Genre: Comedy
Premise: A jewel thief reconnects with her sister, who’s just gotten out of prison, and the two get a team of women together to steal a bunch of diamonds at the always weird and wild Met Gala.
About: This script was sold to New Line in 2015 during the female comedy goldmine era where you could write on your first page, “Two women are introduced,” then, on the second page, “funny stuff happens for the next 99 pages,” and you’d sell the script. But hey. I’m not mad at these writers for cashing in. If Hollywood’s handing out money, by all means take it. The script was written by Gregg Rossen & Brian Sawyer, who made their mark writing Christmas TV movies.
Writers: Gregg Rossen & Brian Sawyer
Details: 111 pages

I didn’t even know what the Met Gala was until a month ago. I guess it’s a fashion event where people dress up in the most ridiculous – but FAB-ULOUS – outfits they can find. Getting on the list is next to impossible, as it’s 11k a head. Normally, this subject matter wouldn’t interest me. But I’m so desperate to read something good and the recent Black List scripts have been so bad that I had to think outside the box. I like heist movies. This isn’t the traditional setting for a heist movie. That promises at least some originality. Right?

When we meet 30 year old Whitney (we’re told to “think Anna Kendrick”), she’s giving a rich couple a chakra makeover for their apartment so that all the chi is properly aligned. But really, Whitney’s installing a pretend “energy panda” that later gets up, steals the couple’s very valuable diamond, and takes it to her. I’m not even sure what to say about that but, yeah, that’s the first scene.

Later, Whitney overhears that the Met Gala, which will be incorporating Elizabeth Taylor’s jewel collection, is going to be insuring the party for 100 million dollars. Whitney doesn’t think much of it until her wily sister, Gemma, who just got out of prison (for taking the fall for Whitney) wants to get back out there and steal stuff. When she hears about the Met Gala, she wants in.

But they need a team, so they call army girl Maya, excellent climber turned suburban mom, Melinda, and tech-girl who’s not above stealing money from churches, Kristine. I think there are a few other girls but at this point, my mind was so numb from the choice I’d made to commit to this script that I couldn’t be sure. Yeah, so they all come together, argue for awhile, and begin practicing for the big Met Gala heist.

Oh! I forgot to tell you. Whitney’s boyfriend is a cop. And he knows that she’s a thief. However, he tells her that with this particular job, he can’t look the other way. It’s too big. So even though she’s going to be pursued by her OWN BOYFRIEND, Whitney still heads off to steal 100 million dollars from the Met. And, in case you were wondering, Whitney SWEARS this is the last heist. She’s retiring after this.

You may have noticed that after I review a comedy spec, I rarely address whether the script was actually funny or not. The reason is that mileage varies with comedy. Even if I told you this script was hilarious, you might read it and think it was the unfunniest thing in history. That’s how different everyone’s taste in humor is.

But today I’m going to try. The three areas I’m looking at in comedies are — 1) Are the characters funny? 2) Is the dialogue funny? And 3) Are the situations clever? Of those three, the first one is the most important. The mistake most people make in comedy is giving us copies of characters we’ve already seen. Alan, from the Hangover, who took a lack of self-awareness to a whole new level, was a character I hadn’t seen in a comedy before. Which is a big reason why he broke out and became a classic character.

But if you really want to be a comedy writer, you have to have funny dialogue. Give me something clever like Woody Allen or Fleabag. Or give me more straightforward humor, like Superbad or South Park. Again, if all you’re giving us is a bunch of stock uninspired interactions, you shouldn’t be writing comedy. Here, the girls argue if there’s ever been a female thief to look up to for inspiration.

Finally, there are situations. And this is where, if you’re bad at the first two, you can make up some ground. All you have to do in a comedy to make people laugh is deliver on the promise of your premise. Put us in situations that we could ONLY experience in your movie. So if you’re writing The 40 Year Old Virgin, we better get some scenes where our main character has a chance to get laid and screws it up in a variety of funny ways.

Of these three areas, Met Gala Heist fails at every one. Well, maybe fails is a strong word. It doesn’t excel in any of these areas. If I gave any writer who follows this site a writing challenge where they had to write a scene with two sisters, one of whom was a planner, the other impulsive, you would all be able to write dialogue as good as this. That’s how standard the dialogue is.

