Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: In the future, there’s a new military weapon called an “APEE,” a human-like combat drone that links up with a soldier. When a soldier and his ape go missing in battle, his brother is sent in to locate the ape in order to find and save his brother.
About: You may remember me linking to a New Yorker article last week about how a studio head judges projects he’s being pitched. The article focuses on a Keanu Reeves project that sounded really cool. I did some underground e-mailing until I was able to find a draft of the script. This is an early version (the second draft) so it’s not complete yet. But it does give us an idea of where the movie will go. The script is written by Justin Rhodes, who’s been working on plenty of scripts over the last few years. He has another project lined up at Lionsgate called, “The Join,” about the clean-up after a particle accelerator disaster (sounds cool!).
Writer: Justin Rhodes (story by Andre Lascaris & Justin Rhodes)
Details: 112 pages – second draft (11-07-13)
You know me. I’m always looking for sci-fi scripts that break the mold, that give us something different. And today’s script fits the bill. Not only is it something we’ve never seen before, it’s ORIGINAL MATERIAL, which, as you know, is hard to find these days. With the magic of Keanu Reeves’ comeback and the producing prowess of Chris Morgan (18 of the Fast and Furious movies), Unmanned could be one of the few original sci-fi ideas that makes it to the big screen.
It’s the 2030s. War is everywhere. The world is unstable. This is good news for military minds, who get to build a bunch of little toys. And their newest contraption is the A.P.E.E. M94E-2 drone. Or “Ape” for short.
Apes are your best friends in battle. They get to know your instincts, your decisions, and “ape” your tactics. Every soldier is assigned an Ape, and since the Apes aren’t human, they can go in and do a bunch of nasty shit without worrying about getting killed. You, then, come in for the clean-up.
Sergeant Royce Bellam is on one of the Ape teams, and is sent into Hong Kong to find an encryption device which will allow the good guys to get a beat on what the bad guys are planning. The only problem is, he disappears.
Royce’s reject alcoholic brother, Adam, is reluctantly brought in to help find Royce. He joins an Ape-Marine team in a very “Aliens-like” setup, which is ironic, since he hates the Ape program. The group is sent into battle-weary Hong Kong, which is flooded with enemy drone soldiers, in hopes of finding his bro.
Along the way, he gets separated from his team, and sniffs out where Royce might be. But instead of finding Royce, he finds his Ape, and the two must work together to locate where Royce is. Find Royce, find the encryption, turn the tide of the war. Save the world.
Man, this sounded so much cooler being pitched in that article than what I just read. I don’t know if that’s because those guys are just better pitchers, or the script has changed a ton since this draft. There’s a chance they went into this script with no idea what they had, and only found the concept after playing with it for awhile. If that’s the case, good. But if they’re relying too much on this draft for a template, the script is in trouble.
What I liked about the pitch was the idea that these Apes were attached to you and learned all about you and basically became an extension of you. I also loved the idea of Adam hating these things, and yet being forced to work with Royce’s Ape as a means to find Royce. There was a lot of character-development potential in that (not to mention conflict!). Finally, I liked the idea of these two having to go into this dark scary battlefield alone, only being able to rely on each other.
Well, none of that happened.
We don’t get to Adam teaming up with Royce’s Ape until page 80! And while Adam doesn’t really like the Apes, he’s the drill instructor to teach marines how to work with Apes. Wait, he works with these things?? Doesn’t it work so much better if he’s forced to work with one for the first time? Finally, instead of going in alone with the Ape, he goes in Aliens-style, with a bunch of other soldiers. It isn’t until they run around a lot in Hong Kong that he finally finds Royce’s Ape.
This is actually a common problem. As writers, we’re terrified to go off the highway. It’s much easier to latch onto things that we know and that we’ve seen before. So we know the Aliens setup. Bunch of marines go into hostile territory and try to kick ass. The familiarity makes it easy to write.
It’s much harder to send just Adam and this robot into battle together because we don’t have as many references for that. It forces us to actually invent new situations. And since writers are all self-doubting whack-jobs, we assume that anything we come up with on our own must be stupid. This is why writers who take chances are so admired. Because they’re brave. And most writers aren’t brave.
Another problem with Unmanned is that it’s drowned in noise. “Noise” is a huge problem in any action script. It’s the process of burying your script inside of a bunch of action scenes. And while it seems like that’s the right move (action movies require action scenes! So that’s good!), scenes where all you’re doing is chasing or shooting or driving… they’re boring. There’s nothing cleverly constructed about them. They’re bullets, screaming, tires screeching, things falling – that’s why I call them “noise.”
Let me give you a couple of examples. In a movie like Transformers, the reason so many of those action scenes feel empty is because they’re noise. Yes, a lot is happening onscreen. But we don’t know why, or what the characters want, or who we’re supposed to be focused on. It’s just a bunch of colors flying around without any context.
Compare that to, say, the trash-compactor scene in Star Wars. There’s a reason why that’s one of the most famous scenes in movie history. Because it’s not a bunch of formless noise. It’s a clear situation. The trash compactor is closing in. They need to find a way out or they’ll die. The rules are clear on what needs to happen, which allows the writer to create suspense as well as reveal character through choices.
Reading Unmanned, it all seemed so formless. We’re out in the middle of gunfire constantly and there wasn’t any direction to it. Bam bam bam! They’re closing in! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Rinse Repeat. Noise.
I wish that were the only problem but everything here needs a check-up. For starters, the story beats need to be moved up. They all happen too late. The brother relationship needs to be improved (remember, nothing in an action script matters unless we care about the key relationship – see the relationship between John McClane and his wife in Die Hard for the all-star example of this).
Despite that, it’s important to remember, this is the second draft. And Chris Morgan is an awesome screenwriter in his own right. So I’m hoping he’s since guided this into a more focused film that takes advantage of its unique concept.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The “Move it Up” Principle. The Move It Up Principle states that with each draft, you want to move the important plot points up earlier in the story. In first and second drafts, we’re in exploration mode, trying to find our story, so we’ll write long sections of the script that don’t really go anywhere. Unmanned’s key plot point – Adam having to work with Royce’s APE, doesn’t happen until page 80! As more drafts are written, this will likely be moved up earlier and earlier in the script. This is the hook we’re talking about. So it definitely needs to arrive sooner in the story.
