PITCHING CLOSED UNTIL NEXT WEEKEND!

Big announcement today, everyone.

I had so much fun with the showdown that it got me thinking about the fact that I have a direct line to, arguably, the biggest person in horror in all of Hollywood. And this person trusts my taste implicitly. If I send him a script, he’ll literally start reading it within 10 minutes.

And I thought, why aren’t we taking advantage of this on the site? He’s wanted us to work together forever assuming I can find a script he likes. But that’s the catch. He’s also known as the toughest grader in Hollywood. If you think I’m tough, this man is like the Stanford professor who’s never given an A before. But when he really likes something, HE MAKES IT. He’s one of the few people in Hollywood who can ensure a movie will get made.

That’s where my idea for the Blood and Ink Showdown stemmed from. The blood is the script. You got to come up with a great horror script. The ink is when you sign on the dotted line of that spec script sale contract.

How is this going to go down? We’re playing the long game here, folks. This showdown will happen on Friday February 26th. Which gives you six months to write the script. And you will be writing it. You’re not going to be able to enter an already written script. Why?

Heh heh heh.

Let me explain.

One of the things I realized with these showdowns is that 90% of the contestants take themselves out of the running before they write a word of their script. Their concepts are insanely weak. I already know this person won’t look at a script if the concept isn’t good. So I have to make sure the concept is worth writing in the first place.

Hence, you have to EARN your way into the showdown. How do you do this? You have to pitch me a horror script idea that I approve of. For the next four weekends, you will pitch, in the comments, your title and logline for a horror script. I will answer “yes” or “no.” I will occasionally answer “maybe” if the idea has potential but needs to be tweaked. In that case, you’re going to want to keep pitching different versions of that idea.  If I keep saying “Maybe,” you can keep going.  But if I feel the idea is toast, I’ll “no” it.  You are allowed to pitch as many ideas as you want.

BUT!

If I feel like you’re spamming concepts in the comments or just running over to ChatGPT and copy-and-pasting whatever it comes up with, I will stop responding to your pitches, which I’ll first warn you about, then confirm. I need to feel like these are genuine pitches that you’ve thought about in good faith.  I suggest you privately vet your loglines with friends from the site and only pitch the best ones.  Again, if I see someone just mindlessly pitching garbage, they’re out.

If you want more of a conversation about your logline pitches, rather than just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ or you want to pitch your ideas in private, you can order my logline service. It’s $25 for a logline analysis (along with a yes or no) and $50 for unlimited e-mails where we potentially workshop a weak logline into something that is contest worthy. There are no guarantees though. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Once we get through the four weekends, that’s it. Whoever makes the cut is in. From there, you’re going to write the script over the next five months. I will be integrating that process into the site occasionally. For example, we may have a First Scene Showdown for the Horror contestants. And I’ll be setting some checkpoints for you along the way to make sure your script is ready come showdown time.

Obviously, the pool of entrants is going to be much smaller. But, since every entry will be a good movie idea, the chances of finding something worthy of being produced will be much higher. There’s an off-chance that if someone comes up with a gangbusters mega-awesome horror idea that this person might fall in love with it and buy it off the idea alone.

I’m also trying to promote good screenwriting practices overall. Too many writers spend years on a script that they never idea-tested. It’s insane to me. You just wasted two years of your life working on a terrible idea, making the writing of the screenplay pointless. What I’m asking you to do here is how you should do it. Get your ideas out there in front of people and test them to see if they’re any good! Only write something when you get good responses from it.

To be clear, I’m not sending this guy an okay script. I’ve sent him scripts before that I thought were good but not great. He responds, in a polite way, with “Don’t waste my time.” So, you have to deliver. It’s not a foregone conclusion that I’m sending this if the winning script is just the best of a bunch of okay screenplays.

The good news is, even if he doesn’t like it, there are other people I can send it to *if I like it*.

So, when does this experiment start?

RIGHT NOW!

You can start pitching horror script loglines in the comments immediately. I will be checking in periodically. Don’t worry if I don’t respond to your idea right away. I *will* get to it by the end of the weekend.