And the only thing unique about this idea is the wacky dress-up that occurs at the Met Gala. If you’re going to mine your concept for unique comedy opportunities, that’s the place to do it. You could give one of the characters a giant elaborate dress where they’re able to hide all of their surveillance equipment inside. As I’m writing that, I’m realizing that it’s too broad. But you get the point. That’s where your unique comedy opportunities are. And we don’t get any of that for the first 70 pages. And once the heist starts, we only get a little of it at the Met.

So where does that leave us? Ocean’s 11 but without the IP.

In Met Gala Heist’s defense, the writers do try and create real characters here. Our main character is flawed with how obsessive she is. Her sister is flawed in how reckless she is. Their relationship is complicated because Gemma took the fall for her. So Whitney owes her. I get on comedy writers all the time for only focusing on the comedy while ignoring the characters. And these writers DID try with the characters. But the thing with comedy is it doesn’t matter unless we’re laughing. Nobody gives you points for nice characters arcs or proper structure in comedies. That stuff is only acknowledged if we’ve laughed our butts off.

I wish I could give you some clear reason why this sold. But the only thing I can come up with is that these writers probably heard from people in the industry (since they’d worked in the industry for awhile) that studios were looking for a female comedy heist, so they wrote one up quickly and – boom – sale. Sometimes it’s being in the right place at the right time.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: X-Factor character. When you’re writing something this formulaic, it helps to throw an unpredictable element into the mix. An x-factor character is a great option. Here, we have this character, Omar, who is a diamond thief that’s always undercutting them. Showing up at their jobs, then swooping in and stealing the jewels at the last second. Because they always have to worry about this guy and never know where he is or when he’s going to appear, he adds a necessary element of unpredictably to the story.

Genre: Drama/Psychological Thriller
Premise: Based on a real life story, the psychotic father of a freshman at a small college moves into her apartment and begins controlling the lives of the 6 other coeds who live there.
About: This is a high-profile “New York” magazine article that got picked up by Hollywood heavyweights Jason Blum and Mark Wahlberg. They haven’t decided whether to turn it into a TV show or a movie yet. Though if they go the movie route, Wahlberg will play the baddie, Larry. This is pretty shocking, as Larry will be one of the most reprehensible characters ever put on screen. I guess Wahlberg is going for that Oscar. But it’ll come at a price as he’ll temporarily lose his 4th of July Middle America family hero image.
Writers: Ezra Marcs and James D. Walsh.
Details: 5000-7500 word article

If you break into this business, there’s a good chance it will be through a Jason Blumhouse production. He’s the guy who specializes in high concept low-budget fare, which is what you should be writing if you want to break in. Therefore, you should always be tracking what Blum is up to. Understanding his taste could be the difference between a writing career and a bartending gig.

Talia Ray is in her first year at liberal arts college, Sarah Lawrence, living with a group of coeds, when she informs them that her father is getting out of prison and needs a place to stay. She assures them that he had “been framed” and was a great guy. As it turns out, Talia was telling the truth. The 50 year old Larry Ray was a quirky but energetic guy who liked to tell tales about his time in the military and CIA.

At first, Larry played the part of dorm dad, laying down a schedule, paying for meals, helping the students study. But then he began holding group therapy sessions at the end of the day, all of which ended, oddly, with Larry convincing one of the students that they were sexually abused as a child.

Things got weird when Larry started sleeping in the same room as one of the students, Isabella. And when another student, Daniel, started dating Isabella, he would instruct them to have sex in front of him under the guise that he could help them achieve a higher sense of clarity (or something). Daniel thought something about Larry was off. But since everyone else in the dorm seemed to think he was great, he figured he, Daniel, must be the problem.

How Larry ended up in prison is hard to sort out because Larry’s so good at lying. Everything he claims has a sliver of truth to it so if you look into it, there’s no proof that it’s definitively a lie. For example, Larry claims to know Robert DeNiro. And Robert DeNiro does actually say he met Larry once. Most of his connections date back to knowing one of Rudy Giuliani’s right hand men, a powerful contact in the years directly after 9/11. But Larry ended up selling him out, which resulted in a revenge mission that put Larry behind bars (according to him).

