I believe it’s time for another installment of, “Wait, that’s a pro script and mine’s not??”

One of the most frustrating things that an aspiring screenwriter faces is identifying the line where amateur ends and pro begins. I’m not talking about official titles here. Everyone knows a pro script is one where a writer gets paid. So maybe the better way to classify it is, where is the line for “Hollywood Ready,” – a script that gets sold or optioned by a reputable production company, a script that wins one of the big contests, or a script that makes the coveted Black List.

How do you know when you’ve written a script deserving of one of these accolades?

This post idea came to me after reading that hauntingly poor haunted house real estate script that made the Black List last week.

I hate when this happens because it’s confusing to writers. They read this terrible script and wonder, “Wait, this made the Black List yet I’m the one still struggling on the outside??” I feel your pain because scripts like this make this whole process feel random. And I promise you it isn’t. Everyone out there is looking for good material. I know because I talk to these people and they want nothing more than the next great script.

It’s important to remember that there is often information you’re not privy to with these bad script success stories. For example, I noticed with the haunted house writer that he was also a director. Therefore, he may have gotten repped by CAA as a director. Not a writer. This gave him an obvious leg up over unrepped writers when he wanted to send a new script out there. It doesn’t explain why 10 people voted for it, but still, it provides more context into how he might have gamed the system.

I remember reading an awful sci-fi script years ago that sold for a lot of money. I didn’t understand the business as well back then so I was miffed as to how anyone thought buying this script was a good idea. Then I learned that the writer was best friends with Channing Tatum at a time when every single studio was desperate to make a Channing Tatum movie. This studio thought that by buying Channing’s buddy’s script, who knows? Maybe he’ll star in the movie. Or, if not, we’ve built up some good will with him so he’ll want to make other projects with us.

But here’s an important thing to remember about these bad scripts. You don’t get to carry them around and when somebody rejects your script, pop them out and make the argument that “This script is worse than mine and it sold. Henceforth, you should buy mine so Hollywood remains a fair place.” Being better than the weasels who backdoor their way into success isn’t a convincing argument. Nobody cares if you write something better than that piece of garbage that sold.

At the same time, this is not a random system. Yes, there are outliers on both sides. But by and large, the scripts that are optioned and developed and purchased and made, these scripts and these writers are better than the slush pile of amateur scripts available. A lot better. And there’s nobody more ordained to make this claim than me. I’ve read more scripts on both sides of the line than anyone save for that Robservations guy. So I have a good feel for where that line is.

But how do YOU know where the line is?

The first thing we need to establish is that there is no line. There are too many variables that affect a screenplay to be able to say, “If you do a, b, c, you’ve written a Hollywood Ready script.” Someone can be weak with plot but if they write a game-changing character, their script can be pro-worthy. Look no further than Joker. Someone can have a weak voice but if they plot something together as strong as Parasite, their script can be pro-worthy. Marriage Story is a plotless wandering journey. But the characters, dialogue, and voice are strong, which makes it, you guessed it, pro-worthy.

If you’re GREAT at one of these four things – plot, character, voice, dialogue – you can write a pro-level script. But most writers will never be great at any of those things. So you have to become really good at two or three of them. I even know some working writers who aren’t ‘really good’ at any of them. But they’re ‘good’ at all of them. These are the “Gemini Man” working professional writers in Hollywood. They can do everything well but nothing exceptional. That should be inspiring. It lets us know that you don’t have to be brilliant to succeed in this business.

Another huge one is writing with strong concepts. I know SO MANY writers who have the chops to break in but they write weak concepts. Weak concepts often come in two flavors. Unexceptional Dramas and Tired Movie Ideas that no longer get people excited. In the Unexceptional Drama category you have stuff like Marriage Story and Call Me By Your Name. In the Tired Movie Ideas category you have stuff like Taken. Or even Die Hard. In both cases, the execution has to be exceptional for these scripts to stand out. And there are maybe 5-10 movies a year where you can legitimately say that the execution was “exceptional.” In other words, you can’t count on exceptional.

There’s a new show coming out called “Beforiegners.” It’s about a group of Vikings who get sent to the present day and have to integrate into modern society. Do I know if this show is going to be any good? No idea. But I know this. It’s a flashy concept. And flashy concepts GET MORE READS, which increases the odds you’ll get your ‘yes.”

They also increase the “yeah but” factor. The “yeah but” factor is when you’re reading average or below-average material, but you keep saying to yourself… “Yeah but, the concept is so fun.” The reader is willing to stay with the script longer. And that’s all this game is, folks. You’re trying to buy more time. Cause the longer somebody invests in your script, the more likely it is they’re going to want it.

Now let’s talk about something uncomfortable.

One of the biggest reasons it’s hard for writers to know where that Hollywood Ready line is is because most writers overestimate their ability. They’re great at pointing out what everybody else’s weaknesses are but are legally blind when it comes to identifying their own. In order to make this next statement, I’ll preface it by saying this was a FORMER COMMENTER. Nobody here right now. But this guy would tear screenplays apart left and right on this site. And I’d read a number of this person’s screenplays. All I kept thinking every time I read one of their critiques was, “Yeah but… you can’t even write a story that makes sense.” I mean they LITERALLY couldn’t put a coherent storyline together.

