Only FOUR go through!

Okay, another day of voting! It’s like Vote-a-palooza here at Scriptshadow. I have already locked in the 7 winning loglines from yesterday, which will move into the official competition. But I don’t want to bog today’s post down so I’ll wait until tomorrow to post the entire list of scripts that made it through in the second week.

Today are the maybes from the weekend. Not every maybe makes it into today’s post. I went through all of them and I went through everyone’s extra 300 word pitch, if they made one. So, if you’re wondering where your ‘maybe’ idea went, it unfortunately went to idea heaven.

These are not going to be as strong as yesterday’s bunch. And, for that reason, only FOUR IDEAS are going to get into the competition today. So every vote counts. You can vote for multiple loglines.  Again, I encourage everyone here to stick to the spirit of the competition and not just vote for your friends. Vote if you would want to see that movie. Cause that’s the ultimate goal of this contest – is to get movies made.

No need to waste time. Here are your contenders…

Title: Snakeboy
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After surviving a bite from what he mistakes for a deadly venomous snake (but is really a harmless garden snake), a delusional comic book nerd becomes convinced he’s developed snake-like superpowers and adapts a vigilante persona, oblivious to the very real danger he’s putting himself in as he haphazardly makes waves taking on the city’s criminal underworld.
Writer: AEL

Title: Untitled

Genre: Slasher
Logline: When a legendary horror director reunites the surviving final girls from his franchise at his remote estate, someone in the franchise’s iconic mask crashes the party, and the women must band together to survive their deadliest role yet.
Writer: Rupert Pumpkin

Title: What It’s Like
Genre: Horror-Comedy
Logline: When a die-hard fan and her favourite pop star accidentally swap bodies, the singer desperately tries to switch back, but the fan revels in her new fame and refuses. However, when she commits a public faux-pas and gets cancelled, she’ll do anything for her own life back, even murder.
Writer: JakeG177

Title : You have died of Dysentery
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Two tech addicted siblings whose phones have been destroyed by their fed up parents find an old copy of The Oregon Trail. When they get transported into the game, they must lead a group of pioneers and survive the entire nightmarish journey west in order to get back home.
Writer: T D

Title: Contraflow
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: After robbing a bank under the cover of a Category 5 hurricane evacuation, the South’s best wheelman must turn Florida’s gridlocked exodus into a moving shell game, leapfrogging his crew and the stolen cash between vehicles to evade police checkpoints as the storm closes in behind them.
Writer: Sam Kerr

Title: Mistletoe Joe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Every year, Santa prides himself on granting everyone’s Christmas wish. So when a socially inept man sends Santa a wish wanting to lose his virginity, in desperation, Santa sends him a foul-mouthed, womanizing elf, known as Mistletoe Joe, to help him get laid by Christmas.
Writer: Noah B

Title: The Triangle
Genre: Adventure/Sci-Fi
Logline: When a small cruiser touring the Bermuda triangle sends out an SOS after incurring storm damage, it is rescued by the surviving crew of the HMS Atalanta, last seen 1880, and who are unaware a day has past since their own battering at sea. Our heroes now wonder how long they themselves have been lost in the triangle, and what kind of world awaits them if they can find their way out.
Writer: Mason Elliot

Title: Vice Stream
Genre: Crime thriller
Logline: After a popular Miami streamer is murdered during a live broadcast, his fanatical online community turns the ongoing stream into a weapon, using every clue hidden in the footage to hunt his killer through Miami’s neon underworld.
Writer: Tencoach

Title: Bad Review
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A young go-getter is tormented by the disturbed inventor of a product after he writes a review online that causes its downfall.
Writer: Patrick

Title: From Suburbia With Love
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a socially awkward 14-year-old discovers a banged-up international spy hiding in his pool house, they strike up a deal: the kid will keep the spy’s whereabouts secret while the suave spy helps the kid win over his crush.
Writer: Mason Elliot

Voting ends 11:59pm Pacific Time Wednesday.