All right. Let’s rock’n’roll!

The big project that landed over at Paramount with Timothee Chalamet and James Mangold

Genre: Crime/Heist
Premise: A guy who uses motorcycles to rob banks recruits his brother to join the party.
About: Timothee Chalamet is reteaming with his “Complete Unknown” director, James Mangold, to make this film for Paramount on the heels of its recent sale to Skydance. The short story was written by Jaime Oliveira, who is adapting it into a script. Oliveira has no previous credits. Which is yet another reminder that you can be a nobody writer and land a big project. It appears that this will be a priority for Mangold and Chalamet, which means that Mangold’s Star Wars project has likely gone the way of every other Star Wars project at Lucasfilm – into the Death Star trash compactor.
Writer: Jaime Oliveira
Details: 50 pages

I was told that this movie was the next “Heat.”

I would agree with that but I would add a slight caveat. It’s the Gen Z Heat. It’s soft. It keeps checking in on you. It gives you warm hugs when you’re feeling down.

The reason Heat was so awesome was that it was relentless. It didn’t care about you. It cared only about being the most visceral experience you were going to have that decade.

If Heat wants to fuck you, High Side wants to cuddle with you afterwards

Which I guess is sort of Timothee Chalamet’s brand. This guy isn’t exactly DeNiro. But I was hoping for a whole lot more than I got with High Side.

When ex-bike racer Billy Miller’s father dies, his older brother, Cole, shows up after ten years and says he’s got a new job for him. Billy’s been waiting with baited breath for his brother ever since he left, so he doesn’t put up much resistance.

Cole takes him to his hideout in the middle of Texas, where he introduces him to the crew. There’s the handsome Ricky, the gorgeous but 100% trouble Emily, the mother of the group, Liv, the hacker, Dusty, and the ubiquitous “Chief” characters who’s in all of these movies.

They’re all tough guys and they follow Cole who has created the perfect bank-robbing scheme. Go to a city big enough to have lots of money in its banks, but small enough not to have police helicopters. They don’t need to worry about cop cars because they escape on motorcycles, which no car can catch.

Cole brought Billy in because Billy is the fastest of the fast on a motorcycle. Of course… Billy can’t drive all of the motorcycles at once so I’m not sure why that matters. But anyway.

The group robs a bunch of banks with no problems whatsoever – riveting storytelling when there are no obstacles to your heroes’ objectives. I suppose that maybe the love story between Billy and Emily is supposed to alleviate this. I would most certainly argue that it does not. Eventually, Cole gets word that there’s a fox in the henhouse. One of the group members is an undercover agent. Cole’s response to this – I kid you not – is to do one last job – their biggest yet – in Fresno California, with a haul of 15 million dollars.

This job is the climax of the story and because Cole is the dumbest person in America, he can’t foresee that the entirety of the FBI is going to be waiting for him, seeing as they have a direct line into their plan. This ending is basically the whole reason this movie concept was conceived of – to rip off the famous bank robbery in Heat. Does it succeed? Based on what I’ve told you so far, what do you think?

The greatest heist scene ever, from Michael Mann’s “Heat.”

I don’t even know where to start in explaining how by-the-numbers this was.

It began like literally every movie ever. Dad dies. Brother recruits other brother into crime. Meet the crew. Go do crimes. Hero falls in love with the girl on the team. I was so far ahead of this story that I swear, at one point, I was reading it in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2026.

It somehow only got more predictable from there. Bring in a parallel FBI agent storyline, which was botched to the nth degree. They introduce this Agent Lennox character like he’s going to infiltrate the motorcycle robbers, only to have him do NOTHING. It turns out his only purpose was to show up at the last second and tell Cole that ANOTHER FBI AGENT had infiltrated his gang.

This then becomes a mystery in the story. Who is the mole?

Which creates an unfixable story situation. Because when you’re saying there’s a mole in the operation, you have to ask as the writer, which character would create the biggest problem as the mole? (Spoilers) Of course, that would be Emily. Because Billy has fallen for her. So, her being the mole creates the most conflict within the group. But that’s also the most obvious person! So we all know it’s Emily immediately. This leaves the writer to either go with the obvious choice or go with a choice that doesn’t matter.

