BLOOD & INK DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED ONE MONTH!!!

Very important news for all you Blood & Ink Contest writers. I knew a lot of you would take that script right up to the last second, changing scenes, adding subplots, erasing characters, all with just days to go. When you do that, your script is usually bad. So, now you have an extra month to smooth all those last second changes out. If you’ve already sent me your draft, you have the option of sending in a newer draft by the new deadline date. So, here we are…

I need: Your Blood & Ink screenplay
When: Sunday April 5th Now Tuesday May 5th (Cinco De Mayo!!!)
E-mail me at: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Include: Title, Genre, Logline, and a PDF of the screenplay
Subject Line Should Read: Blood & Ink Final Entry

Now on to our regularly scheduled programming.

I’m so insanely thrilled to see Project Hail Mary doing well. It’s important that when Hollywood makes a movie the right way and it’s good, that it be celebrated. Because as many mistakes as Hollywood makes, the one thing you can count on them to do is emulate their successes. So, with this movie doing so well, a lot of people in the industry are studying why that is and hopefully learning a few lessons.

I have a theory that’s a little ‘out there’ about how Project Hail Mary was able to separate itself, quality-wise, from, literally, the last 500 movies the studios have released. The theory? Hollywood has learned how to game the Rotten Tomatoes system.

Here’s what I mean by that. Hollywood knows that they just have to get an 80% RT score to give themselves a shot at the box office. They also know that to get a positive critic score from any one reviewer, you just have to make something that they like more than they dislike. So, a C+ movie. If you get 80% of critics giving you a C+, that’s still an 80% RT score.

So they’ve basically learned how to make the perfect C+ movie. Likable hero. A certain number of set pieces. A story that has some energy behind it.

The problem with that is, the formula taps out at C+. If you want to make an A+ movie, you have to put a lot more work into the script (be willing to try something risky, fail, and start over, be willing to write more drafts to strengthen weaknesses, etc). You gotta take some chances. You have to be willing to risk being terrible to be great. I mean, if they would’ve botched the Rocky character – which was, by no means, a slam dunk – this movie would’ve fallen apart.

I believe that the reason Project Hail Mary was awesome was that, unlike all the other movies in Hollywood right now, the creators weren’t interested in an RT proof C+ movie. They wanted to make a great movie.

You know how I know this movie’s doing well? This week, half a dozen random people I talked to brought up Project Hail Mary. “Hey, have you seen Project Hail Mary? What’d you think?” In this day and age, that’s shocking. Cause movies are no longer at the top of the pop culture food chain. Yet something about this film is breaking through. And now that we see its amazing hold through its second weekend, we know that it’s officially that word-of-mouth hit.

Speaking of good movies, a couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the unmade screenplay for Commando 2. Arnold Schwarzenegger is coming back to some of his older franchises so reviewing it felt right. I thought it was an odd screenplay but a good one. And it got me thinking about the original film and how much I loved it. I hadn’t seen it in 30+ years so when the thought of revisiting it came up, I figured the older more sophisticated version of myself today would think it sucked. And my positive memory of the film would be ruined forever.

But curiosity got the best of me and I finally rented it.

I can now say that THAT MOVIE IS EFFING AWESOME.

It’s awesome.

It really is.

And what shocked me the most was the screenwriting. They wrote scripts different back then, specifically action scripts. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing with action scripts these days but these modern-day action writers would be doing themselves a big favor to go back to movies like Commando to reacquaint themselves with the basics.

One screenwriting tip stood out more than any other for this movie and I would argue it’s the second biggest reason (behind Arnold of course) this movie was so awesome.

What’s the tip?

SAY ‘NO’ TO YOUR HERO AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

It took me 15 years in the screenwriting world to learn this lesson. But it’s a powerful one. The word “yes” is your enemy as a screenwriter. The word “no” is your biggest ally. Every time someone says ‘yes’ to your hero, you make things easy for them. Every time someone says ‘no’ to your hero, you make them have to work harder.

Let’s say that we’re following a “Superbad” group of teens. There’s a huge party tonight where the hero’s dream girl is going to be and they’ve been told that, to get in, they have to bring a case of beer. So they come up with a plan, go through the elaborate process of securing a fake ID, head to the liquor store, the oldest one goes in to buy the case, puts the beer on the counter, and takes out the cash to pay for it.

As the writer, you now have a choice. The checker can either accept the money and let him buy the beer or he can say, “No.” If he says yes, the plot moves steadily along and you can get them closer to the party.

But if he says “no,” things get WAY MORE INTERESTING. “No, sorry. You’re not old enough,” and he snatches the fake ID away. “Now, get out of here.” Well, now what does the group do? More importantly, what do we feel as the reader? We’re thrown into disarray. We’re unsettled. How the hell are they going to get into the party now??? That uncertainty is like crack to a reader and has them way more engaged than if the checker simply allowed him to buy the beer.