All of us have some level of that blindness in us. Which is why I tell writers to assume they’re not as good as they think they are. And therefore to work hard to make up for the weaknesses they’re ignorant to. Also, try to un-ignorant yourself. Give your script to people. Beg them for HONEST FEEDBACK (not ‘be kind to me’ feedback). When you get more than one person complaining about some aspect of your writing, you’ve been given a GIFT. You now have something you can work on!

You can attack this in two ways. One, stop writing scripts that highlight your weaknesses. If people keep telling you your character work isn’t good, maybe don’t write Marriage Story. Write Snowpiercer. Or Jane Wick in space. Or two, go out and study everything you can about that subject matter so you can get better at it. Not enough screenwriters work to improve their weaknesses.

Finally, be aggressive and get your script out there. This is a business of no’s. Even people who like your script are going to say no. I once read a friend’s husband’s script that was pretty good. The friend was thrilled because she’d given it to a bunch of people and none of them liked it and finally she had someone to work with on the project and get it made. But the subject matter wasn’t my jam. It was good for what it was. But it’s not a movie I was interested in making. So I had to clarify that to her.

If you’ve been at this screenwriting thing for a while? If you’ve written more than six screenplays? If you’re consistently getting positive feedback from multiple people? You breaking in might just be a matter of getting your scripts to more friends, more contacts, more contests, more screenwriting sites, more Amateur Showdowns. Put your script in front of more pairs of eyes. Funny enough, I find that the people who aren’t ready (who’ve written less than 3 scripts) are good at this. Whereas the people who are ready, don’t do enough of it.

Outside of that, it’s a matter of knowing that every script you write is going to be better than the last. And as long as you’re writing strong concepts that make getting reads easy, your odds are going to go up with each new script you write.

But please… PLEASE. Don’t buy into this idea that it’s all a game of luck and randomness. Trust me, this town is desperate for good material. Keep giving them your best and when you’re ready, your time will come.

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A girls high school soccer team flying to nationals crashes in the remote wilderness. Here, the girls descend into madness while trying to survive.
About: This upcoming Showtime show comes from Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, who created the Netflix show, Narcos: Mexico.
Writers: Ashley Lyle & Bart Nickerson
Details: 65 pages

The other day I was reading a consultation script and I found that one note kept popping into my head. I kept dismissing and dismissing it because I didn’t see any way it would improve the story. So the question was, why was this note so determined to be expressed? I realized, after finishing the script, that the reason the note wouldn’t leave me alone is because the industry is high on it right now.

That note was “Change the main character to a woman.”

There was literally no story reason for the writer to do this, though. Yet the note wouldn’t leave me alone. Which is frustrating because your character choices should be dictated by your story, not what Tinseltown’s latest obsession is. Yet the female-led project is so hot at the moment that when I looked up Yellowjackets, I learned that it wasn’t even the only girls in a plane crash who must fight for their lives in the wilderness show in production (there’s another one called “The Wilds” that’ll be on Amazon).

So if you’re a writer out there, what should you be doing?? Follow the trend or do what you want to do? I think a few things come into play. You shouldn’t blindly ignore a trend. If something markedly improves the chances of your script’s success, you should consider it.

Another big consideration if you’re *not* a female writer is how comfortable you are writing outside your gender. I remember early on when I started writing, I gave my script to a female friend and she eviscerated my main female character. She pointed out half-a-dozen things I’d written that “a woman would never do.” That was a big lesson for me.

Then again, you have writers like Nicholas Sparks and John Green who seem to have an effortless feel for writing female characters. So you need to do a self-assessment on how comfortable you are writing the opposite sex. Cause the advantage you gain from following the trend might be offset by the weakness of the character.

But the most important factor in determining the gender of your protag should be your story. I’m not going to say Fight Club couldn’t be made with all women but that’s an example of a movie specifically about masculinity. Exploring masculinity in an age where men were feeling less masculine than ever was one of Chuck Palahniuk’s main objectives when he wrote the novel. Same thing as I wouldn’t suggest re-imagining “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” as “Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants.” It’s probably not going to work. So that’s the biggest thing that needs to be considered.

Okay, despite this introduction, I’m super excited about today’s pilot. I hated every book they made me read in high school. EXCEPT FOR ONE. Lord of the Flies. It’s one of the most powerful setups I’ve ever seen for a story. Plus it’s got a plane crash. And I love plane crash stories! Let’s take a look.

We start off in a snowy wilderness where some kind of ritual is taking place. A teenage girl is running from something before falling into a tiger trap where she’s impaled by numerous wooden spikes. A group of similarly aged girls emerge looking emaciated and wild. They seem satisfied with their kill.