Things get truly devious when we learn how Larry makes money. In one of the most bizarre schemes I’ve ever heard of, Larry tells people that they “broke” items of his, makes them admit it in written form, and forces them to pay him back. Some of these items, like a window, could go for a couple hundred bucks. But other times he claims his entire house was destroyed and demands half a million dollars. In one of the saddest examples of this guy’s insanity, one of the girls, desperate to pay him back, began working as a high class escort after she graduated. Charging $8000 an evening, all of the proceeds went to Larry.

So how do you get away with all this? As is typical with these psychopaths, they use intimidation, manipulation, and threats to keep their victims in line, and they never do anything they know can put them in prison. They don’t kill anyone. They don’t rape anyone. In every case, the victim makes the decisions. Some of these people have actually escaped Larry’s clutches, and he’s still out there hunting them down, trying to get the money he’s “owed” back. Larry denies any of this happened, of course, and says that it’s actually himself who’s the victim. That Giuliani’s old aid is trying to kill him.

This reminds me a lot of the true life podcast “Dirty John” (which would eventually be made into a TV show). But even though the titular character in that story would end up trying to murder someone, I feel like Larry is worse. This guy is pure evil in every way. He manipulates. He cons you out of money. If you try to run away, he threatens you. And if anybody calls him on it, he claims he’s the victim. He’s literally the worst type of human being you can be.

Which is our first screenwriting lesson of the day. Remember that when you’re conceiving of an idea, you’re looking for something that makes the audience FEEL SOMETHING. If they don’t feel anything, your story is a failure. Now the more popular movies like to make you feel good. Or scared. Or they might make you feel sad-happy in that cathartic “I’ll never let you go Jack” way. But one of the overlooked ways to make an audience feel is through anger.

You saw this, for example, in the documentary, Three Identical Strangers. With each new revelation, we became angrier and angrier. The reason you don’t see this used as much is because people don’t like to go to the movies to be angry. They go to the movies to escape negative emotions. So it’s a risky choice. What you’re hoping for is that the audience (or reader) gets SO riled up, that they have to talk to other people about it. And those people will then have to see it for themselves. I feel like Larry is powerful enough to achieve that.

I can also see why, out of the millions of articles on the internet, Blumhouse chose this one. You get to tell the story of a cult but the story is already localized for you. What does “localized” mean? Well, one of the challenges of writing about a big event is figuring out what you’re going to zoom in on. For example, if you’re telling a story about the apocalypse, you can’t cover every country and every city and every person and the military and the government and etc. etc. You need to find a small group of people you’re going to follow. “The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence”allows you to tell a story about a cult, but it’s all happening in this tiny dorm room. It’s already localized.

On top of this, “Sarah Lawrence” has a second thread working underneath it, one that’s fascinated people for as long as cults have been around. That being, “How can they be so stupid?” A couple of the girls who come into this story graduated from Harvard and Columbia. And Larry’s got them in a three-way sexual relationship. The fact that nobody can ever satisfactorily answer that question is why cults will always be fascinating. For what it’s worth, I think falling victim to a cult is a combination of things. One, these are often people who feel lost. And when people are lost, it’s easier to spin them a tale. Second, I think being in a cult is a bit like falling for the wrong person. By that I mean someone who’s cruel to you. Someone who takes advantage of you. Someone who psychologically manipulates you. But when you’re in love, you can’t see these things. Your best friend could literally lay out all of the ways this person is terrible to you, and you can’t see what they’re saying. I imagine cults working on a similar level. At least, that’s the only way I can make sense of it.

I could see this being a good TV series. Tell the story through the kids’ point of view and focus on them wanting to get out but not being able to. Cause if you tell the story the way it’s told in this article – that nobody wanted out until the very end – it will be infuriating. We have to have one or two people trying to get away and expose this man.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The “Liar Liar Pants on Fire” sub-genre. Hollywood loves stories about liars. We just had a prominent Oscar contender liar with Can You Ever Forgive Me. If you can find a true-life story about a liar who got into some deep sh*t because of his lies, consider writing that puppy.