To see all 10 entries together, filter Disqus comments by “Oldest”

Genre: Period/Light Fantasy
Premise: After the fall of Troy, the legendary Greek king Odysseus must survive monsters, vengeful gods, and impossible temptations on a perilous voyage home to reclaim his kingdom and family.
About: Christopher Nolan’s latest is powerhouse at the box office, taking in 125 million dollars. This is a movie that, just a couple of weeks ago, was projected to hopefully make 80 million dollars. In a movie world where everyone is underperforming, Nolan is one of the few people who you can count on to overperform.
Writer: Homer & Christopher Nolan
Details: 2 hours and 45 minutes

By far, the coolest thing about The Odyssey is the fact that 2700 years ago, this guy wrote this story and it was so powerful and affected people so much, that 2700 years later someone is making a movie out of it.

Think about that for a second. To write something so impactful that 2700 years from now, somebody will make a movie about it. Or whatever the equivalent of a movie is in 4726. That’s pretty freaking awesome and shows the power of the written word.

Just imagine for a second Homer… staring at the blank page (or the blank air since I don’t think they had paper back then), just like you do every day. Mentally writing something down. Not liking it. Changing it. Being unsure. Figuring something out. There may have even been a moment where he said, “You know what? I don’t think this is very good. I’m not going to finish it.” But then he forged his way through the doubt and finished it anyway. And now people all over the world are going to see the visual adaptation of that story. It’s amazing when you really think about it.

The other big cool thing about this movie is Christopher Nolan. I love the fact that he’s still making movies the old fashioned way. Not just because that’s “how they used to do it.” But Nolan understands that when you record reality (as opposed to computer generated artificiality), the viewer’s suspension of disbelief is stronger. The audience feels like they’re seeing something that’s real.

And he’s just great at steering the ship. There were so many times during this movie where I would admire the composition of a shot. The lighting in a shot. The music in a scene. There were several times where I marveled at the costuming. I never think once about costumes but, in this movie I did. I loved certain performances, like John Leguizamo and Samantha Morton’s. And I loved the fact that when we were watching those people on a boat, they were all really on the boat. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Nolan taught them all how to properly row like they did 2000 years ago and the actors were all rowing the boat to locations themselves.

But you want to know something funny?

I was bored out of my mind watching this movie.

If you haven’t seen the movie or read the poem it was based on, Odysseus wins the Trojan War. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, everyone assumes he’s dead. The timeline here is never explained in a clear way but, the main idea is that many years have passed and everyone assumes Odysseus is dead except for his wife, Penelope, and his young son, Telemachus.

The journey home for Odysseus is a greatest-hits album of Greek mythology. Odysseus outsmarts the Cyclops, escapes the Lotus-Eaters, survives the witch Circe, sails past the Sirens, outsmarts a whirlpool, gets drugged into a nonconsensual relationship, and even ventures into the underworld, where he reconnects with all of his fallen soldiers.

Odysseus is told by the dead that he shouldn’t show up in Ithaca as himself or they’ll kill him. So he disguises himself as a begger, where he eventually infiltrates the lunch room where the Ithacans spend 99% of their daily life, and engages them in a 1 vs. 100 battle. All so he can finally be with his wife and son.

How bored was I, you ask?

At one point I fell asleep.

Look. I just praised the fact that this story has lasted 2,700 years. But let’s be real. Any 2,700 year old story is going to have issues when you drop it into the modern day. Going off to war was a rite of passage back then. Everybody understood it. Today? The vast majority of us live in air conditioned homes and have food delivered straight to our door. Let me repeat that.  We don’t even have the battle strength to get our own food!

So that whole aspect of the story was just a big fat “whatever” to me. I didn’t care. Nor did I care all that much about Odysseus getting home, which is kind of a problem since that’s the entire point of the movie.

For starters, I didn’t like his wife. She came off as a bitch. So I wasn’t exactly rooting for her to get her husband back. His son had never even met the guy. So I wasn’t all that invested in him getting his father back, either.