Then we learn that that event we just saw? It happened back in 1994. The people we’re following – the girls who crashed on that island – we’re watching them now in their 40s, long after they returned to society.

There’s Taissa, a popular player on the team who’s now a senator. Shauna, once the team’s best player, now a depressed housewife who masturbates to pictures of her daughter’s boyfriend. And Natalie, a gothy outcast on the team who, when we meet her as an adult, is leaving her latest rehab center.

We’re given bits and pieces of what happened since that life-changing crash but not much. We do know, however, that an eager reporter, Jessica Cruz, wants to do a new story on what happened after the plane crash. And from Shauna’s reaction, we get the feeling that these girls covered up a lot of terrible things, and if those things got out, they’d all be f%#@d.

The narrative jumps back and forth between the present day and the days leading up to the soccer team leaving for Nationals. It’s fun as we get to contrast who these people have become with who they once were. Taissa, for example, orchestrates a plan to injure the weakest character on the team, Allie, so she won’t be a liability on the field. Meanwhile, in the present, Taissa has become a senator.

The pilot wraps up with one big high school party before they head off to nationals and, in the present, Shauna realizing that Jessica Cruz could be a liability if she keeps digging into what happened. So Shauna calls up Taissa, the senator, and tells her that Jesscia has to be “taken care of.” All as we get one final look at a horrid ritual deep in the forest, as a group of teenage girls cook one of their own. Fade to black!

Can I just say something?

THANK YOU!

Thank you to these writers for not only being good writers but for taking a concept and pushing it to its limits. Too many times I read scripts where concepts are barely pushed at all. And when you don’t expand upon a concept to see its potential, you give audiences exactly what they expect. Which leaves them bored out of their minds.

As soon as I realized that this show was going to take place in the present *as well as* in the past, I knew they had a winner.

What usually happens when writers take a familiar concept and put a new spin on it is they execute the story exactly how it was already executed, just with different characters. That’s a recipe for a boring show.

To create a good show, you have to ask WHAT YOU CAN DO to make your version DIFFERENT. And once they decided, “We’ll show both what happened on the island AND what’s happening when these girls grow up,” they added an entirely new dimension to the idea.

For example, the team deliberately injuring their worst player so she can’t fly to Nationals is petty high school shenanigans in your typical one hour teen drama. But in this show, the first thing that comes to mind when they break Allie’s leg during practice is, “That injured girl doesn’t know it yet. But they just saved her life.” When people talk about stories that have depth, this is one of the qualities they’re referring to. The things that happen on screen extend beyond the initial event. There’s a contrast to them that allows the reader to experience a bigger picture.

Also, I think there’s this fear going on with writers right now where they’re afraid to write anything that could potentially offend someone. As a result, we’re getting all this safe p.c. boring nonsense. Lyle and Nickerson have zero interest in that. They know that this is a story where you need to lean into the things that you’re not supposed to lean into. People get killed here. People need to survive here. Peoples’ lives could be destroyed if secrets are exposed. You can’t sugarcoat a story like that. And they don’t. Characters are going to do horrible things in this show. Which is exactly why it’s going to be so good.

Whatever you’re writing, always try to find the truth of it. If you try to write what society says is right to write, you’re going to bore people. Guaranteed. It all has to be organic to the story of course. You never want to write controversial things just to be controversial. Just be honest with what your story is asking of you. For example, early on, we see a 40 year old woman masturbating to a picture of her teenage daughter’s boyfriend. It’s shocking. But it makes sense. A part of Shauna is always going to be stuck back in that traumatic experience that happened to her in high school. You’d be suspicious if she *wasn’t* f&%@d up in some way.

I loved about every decision here. I went into this pilot thinking I was getting a plane crash and a lot of girls trying to survive the aftermath. Instead, 95% of the pilot occurred in the present. And that created this intense level of suspense throughout because I so wanted to keep reading and get to the actual crash.

I’m telling you guys. This show is going to be savage. It’s Lost for grownups. I can’t wait.

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

What I learned: A “beat” is a screenplay-specific term that denotes a small pause in time. “A beat as Joe recovers from the fall.” You can play with what comes before a beat to give it more of a mood. “A loaded beat.” “An extended beat.” “An unexpected beat.” Have fun with it. Here, in Yellowjackets, we get “An infinitesimal beat.”

What I learned 2: In one of the loglines I found for Yellowjackets, they used the word “talented” to describe the soccer team that was going to nationals. So, it was close to my logline but approximated this: “A talented girls high school soccer team flying to nationals crashes in the remote wilderness. Here, the girls descend into madness while trying to survive.” With loglines, you’re trying to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. One of the ways to do this is to eliminate redundant and repetitious words. We can already assume that a team going to nationals is talented. Which is why it’s a no-brainer to eliminate the word. (e-mail me to get a logline consultation at carsonreeves1@gmail.com)

While I continue to root for Margot Robbie, a part of me is happy that Birds of Prey underperformed. The message of that film wasn’t one of exclusivity. But it certainly wasn’t inclusive. That word has to work on both ends of the spectrum. So I’m hoping that sends Hollywood a message to give us films that unite us, as opposed to divide us.