The reason Commando is so awesome is because the entire screenplay is one “No” after another.

The plot of the movie is actually more clever than I remembered. Bad guys kidnap former special ops commander John Matrix’s (Arnold’s) daughter. They tell him that they’ll kill her unless he goes to this South American country and assassinates a president there that they need dead.

They put Matrix on this commercial flight with one of their guys accompanying him but Matrix, in an amazing scene that still holds up today, has Matrix killing the bad guy, then escaping from the plane, jumping out at the last second. Matrix knows that the second that plane lands in South America, it will be relayed to the bad guys that Matrix isn’t there and they will kill his daughter. The plane lands in 11 hours so that’s how much time Matrix has to find and save his daughter.

GSU before GSU was en vogue!

Matrix forces his way into an off-duty flight attendant’s (Cindy) car and she ends up staying with him during this whole revenge plan.

There’s a great example of “The No Rule” in the scene following Matrix’s escape from the plane. Matrix kidnaps Cindy and her car, and they secretly follow another bad guy, Sully, who’d been tasked with making sure Matrix left on the plane. Cindy is kicking and screaming the whole time, with Matrix trying to calm her down.

They follow Sully to a mall, where he’s meeting someone, and Matrix realizes the place is too high profile to confront Sully face to face. So he tells Cindy that she needs to go to Sully, put the moves on him, and try to get him to a quiet place, where Matrix can confront him.

One thing you have to understand about “The No Rule” is that the word ‘no’ isn’t just a word characters can say. It’s a word YOU CAN SAY to your characters.

So, we watch Cindy head across the mall to the restaurant that Sully has entered. Now, I want you to see this moment through the eyes of a screenwriter writing the scene. If Cindy does what Matrix says and convinces Sully she’s into him and gets Sully into, say, a bathroom, where Matrix confronts him, THAT’S THE ‘YES’ VERSION OF THIS SCENE.

The ‘NO’ version is what we get instead. The second Cindy walks in the restaurant, she sees a cop and hurries over to him and says, “There’s a man out there who kidnapped me. Please stop him.” Notice how our heart sinks in this moment. Matrix just got the ‘NO’ as opposed to the ‘YES.’

And notice what happens after. The cop calls the other cops in the mall, tells them to close in on Matrix, a dozen cops move in on Matrix from every side and HOLY FRICKING COW we now have a scene that’s A THOUSAND TIMES more interesting than had Cindy done exactly what Matrix asked. I don’t even have to tell you what happens next in this scene and I can hear from inside of my computer how much you want to know.

So, why do writers write ‘yes’ so much then?

Because ‘yes’ is always easier on the writer. If you write ‘yes,’ you don’t have to write this big elaborate complex scene of John Matrix having to escape 12 cops in the middle of a giant mall in the middle of the day. So, your inclination is always to write ‘yes.’ Cause that inner writer wants to take the easiest route.

If you’re at all an action guy, rent this movie tonight. It’s really good. More importantly, study how many times the writer says ‘no’ to the main character. Even the subtle times. There’s this moment right after the mall chaos where Matrix is chasing Sully in the parking lot and gets in front of his car. And we’re thinking, “He can jump in this car and grab Sully now.” But then Sully bowls him over with the car, sending Matrix reeling off to the side. That’s a ‘no’ moment. Cause you could’ve said ‘yes’ and got him in the car where he would’ve been able to take down Sully. But by saying ‘no,’ the sequence becomes a lot more interesting.

Go through your current script right now, see where you’re saying ‘yes’ and, in a key moment, say ‘no’ instead. Watch that scene come alive.

My relationship with AI continues to evolve.

One day I think it’s amazing that I can theoretically create a movie in a computer without ever having to step outside and shoot a frame of video. The next day I think AI movies are soulless, evil, and antithetical to the actual purpose of storytelling, which boils down to evoking emotion from an audience.

With that said, AI is becoming a really good partner in the writing process. And today, I want you guys to share your experiences with AI writing so far. I want this to be a shame-free safe space. I know some of you are passionate in your hatred of AI as it pertains to writing. But let’s try and keep the conversation around this tool positive only because there are parts of AI that could really help some writers out which they may not know about. So, I was hoping that if we all shared what we use AI for in the writing space, it could help others who never would’ve thought to use AI in that way.

I’ll give you an example. I know this ESL writer whose dialogue, as a result of English being his second language, is really on-the-nose. I’m talking like some of the most on-the-nose dialogue you’ve ever read. And I’ve been trying to get him to make the dialogue less on-the-nose. Even if it’s just by 10%. But he continues to struggle with it.