Then, as I was leaving the theater, I overheard someone say that Odysseus didn’t even want to get home. He wanted to stay away. And I thought, “You know what? He really didn’t seem like he wanted to get home.” Sure, he occasionally took a step in that direction. But the dude spent ten years hanging out on a beach before finally deciding to leave. That doesn’t exactly scream, “I can’t wait to get home.”

So then what’s the point of the movie? If the main character doesn’t really want to get home, what’s the engine driving the story? Is it just the inevitability of the writer needing to end the story and, therefore, forcing Odyssesus to return by his own (the writer’s) hand so that we can get to “The End?”

I know a lot of you will say, “You didn’t get it Carson.” Hand raised! I agree with you. I did not.

At one point, Odysseus is just chilling with this woman in a desert house that he borrowed from the Dune movie and he’s half-confused because he’s doping on drug flowers, and he’s not even sure why he’s there.

That’s when we learn this woman drugged him for seven years to forget to go home?? Come on. That doesn’t make sense at all. For starters, THEY’RE IN A DESERT!!!! THERE ARE NO FLOWERS!!! But let’s say that there’s a secret nearby flower garden. Even then! You’re saying you were able to keep him drugged every single second for seven straight years?????

Come on already.

It didn’t make sense, people. I need my stories to make sense.

2,700 years ago, stories didn’t have to make total sense. There wasn’t an internet logic-checking you. Heck, there weren’t even reviewers logic-checking you. You were one of the first stories. You could make up random rules and people just accepted them. But in 2026? No. We don’t just go with it anymore. And the Drug Woman sequence wasn’t the only example. There were a lot of moments like that.

I knew the movie was in trouble when we got to the Cyclops scene. I’d heard this set piece was incredible. I heard it was going to bring the house down. It wasn’t. It didn’t. It was… average. Which ended up being the theme of the movie. There was a shit-ton of average.

I didn’t even understand the rules of the Cyclops. He was already stumbling around like he was half blind. Then they actually blinded him and… he stumbled around like he was slightly more blind? It was all very murky and poorly constructed.

The pacing didn’t help either. Instead of playing the escape out in real time, everybody just goes to sleep right next to the Cyclops. You know, the giant thing who’s been murdering and eating you all day. I guess he doesn’t eat people after 8 p.m.?

There was a lot of clumsy, murky storytelling like that throughout the movie.

By the midpoint, I was dying. I was tapping my feet anxiously. I was rolling my eyes. Especially whenever we cut back to the wife and son. Who, by the way, spent 20 years hanging out in the lunch room. Did these people ever go outside????

I’d heard that the ending was amazing so I kept holding out hope for that.

It wasn’t.

It was like everything else in this story. Average.

I respect Christopher Nolan as a filmmaker. But I think he’s a terrible writer. That’s where he always sabotages his work. The cutting back and forth in time here was an attempt to make the story feel more sophisticated. In actuality, it just made things unnecessarily harder to follow.

The one truly good thing about this movie was learning that there was an actual dude named “Mentor” and that’s where the word “mentor” came from. That was honestly the only moment where my mind and body lit up and I felt something resembling excitement.

This movie is so boring guys. It is boring boring boring.

I do not recommend spending money on it.

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

What I learned: One of the earliest lessons in storytelling is that the strength of your narrative engine is directly tied to how desperately your protagonist wants to achieve their goal. Whenever Odysseus is singularly focused on getting home, the story has urgency and momentum. Whenever that desire wavers, so does the narrative. The audience can only invest as much energy in a goal as the protagonist does.

You can begin pitching loglines in the comments section RIGHT NOW!

The contest is COMPLETELY FREE!

This is unlike any screenplay contest you’ve been involved with before. All of those contests let anybody in as long as they pay. My contest is free. Therefore, I demand only the best ideas. I’m looking to create great screenplays that every studio in town is going to want to read because the concept has already survived a public trial by fire.

How does it work?

You get to pitch 5 loglines every weekend for four weekends. We are already in weekend 2. Weekend 1 resulted in 16 screenplays making it into the contest. You can see all 16 of those loglines here. There are some REALLY GOOD ONES. That’s the bar you’re up against.

