Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Premise: When a major accident occurs at America’s first giant particle accelerator, a hazmat team is sent in to measure the damage, only to realize that something about the event feels like deja vu.
About: This is a spec script that sold a few years back to Lionsgate. Screenwriter Justin Rhodes made a name for himself in the early 2010s, selling a number of sci-fi scripts. He was finally rewarded with his first high profile studio job, writing 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate.
Writer: Justin Rhodes
Details: 119 pages
Today I was going to review that new The Making of Godfather project that Oscar Isaac will star in. But, what do you know, I already reviewed it!
So I went into my stash of screenplays and I found this bad boy which sounded right up my alley. Did you say particle accelerator? Did you say experiment gone wrong? Did you say the same people keep showing up over and over every day after you’ve killed them and you don’t know why?
High concept salacious sci-fi gets me all giddy cause I keep thinking one of these scripts is going to be the next Source Code. Will it be the grammatically questionable, “The Join?”
It’s the near future and the U.S. has built their own giant particle accelerator, just like the Large Hadron Collider, 500 meters underneath the New Mexico desert. But when there’s a giant explosion inside, the government has to send a team to close up the air ventilation system so smoke doesn’t make it up into the air, as it’s suspected to be contaminated.
That hazmat team, led by 31 year old Pete Katrola, stumbles out of the exit, into the desert, with bad news. Everyone down there is dead. An evac team takes them back to headquarters where all of them are asked about what they saw. But something is off about the questioning. The scientists almost seem… bored. Which is odd under the circumstances.
Then, after the last question, the scientists leave the room, gas is poured in, and the entire team, including Peter, dies. WTF?? And if that’s not weird enough, we cut to Peter and his team AGAIN inside the particle accelerator. They do the job again, come outside again, and again are interrogated by scientists. AGAIN they’re gassed.
BUT!
This time they don’t die. The gas has no effect on them. Peter and the team, realizing they’re being gassed, break out of the room and attack the scientists. Peter is able to take 63 year old DOCTOR GEOFFREY MCKISSICK hostage, and sneak out of the building and drive off. Peter wants answers now!
McKissick explains that, seven years ago, there was an explosion inside the particle accelerator and Peter’s team was sent in. They were questioned, only for the next day, the exact same thing to happen and a SECOND team of Peter’s appear at the exit. Same thing the next day and the next. For seven straight years now! Which means they’ve killed Peter’s team hundreds upon hundreds of times.
Peter ditches McKissick to find his wife who he doesn’t realize thinks he died seven years ago. After a lot of convincing, she finally believes it’s him, and the two go on the run together. The government comes chasing after him though because whatever was down in that accelerator was contagious. If Peter is able to make it back into society, he could potentially contaminate and kill everyone on the planet. Duh-duh-duhhhhhhh!
When it comes to this genre, I see the same mistake made over and over again, regardless of whether it’s a beginner screenwriter, an intermediate, or even a professional. In fact, it just happened to one of the biggest most successful writers ever, resulting in the failure of a 200 million dollar movie.
When it comes to science-based science-fiction, the science and the rules need to be impeccably explained. And the execution of the science and rules must be clear as day. Otherwise you’re building your narrative on this ooey-gooey pseudo-science that never makes sense, which means it always feels fake.
Tenet is a case study in this. It wasn’t clear how the stuff from the future was getting here. It wasn’t clear how the backwards objects worked. It wasn’t clear how the backwards world worked. In every scene where those things mattered, we only understood, maybe, 60% of what was going on. That’s what a lack clarity does in science-fiction. If we don’t understand the rules of the game, there’s no way for us to enjoy it.
I’ve found that both beginners and professionals make this mistake but they do so differently. The beginner makes the mistake because they’re sloppy and don’t know how important clarity is in a script like this. The professional (Nolan with Tenet) knows this but he deliberately holds back the information in the spirit of “challenging” the reader. Ironically, both roads lead to the same problem. We’re confused.
The Join has a lot of cool ideas but it falls into this same trap. We don’t understand what’s going on. We get that there was an explosion. We get that the particle accelerator may have opened some doorway to another dimension. We get that that may be the reason new Peter Teams keep showing up (cause they’re from these other dimensions?). But none of it *really* makes sense. The more you think about it, in fact, the less sense it makes.
This is why the original Source Code draft (not the movie you saw – the original spec draft) was such a great script. It explained its rules so well that we were easily able to take part in the story. And Ben Ripley, the writer, told me himself, that he worked tirelessly on making those rules clear because he knew if they weren’t, the screenplay wouldn’t work.
Honestly, I don’t think this is a talent issue. I think it’s an effort issue. Writers don’t want to do the work. Most writers writing these complex science-based scripts stop once the script *makes sense.* That, to them, is a major achievement. But, in theory, that should be your beginning point. Getting your script to make sense is expected. Nobody gives out Oscars for movies “that made the most sense.” You work through all the annoying science-y logical stuff to get to a point where you can actually explore the idea in an entertaining way.
The Join only gives us the bare essentials of what’s going on, leaving us confused as to what the ultimate goal even is. I guess it’s to get Peter back so they can kill him and prevent more contamination. But since I don’t really understand what caused this, what the rules of what caused this are, why his body is changing at the molecular level, why previous versions of him died from the gassing but this recent version is immune to gas, or what any of this has to do with him having a highly transmissible disease… since all of that was vague, I didn’t care what happened.
That’s what so many writers don’t understand. If we feel like you’re not giving us the facts due to laziness, why wouldn’t we also take part in that laziness? If you ain’t gonna try, why should we?
It’s an issue that gets to the heart of what it takes to write a good screenplay. It really does. The collapse of the spec script is in large part due to writers cooking up scripts in three months and thinking they’re genius. Once enough of those scripts got purchased and made, only to become box office disasters, though, Hollywood stopped buying them.
Luckily, there’s a silver lining to all this. If you’re one of these writers who DOES put in the effort and you’ve thought through every single science component of your story so that when characters talk about it, it feels truthful, and when you build plot threads around it, they feel real, then your script is going to stand out. You still have to know the basics of effective storytelling. If you spend two years researching your science but you don’t know what a character arc is, it’s probably not going to matter. But assuming you know how to tell a story, make sure you do your due diligence and become an expert on your subject matter.
Cause we readers know when you’re b.s.’ing us. We know when you and your characters don’t know what you’re talking about. TRUST ME.
I was hoping this was going to be a surprise winner but it’s just too messy.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you have a unique concept, you don’t want to use big chunks of your screenplay to explore things that don’t take advantage of that concept. Here, we have a particle collider and some characters who keep appearing every day, no matter how many times you kill them. That’s where your concept is. So when Pete escapes and spends 30+ pages on the run with his wife, we’re nowhere near that unique concept. Your script has become a straight “on the run” movie. It could be about anything. It would be like, in Source Code, if he got out of the train at the midpoint and tried to integrate back into the world. Plot points that don’t take advantage of the the most unique thing about your script should be avoided.