Everything about this story was more vanilla my dance moves.

Here’s a snippet from the story that encapsulates my reading experience.

“One more job,” Cole said. “Then we ride off into the sunset.”
Nobody cheered. Just nods and silence.

Where is the LIFE???????

This is supposedly the biggest moment in the script so far. The response? “Nobody cheered. Just nods and silence.”

That’s how I felt when I read this. A lot of silence. A lot of lifelessness.

Does this story have hope as a movie?

I suppose that if they make some truly memorable motorcycle getaway set pieces, at least the movie will give audiences something to talk about. That’s something that’s hard to measure in a script. The way the motorcycle scenes were described here were vanilla, like everything else in the story. But James Mangold might come in and have some ideas to improve them.

And then you have the final bank heist scene, which is striving to be the Heat bank heist. I don’t know why directors, or writers, do this to themselves. Well, I do. Like I always say, we’re all here to rewrite or remake our favorite movies. And so I’m sure James Mangold is thinking, “I get to do my Heat bank shootout!” But it’s never going to be as good, James! It just won’t be. Even if you do the best job you can possibly do. You can’t beat the scenes and the movies that are in the pantheon. It is IM-POSS-IBLE.

So why not, instead, create your own great scene? Something nobody has done yet? Be a trendsetter, not a trend-follower.

For this script to have any hope, it needs a massive rewrite from someone who understands clichéd and obvious choices.

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

What I learned: This is an absolutely terrible way to introduce a character: “Then came Emily. She moved quiet, calm. Wore her gear like it was part of her. Her eyes—dark, unreadable—found mine without blinking.” What in the world have we learned about this character from this intro? NOTH-THING!!! Nothing. That’s the only criteria that matters when introducing characters is – DOES THE DESCRIPTION TELL US WHO THEY ARE? This description does not and therefore it is a failure.

What I learned 2: You’re probably wondering, after this scathing review, “Well then why did Timothee Chalamet sign onto it?” Simple. Motorcycles. Seriously! That’s it. He gets to ride motorcycles and the director promised him that he’ll get to be in his own Heat bank shootout scene. It also helps when you have 4 months to pitch someone an idea (as Mangold did on the set of Complete Unknown).

This is it! The Second Annual Mega-Showdown winning screenplay. And we don’t wait around here at Scriptshadow like other contests. We celebrate the script THE VERY NEXT DAY. Hence, here’s the review for… Hard Labor.

Genre: Real-Time Action Thriller
Logline: A heavily pregnant woman is found by criminals she’s been hiding from and the shock makes her go into labor. Now she must awaken old skills to survive this night – because killers are coming…but so is the baby.
About: While Hard Labor finished third in the original voting tally, when it was facing 9 other screenplays, it took the top spot after everyone had a chance to read all four finalists’ first five pages (say that five times in a row!). You can check out those first five pages here. Overall, it was a fairly close competition, with Hard Labor taking in 35% of the votes. That’s 12% higher than the next highest vote-getter. But all four scripts received a solid amount of votes. You can check out the original Mega-Showdown post with the 10 contenders here. And you can check out the finalist post with the top 4 scripts here. For anyone with questions about Hard Labor, I’m sure the writer, Mike, will be in the comments to answer anything you want. Oh, and Mike. CONGRATULATIONS!
Writer: Mike Hurst
Details: 98 pages

Anya Taylor Joy for Tamara??

I noticed that some of you were concerned that this script might come off as goofy with the whole pregnancy angle. And, you know what? I was worried about that too. It was one of the things that made me waver as to whether to choose this script for the competition.

But, as I told you, this competition wasn’t just about the logline. Or even the first page. It was about the first five pages. In other words, I had to make sure that all the writers in this contest could write! And when I read these first five pages, I didn’t have any doubt that this script had to be in.

Nine months pregnant, Susan, is preparing to have her baby. The doctor just told her to get her “go bag” ready. Susan’s response: What’s a go bag? In her defense, she doesn’t need to know a lot about raising babies because she’s giving hers up for adoption after her little girl is born.