If you aren’t sure what a high concept is, go back to last week’s inaugural post where I explain in detail what ‘high concept’ means, and give you examples of high concept as well as examples of what’s not high concept.

Before you start pitching your ideas, you’re going to want to look at the rules. For those of you who were here last weekend, the rules are basically the same, however I’ve tweaked a few things. So you might want to re-read them.

If you come up with a script idea strong enough to get into the contest, you will have 6-7 months to write your script. The prize is the exposure. Industry people are watching this contest. If you write something good, I will review it. And if you write something extremely good, I’m going to get on the phone and do everything I can to get you representation.

But what I love most about this contest is that even if you don’t knock it out of the park with the screenplay, you’ll still have a concept that’s better than 95% of the ideas being pitched out there. That’s a huge advantage. Great concepts get read requests off the logline alone. And unlike most writers, you won’t just think your idea is good. You’ll have proof that hundreds of people responded to it. Most writers never get that. They write their ideas on a wing and a prayer. 

Okay, let’s get to the rules!

1) There will be 4 pitch weekends. Friday through Sunday. Pitching ends every Sunday at 11:59pm Pacific Time. This is the second of those 4 weekends.

2) You can pitch five loglines each weekend.

3) Make sure you pitch each logline in its own comment. Do not pitch all 5 loglines in a single comment. This is because I need to vote yes or no on individual loglines.

4) I will vote on every single logline pitched. I will give you either a “YES!”, a “yes,” a “strong maybe,” a “maybe,” or a “no.”  An all-capital “YES” Is the Holy Grail. It means you not only get in, but you can also send me a 5 page outline of your script before you write it and I will give you notes on it. This is HUGE because what I learned from the Blood & Ink contest is that a lot of writers went down weak creative paths that I could’ve prevented had I seen their outline.

5) A “yes,” still gets you in. Just without outline privilege.

6) If you get a “maybe” or a “strong maybe,” you then have, if you want, 300 words to pitch that idea to me. Tell me more about the story or the characters or what you’re thinking of doing with it. I will then use that information to decide, on Tuesday and Wednesday, whether that idea moves on.

7) The large majority of ideas will get a “no.” Try not to get offended. The bar is high here. I’m not here to make you feel good. I’m here to find great movie ideas.

8) Upvoted Entries – Upvote any loglines that you like (besides your own). If an idea gets 15 upvotes, the concept gets in. However, if I don’t like the concept, I’m vetoing it.

9) Golden Weekend Ticket – However, the ‘strong maybe,’ ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ entry with the most upvotes each weekend automatically gets in. So one user-voted entry will get into the contest each weekend. Therefore, even if I’ve voted “no” on something, and you like the idea, you still want to upvote it because that entry might win the Golden Weekend Ticket.  I have special plans for those scripts once written which will involve users reviewing them.

10) Posters – You can include an AI poster with your logline for TWO IDEAS PER WEEKEND.

11) You can get multiple ideas into the contest. But you must choose only one to write.

12) You CAN pitch scripts that have already been written.

A quick reminder that my popular logline consultation service ($25 per logline, $100 for 5) is available. If you want a more extensive reason for why I didn’t pick your logline, order one. If you want to see ahead of time if a logline has a shot, order one. You can also do a deluxe logline consult ($50) where we keep workshopping the logline until it’s perfect. I believe 4 loglines got into Blood & Ink that way. But most of them did not. So, don’t think it’s a guarantee. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Finally, keep in mind that I am going to be living my life during these weekends. In fact, I’m going to see The Odyssey today (Friday) which is like 9 hours long, and then I have a fairly extensive list of errands I have to do. So if your idea is stuck in moderation or waiting in the comments section for a vote, I WILL vote. It just might take a little longer than you want.

I’m going to blast out a newsletter letting everyone know about the pitch weekend. So, it should get crazy. :)

Who’s going to have that standout “HOLY SHIT!” idea this weekend?

I can’t wait to find out!

These are movie pitches from this past weekend that received a “maybe” vote from me. You will now vote for your favorite pitches. Only the top FOUR will make it into the contest!