A lot of people are saying that if Birds of Prey came out on Valentine’s Day weekend, it would be a totally different box office story. The film is about a breakup so the subject matter was perfect for the holiday. It also used Deadpool as its template. That film changed the game for Valentine’s Day openings, proving that it could offer humongous box office.

I realize now what happened. Birds of Prey got greedy. They thought to themselves, if we open the weekend BEFORE Valentine’s Day, we get that opening weekend money AND we get that big Valentine’s Day Deadpool haul as well. The problem with that strategy was they weren’t able to market the movie as a Valentine’s Day film. Who knows how much of a difference it would’ve made but if the difference was 10 – 15 million dollars, that’s the difference between the trades labeling the film a bust and labeling it a solid opening. And in this town, perception is reality.

I often wonder how big a difference a release date makes. People used to think you couldn’t open an action movie on Valentine’s Day. Then Deadpool came around. Studios supposedly scratch and claw to get one of those big summer slots. But in the summer, all your second weekend box office is swallowed up by the next big shiny blockbuster. So how desirable is one of those weekends really?

James Cameron famously thanked 20th Century Fox for moving Titanic from the summer, where it was originally slated, to a winter holiday opening. The film went on to break every box office record in the book. It begs the question, what if it had opened in the summer? Would it have made way less money? Would the world not have fallen in love with Leonardo DiCaprio?

The box office comeback story of the year may go to Sonic the Hedgehog. That film was dead as a doornail when that first trailer came out. Everyone proclaimed it the single worst animation of a creature’s face in history. In one of the rare instances of Hollywood admitting they were wrong, the director, Jeff Fowler, publicly apologized then had Paramount push the release date back so they could redesign the face. Flash-forward to today and Sonic the Hedgehog had the biggest video game adaptation opening in history with a 4-day holiday haul of $65 million bucks. Which equals its Rotten Tomatoes score. Not bad.

Let’s sit on that for a second. Sonic the Hedgehog is the BIGGEST VIDEO GAME ADAPTATION OPENING EVER. This continues to be one of the bigger curiosities in the movie business. Of all the things that should be a slam-dunk to adapt, you’d think video games would be at the top of the list. They take all their cues from movies anyway. In some cases, they even improve upon them. Go watch a level from Uncharted for proof. And yet they always land in theaters with a big thud. Assassin’s Creed is such a cool movie concept. But the film was unbearable, to the point where it made you retroactively dislike the video game.

I’m not sure what the reason is. My guess is that video games are built on top of flimsy mythology. Lord of the Rings was such an extensively researched world. Everything that came out of it felt solid and believable. That set the stage for a fully-fleshed out adventure. But these video games – all they care about is cool levels. And whatever janky paper-thin backstory helps them get there, that’s good enough for them. So when you extrapolate that out into a story, all the pillars holding up your screenplay are weak and crumbly. Curious what your thoughts are on this.

Speaking of adaptations, Blumhouse underperformed this weekend with their latest film, Fantasy Island. Blumhouse is in an interesting place at the moment. They blew up because they elevated the most reliable money-making formula in Hollywood – make horror films cheaply. Before Blumhouse, a lot of low-budget horror was schlocky and cheap looking. Blumhouse gave their movies a slightly shinier production design which allowed them to play in theaters as opposed to going directly to digital.

The problem with that is, it’s an easy formula to copy. There’s nothing proprietary about what they do (for example, nobody else can make Marvel movies but Disney – you can’t replicate that). This has allowed other horror movies to eat into their market share. Lights Out. A Quiet Place. Hereditary. The only thing keeping Blumhouse above these production houses is the fact that they make so many films. This allows them to take more chances and increases the odds that one of the movies breaks through and becomes a media darling, like Get Out.

Jason Blum knows this so he’s trying to innovate and take the next step forward that no one else is thinking of. This weekend, he adapted a successful TV show in “Fantasy Island,” but instead of staying true to the material, he put a horror slant on it. That was the innovation. I don’t know what their projections were but I know they were hoping for more than 14 million for the 4-day weekend.

I actually like this idea. Any “stuck on an island” horror concept has potential. And I liked the irony of characters stepping into what they believed was a fantasy, only for it to become a nightmare. But it just didn’t capture the public’s interest. The problem when you open things up in the horror world – when you try to be bigger – is it becomes more apparent that you’re in over your head. Audiences don’t think about the lack of production value when an entire haunted house movie takes place inside the house because it’s organic to the concept. But when you start incorporating more space, more sets, bigger shots, additional characters, we can see where you don’t size up with the Marvels, DCs and Fasts and Furiouses of the world. It’s almost like by going bigger you actually look smaller.

On the plus side, Blumhouse still has The Hunt, which is finally being released. I’m curious to see how this does. They’ll be able to sell it as “the movie they wouldn’t let you see!’ And what gets people more interested in something than being told they can’t see it? What’s your prediction on The Hunt? I think it could open in the $25-30 million dollar range assuming they open wide (3000 theaters). But they might do one of those “feeler” releases (800 theaters), in which case I have no idea how much it’ll make.