Susan heads back to her little apartment that she shares with her gay roommate, Brett. Brett brings home a hookup from work, a guy named Lyle, but Lyle is suspiciously more interested in Susan than he is Brett. It doesn’t take Susan long to figure that old Lyle is a killer. So she utilizes the exploding microwave trick to throw him off balance and then attack and kill him.

Brett loses the desire to get laid pretty fast after that because now he’s got a much bigger problem – There are four more men outside in a car who want to kill Susan. Oh, and her name isn’t really Susan. It’s Tamara. And she’s a hitwoman for one of the most notorious mobsters in the region, Big Red.

Big Red, you say? Yeah, that would be the father of the baby inside Tamara. And he really wants to get that baby before Tamara passes him off to the hospital and the child gets lost in the adoption system, never to be found again. Tamara is determined to deliver this baby because she doesn’t want it growing up in this awful violent life. Getting her as far away from Big Red is paramount.

So, she gets Brett to drive her to the hospital, which immediately results in a chase from Big Red’s main crew. The crew includes the mountainous black bodyguard known as Halsey, and the slick leader of the crew, Ryder, both of whom are determined to kill Tamara (but not the baby!) at all costs, as, should they fail, Big Red will end them.

A chase follows throughout the city. Tamara hides just about everywhere she can (including an active ambulance ride), all while in the middle of labor. But a 120 pound 9 months pregnant assassin can only do so much, and she’s eventually captured. That’s when she drops the bombshell on Halsey (spoilers). This ain’t Big Red’s baby. It’s yours. Halsey, realizing that visual confirmation means he’s dead the second this baby is born, is forced to help Tamara escape. But it may be too late for that. Because Big Red has finally arrived on-site.

Let me start by saying why I chose this script.

Like I said earlier, I was a little skeptical about the setup. I was afraid of that potential goofiness factor. I’ve seen women who are nine months pregnant and their bellies are enormous. That can definitely come off as comical in the wrong hands.

And, the truth is, we won’t know if it works until we see it. Mike has a secret weapon here, which is that the visuals are hidden. Which means we can imagine what we want to imagine. And I imagined a pregnant woman who’s just lean enough to still believably run around like Tom Cruise. Whether that’s how it’s really going to look……? We’ll have to find out.

But the reason I chose the script was because it was one of the few scripts that started the way that I tell everyone to start their script – WITH A STORY. You easily could’ve started this script with a woman in a hospital bed getting an ultrasound. 95 out of 100 writers would’ve done that.

But that’s boring. Unless something crazy is going to happen during that scene.

Instead, we start with a “story scene” that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We start with Leo being pulled out of his house, towards his pool. There’s a first act, which starts with a goal: Bad guys need information from Leo (Where’s Tamara?). There’s a second act, with conflict: Leo insists he doesn’t know where she is. And there’s a third act, with the conclusion: They get the information then kill Leo anyway.

Stories are just so wonderful to start your script with because they shift the reader into a “what’s going to happen next” mindset immediately. I’m not asking, “What’s going to happen next?” if a pregnant woman is quietly asking her doctor who’s giving her an ultrasound, “Is it a girl or a boy?” That’s not a story. It’s setup. Setup is just information. It’s not entertainment. I’d guess that 95% of aspiring writers don’t understand this and it’s what cooks half their screenplays.

Granted, we do get some of that setup in the second scene. But, by then, we’re already hooked, because the writer has pulled us in with a story.

Now comes the question: Did the rest of the script live up to the first scene?

For the most part, yes.

Hard Labor is one uninterrupted ride. Which is both its powerful chest and its Achilles heel. The problem when you put your pedal to the metal for 90 pages is that it’s easy for things to become a blur. For example, there was a moment early on when we were in the first car chase where I was losing focus because it was so repetitive. There wasn’t enough variety to keep me focused. And that would happen periodically.

But I’ll tell you how the script won me over.