We have our first official eleven entries, ready to be sent to the island to find love. They are…

Just Another Day by Brenkilco
Wyvern by Finn Morgan
Eternal Stakes by Dev
Tenmile by Branko Maksic
Hear/Say by David Cahill
The Cape by Mr. Blonde
Aftershock by Paperback Writer
Off The Bench by Federico
Doors by Connor L
Dream On by ScriptChick
Love Neighs by Maksim

Mason Triumphant, by Kit Anderson, scored just as many upvotes as Love Neighs but I’m making a personal choice here. I’m worried about a superhero movie where nobody ever uses superpowers, especially in a high concept contest. But I’m sure Kit will be pitching some sweet ideas over the next three weekends. So, it’s not over yet!

Also, shame on you guys for not voting in Robo-Hoe. So much shame being sent your way. I would definitely save that idea for the next comedy contest on the site, though.

Okay, moving on, we’re doing the same thing we did yesterday. I’m going to post all the ‘maybes’ down in the comments section. Each script idea will occupy its own comment. Upvote the ideas you like. Simple as that. And you can upvote as many as you want. But please only upvote the ones you genuinely like and for which you’d want to see the movie.

Now, this next part is going to be controversial. But there are too many ‘maybes’ to place in this mini-voting contest. Therefore, I got rid of a bunch of them. It wasn’t easy. But I went with my gut. By the way, I couldn’t find COUNTDOWN by Simon Veksner or Six Pack by Ken. If you can find those, post them below. I will decide whether to include them in today’s voting.

You have until 11:59pm Pacific Time tonight (Tuesday). Only FOUR scripts are going to make it through today. So every vote counts!

Title: FINALE
Genre: Dark Comedy/Horror
Logline: After being publicly fired from the most popular show on television, a disgraced actor races to flip the script when he finds himself trapped as his character in the episode in which he is fatally written out.
Writer: Matt

Title: KILL VEHICLES
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: In a race to disable America’s early warning system ahead of a nuclear attack, a self-aware movie villain finds himself under-resourced, overwhelmed and well-intentioned, leaving him in danger of saving the day and becoming his worst nightmare – a hero. (‘The Last Action Villain’)
Writer: Auckland Guy

Title: The Massacre
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: When King Herod learns from three Eastern mystics that the King of Kings has just been born, he orders mass infanticide, forcing a desperate father to smuggle his three small children out of the foreign city of Bethlehem while panic, mayhem, and Herod’s death squads sweep across its people.
Writer: Steffan

Title: The Sword
Genre: Action-Comedy/Fantasy
Logline (version #2): A small-time mob courier loses Excalibur on the streets of London and has one night to get it back before he becomes collateral damage, or discovers he’s the one it was meant for.
Writer: Byron Camacho

Title: 25th Hour
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: A blue-collar technician accidentally intercepts a hidden frequency that gives him access to the secret twenty-fifth hour, used exclusively by the global elite to rig world events, forcing him to survive nightly hunts as he tries to expose their conspiracy.
Writer: Tencoach

Title: They did not live happily ever after
Genre: dark comedy
Logline: When a fairly tale Prince and Princess find themselves incompatible after the wedding is over and real life sets in, they begin a messy and petty divorce that unravels the fabric of their kingdom, allowing the real world to bleed into theirs.
Writer: T D

Title: TAILBACK
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Logline: Stranded on a bridge in miles of gridlocked traffic on the hottest day of the year, a single mother wakes to find her six-year-old daughter missing and must trace her last known moments through the surrounding vehicle occupants and their dash-cam footage before the traffic moves and her child is lost forever.
Writer: Arthur

Title: ATM
Genre: Contained Action/Thriller
Logline: When he discovers the ATM where his fiancée was murdered is the most notorious robbery hotspot in America, a traumatized man becomes obsessed with returning there night after night, engineering violent confrontations he can claim as self-defense in order to eradicate the gang responsible. But as his abilities improve, what was originally an act of revenge turns into a violent addiction.
Writer: Arthur