Finally, I said, “Look. Run one of your dialogue scenes through AI. Claude or ChatGPT. And tell it to make the dialogue sound more like real-world conversation. Do not use the dialogue it gives you. But use the dialogue it gives you TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND HOW TO MAKE YOUR DIALOGUE LESS ON-THE-NOSE AND MORE LIKE REAL LIFE CONVERSATION.” Then use that dialogue as a reference point to rewrite the dialogue in that scene.

He did this and the dialogue got better! Not a ton better. But definitely improved.

I find that to be one of AI’s biggest strengths. If you have a weakness and you know it’s a weakness, you can have AI write up something for you to help you see, in general, how the “correct” way to write it is.

Another thing that AI is really good at is working through scenes with you. And I’ve used it sporadically for working out scenes in my novel. One of my big writing philosophies is that your script isn’t ready until every scene is at least a 7 out of 10. And preferably, you want to get as many of those scenes into the 8 out of 10 category, or higher, as possible.

I had this scene that just wasn’t working.  It was a 4 out of 10 at best.  You guys know what I’m talking about. There are those scenes in your script that you just can’t figure out for the life of you. And so I put it through a couple of AI sites and I laid out, very specifically, why I thought the scene was slow and what I thought needed to get better.

Here’s the funny thing. Just by thinking so deeply about why the scene wasn’t working, I actually figured out the solution to making it better before AI responded. But the point is, whenever I do this, AI lays out why it believes the scene isn’t working and gives you some alternative ideas.

Which leads to another funny reality. It’s actually never come up with a scene that I’ve liked. But just reading through the logic of all of its alternative ideas, helps me see the scene in ways I haven’t thought about before and THAT usually gives me an idea on how to fix the scene.

So it’s like virtual brainstorm buddy. And I think it’s great for that. I believe all writers should be using that aspect of it.

Another thing that AI is absolutely stellar at is describing locations that you know nothing about. Like if a scene of yours takes place in a 1930s factory in Germany, and you need to describe what it’s like in there – what it looks like, feels like, smells like – AI is amazing at that. You say, “Describe the setting in three paragraphs” (for a novel) and it will give you a very detailed description of the place, that you can then use as a reference point for writing your version of that location.

It’s a game-changer because one of the easiest ways for me to spot newbie writers is they’ll set a scene, a sequence, or even an entire script, in a world they barely understand. And you can tell they don’t understand it from how sparsely they’ve described it. This eliminates that issue. Don’t know anything about hospitals? With AI by your side, you can create the most realistic fictional hospital series ever.

But let’s get to the ultimate question. Which is: Can AI actually write? As in, all by itself? Can you tell it to write a scene for you? And the answer is, it can. I test it at least once a week to see where it’s at. It turns out, it has two gigantic weaknesses that keep it from being able to write.

The first is that it’s not good at anything that deals with emotion. It can describe a room for you as well as some of the best writers in the world. But the second you want it to convey the complicated relationship between the mother and the daughter in that room, and how the two interact with each other, it starts breaking down. It just doesn’t understand what that looks like or feels like.

Which makes sense. A big part of making writing authentic is being able to place yourself inside each character’s head and understand what it is they’re going through and using that filter to build a mechanism for them to interact with the rest of the world.

For example, Bender, from The Breakfast Club, grew up in a violent household with a stepfather who always beat him. So, the way that he interacted with the world was to challenge it, to berate it, to displace that energy off of him and onto others. And once you understand that, you know how to write that character.

AI just can’t get there. It mimics what other characters like this have done in the past. But, again, as every good writer knows, each character, like each human being, is its own unique individual. The second you copy and paste someone into a new script, something feels off. I would go so far as to say that one of the ways you become a good writer is to understand that. Because those little unique things that separate your bully character from the last bully character in a movie are what make them stand out. I just don’t see AI ever figuring that out.

The second big weakness is that AI is not you. One of the most common things I’ve heard in Hollywood over the last 25 years is that people are looking for someone with a voice that’s unique. They write in a unique way. Their sense of humor is different. Their story choices aren’t like other writers’ story choices. They tell stories in a way that feels unique. And just the way their writing moves through your head as you’re reading it has its own unique rhythm and cadence.

When I have AI rewrite a scene of mine to see how it does, sometimes it writes something that’s better. But when I go through the actual text, I’m constantly saying to myself, “That doesn’t sound like me.” “I would never use that word.” “That sentence feels off for some reason.” I have a distinct style and way that I write and once I give that job to AI, I lose the very thing that makes my writing me.