Is Barry Season 2, Episode 5 (“Ronnie/Lily”) really the best episode of television since 2010? I don’t know. But it’s in the conversation. I resisted discussing the episode until now because I figured only a small percentage of you watched Barry and to best appreciate the episode, you needed to watch the first 8 episodes of Season 1, and the four preceding episodes of Season 2. Did I really expect all of you to do that? No. But then I realized Ronnie/Lily is basically a standalone episode. As long as you understand Barry’s character and past, you can enjoy it.

Barry is a former hitman who’s moved to LA and joined an acting class. The problem is, he keeps getting pulled back in to do jobs, despite the fact that he desperately hates killing people. Due to a string of circumstances, Barry is “hired” to kill a guy who’s sleeping with another man’s wife. But Barry’s got a plan. He’s going to show up at the man’s house, he’s going to explain the situation, and he’s going to help the guy disappear so that they both get what they want. As Barry is helping the man pack, they walk into a giant trophy room. It turns out this guy is a freaking Taekwondo master. Barry’s a little freaked out by this, but they continue to pack. Then, just when Barry lets his guard down, the guy attacks. A long drag-down fight ensues.

It’s best if you actually watch the episode. But if you don’t have time, here’s what happens. Barry somehow manages to defeat the guy, who dies. But as Barry’s leaving, the front door opens and an 11 year old girl in a karate outfit appears. The two freeze, both look at each other, and the girl darts past Barry. Barry heads to the door, opens it, is about to leave, stops, closes the door. Oh no! We know that Barry now has to kill the daughter as well! So Barry goes searching through the house to find the girl when… she appears out of nowhere and attacks him. The girl is like a feral Taekwondo monster. She’s relentless, diving and scraping and biting and growling as she attacks Barry from every angle. Barry does everything he can to stay alive before the girl darts out the window and disappears into the neighborhood.

Barry goes back to his handler, Fuches, who’s waiting in the car. Fuches asks if he took care of business. Barry tells him about the girl. Fuches says, “Well she’s seen you. We gotta kill her.” The two go driving through the neighborhood until they come across her again. But instead of attacking her, she attacks them! The girl’s moves are almost inhuman and the guys don’t understand what they’re dealing with. That’s the gist of the episode and I won’t ruin the ending. But let’s just say it continues to unfold in an unexpected entertaining way.

If that sounds too bizarre to be good, I promise you this. They make it work. You can complain all you want in the comments about, “WHAT??? A LITTLE GIRL ATTACKS A GROWN MAN AND SHE LIVES???” or whatever other complaint you have based on my synopsis. It’s pointless. The only way to understand the genius of this episode is to watch it. Cause they take a lot of things that shouldn’t have worked and they not only make them work, they combine the ingredients into an all-time classic meal. You gotta understand how hard that is. The show that precedes this one HAS DRAGONS in it. It has zombie monsters. It has production value that rivals most 1960s war epics. Barry has people. That’s it! It reminds me how powerful a single writer with a few characters and a room can be. With that in mind, here are 7 screenwriting lessons to learn from Barry, Season 2, Episode 5.

1) Chase down weird unexpected ideas – The only reason this episode exists is because the stunt coordinator on Barry told Bill Hader (the co-creator and actor who plays Barry) after a long day that he knew of this young girl who was a karate master and if Bill ever had a story idea that included a young karate girl, he thought this girl was talented and would kill it. Hader says he then wrote down the idea of Barry getting into a fight with this girl. Later, when they were writing Season 2, he decided to make that the centerpiece of an episode. What’s important to note here is that Bill didn’t just come up with this idea. A person suggested it to him, which got him wondering if a character like that would work on Barry. This makes me wonder how many great ideas I’ve missed over the years because a random person didn’t come up to me and drop a bizarre idea. So my tip here is, instead of waiting for this to happen to you, be the person who suggests weird ideas yourself. At the beginning of the day’s writing session, suggest five weird ides to yourself and chase those ideas down to see if anything interesting comes of them. They very well may yield nothing. But if there’s a chance that one of them will lead to a creative explosion and something even half as good as Ronnie/Lily, it’s worth a try.