A movie that continues to impress me is 1917, which has been around for 8(!) weeks and pulled in another 8 million dollars this weekend. I’m learning a lot from this film. There’s this giant potential audience of History Channel geeks – people who watch shows like “Hitler’s Bunker” and “World War 2 in color” who are dying for a larger-than-life version of what they get in those shows. Because History Channel shows have relatively low budgets. They can only do so much. So if you promise them something that’s just like those shows but bigger and more expensive with great production value, they’ll leave their houses and pay for it. 1917 proves that.

Another thing this movie’s taught me is to look for fun angles in war movies. I don’t mean fun as in “comedic.” I mean using war movies as a ride as opposed to being big glorified dramas. War films are traditionally downers. I mean, it’s war. Lots of people are getting killed. So there’s a dire tone tugging at most of these films. If you can find a way to make a war movie fun, that’s a huge advantage because people generally go to the movies to have fun and feel good.

That’s why these Oscar movies, despite getting endless advertising, often struggle to make money at the box office. Audiences know that it’s not going to be a traditional “fun” experience. The way 1917 became fun was by condensing the timeframe.

I’ve been telling you this for years. One of the easiest ways to supercharge an idea is to create a condensed timeframe. An idea that feels tired and played out can all of a sudden seem fresh and exciting if the right timeframe is applied. Where writers make the mistake is to apply this advice to the usual suspects – pairing it with an action or thriller concept – “A guy’s fake heart is actually a bomb so he’s got to get from the top of a skyscraper to the bottom in 2 hours or everyone in the building dies.” But, actually, where a tight timeframe stands out is when it’s paired with a non-traditional concept. When we think of World War 1, we don’t think of narratives taking place in less than 24 hours. That’s what helped 1917 stand out. You can apply this to any non-traditional setup. A Western. A drama. A romantic-comedy. Just in my head right now, that sounds exciting. A romantic comedy told in a single day.

As for the rest of the box office, I’m shocked to see that Jumanji crossed the 300 million dollar mark. I didn’t think anyone saw that movie due to the risky but ultimately failed choice to have The Rock and Kevin Hart mimic a couple of old men for two hours. Parasite got a small bump from its Oscar win and it’s cool to see Bong Joon-ho celebrate his most successful movie ever. Finally, in what can only be titled “The Ultimate Revenge,” Star Wars Episode 9 fell out of the top 10 to number 15, whereas Rian Johnson’s Knives Out has now pulled ahead of it, taking the number 12 spot. Why is this significant? Because Rise of Skywalker has been out for 8 weeks whereas Knives Out has been out for 11! Does this mean that Rian Johnson was right to kill Luke Skywalker all along? Should every movie from here on forward subvert expectations? Are Rey’s parents’ nobodies? I have to revaluate everything!!!

Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Premise: A ragtag group of resistance fighters infiltrate the First Order-ruled world of Coruscant in an attempt to ignite an ancient communication beacon that will recruit thousands of worlds to come join the fight and defeat the First Order.
About: Before Rise of Skywalker, there was what was supposed to be the original 9th movie in the Star War franchise, Colin Trevorrow’s, “Duel of the Fates.” But Kathleen Kennedy ain’t being Kathleen Kennedy if she’s not firing a Star Wars director so she canned Trevorrow right as the film was about to start shooting. She then called up JJ Abrams, the director of mega-hit, Episode 7, and asked him to come back and direct the final film, which he did. Many seemed confused by the fact that Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow received half of the writing credit on Rise of Skywalker considering Kennedy so publicly cited a bad script as the reason Trevorrow was fired. Will that mystery be solved today via a Scriptshadow review? Grab your brooms, channel the force, and let’s find out together.
Writers: Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow
Details: 130 pages

Yesterday’s post ended up being pretty divisive so I asked myself, “What can I do to bring everyone together again?” The answer came to me like a beam of light. What brings people together more than STAR WARS?

So I clicked open the script that was originally meant to be Episode 9 to definitively find out if Kennedy made a crucial mistake, allowing the superior Star Wars movie to be lost forever in the pages of a screenplay.

After the opening crawl tells us that things are, like, REALLY bad for the Resistance, we settle in on something called the “Kuat Orbital Ring.” Our good buddies Poe, Finn, Rose, and BB-8 have snuck into a migrant worker site run by the First Order hoping to free all the slaves. Unfortunately they get sniffed out and have to run for their lives. As they’re fighting, Rey appears out of nowhere with her two-sided lightsaber. She then gets the idea to steal one of the Imperial Starships hovering over the planet.