And if the writing doesn’t sound like you, that means it sounds like someone else. In this case, since it’s AI writing it, it sounds like whatever AI has decided is the “proper” voice to tell this story in. And since AI’s very existence is built on top of it pulling millions of writing styles in, it’s literally writing in that middle generic space that doesn’t evoke any sort of point of view at all.

What this tells me is that AI is a writing tool. A valuable one. One you should definitely be experimenting with. But it can’t write things for you. It can assist you. It can inspire you. But everyone here who has a voice they consider unique should stand proud knowing that as long as you’re loyal to that voice every time you write, you will always be an asset in this industry. It is only once you give AI all the power in your writing that you are no longer of value as a writer. Never forget that.

What do you guys use AI for these days? Be as specific as possible. And try to be supportive of people here. In some meetings I’ve had, I notice a lot of writers hiding the fact that they use AI cause it’s stigmatized. We’re not going to stigmatize you here. We want to share the strengths of this tool with everyone so we can all get better as writers. :)

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Alex O’Hara is struggling through a divorce when everyone in Los Angeles County starts receiving emergency alerts on their phones, revealing the details of Alex’s depressing life. Unable to stop the alerts from coming, Alex decides to lean in and try to use the newfound accountability to turn his life around.
About: This script was bought by Sony! All hail! The comedy spec…… is back????
Writer: Donald Diego
Details: 99 pages

I’ll start off with this.

Fun idea!

I’ve seen just about every idea under the sun so it’s always nice when one pops up that feels fresh. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t remind me of those late 90s early 00s high concept comedy spec sales.

I’d also be lying if I said it’d be nice to have those days back! Especially comedy specs. I don’t know what happened with comedies. Actually, I do. But whatever the reasoning for why comedy movies went out of style, I’d be shocked if a Hangover-level premise didn’t bring in plenty of buckaroos for a studio.

Buy some comedy specs, guys!

I guess that’s exactly what Sony did. Let’s see if they did it well.

Alex O’Hara has been married to Dana for 20 years and has an 18 year old daughter named Sloane who’s heading off to college. On the eve of her leaving, Sloane confesses to Alex that she overheard mom and Aunt Cara talking and that mom plans to leave Alex as soon as Sloane leaves for college.

That turns out to be true and when Alex is faced with living in a giant house all alone, he breaks down and starts crying. But that isn’t the worst moment of his day. The worst moment is when an alert goes out all over Los Angeles that says this: “Alex O’Hara, a grown man and resident of La Cañada Flintridge is currently in the fetal position, crying his eyes out next to his kitchen island because his wife just left him.”

More alerts start shooting out, all of which appear to be motivated by emotion. So, whenever Alex feels something very powerfully, an alert goes out. “Alex O’Hara, a grown man and resident of La Cañada Flintridge has just furiously masturbated to a picture of his ex-wife in a red bikini.” Alex races over to city hall to ask what’s going on but they don’t have any idea. In the meantime, he’ll just have to get used to these alerts going out.

What follows is Alex living a life of misery. He hates his car dealership job. He hates living home alone. He hates that his wife has a new boyfriend. But something funny happens. Alex becomes a sort of mini-celebrity and people start rooting for him. With the warm embrace of the masses behind him, Alex takes a hard look at his life and realizes everything he did wrong that led to his divorce.

Alex then decides that he wants his wife back. But in order to get her back, he has to change. So he starts going to the gym again. He quits the job he hates. He develops new friendships with people he’d otherwise overlook. He starts taking initiative for the first time in his life. And because these are all emotional highs, they go out as text alerts, letting not just all of LA know what’s up, but Dana as well. And slowly, but surely, she becomes intrigued by her ex-husband again.

That is until Alex sees an IG post about Dana’s new boyfriend. He gets so mad about it that his thoughts go out as an alert, and the next day, masses of people who are rooting for Alex destroy the boyfriend’s house. Dana is furious and says that’s it, that Alex needs to give up on rekindling their marriage because she’s done with him.

Soon after that, LA discovers the reason for the errant text alerts (which is shockingly believable) and is able to shut them down. Which means that Alex is just a regular guy again. In spite of this, he still wants to get his wife back. So he decides to do one final grand gesture in the hopes of convincing her. It’s a long shot. But maybe, just maybe, it will work.

Alex Alert is a script that falls on its face in the first half and, much like Alex does at the end of the movie, somehow redeems itself when it’s all said and done. It is not an accident that this happened. There is a very specific script-related moment that took this screenplay from forgettable to charming. And I’ll tell you what that is in a second.

First, I want to talk about mining your premise. Because when you have a big flashy premise like this, you need to mine it for every script possibility it can provide for you. Most writers never get past the 70% mark of mining a big premise. And a ton don’t even get that much out of their scripts.