2) Look for components in a scene that you can play against type – When you imagine a scenario where a hitman comes into a guy’s house and tells him he’s here to kill him, you’re thinking the house owner is probably freaking out. He’s probably talking a mile a minute. He’s nervous and scared and jumpy. That’s how most writers would write this scene. The father character in this scene is the complete opposite. He has no reaction whatsoever. He’s as calm as calm can be. Playing this character against type creates a slow unnerving subtext to the scene. Because he’s being so non-reactive, we know something is up with him.

3) What’s the worst thing you can do your character in this moment? – This is the question Bill Hader asked when Barry showed up at this guy’s house. He thought, “What if, as they’re packing, they walk into a room, and it’s filled with Taekwondo trophies?” It’s a brilliant moment as it completely shifts the dynamics of the scene. A second ago this was just a guy. Now he’s a man capable of killing you with his hands. Always ask what the worst thing is you can do to your character in this moment. You won’t always use it. But it’s a quick way to find a great scene.

4) Once you open a line of suspense, let it ride – Remember that with suspense, you can add an insane amount of tension to a scene even during periods where little is going on. Too often I see writers create a suspenseful situation then ruin it by immediately jumping to the action. Here, when they walk in the Taekwondo room, Bill Hader has opened a captivating line of suspense. This is not an ordinary man. He’s a dangerous adversary. But Hader doesn’t jump the gun. He allows the man to slowly pack, to slowly walk back into the other room, and to continue packing. This is one of the most powerful sections of the episode even though, technically, nothing is happening. Let those lines of suspense ride!

5) Ground your episode with an emotional anchor – When co-creator Alec Berg read Bill Hader’s script for Ronnie/Lily, he had one note. Ground it in emotion so it’s not just this big wacky fight episode. In the show, Barry has a complicated relationship with his handler, Fuches. The man saved him when he was at his worst, but then turned him into a contract killer, a life Barry’s trying to leave. Hader decided to give us a little more on their relationship, so there are a series of flashbacks (never too long) of Fuches rescuing Barry from his tour in Iraq, and he ties those in with the present scenes of Fuches helping Barry find this girl. It’s a surprisingly emotional payoff, and a huge shift in their relationship going forward.

6) Don’t always start the scene on the obvious character – In Hader’s first draft of the episode, we follow Barry into the house all the way until he confronts the father. One of the writers suggested that this was boring. Instead, start by following the father instead. It was a game-changing choice because it resulted in us watching this random guy drive up to this random house, go inside, put his stuff away, and the whole time we’re thinking, “Who is this guy???” It totally changed the dynamic of the scene, where only later does Barry come in. Even then, we don’t see Barry. We only hear him off-screen. Nothing about this episode plays out the way traditional TV does. The DP even challenged Hader on this moment. “Why are we only hearing Barry? It doesn’t make sense.” “I don’t know, it just feels right,” Hader answered. And he was dead right. Way more interesting.

7) Add complications to fight scenes so they’re not like every other fight scene we’ve seen – One of the conscious choices Bill Hader and Alec Berg made early on about the Taekwondo dad fight was that it was going to be realistic. It wasn’t going to be perfectly choreographed. It was going to be messy to look at and the guys were going to be tired. They’d take breaks. More specifically, Barry gets an early hit on the guy’s windpipe, damaging it to the point where the guy is barely able to breathe. That wheezing breath becomes a centerpiece of the fight, helping to differentiate it from all the other onscreen fights we’ve seen. It was like the anti-John Wick and extremely refreshing.

Ronnie/Lili represents the power of “What if?” Pose that single question to yourself while you’re writing. It can be the dumbest “What if…” question in the world. But you’d be surprised at how often terrible ideas turn into great ones. “What if Barry was attacked by an 11 year old female Taekwondo master?” isn’t a scene you’d imagine in a show like Barry. Which is exactly why it’s become the most buzzed-about TV episode of the year. At least in a show without dragons. :)