Rey’s able to take the ship using a stronger version of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi mind trick, informing the ship operators to do what she says. They then fly the ship back to the Secret Resistance Base that Hux is trying to sniff out from the First Order’s new headquarters on Coruscant. Leia is waiting for them and, after a little chat, someone brings up that there’s this Old Republic technology underneath the Jedi Temple on Coruscant that, if used, could alert all the planets in the galaxy to come and fight for the Resistance. The whole clan agrees to try and activate it except for Rey, who’s having visions pulling her towards Kylo.

Speaking of Kylo, he’s in the Remincore System being trained by 7000 year old Master Sith Lord Tor Valum, a dude so versed in the dark Jedi arts that he taught Master Plaegius! Valum teaches Kylo a new trick that allows him to suck the life out of other life forms. So what does Kylo do? HE SUCKS THE LIFE OUT OF TOR VALUM, turning Jedi knowledge into a form of fast food. Kylo still needs to learn some dark secret underneath the temples of this planet, however, to become all-powerful. If that happens, he will be more powerful than 1000 Death Stars, able to crush planets from anywhere in the galaxy. Yikes!

Back on Coruscant, Finn is running around the sewers, looking for this darn beacon thing. He eventually stumbles upon an underground society of displaced Coruscant residents. He asks them if they’re ready to rise up and fight and they say, you bet we are! Hux learns about their plan, though, and orders his troops to find and squash these cellar dwellers. But that’s going to be difficult, since Leia has just shown up with the stolen First Order starship – a starship filled with Resistance fighters and tons of ships and AT-AT walkers to attack the First Order with.

Rey finally arrives on the Dark Jedi planet to stop Kylo. But Kylo ain’t having any of it. The two fight and Kylo easily has the upper hand. Rey tries to recruit all her Jedi powers to stop him, but then Kylo uses Tor Valum’s life-sucking power to suck out Rey’s soul! It’s not looking good for the Resistance either, as they’re getting pummeled by the First Order on Coruscant.

Luckily, at the last second, Leia force-calls Kylo, tells him to stop being such a meanie, and Kylo gives Rey her soul back, sacrificing his own life in the process. And on Coruscant, Finn finally got that message out, so all the planets come to help the Resistance. Hux is really upset that he lost so he goes over, grabs one of the many lightsabers he’s collected over the years, ignites it (it’s a purple one!) and sepaku’s himself. The Resistance wins and Rey comes back to teach a new generation of Jedi. Oh yeah and Rey’s blind now. I don’t remember why.

Let’s deal with the obvious question first. Is this a better script than Rise of Skywalker? No. Not by a long shot. It’s not bad. It’s actually decent most of the time. But the knock against Tervorrow has always been he doesn’t surprise you. He doesn’t make any bold choices. And you can see that here. People who complained about Rise of Skywalker being generic and safe – read this script. You’ll see what actual generic and safe looks like.

The first moment I knew the script wasn’t going to be great was the opening. It wasn’t clear why we were at this Orbital Ring place. I think it was to save slave workers but I’m not positive. One of the reasons the Jabba the Hut sequence in Return of the Jedi is so strong is because the objective is so strong – rescue Han Solo. And clear! We know why they need to infiltrate Jabba’s palace. We didn’t know anything like that here.

Then there was the stealing of the Star Destroyer. In screenwriting, the bigger the objective is, the bigger the plan needs to be, the more convincing everything needs to be, the harder everything needs to be. You’re stealing a giant ship here. It can’t be as easy as waving your hand at the captain and saying, “You’ll do what we say now.” There’s even a moment where Hux asks his side general what’s going on with the ship and he says, “Oh, everyone from that ship is on leave. Only the bridge crew is inside.” In other words, they made stealing an impossible-to-steal element the easiest thing to steal in the world. Storytelling works best with the opposing logic. You want to make stealing something the hardest thing in the world because that means your characters will need to overcome genuine obstacles to succeed. Everything your characters are after in a story must be earned, not handed to. So that was a major faux pas right away.

Also, the sequence that held the most promise ended up being the biggest dud. Kylo Ren learning from this 7000 year old Sith Master. We’ve already seen Jedis learning from masters in past Star Wars stories. But we’d never seen Siths learning from Sith Masters. So there was potential to really have fun with that. But we only get a couple of scenes with this Master Tor guy before Kylo kills him. You can’t build someone up as surviving 7000 years worth of Jedi obstacles and then kill him in two scenes. It’s inconsistent.

Also, I’d heard that Luke’s ghost was going to haunt Kylo in this. That’s another cool idea that we hadn’t seen in Star Wars before. But that happens for all of one page. So it was another letdown.

There was one set piece that stood out in the script. When everyone is trying to escape the Rebel Base as its being attacked by the First Order, the First Order shoots this giant laser beam down and blows this big chunk of planet up just as Poe and Rey have left in their ship. And the Knights of Ren come in, chasing them in their ship, in a sequence that has all this floating planet debris in the way. So, for example, they’re having to zip up the side of mountains that are floating in space. One of the hardest things to do in these giant event movies is come up with original set pieces. They’ve all been done. So any time someone comes up with a fresh idea, I give them props.

Early scene where Hux kills a traitor.