That’s where I’d put Alex Alert. This is a 70% mining of the premise. It could do so much more. And I’ll tell you exactly where you mine those extra percentage points. You find them in rewrites. With big concepts, every rewrite is an opportunity for you to figure out even more regarding the uniqueness of your premise, and then utilizing that by building story developments and character advancements around it.

Back to the Future is a great example of this. As I’ve stated before, the time machine was originally a refrigerator. It was only through rewrites that it became a car. And once it became a car, the multitudes of awesomeness the script improved by were unquantifiable.

Where did Alex Alert fall short? I loved this idea that people started to become Alex fans. And it made perfect sense, too. This guy was struggling in his life and every struggle was being shared with everyone. It only makes sense that people would feel sympathy for him and start rooting for him. Almost like a character in a movie. There’s a version of this screenplay where that becomes a much bigger part of the story. These people coming to him and supporting him and pushing him to become better. We get a little of that here and there. But the writer could’ve gone much further with it.

Then there were small things. For example, one stage of the script is Alex utilizing the alerts to let his wife know that he’s changing for the better. And she’s taking notice. Then that alert happens that gets her new boyfriend’s house destroyed and she’s done with Alex. Then, AFTER THAT, LA stops the alerts.

What would’ve been better is if LA stopped the alerts WHILE ALEX WAS IMPRESSING HIS WIFE. Cause, as a dramatist, that’s when you want to hit your character – when they’re on a high and they’re getting closer to achieving their goal (get my wife back). It’s way less interesting if they stop after he’s already failed at his goal.

Okay, so getting back to how this script saved itself. It’s pretty “Screenwriting 101.” The mistake that was made here was there was no goal in the story. The first half of the script was objective-less. Sure, it was kind of fun to see Alex’s life fall apart and all the alerts go out. But 40 pages of that without any story direction? That’s storytelling suicide. I was bored out of my mind.

The script saved itself at the midpoint by simply adding a goal with high stakes attached to it: GET WIFE BACK. As soon as the story did that, it gained purpose. It gained momentum. It gained A POINT. And pretty much everything after that was good. Not game-changing. But good.

So, writers? Add a goal. It does wonders to your screenplay.

Now, if this writer were debating this choice with me, I assume he’d say that he first had to establish the gravity of losing his wife in order to introduce a storyline where he tried to get her back.

To that I say… dude? This is screenwriting. Tons of screenwriting is about doing as much as possible inside as little space as possible. It’s the nature of the beast. If you’re efficient, you can have your hero introduce the goal of trying to get his wife back at the beginning of the second act. Worst case scenario, you can get it in at the 3/8ths mark (around page 40 for a 100-page script). To wait all the way to the midpoint before the story has a point? That’s too risky.

But as I always say here, it’s better to have the bad part of your script be the first half than the second half. Cause that means we finish the script happy. And that’s what happened here.

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

What I learned: Jerry Seinfeld talks about this a lot – the idea that there are funnier words out there for you to use when you make a joke. It’s why he made that Pop-Tart movie. He thinks the word “Pop-Tart” is an inherently funny word. It’s more funny, for example, than “bread.” So, you always want to look for the funniest word or expression, especially at the climax of the joke. There’s this moment where an alert goes out after Alex leases his ’divorced guy’ apartment, talking about how sad and lame it is that he’s done this. Alex is in public at the time, and tries to defend himself to the people around him who just read the alert. “Okay, just so everyone knows, the apartment I just leased isn’t crappy. It’s totally nice! It’s conveniently located next to the grocery store I like. There’s a pool that I have access to everyday until 10. None of that is in the alert, but it should be!” “10” isn’t funny. It’s too bland. “9:30” is funnier. It’s funnier because it takes longer to say, it sounds goofier, and it’s more specific. These are small things in a comedy. But if you’re writing comedy, these are exactly the kinds of details you should be obsessing over. Comedy lives and dies in tiny choices like this. If you’re not constantly hunting for the funniest possible word, you’re leaving laughs on the table.

Character Development gone wrong

Genre: Action/Sci-fi
Premise: A group of Rangers trainees on their final mission encounter an alien machine that seems to have been programmed to destroy them.
About: Director Patrick Hughes became obsessed with high-class military operations and wanted to tell a story about one, which is how he settled on the Rangers. He combined that with a nightmare he once had about a towering machine hunting people down through a forest. The result was War Machine, starring Alan Ritchson, which you can now watch on Netflix.
Writer: Patrick Hughes and James Beaufort
Details: 105 minutes

One of the more common concerns writers have when sending me a script for notes is, “Are my characters well developed?” “Did I do a good job creating characters with flaws that you care about?” These are good questions to ask. If we don’t like your characters, if we don’t want to root for them, the rest of the script doesn’t matter. It’s hard to get engaged in anything if we’re not swept up in the characters who are taking us on the journey.