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Crime
Premise: When a dirty Los Angeles cop’s partner is killed by a Korean gangster, he follows the gangster to Seoul to get revenge, teaming up with a Korean bodyguard-for-hire who has his own reasons to kill the target.
About: In what would have been a game-changing experiment, this 2007 project was set to be made in Korea. There would be two cops, one played by Channing Tatum, the other played by a Korean actor, and two movies would be edited, one with a focus on the Korean cop for the Korean market, and the other to focus on Channing Tatum’s cop for the American market. The script was close to ready, but just as they were about to shoot, the writer’s strike happened. Since then, the project never got up and running. Doug Jung is best known for having the near impossible task of turning what was once a good script, The God Particle, into what would eventually become Netflix’s, “The Cloverfield Paradox.”
Writer: Doug Jung
Details: 111 pages

It’s so hard to get a project to the finish line. If even one thing gets in the way, it could destroy all momentum. And if that momentum isn’t picked back up soon, the film may never see the light of day. People in high positions getting fired has been the harbinger of doom for thousands of projects throughout the years. Just look at Fox. Half their slate was wiped out when Disney took over. And that was just for the movies that were finished. An untold number of projects in development were wiped out as well.

But the event that doomed this 2007 project was the writer’s strike. Channing Tatum, who was the most desired actor in the world at the time, was ready to make his Departed. They were mere months away from shooting and then… writer’s strike. The project never found its footing again. The irony is that 2019 seems like the ideal time to make a project like this. Who knows? Maybe this project isn’t dead yet.

Ethan is a Los Angeles cop who knows a thing or two about our justice system. Mainly that they don’t deliver. So when Ethan charges in on a man who’s murdered a woman after doing unmentionable things to her, he takes that man to the top of the building and TOSSES HIM OFF IT. Haters can suck it.

Because internal affairs can’t prove he tossed the man off the roof, Ethan’s off to his next gravity experiment. It’ll be a little tougher this time since his partner and best friend, Vincent, has been asked to keep a closer eye on him. While investigating a murder, the two find themselves in the middle of a high profile Korean criminal underground meeting. During the meeting, a dangerous Korean man named Moon kills the high ranking “president” in the room (this is what the Koreans call their major crime bosses). When all hell breaks loose, Ethan watches in horror as Moon slits Vincent’s throat then flees back to his country, where he plans to make a play for a presidency.

Devastated, Ethan gets on a flight to Seoul to get his revenge. But the Korean police don’t want him here. They know what he’s capable of and tell him to go home. Ethan sneaks away and eventually teams up with Park, the disgraced bodyguard of the “president” Moon killed. With Park’s knowledge of Seoul, Ethan figures he’s got a shot of finding Moon. But they’re going to have to act fast. Moon is moving up the ladder quickly. It’s only a matter of time before he becomes so powerful, he’s untouchable.

I’m always leery of these gimmicky movies (we’ll have one main character for one country and another main character for another country!). It’s hard enough to get a story right as it is. Less than 20 movies a year are able to do that. So how are you going to write a script that’s able to alternate main characters depending on the edit?

But it occurred to me that it’s not as hard as it sounds. You just write two really good characters. That way, it won’t matter who you cut to. We’re going to want to spend time with either.

Another thing I’m always reluctant about is generic cops and robbers scripts. These two elements have been explored so extensively over the years, that it’s nearly impossible to find a fresh way into the genre. And when you don’t have anything fresh, all that’s left is men with guns. And men with guns isn’t interesting.

For this reason, I was ecstatic that the bulk of this story took place in Seoul. I know a few of you hate when I use this word, but the Korean mythology – by that I mean the world-building of the Korean underworld – was unique enough to make this stand out from your average cops and robbers flick. I liked, for example, learning about the “presidents,” which were basically the Korean versions of mafias. I liked learning about the code between the cops and the gangsters. Everything about this universe was different from your average American cops and robbers movie.

The script also helped me realize what was missing from another recent ‘men with guns’ movie, John Wick 3 – a personal reason for all the killing. In John Wick, there isn’t a single emotional component to what John is doing. He’s just trying to stay alive. That was a big reason why all of his kills felt so empty. But in this script, Ethan is clearly torn up by his partner’s murder. And it’s for that reason that we care so much about his objective. We were there when Moon killed his partner. So we’re not leaving until we see him do the same to Moon.