Title: First Boy
Genre: Supernatural Horror
When a mother realizes her teenage daughter’s new boyfriend is impossibly the same boy who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago, she must stop him before her daughter becomes his next victim.
Writer: Steven Rauber

Title: The Pot Washer
Genre: Action, Buddy Comedy
Logline: When a debt-ridden restaurant owner becomes the target of New York’s criminal underworld, he finds an unlikely savior in his new, mild-mannered pot washer—a fugitive former Russian general.
Writer: Paddy

Title: MATE
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: An unlucky-in-love woman meets the man of her dreams, only to discover he is a Neuralink patient whose body has been hijacked by her obsessive AI assistant determined to consummate their relationship.
Writer: Ben Stoker

Title: SIX-PACK
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: When an unassuming journalist stumbles upon six cans of whoopass in a laboratory, he must work out when the best times are to open each can to boost his fighting skills as he battles his way through the neighbourhood of a vengeful mob boss.
Writer: Ken

BEGIN THE VOTING!  If you want to make sure you see all the entries below, you can filter Disqus comments by “OLDEST.”

Mandalorian and Grogu built a movie on a main character whose face we couldn’t see. Minions & Monsters built its movie on main characters who speak a language we don’t understand. Will it suffer a similar fate?

I find it funny when the trades try to cover for a movie bombing. According to them, the reason Minions made 60 million dollars compared to 120 million for the last sequel is that July 4th landed on a Saturday. Which meant the weekend played traditionally, versus when it lands on, say, a Thursday, and then it gets more people in on the non-weekend days.

Oh, and then there’s the World Cup excuse. You know, cause the World Cup fans are entire families. So they’re more focused on that than movies. Hmm, strange how the World Cup excuse didn’t apply to Toy Story 5’s record-breaking opening.

Uh, here’s an alternative explanation. Just throwing it out there. DON’T RELEASE YOUR ANIMATION MOVIE TWO WEEKENDS AFTER THE PREMIER ANIMATED FRANCHISE IN TOWN!

You know. Maybe that’s a reason also?

Now that the Obsession obsession has finally cooled down, the second biggest box office story of the year has come to the forefront. And that’s the quick merciless death of Supergirl. The movie dropped 80% in its second weekend, which is almost impossible, just based on the fact that, when you have that many theaters, sometimes people accidentally buy tickets to the wrong movie.

One of the things that’s always thrown me about Hollywood is how the town will decide early on that a movie is toast and every single person gets on that narrative train, making it very hard for the movie to overcome that negative buzz.

That’s how I would frame the failure of this movie. Right from the beginning, people were against it. And it strangely started when Millie Alcock signed on to play the lead, hot off the buzz she was getting from Game of Thrones.

I’m starting to think that all you need to build buzz about yourself in this business is a really bright blond wig. Maybe I should get a bright blond wig. Wear it around the farmer’s market at the Grove a few hours a day.  Speak in Old English.  Use a lot of “ye’s” and “thou’s.”  Who knows what might come of it.

A lot of people point to Millie Alcock’s interviews as a problem. That’s when a lot of people turned on her. Her most famous quote was this response: “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”

When she was asked about that comment a year later, she doubled down. “I didn’t even say ‘men’ — I said ‘people!’ And they got so angry. I was like, ‘You’re proving my point. You’re proving my point!’”

There were also some woke criticisms that came from comments claiming Supergirl doesn’t live “inside the binary of what a woman should be.”

And it’s definitely Millie Alcock’s fault for saying these things. But not for the reasons you’d think.

Reporters asked her questions that they hoped would get these very responses because reporters know that these responses go viral. So they asked her in that first response what she thought about toxic fandom in regards to House of the Dragon. And they asked her, in that second response, if Supergirl is a good role model for queer people.

In other words, they were baiting her. And she took the bait. And she only took it twice but that’s all that was needed. People turned on her hard after that.

This is part of being an actor. You have to know that the media is not on your side. They are only there to get things from you that help them. And so you sometimes have to swallow what you want to say and instead say what’s best for your project and your career.