However, every so often, someone writes a script that focuses TOO MUCH on character development, to the detriment of the story. This usually occurs in scripts like these – action scripts where the audience isn’t pressing play because they want to feel a giant swell of emotion. But because they want to have fun. And if you impede on that fun by turning your script into an indie character piece, the audience rebels against you.

The first mistake War Machine makes is having 81’s struggle be an internal one. 81 is struggling with grief, with not doing enough to save his bro, and he holds it all inside, masking it behind a stone face. These are INCREDIBLY risky characters to write because while the character might be going through a million fascinating feelings inside, all the audience sees is a blank frustrated face. It’s nearly impossible to connect with characters like that and the only exception to this issue tends to be because we like the actor playing the part and just want him (the actor) to succeed.

That mistake alone put War Machine behind the 8 ball. So it sucked that that wasn’t even its biggest character development issue. The giant mistake the writer of War Machine made was he whiffed on the character arc. In order to explain what went wrong, we should discuss the beginner, intermediate, and advanced tiers of character development.

For beginner screenwriting character development, the writer doesn’t even care about development. So they won’t give the character anything going on. In the rare case where they do, they give the character something simplistic, like “they do drugs.” These characters feel empty because there’s no real depth in that.

Next you have intermediate character development, which is how I’d classify War Machine. Often, intermediate character development FEELS like character development, but if you probe it with even the tiniest stick, you see that it’s only mildly effective. 81 had this traumatic experience where he tried to save his brother and failed. And now he’s trying to get over it by doing what his brother would’ve wanted – cross the finish line and become a Ranger.

The lure of character development like this is that it *feels* really intense and like character development is happening. I mean, gosh, the guy couldn’t save his brother! How can that not be character development!?

Let me explain why.

Because 81 did all that he could. 81 tried with every ounce of his being to save his brother and then his brother died. So then where is the growth needed from that? If you already did everything you could then where is there space for growth?

You see, for character development to resonate with readers, there must be growth. And, in this case, 81 already did everything he could to save his brother. Which means internally, from a character development perspective, he’s just spinning his wheels. There’s nothing more we need to see this character do.

Now, if you want to get technical, you could argue that 81 trying to cross the finish line in honor of his brother’s death is development. But is it? I guess in a tiny way it is. He feels a little better about fulfilling the promise to his brother of becoming a ranger. But, again, 81 isn’t actually overcoming anything. I mean, seriously, who the hell cares if he gets across the line or not? I was more interested in whether he was going to destroy this machine.

Okay, let’s move on to the main attraction. If we know what beginner character development looks like and we know what intermediate character development looks like, what does ADVANCED character development look like? All it takes is another Netflix movie that aced it in this category to teach us the lesson.

Remember The Ritual? That’s advanced character development. Why? BECAUSE THE MAIN CHARACTER’S FLAW BEGAN WITH A CHOICE.

I want you to remember that word when it comes to character development: CHOICE

If your character has a choice to do something, and they make THE WRONG CHOICE, that means they have room to grow. The rest of your movie is about them growing so that, in the end, they can make the RIGHT CHOICE. The ability to make the right choice in the end is how you show them grow, and when done well, creates truly memorable character development.

So, if you didn’t see The Ritual, the beginning of the movie has our main character go to a convenience store with his buddy, go to buy something in the back, when a robber comes in. The robber starts threatening the checker and his friend, while our hero hides. In this moment, our hero has a choice. The robber doesn’t know he’s there. He could sneak up on him and try and save his friend. It would be dangerous though. He could get hurt or killed. So he decides to stay hidden. And, as a result, his friend is killed.

By making the wrong choice it opens the door for our character to grow over the course of the story. The movie jumps forward one year with our hero joining his friends on a camping trip and they gradually stumble into a dangerous coven, which will eventually force our hero to make a similar choice. That choice will show us whether he’s grown (developed) or not. If he has, we will feel a swell of emotion due to the fact that the writer properly set up his journey to get to a point where he can change.

Getting back to War Machine, the one-two punch of an interior (and therefore inaccessible) character and a character arc that doesn’t require any development, leaves the emotional side of the movie feeling empty. Which must’ve come as a hard pill to swallow for the writer and director, who clearly put a ton of work into the character side of the script.

But welcome to the evils of screenwriting. Effort doesn’t always equal execution. Especially if you only kind of know what you’re doing as a screenwriter.

