Today’s script review challenges the notion of non-traditional narratives.
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: When a Native American girl’s brother is critically injured, she rushes to a nearby military compound for help. But after two soldiers are deployed to find the man, it becomes unclear if their intention is to help or hurt him.
About: Rupert Wyatt directed one of my favorite movies of the last few years, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Since then, however, he’s been carefully taking his time looking for his next project. I’ve seen him attached to everything from the Apes sequel to The Equalizer. But word on the street is he’s looking to direct one of his own projects. This dark drama-thriller could be in the running.
Writers: Rupert Wyatt and Daniel Hardy
Details: 97 pages
Scriptshadow suggestion: Christian Bale for Patrick
When I first saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I was baffled as to what I was actually watching. A big-budget movie that was essentially a silent film? An animal as the main character (no, I’m not referring to James Franco)? A non-traditional narrative? Was I in a 1990’s New York art house or the Arclight in Hollywood?
We’ve had some debate about this before, but USUALLY (not always) scenes tend to be more interesting when you tell them through action as opposed to words. Go ahead, try it. Pop open the script you’re currently working on and pull open a talky scene. Try to do that exact same scene with no words. It’ll probably end up better.
I was curious to see if Wyatt, along with his writing partner, Daniel Hardy, would bring that same approach to this new script. And really, I was just wanted to see what these guys would write about when left to their own devices. Once again, I wasn’t prepared for what would unfold. Like Apes, we have another non-traditional narrative here. The question is, did that choice help or hinder the screenplay?
30 year old Squad Leader John Patrick is the cool, cold soldier under pressure. When you encounter the enemy, there’s no one you’d rather have leading you into battle than this guy. But we aren’t on the battlefield. We’re at a military base in the U.S. with a bunch of soldiers who have nothing to do. And when a bunch of young jarheads with too much testosterone in their blood have a bunch of time on their hands, bad things usually happen.
So one day Patrick, while watching the post with his wet-behind-the-ears partner, Cobb, spots a teenage Native American girl Zote, running towards the base. When they confront her, they find out her older brother has been critically injured and needs help. The two follow Zote into the woods, and we notice that Patrick is particularly interested in finding the brother, despite (supposedly) knowing nothing about him.
Once they get to the spot where the brother is injured, they see that he’s been taken. But where? And by whom? Patrick and Cobb determine that it’s probably whoever hurt him in the first place and he’s likely transporting the brother back someplace where he can finish the job. So they follow the man’s trail in hopes of catching up and saving the brother.
In the meantime, we’re jumping back in time to a parallel storyline that happened a couple of days ago, where Patrick, Cobb and the rest of the station’s soldiers go out drinking at a nearby bar frequented by Indians. After flirting with some Indian girls, we notice Zote’s brother watching the soldiers from the corner of the bar, particularly Patrick’s best friend, Bennett.
Back in the present, Patrick, Cobb and Zote finally find the brother safe in a cabin. It turns out whoever brought him here wanted to help, not hurt, him. But that doesn’t last long. Patrick pulls out a gun and coldly shoots the brother in the face! Holy Moses what the hell just happened?!
As Cobb and Zote wrestle Patrick to the ground, we learn from Patrick and a couple more flashbacks that the brother is responsible for killing Bennett. Patrick and the other soldiers had already tried to kill the brother once, but he obviously survived. That’s why he’s been so hell-bent on catching up to him – to finish the job.
This of course means, unfortunately, that Patrick has to kill the sister as well. But Cobb isn’t down with that and takes Zote on the run. What started as a pursuit now becomes a race to get to safety before Patrick catches up to them and kills them both.
Whoa, this script was a tale of two halves. I’ll be honest. For the first half, I was in “What page am I on?” mode. There were two main reasons for this. First, I couldn’t figure out why Patrick was so set on saving the brother of a girl he didn’t even know. He’s a soldier, not a policeman. Why not call the cops and let them deal with it? The motivation didn’t seem to be there.
Now later on we find out the truth, that he wanted to kill this guy all along. But that’s the thing with hidden motivations. They pay off eventually, but run the risk of frustrating the audience before they get there.
Then there were the flashbacks. In the second half of the script, these flashbacks helped formulate what happened two nights ago and how that led to the present situation. We understand, after Patrick kills the brother, that these two timelines are a cause-and-effect situation.
Before that, however, there’s nothing interesting happening during the past timeline. It’s just a bunch of soldiers hanging out. But what’s worse is that there’s no indication that THERE EVER WILL BE A CONNECTION with that timeline. So we go on for half the movie watching character backstory and nothing more.
However, once Patrick, who is supposed to be our protagonist, takes out that gun and shoots the brother, everything changed. The script literally became a different story. It was almost like a Psycho situation where you’re going, “Wait? Who’s our protagonist now??”
This got me thinking about non-traditional narratives in general. When to use them and when to stay away from them. Having us go through 25 pages of backstory that didn’t seem to be pushing towards anything was a huge risk. It paid off in the end, but I can see some readers being like, “Man, why are we watching all this past stuff when nothing’s happening??” then mentally checking out.
So I think you have to ask yourself WHY you’re using a nontraditional narrative and if it’s the most effective way to tell your story. Are you just doing it to be different? Or is there an actual story purpose for it? And maybe, just as importantly, is there an actual EMOTIONAL purpose for it? What is it you want the audience to FEEL by jumping around in your timeline?
A perfect example is 500 Days Of Summer. The reason the writers kept jumping around between the 500 days of this relationship was to show the emotional toll this was taking on our protagonist. One second (Day 38) he’s having the time of his life with Summer, the next (Day 189) he’s fighting for the relationship’s life. You can’t bring a reader to such a high and then such a low so quickly by showing that relationship linearly.
Getting back to The Trail, I think the key to making this entire script work (and not just the second half) may be to imply something bad is going to happen in the flashback storyline. Because until we get to the bar where the soldiers cross paths with the brother, there’s no indication as to what the purpose of these flashbacks is, and therefore they’re kind of boring.
In good old fashioned storytelling terms, we need some suspense! Tarantino and Hitchcock are masters at this. Indicate a terrible thing will happen, then milk the scene or sequence until that moment arrives. Check out the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds. We indicate the Jews under this floor are going to be murdered, then Tarantino toys with you for the next ten minutes until it happens.
Then again, I’m thinking that Wyatt and Hardy purposely kept things uneventful in those flashbacks so the killing would be a surprise. And it was. And that’s the thing about storytelling. With every choice, you’re making a trade-off. You can never it all. If you could, then everyone would be writing million dollar scripts.
The Trail got good right when it needed to. But it has the potential to be great with some first-half re-writing. I hope Wyatt and Hardy figure it out cause I can’t wait to see what Wyatt does with his next film.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Try not to use flashback storylines that run parallel to your present day storylines if all you’re using them for is backstory. Make sure there’s a goal, a mystery, or the implication that something big (usually bad) is going to happen. In short, let the reader know you’re building towards something so that they see the past narrative as a story in itself.