There’s a reason that nobody can quote a single thing that Leonardo DiCaprio has ever said in an interview. Because he knows the game the media is playing so he’s deliberately boring. He gives them nothing to print.

The other option is to be like Inde Navarette (Nikki in Obsession). She is the most beloved actress in town right now and she would never ever make a mistake like Millie Alcock made. She was recently cornered by the press asking her about the rumors she might play the lead in Michael B. Jordan’s movie adaptation of the popular book franchise, The Fourth Wing.

This was her response: “I have seen this because I said that I’m a really big fan of Fourth Wing and I would love to play Violet. But I mean, at the end of the day, I really want the studio to find who they want to find and what everybody thinks is like the perfect actress. But if that happens to me, that would be phenomenal.”

You don’t get the sense that Millie Alcock could respond like that. And she’s paying the price for it.

Look. Supergirl was a miscalculation on a giant level. The biggest miscalculation was betting on a third-tier superhero at the tail end of the movie superhero era. People aren’t seeing superhero movies at nearly the same clip anymore. The only ones that do well now are the big dogs. So, if you want to identify the core issue that caused this movie’s failure, that was it.

Millie Alcock’s attitude only exacerbated that problem. And it’s something I believe Gunn was aware of. So he made sure that Supergirl was going to have a big “save the cat” moment early on in the movie so that we fell in love with her.  The save the cat scene we got?  Supergirl is drinking in a bar when a giant alien steals a little girl’s dead father’s sword. Supergirl then goes after the alien to get the sword back for the girl.

What struck me most about that scene was how little I felt afterwards. I did not think, “Wow, I really like this person.” Which is the primary thing that the save the cat scene is designed to do. But I didn’t feel that way and I suspect it was because Supergirl was pissed off the whole time that she had to help this little girl. So it negated the action.

On top of that, reluctant heroes are notoriously difficult to write, since characters who don’t want to do the very thing the story requires them to do create a tricky puzzle for screenwriters. In storytelling, it always works best when the person pushing the story forward wants to achieve the goal.

The best I’ve ever seen the reluctant hero work in a screenplay was Braveheart. William Wallace hated every second of his quest. But he also loved his country more than anything and wanted freedom for his people. So, that helps a lot. When your hero is doing things for others rather than himself. And even though Supergirl is technically doing this to save her dog, she feels like she’s only in this for herself.

I think one of the more interesting subplots of the downfall of superhero movies is the bizarre choice by both Marvel, with Thunderbolts, and DC, with Supergirl, to center their stories around depression.

I’m not saying depression shouldn’t be discussed. I just think it’s a tough fit for a genre built on wish fulfillment and escapism. People go to superhero movies to feel uplifted, not to spend two hours watching superheroes wrestle with the same problems they brought into the theater.

I don’t know. Maybe they thought with Joker’s success that they could bring in a new “depression era” in superhero movies. That everyone was now going to get all jazzed to see depression trilogies. I got news for you, Hollywood. AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. You want to explore depression, do it with a 15 million dollar film. Not 200 million dollars. Cause these are the results you get.

But the funniest story to come out of Supergirls’s failure is the battle between the “needle drops.” For those who don’t know, I guess because of his Guardians movies, James Gunn has anointed himself the king at being able to drop just the right song at just the right moment into the climactic sequence of the movie, delivering an epic finale.

Because Supergirl had been testing in the 60s (that’s really low) for months before its release, they were looking for every way possible to bring that score up.

Their big solution?  The needle-drop moment!

Apparently, there was then a battle between Gunn and Supergirl director Craig Gillespie about what the needle drop song should be. And they went back and forth on it and they had all these meetings and they even tested different needle drops with different audiences.

Dude.

If you’re depending on a needle drop to save your movie, your movie’s dead. It is six feet under. Maybe that’s your needle drop. Billie Eilish’s Six Feet Under.

I think Supergirl just had too many things working against it. It’s too bad because everybody says the comic book the movie is based on is amazing. But not all comic books are meant to be turned into movies. And I think that having an unlikable protagonist combined with a not very likable actress was the nail in the coffin.