drives over it, all of which are easy to imagine.
But then you have all these inner areas and lower sections and turbines and engines and electrical rooms – and this is where most of the movie takes place. I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine 75% of it. I just never knew exactly where I was or what I was looking at.
This isn’t as big of a deal if you’re writing a draft for the studio. Cause if you’re writing for the studio, it’s more about making the physical movie than writing a script that will win over readers. But it still matters because you eventually have to give the script to a director or a star to approve of it and if they’re reading this like me, where they can never quite understand what they’re looking at, then they can’t get invested emotionally. They won’t be pulled into the drama. And they’ll say “no.”
Which is exactly what I’m assuming happened here. This was the draft that went out to Stallone, and all he saw was, “Character is in the Engine Room.” “Character hides in turbine elevator tunnel.” “Character radios Other Character in Diversion Sector.” You might as well write your script in hieroglyphics.
I wish I could reveal the script I’m reviewing for the newsletter because that’s a script that did the exact opposite of this. It created a situation that was incredibly easy to imagine and, as a result, was able to secure one of the biggest actors on the planet. That’s not an accident that that happened. When you write scenarios that are easy for the reader to imagine, it’s easier for them to get lost in the story.
By the way, I’m not saying you can’t write a script about the Hoover Dam. You just have to understand the challenge in front of you and be up for that challenge. You need to have a game plan to keep your script easy to visualize. Recently, a writing duo hired me for a script consultation on a big flashy 90s-type action movie and, on the very first page, provided a picture of the location. That went a long way towards me understanding what I was looking at. I’m not saying to only use pictures. I’m saying, use whatever you can. If you’re great at description, be prepared to mine every last drop of that skill in a script like this one.
Outside of that, the script was fun to read in a “Back to the 90s” way. The number of 90s spec cliches here was astounding. One of the first things we see is a Blackhawk helicopter. It is statistically proven that between the years of 1994 and 1999, every single Hollywood movie had a Blackhawk helicopter in it.
We’ve got silly tough guy lines that nobody would ever say in real life: “Think my nuts just hit absolute zero.” We’ve got a max security prison (check that, a “Max Max” security prison, whatever that is). We’ve got a villain who used to be in the U.S. military. And, of course, no 90s action spec would be complete without a stolen nuclear missile.
I bring this up in part to have fun with it. But also to remind you that you don’t want someone in 2054 looking back at your script that you’re writing now, and be able to tell, within seconds, that it was written in the early 2020s. So if you’re doing whatever everyone else is doing (female lead, social commentary, overly sensitive to every potential reader, overtly political), it’s going to be obvious why your script didn’t get anywhere. Because you were doing exactly what everybody else was doing!
Be different. Make sure your script stands out in some way.
As I look back at this script, its biggest problem is that it’s trying to make a set piece an entire movie. The Hoover Dam is a great 20 minute action set piece. I’m not convinced it’s a 2 hour movie. Mainly because of the stakes. What does destroying the dam do? Our villain says that it will destroy every city downstream but I looked up on a map every city “downstream” and all I saw was a podunk town called “Bullhead.”
And then, of course, we don’t get Gabe Walker! The hero of Cliffhanger. I know, I know. The studio bought the script to turn into a Cliffhanger sequel. But this Mike guy is pretty lame as far as action heroes go. He wasn’t that smart. He wasn’t that actiony. That’s another reason Stallone probably passed. “Yo Adrian, this character sux.” Although, in Mike’s defense, he does get to skate up the Luxor Hotel in Vegas in the final act (no, I’m being serious).
It was fun to take a trip back to this potential franchise. But after reading this script, it’s easy to see why it never made it past the first movie.
Script link: The Dam
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Make your set pieces easy to visualize. To this day, the best action set piece I’ve ever seen remains the T2 semi-truck motorcycle chase. It not only works on screen. It works on the page. Why? BECAUSE IT’S SO EASY TO VISUALIZE. Tanker truck chases cycle down narrow passage. Compare that to this script where I needed to study a 200-page series of diagrams about the Hoover Dam to properly understand where everyone was, where they were in relation to each other, and what the heck they were doing.