And here’s what must really hurt about putting all of this work into the main character only for it to give back nothing. By spending all that time developing 81, the writer didn’t have any time to set up all these other characters in the regiment!!  I mean, we didn’t know ANNNNNYYYYBODDDDY in this group. There was one guy who I maybe could’ve classified “Funny Guy.” But that was the extent of the character development for the rest of the characters. Which made this an extremely empty experience. We didn’t care about anybody else here.

Obviously, they were trying to make a modern-day Predator. In doing so, they should’ve studied that movie more closely. Because one of the many brilliant things about that movie is that they knew they didn’t have time to set up all these characters. So they leaned into archetypes and stereotypes.

Those are often seen as bad words in screenwriting but when you’re writing action, adventure, or horror movies, the extended cast should be archetypes and stereotypes because that’s all you have time to set up. Lean into one guy being a big oaf who thinks that guns solve everything. Lean into the guy who breaks down psychologically because his mind can’t handle what’s happening. Lean into “the mystic.” The 80s were the greatest decade of mastering the two-dimensional character. And I know that sounds like a back-handed compliment but there’s a time and a place for two-dimensional characters. Even if you don’t like the sound of that, I promise you it’s better than what War Machine did, which was give us a group of zero-dimensional characters.

The thing that sucks is that despite all of these character problems, the movie still could’ve been enjoyable had they nailed the war machine. But the war machine sucked! It only had one move. To identify you with its red beam and then shoot at you with its little sparkler bullets. And that was it! It was so lame!

As a sci-fi writer, one of your big jobs is to utilize your imagination so that you give us stuff we couldn’t have come up with ourselves. If you would’ve asked 50 million random people to come up with how this war machine attacked people, nearly all of them would’ve come up with this exact same idea that this writer did. Which is how you know you’re not doing enough. This machine needed to evolve. It needed to do cooler things as the story went on. It did none of that. And when you combine that with a total whiff on the character development, you get a bummer of a movie that wasn’t even worth the time it took to watch it.

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

What I learned: Hughes made a classic mistake here. He fell in love with this idea of a guy trying to get across the “finish line” of a special ops military trainee session. He then retroactively built everything around that storyline. You can feel that in the final product. All the focus was on that storyline whereas the actual hook of the movie – the War Machine – got very little attention. As I pointed out, it did one boring move the whole movie. As the development of your screenplay evolves, you need to evolve the focus so that it takes advantage of the coolest thing about your movie. The coolest thing about this movie is not a guy crossing the Rangers trainee finish line. It’s the fucking War Machine. So make the War Machine a lot fucking cooler.

Make sure to grab a feature screenplay consultation or logline consultation over the weekend!

When they announced this new Jurassic Park movie seemingly minutes after the latest trilogy had ended, I threw up my arms in frustration, went out on my balcony, screamed at the Hollywood sign, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”, and proceeded to get a visit from the police 15 minutes later telling me that some of my neighbors were “scared.” I explained to them that, yeah, they should be scared! Typically it takes five years before rebooting a franchise. Jurassic Park just did it in five minutes!!

You see Mr. Officer, one of Hollywood’s biggest mistakes is that they don’t build movies around scripts. They build scripts around movies. This is despite the fact that the best movies we’ve ever seen have come from building the movie around the script. It RARELY works the other way around. To be frank, it only works when they get lucky!

So when they don’t even PRETEND that they’re going to sit down and take a bunch of pitches and find the best one and have the writer write it, I say go F yourself. Cause that means you don’t care about us. Okay officer?

I’m happy to report that I’m now on a special list for LA County titled, “Suspicious People to Look Out For.” Whatever. Here I am trying to save the movie industry. If I have to publicly humiliate myself on that hill to do the job, then by gosh, I’m going to do it!

However, as I began collecting data on the movie’s performance, I was shocked to watch it climb up the box office charts, finishing as the number 2 live action movie of 2025. And I was pissssssed about it. Because it meant audiences were willing to show up for a bad movie, reinforcing this toxic belief studios have that you can just keep feeding the masses crap and they’ll buy it. This would surely lead to more quickly produced franchise entries that sucked.

I eventually forgot about Jurassic World Rebirth and went on with my life but then last week it showed up on Netflix and I thought, “Well, it’s free now. And there are literally no other movies streaming at the moment. Let’s check it out.” I crossed my arms, fired up the Roku, and dared the movie to entertain me.

You know what?

It did.

Mikey likes it! (Bonus Scriptshadow points if you know that reference)

How in the world did this happen?

As per usual in these parts, I sat in silence while listening to the gentle sounds of Youtube-generated waves for twenty minutes before the answer emerged.

Universal made one big change with this film. They decided to make one awesome Jurassic Park movie and who the hell gives a shit about a franchise that comes after it. I realized that the second they took that path, it freed them up to explore all sorts of cool story possibilities that weren’t available to them had they designed a trilogy.