One of the things I always say is to figure out what it is about your story that’s unique and build the majority of your story’s scenes around that unique thing. If you’re writing a movie about a little girl whose monstrous sketches come to life, I better be getting a lot of scenes that deal with real-life sketches attacking people. At first, I was wondering if Mike was doing that enough here. There were a number of set pieces that could’ve been copy and pasted over to a John Wick film, which worried me.

But I realized that Mike was heeding my advice after all. Just ON THE PERSONAL SIDE OF THE SCREENPLAY. We weren’t getting “pregnant-specific” action scenes. But the pregnancy is definitely integrated into the character and plot sides of the script. One of my favorite developments by far was the reveal that Halsey was the father.

There’s this great scene right after Tamara has told him this and Halsey gets in the car with Ryder, who’s still ignorant of the secret, and Ryder brings up that if this isn’t Big Red’s kid, Big Red is going to annihilate, in the worst fashion possible, whoever the father is. And, of course, since there wouldn’t have to be a DNA test for Big Red to figure out who the father is once this baby is out, Halsey is internally freaking the hell out.

This leads to Halsey helping Tamara later and that’s all you need. You need the unique hook your story is built around to drive the major moments of your script. You can’t write the Halsey reveal or Halsey doing a 180 and deciding to help the heroine in any other script. It specifically comes out of the pregnancy hook. I loved that.

By the way, this script could’ve used more humor. Sometimes we make the error as writers to hide our script’s weakness. But often the best writers shine a light on that weakness and use it to their advantage. A woman running around with a gun 9 months pregnant is kind of a funny image. So why not inject some humor into the script? Brett would be a great character to have more fun with. He could freak out more. He had that capability but I always felt that Mike was putting a muzzle on him.

Check out Anora to see how Sean Baker did a great job with a similar scenario. He had one of the thugs constantly throwing up throughout the story because Anora beat him up earlier. And there were quite a few funny moments even from the serious characters in that movie. I would use that as a template to approach the humor here in a baby’s heartbeat.

In a lot of ways, the script reminded me of Clementine, which came from another Scriptshadow reader, David Williams. That script is now in my Top 10. Is Hard Labor going to make the Top 25? I don’t think so. It’ll definitely make the Top 25 Amateur list. But I think for this script to jump up another level or two, it needs a little more variety, as well as originality in the set pieces. I don’t know if we have a stand out set piece here. We have a lot of solid set pieces. But we need an all-star set piece and then we need a “1a” set piece.

I would love to hear the readers of the site volunteer some ideas for some original set pieces. That’s one of the wonderful advantages of doing this contest. Unlike other contests, there’s community support here and we can all help each other. Because I definitely think Hard Labor could be a movie. Even without a rewrite. But I don’t want to just be the starting point for an average movie. I want something great to come out of this.

Overall, I’m very happy with how you guys voted. And one more final congratulations to Mike Hurst!

Script link: Hard Labor

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

What I learned: Make sure the stakes aren’t just high for your hero but for your villains too. We learn early on that if these thugs don’t kill Tamara, Big Red is going to kill them. So the stakes are very high for them to achieve their goal.

We got the trailer version of this screenplay in the First Page Showdown. Now, it’s grown into an entire script. People lovvvvvved this first page. But can it survive the relentless deconstruction of every single word by the Scriptshadow audience??  You would’ve thought QB1 was an actual serial killer who was best friends with Sydney Sweeney from some of those comments.  The Scriptshadow faithful does not hold back, that’s for sure.  

A quick reminder about how this contest works. This week, the top four vote-getting scripts from the Mega-Showdown last weekend will get their own featured day. Yesterday was QB1. Today is The First Horseman. I will post the first five pages of every script on their day.  I want you to read those pages because, come Friday, we’re having the second half of the showdown where you will vote for your favorite of the four finalists.

To be clear, THERE IS NO VOTING TODAY. This is strictly about reading The First Horseman’s first five pages. Also, if you like what you see in the pages, you can download the entire script. So, everybody give a big returning welcome to our first page lothario, Finn Morgan, and his script, The First Horseman!

Hey! I don’t hear you clapping!

Title: The First Horseman

Genre: Thriller

Logline: At the height of World War 2, a young Japanese-American investigator must race to prevent a terrifying Japanese plot to unleash a devastating plague on the United States. Inspired by true events.