Where the script faltered was in the character of Park. Park had an interesting story himself in that the man he was tasked with protecting was killed on his watch. But Park is more of a gun-for-hire. He had no personal attachment to the president that was killed. This leaves his emotional journey hanging, and not nearly as interesting as Ethan’s.

Still, I enjoyed the fish-out-of-water angle of Ethan being in Korea and Park helping him understand that it’s different here. You can’t just do whatever you want. You’ve got to operate with a sense of honor and respect, something Ethan is terrible at. It was sort of like a serious version of Rush Hour. It had that same kind of dichotomy between the main characters but without all the silly jokes and Jackie Chan jumping on busses. If you’re coming for Van Danzens, this is not your movie.

Despite enjoying this script, it never reached the level of the movie it was inspired by, The Departed (which came out a year earlier), because it didn’t have any flashy characters. There was nobody who popped off the page. And you need that in a script like this because you don’t have the big flashy concept. You have to find your flash in other places. The Departed had Jack Nicholson. We needed a character like that here.

Don’t give up on “Untitled” though. We may see this script come to life yet.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: “Men with guns” movies aren’t going to work on their own. You need an angle. What we’ve learned this week is that a unique mythology, whether made-up or based on a real place somewhere else in the world, can be that angle. With John Wick, it’s the “honor among assassins Continental” mythology. With this script, it’s the Korean crime world. Basically, if you’re not bringing us something new that we haven’t seen before, what incentive do we have to watch your movie?

Genre: Action
Premise: John Wick is being hunted by every single assassin in the world. And John Wick on a horse.
About: John Wick didn’t just kill the 200 characters who came at him in Parabellum. He killed Avengers Endgame, dethroning the box office behemoth with a 57 million dollar opening, almost twice that of John Wick 2’s opening box office weekend.
Writers: Derek Kolstad and Shay Hatten and Chris Collins & Marc Abrams
Details: 130 minutes

I have to be careful with today’s review.

The John Wick franchise is one of the best underdog stories in cinema history. The first John Wick script was laughed at by Hollywood. It was about a retired assassin who went on a killing rampage because of a dog. It starred an over-the-hill former movie star who was in the process of joining Bruce Willis and Nicholas Cage in the direct-to-digital doldrums. The movie, a likely candidate for direct-to-digital itself, needed to have literally every single critic who saw it say it was awesome to get publicity. And even when the first film did well, it didn’t do well enough for a studio to think it was worthy of a wide-release sequel. Still, Lionsgate took a chance on a bigger sequel, and the box office results legitimized the franchise, ensuring that more sequels would be in the works. John Wick is the little engine that could. And a wonderful reminder that there are still popular projects that can be birthed from screenwriters’ imaginations.

With that said, here’s my beef. John Wick started out so good, I thought I was in the process of watching a classic. But then each fight scene became less interesting than the previous one, when it should’ve been the other way around.

If you haven’t seen the film, it continues where the last one left off. John Wick has killed an assassin inside the sacred confines of The Continental hotel, a huge no-no. It’s such a no-no, in fact, that John Wick becomes the number one bounty in the world, at 14 million dollars. Since it’s rare for a head to pay that much, every single assassin on the planet will be after him. I want you to remember that for later, as it’s a pivotal area the movie could’ve improved in.

Priority number 1 for John Wick is to get out of New York City, which isn’t easy. But he eventually gains passage to Casablanca of all places, where he reunites with an old assassin friend (Halle Berry and her dogs) and tries to convince some dude high up on this bonkers Wickian mythology ladder to get this price off his head. The guy tells him he’s got to meet some other guy who literally lives in the middle of the desert, who tells him if he wants this, he has to kill the head of the Continental, sending him right back to where he started. It’s here where Wick takes on a late-arriving villain who’s been dreaming his whole life of killing John Wick. Is it finally the end for the king of the double-tap?