They essentially made their version of “Aliens meets Jurassic Park.” A bunch of mercenary types go to the Jurassic equator, which houses the last of the dinosaurs, to collect some blood samples in the hopes of turning the result into a miracle life extension. Their plan goes astray when a family on a boat throws up a mayday signal.

You might be saying, “But Carson, that plot isn’t anything special.” It isn’t. It’s actually quite simple. And that’s the point. You want simple plots in these movies. These films fall apart fast once you start stacking plotlines one on top of the other. Plot overload creates fuzzy story engines.

Let me explain something to you about screenwriting when it comes to big concepts. Your plot’s only purpose is to become a vessel that allows you to explore what’s unique about your premise as easily as possible.

In other words, the plot’s job here is to make it as easy as possible to get our characters into as many cool dinosaur-led set-pieces as possible. And that’s exactly what it did.

Our first dino set piece is a giant dinosaur fish-thing attacking a small sailboat. And it’s great! What I loved about it was how simple it was. So many of these set pieces these days are big and busy and convoluted. You don’t know what’s going on half the time. Here, it’s simple! Big fish try to knock over boat. That’s it! So it keeps swimming around and bumping the boat. And it keeps getting worse and worse for the family on the boat. And it’s riveting! I was on the edge of my seat.

The second set piece is just as good. Even though it ups the complexity, it still keeps things simple enough that we understand the scenario. That’s the trick here. You can get more complex with a set piece AS LONG AS YOU EXPLAIN TO US WHAT’S HAPPENING AND WE ARE CRYSTAL CLEAR ABOUT IT. If we’re only 80% there when it comes to understanding the scene, that means the maximum we can enjoy the set piece is at 80% of what you’ve created.

So here, we’ve moved to the mercenary boat. The family has been saved by the mercs. And these five semi-big dinosaurs start swimming around the boat in a menacing way. And the dinosaur expert quickly explains that these are special dinosaurs that actually team-up with other species of dinosaurs to hunt. And so they’re helping that big scary fish hunt this ship. And that’s it! That’s the scene.

And it’s great! Cause it’s so clear. The mercs are trying to outrun the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are whizzing around the boat and try to snatch up the humans in their mouths. Guardrails are broken, humans are holding on for their lives. Hungry dinosaurs get closer and closer. It’s good old fashioned set piece storytelling without all the excess nonsense that has destroyed the Marvel Universe with their abysmally over-constructed fuzzy set pieces.

And I have to give props to David Koepp, who came up with the concept and wrote the script. I’ve always seen Koepp as a glorified studio stenographer. He’s never written anything that’s had any major impact on me. But he kicks ass here. Because he understands what I said earlier. Which is that these huge concept movies are not about anything other than building a story that creates great set pieces.

The T-Rex set piece here is a show-stopper. It’s better than the T-Rex jeep scene in the original movie. And again – I know I’m beating a dead dinohippus here – but it’s because it’s so simple. It’s just a T-Rex stalking the family on an inflatable raft down the stream. So the T-Rex is sort of dancing around from side to side on the stream as it picks at this strange contraption full of potential hors d’oeuvres. It’s actually quite brilliant spatially. The T-Rex is on the right side, then the left side, at one point when the water gets deep, it swims under them.

But the point is, it’s such a simple setup. And that creates clear GSU. If you do that for your set pieces, you’re winning most of the time.

Another thing Koepp did that impressed me was he created two different groups of people to follow on the island. This allowed him to create twice as many set pieces.

I think what Koepp realized, possibly in early drafts, was that if he only followed a team of mercs, that they would be able to stand their ground against the dinosaurs. I mean they have giant guns and weapons. By creating a family as well, he could place characters into situations that the audience genuinely didn’t think they could survive. Like that T-Rex scene. You’re sitting there thinking, “There is literally no way they can survive against this thing.”

So, let’s ask the most important question of all here. Or, at least the most important question in my Universe. What does this mean for Star Wars? Cause I want to save Star Wars. And when a big franchise does a good job, I ask if the same approach might be able to resuscitate my favorite dying franchise.

The big “what I learned” from Jurassic World Rebirth is that when you don’t have to worry about trilogies, you can just create a good singular story concept. And that’s when I realized, this is the same track that Star Wars is already taking. Both Mandalorian & Grogu and Starfighter are standalone movies. So, maybe I’ve been too hard on them. Maybe they did the same thing as Koepp – just figure out what the best story to tell is and tell it.

If that happens and those movies are awesome, I’ll be the first to cheer, just like I’m cheering this movie on now. I suggest all of you do the same. Fire up Netflix and enjoy yourself a heck of a well-written action-adventure film.