Submissions for The Scriptshadow Mega-Showdown Screenplay Contest are due THURSDAY! – Here’s how to submit!

Genre: Superhero
Premise: As the world’s most famous family, The Fantastic Four, prepare to have their first baby, an evil giant entity known as Galactus threatens to destroy their planet.
About: A lot is riding on this film’s success for Marvel. The movie finished its opening weekend with 118 million dollars. In the much hyped DC vs. Marvel Summer battle of Superman versus Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four lost out to Superman by 7 million bucks. The two films have an almost identical worldwide box office tally, separated by just a million dollars (220 to Superman versus 219 F4). The film received a lot of surprisingly good reviews just before being released, bringing expectations up significantly. I may have allowed those expectations to cloud my judgment.
Writers: Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer, Kat Wood – characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Details: 115 minutes long

I’ll be straight up honest with you.

I can’t get enough of this stuff.

My script analysis brain runs at a million RPMs during superhero movies now, making it hard to just let go and enjoy them. Still, I’m fascinated by these films because I know the people behind the scenes are pouring every ounce of their creative energy into them.

I know people think the opposite is true, that they’re just mindlessly churning these films out. Trust me, that is not the case. They know that the profit difference between a bad and a good superhero movie could be as much as 400 million dollars. And the difference between a bad and a great superhero movie could be as much as a billion dollars.

With those numbers, everybody is working overtime to create the best movie possible.

The problem that keeps getting in the way is that studios refuse to take real creative risks on movies that cost over 100 million dollars. And big creative risks are one of the only ways for a film to break out into something great. Instead, their risks have to stay within small-risk territory. So you’re never going to get something that’s amazing.

That’s why I love this stuff. I love seeing what the studios and creatives on these movies will do. How much they’ll push that envelope and if they’ll ever get bold enough to take a real creative risk. Cause they’re getting to that point where they may not have a choice. If people stop coming to superhero movies, they’ll have to get creative fast. So, in a way, you kind of want these things to fail. That will lead to a new era of wilder weirder superhero films.

I guess you could say that Fantastic Four took *some* risks. They came up with this 1960s aesthetic, which feels a little different than your typical superhero film. But, for some strange reason, you get used to it so quickly, that they might as well have set it in modern times.

The movie follows this “family” of superheroes – Sue Storm (invisibility), Reed Richards (stretchy powers), Ben Grimm (a giant rock), and Johnny Storm (fire powers) – on their parallel universe Earth, where they are kind of like the planet’s presidents. And the movie starts with news that Sue is pregnant.

No sooner does this happen than a female Silver Surfer shows up and warns the entire planet that her master, the gigantic galaxy-hopping Galactus, has chosen their planet to eat. That’s right. Galactus goes around eating planets.

She then disappears and The Fantastic Four chart a flight to Galactus’s home world to try and negotiate. Surprisingly, Galactus is open to negotiation. And, to any sane person, his offer is reasonable. He says that if you give me your newborn, I won’t destroy your planet. The Fantastic Four channel Howie Mandel and tell Galactus… NO DEAL!

They then go back home, break the news to Earth. For some reason, the people of earth are only mildly upset about it. Here the civilians in Superman were, hurling cans of soda point blank at Superman’s face for helping avoid a war yet they merely shrugged their shoulders at the fact that the Fantastic Four didn’t sacrifice one human life for the lives of 6 billion. Um, okay.

But don’t worry! Reed Richards has a plan! It’s called: Project Baby Swap! He’ll lure Galactus into a trap that will send him to the furthest regions of the universe with an empty baby basket. Except he miscalculates how smart Galactus is. When Galactus sniffs out the tomfoolery, it will be a battle to the end right there in New York City.

There is a LOT to talk about with this movie but I’ll start with Pedro Pascal. This dude needs to take a three year vacation from acting. He does so many jobs that it’s clearly harmed his performances. I’ve never seen a more monotone lifeless performance than Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards.