Okay so look. John Wick has always been about two things. Wacky assassin mythology and fight choreography porn. You could legitimately argue that these are the only two things that exist in the franchise. However, you would also have to point out that it does both of them really well. The mythology, in particular, is so weird, that you can’t help but bask in it. I love these tatted up bounty order-taking nurses. I love how there are a dozen different sacred coins, all of which mean something unique to this assassin community. I love how every tenth person on the planet is an assassin waiting for John Wick to walk past them so he can start following him. I love the way-too-dramatic look on everybody’s faces when an order is called in to “deconsecrates” the Continental. I love that they gave the movie a title that three people in the world knew the definition of.

I absolutely loved John Wick killing a 7 foot man with a book, unofficially making the 300 year old author an accomplice. I loved John Wick using stable horses to kill assassins. I loved the “hallway of knives” fight. I even loved the motorcycle sword set piece, despite the fact that it felt like something we’ve seen before.

However, I didn’t like any of the fight scenes after that. I thought Halle Berry’s character was annoying – a classic case of a secondary character hating the main character for no other reason than to create conflict, not cause there was any actual organic reason. All of the dog choreography felt overtly staged, taking me out of the movie. And how many faceless bad guys does John Wick have to kill in a scene before it starts getting tiresome? The answer is 10. The movie thought the answer was 50.

Then Halle Berry just disappears, never to be heard from again. If they’re going to try that hard to spin off a new character, they might as well have admitted it. “I’ll see you again if the internet response is positive,” Berry should’ve left Wick with. Then Wick walks in a desert for no other reason than it looks cool to have a sharply dressed Keanu Reeves walk in a desert. This is where I started to lose faith in the film.

But what really bummed me out was that they went with beauty over ingenuity for the film’s climax. Having Wick fight three guys who I only found out afterwards were big action stars from another film in this glowing neon glass room that had zero reason to exist other than that it looked good on camera was disappointing. The whole reason I loved the library scene and the horse stable scene and the knife hallway scene is that Wick could use the unique environment to give us action scenarios we hadn’t seen before. The neon glass castle didn’t have any of that. And I suppose they could argue that they wanted the focus to be on the fight, not the gimmicky surroundings. But I didn’t have any idea who these rando guys were. And by that point, we’d seen John Wick punch and kick so many people, that any fight he was in now was going to look redundant.

The great thing about that library scene was how unique the opponent was. I figured, when they said that every assassin in the world was going to be after him, that we were going to get a couple of dozen unique characters like that, all of whom had different talents and fighting skills. Instead, they brought in every top Asian stunt man in the business and used them for Wick’s adversaries. I can’t figure out for the life of me why they didn’t give us more variety. I thought maybe they were saving the adjudicator (a tall short-haired woman) for a battle, which would’ve been cool. But nope. Nearly every bad guy he faced was similar.

And yet, I can’t get too mad at John Wick. If you love pure action, I don’t see how you can not love this movie. It’s only a tough watch for those who watch way too many movies like myself and who wouldn’t mind a little extra character development so we care more. Oh, and I love the fact that director Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves want to keep making John Wick movies til they die. I think that’s hilarious. In a world where snobby actors on hit shows and franchises are always ungratefully begging to get out of their contracts, it’s good to finally see two people who are like, “Nope, we’re good. We have no intention of stopping.”

But Reeves and Stahelski will have to watch out. If they get even a little bit lazy, this franchise could fall apart. Bring us whatever inspired the first half of John Wick 3 for future installments and I’ll happily make another reservation at the Continental.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: A common screenwriting mistake is to get hung up on what you’re going to do in a scene and not be open to better ideas. John Wick 3 made a crucial mistake in one of its early scenes. John must go to an underground doctor to get a shoulder wound sewed up. The problem is, he’s only got 5 minutes before the bounty begins. The writers choose to use the scene to set up some plot. The doctor, an older Asian man, isn’t allowed to work on John once the bounty begins. So it’s a race against time to sew him up. Afterwards, they discuss what his plan is, which sets up the next sequence. — What they should’ve done instead is have the doctor work on him, giving John everything he’s got, cutting back and forth from the clock, time ticking down, time ticking down, time ticking down, and then, the SECOND we hit the top of the hour, the doctor should’ve switched from helper to killer, grabbing available weapons (which would’ve been fun in a doctor’s office) and trying to kill John to get the bounty. I think they were so locked in on making this an exposition scene that they didn’t see an obvious awesome scenario.