Now that I’ve read the script, I think I know what happened with the firing. The thing studios and executives and producers are most terrified of is the ending. The ending has to be great. Why? Because that’s what the viewers leave with. If you have 90 minutes of a good movie and the last 30 minutes are bad, that’s what the audience remembers. So that’s what they tell everyone else ( “The ending blew.”). This is why they did a 50 million dollar reshoot of Rogue One’s ending. They wanted to get that right.

I suspect that Kennedy fired Trevorrow because of the script’s ending. It’s weak. For starters, Rey and Kylo are off on some planet in the middle of nowhere fighting each other while the war was going on on Coruscant. So it felt insignificant. Especially because they didn’t do a good job establishing the power Kylo would gain and what he would do with it. There’s a reason the ending of Star Wars is so great. We see the Death Star rounding that moon. And we know what it’s capable of once it clears the moon and has a shot at the Rebel planet. We were told earlier in Duel of Fates that Kylo will have the power to crush planets from anywhere in the galaxy, but there’s no visual representation of that to scare us. The implication is that maybe it’ll happen some day. That’s not nearly as scary as seeing a Death Moon seconds away from blowing up a planet.

We may have forgiven this if Rey’s personal battle with Kylo would’ve been great. But all the fight beats, with the exception of him taking out her soul, were lackluster. For example, we learn the real reason Rey was left on the planet was to be hidden from Kylo. It wasn’t exciting. And fights are supposed to build. It should feel like air is being pumped into a balloon that’s getting bigger and bigger. But Rey and Kylo’s fight was more like, she got tired and beaten down and the two of them sort of limped their way to the end. And then Kylo deciding to give Rey’s soul back because his mom Skyped him didn’t feel earned at all.

Coruscant plays a huge role in the film.

So I’m guessing that when Kennedy hired JJ back, her primary directive was, “We need a huge ending.” And while I don’t have inside information, I’m guessing that was the motivation for JJ bringing the Emperor back. He knew he had to make that ending huge and the Emperor offers you that opportunity. And I will say this. You may not have liked that Emperor-Rey-Kylo finale in Rise of Skywalker. But I promise you that it was a hundred times better than the Rey-Kylo ending in this script.

I’m still confused about why Connolly and Trevorrow got half-credit for Rise of Skywalker. The only connection I see between the two films is that Leia does a lot of force-Skyping in this. She’s leading the Resistance. And then the life-force grab at the end of Rey and Kylo’s fight inspired the Emperor’s life-force grab at the end of Rise of Skywalker. But outside of that, the plots are very different. I guess that mystery will have to be solved another day.

Next Star Wars we’re going to see is October, when Mandalorian Season 2 debuts. In the meantime, there is no official Star Wars movie on the Disney calendar. Will we ever see a Star Wars feature film again?

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

What I learned: You don’t get points for connecting the dots – The problem multi-narrative scripts (like Duel of the Fates) have is that there are a lot of plot points and a lot of plot points that need to intersect. For example, you have Rey over on one planet, Poe over on another planet. And you know that by page 60, you need them to meet up. This forces you to create some dots that must be connected in order to get the characters to the place where you need them. This can be tough to do. And what happens in a lot of the scripts is that the writer is so happy to JUST GET ALL HIS DOTS CONNECTED, that he thinks he’s done once that’s finished. This is especially true of beginner writers who just want to be applauded for bringing everything together in a way that makes sense. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of your work. Once you’ve connected all the dots so that they make sense, you must go back into the individual narratives and make them as strong as they can be. Duel of the Fates had a very “happy I’ve connected the dots” feel to it. Technically everything made sense. But none of the individual storylines, nor the larger storyline, were as good as they could’ve been.

Genre: Comic Book
Premise: Harley Quinn tries to figure life out after the Joker dumps her and gets caught up in a diamond theft that ignites Gotham’s newest baddie, Black Mask, to try and kill her.
About: Harley Quinn was projected to make 45-55 million dollars this weekend. That was down from the projections Warner Brothers had when making the movie, which were closer to the 75-85 million dollar range. Sadly, the film finished with a measly 33 million bucks and is considered a full-blown box office disaster.
Writers: Christina Hodson
Details: 110 minutes

Harley Quinn.

I’m not here to dance on this movie’s grave. A lot of people worked on this film and, unlike a lot of movies that come out of this town, these people really cared. It’s said that there was a woman heading up every major department in the film. And all of them felt they had something to prove.

Nobody was more determined to make Harley Quinn work than its star and producer, Margot Robbie. I saw an interview where Margot was asked what her favorite Harley Quinn tattoo was and she didn’t skip a beat, going into an extensive explanation about Harley’s first tattoo and how she got it and what it meant to her. All I could think was, “Wow, Margot really cares about this character.”

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way of this film’s development, they decided to embrace an anti-male slant. In retrospect, I guess this makes sense. The movie was being written and prepped during that rabid six month stretch where everyone thought Twitter was real life and if you were Caucasian and had an xy chromosome, you were the devil incarnate.