In fact, the worst thing about this movie…. IS THE FANTASTIC FOUR. They’re all boring! How do you make The Thing boring? He’s an awesome character. Here, he’s always tired, like a gassed bodybuilder after a 3 hour workout (“Oh, you want me to pick up this car?” He says, half-heartedly to a group of schoolchildren. “Sure, okay, I guess.”). Then there was the baby drama, which felt like it belonged in a 90s sitcom starring two dads, one named Jesse, the other named Balky, rather than in a 2025 superhero movie.

The closest they got to a compelling superhero was Johnny Storm because at least he had a fun storyline – he fell in love with the Silver Surfer chick.

But from a screenwriting standpoint, they made a critical error early in the screenplay. They created a family WITH ZERO CONFLICT. Since when has there ever been a family without conflict? What a bizarre choice. But, even worse, IT WAS A BORING CHOICE. Cause we meet this family and they all like each other and chum around and that’s not why we come to movies. We come to movies to see conflict resolved. There was no conflict with this family! That alone made it nearly impossible for the movie to succeed.

And here’s the kicker: It almost did succeed.

Why?

Cause, for the first time since Thanos, Marvel had some badass villains! Galactus was a badass! I loved him. I can’t remember the last time a villain with gravitas entered any superhero film. This guy felt like a legitimate threat. Whenever his eyes lit up, I got scared goosebumps.

And Silver Surfer Chick was badass too! I loved the sadness within her. Her action scenes were fun to watch. I wanted her and Johnny to get together. I found myself rooting for her a lot.

Maybe this is why Marvel doesn’t make more badass villains. Because they’re afraid of what’s happened here, which is that the villains outshone the heroes.

One thing that The Fantastic Four taught me, though, is the value of setups and payoffs in these big movies. Again, you don’t have a lot of leniency in your creative choices with these scripts. The higher forces give you nowhere to go but in the most obvious directions.

You can combat this, however, with strong setups and payoffs. Setups and payoffs, as simple as they are to do, create this feeling of cleverness whenever they’re executed. In other words, they make a movie feel smarter than it is. In many ways, it’s your last line of defense in making these big generic movies feel satisfying.

For example, there’s this nice late moment where Johnny Storm decides to sacrifice himself to help push a struggling Galactus into the teleportation zone so he’ll be sent to the furthest regions of the universe. Johnny’s plan is to push him in, which means he’ll have to go as well. So he’s shooting towards Galactus and, at the last second, the Silver Surfer bumps him off his path and sacrifices herself instead.

The movie gave these two – Johnny Storm and the Silver Surfer – five scenes together setting up their complicated relationship and Johnny’s attempt to turn the Silver Surfer, which she had, up until this point, resisted. That was the setup. So, to see her finally come around, to the point where she sacrificed herself for him, was a great payoff. And it felt good!

It was a reminder, though, of just how frustrating this movie was. It had these little flashes of greatness but then it would destroy them with these major character or structural errors. This family was sooooooo boring. And then, for the majority of the script, you had the dreaded “waiting around narrative.” That’s where all our heroes do is wait around. Which DESTROYS story momentum – that they had to wait around for Galactus to show up.

All of this steeped on top of, probably, the most special effects driven movie I’ve ever seen. I’d be surprised if there were even half-a-dozen tangible things on screen. It looked like every frame was created in a computer. And that drives me nuts.

The Marvel Universe is in a really tough spot now. The Fantastic Four did okay. But it’s not going to create a rabid fanbase for more Fantastic Four films. And the reason that’s relevant is because they’re supposedly building these next two Avengers films around Reed Richards being the new Tony Stark.

Oooooooh boy will that be interesting. We’re talking about one of the most charismatic characters ever put on screen being replaced by a piece of cardboard – a piece of cardboard, by the way, who will be shooting seven other films at the same time as Avengers, turning his cardboardy performances even more cardboardy.

For hardcore Marvel fans, this film should be satisfying. Anybody else, though, is going to forget this one within a week.

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

What I learned: If your movie is built around a group of heroes, I would highly advise building SOME FORM OF CONFLICT into that group. While there is probably a good movie somewhere that’s based around a group of people who have zero issues with each other, it’s extremely rare.