The first white man to enter this story is a drooling bald-headed creepy pet salesman who says he accepts sex for payment. Harley feeds him to her hyena. The next white man is an a-hole who calls Harley a slut. Harley breaks his legs. The next four white men introduced are gunned down while eating dinner by the Huntress. They don’t even have time to protest their death. The next two white men introduced try to rape Harley after a long night out.

Put simply, if you are white and a man in the Harley Quinn universe, it ain’t going to end well.

Finally, about 15 minutes into the film, we see that Harley has one Caucasian male friend – the cook who makes her daily greasy egg sandwich. The two are smiling and jovial. I thought, okay, I’m glad they’re at least portraying one white guy as cool. And then as Harley’s leaving, her voice over reveals that the man is Armenian.

Look, anybody can make any movie they want. If you want to portray an entire demographic in a negative light, you are well within your rights to do so. It’s art. It has no rules. However, you have to then be accepting when the demographic you’re destroying has no interest in seeing your movie. I mean who wants to spend two hours being told that people who like you are bad?

I guess I’m surprised because it’s such an odd business choice. You’re hating on the demographic that spends the most time in movie theaters. It’s weird. Why didn’t somebody come in and say something? “Maybe we should be inclusive and positive about all races and genders?” In the immortal words of Dana Carvey as George Bush: “Neht gunna dew it.”

Eventually, a movie emerged out of this. Sorta. The plot follows Harley Quinn as she’s coming out of a bad breakup with the Joker. The film shamelessly attempts to be this year’s Deadpool, with Harley Quinn bee-bopping her way through an endless “listen to how clever I am” voice over narration, all of which could’ve been distilled down to a single sentence (“The Joker and I broke up.”).

The plot then decides to take a bathroom break, forcing the audience and the characters to wait around for him. In the meantime we learn something about mobsters in Gotham and that someone’s going around shooting people. None of it ties into anything that you would call “relevant” but we do meet club owner Black Mask, played by the only person who comes out of this movie unscathed, Ewan McGregor. He has a few funny lines.

Finally, after a good twenty minutes, the plot waltzes back in the room with a theatrical, “fiiiiiiiiiine!” and gives us some direction. A young Korean pickpocket girl inadvertently lifts a million dollar diamond off of Black Mask’s second-in-command and Black Mask, who has captured and is about to kill Harley Quinn, for some reason hires her to go after the girl and get the diamond back.

Harley finally finds the girl, who by this point has swallowed the diamond. This means Harley can’t turn her in until the diamond passes through her system. So Harley takes her back to her hideout where, within the span of five minutes, she becomes best friends with the girl, and now she’s not so sure she wants to give the diamond or the girl up to Black Mask. Unfortunately, that doesn’t matter because Black Mask is coming to get them.

I wish I had anything good to say about this movie.

But I don’t.

Most of the badness here is baked into the script itself.

The narrative is uber-weak. It’s Harley Quinn whining for half an hour about I don’t even know what. Then, out of nowhere, a random girl steals a diamond, a diamond we only learned about two minutes prior, and then everybody is after the diamond and that’s the plot. I bring up the fact that we only learned about the diamond two minutes prior because it shows how low the stakes are in this movie. The thing everyone is after had zero significance in the audiences’ eyes. The only reason it exists is to engineer some semblance of a plot.

Then there are all these little things that conveyed how amateurish the writing was. At one point, in the middle of the first act, Harley’s getting beat up, and, while talking to us in voice over, says, “In the storytelling world, this device is known as a complication.”

Um, no it isn’t.

A complication requires that your character have an objective to complicate. At this point in the story, there is no goal. Nobody is after anything. It was just Harley Quinn rambling in voice over while we meet a bunch of people we’d later learn had nothing to do with the story. So if you’re going to try and be clever and fourth-wall breaking and bring up screenwriting vocabulary, you might want to actually learn what the device is you’re talking about.

But there’s a much bigger problem at the heart of this movie and it’s something I’ve been asking ever since it was announced that Harley Quinn would get her own movie. What is it that Harley Quinn DOES? What makes her special? In other words, why does she deserve her own movie? I spent two hours with this character this weekend and I still can’t answer that question. As far I can tell, she’s just some loudmouthed eccentric person who likes to play dress up. What is it about that that makes someone think she deserves her own movie? I don’t get it.

And then there was the directing, which vacillated between generic and extra generic. The action scenes felt like the director was learning on the job. Many sequences came across as if the crew ran out of time and had to stick in a bunch of those garden-variety stunt moves you can see in a thousand 1985 B-action movies. There were occasional flashes of inspiration, like a couple of shots where Harley beats someone up with a bat. But they’d be surrounded by tons of locked down wide-angle shots that any second year film school student at USC could’ve pulled off. Where is the vision here? Where is the specialness that separates the good directors from the wannabes – that makes you say, “Oh, I understand why this director got the job over everyone else.” Cause those qualities were not evident in the finished product.

This was a misfire on every level.

And the problems started at the conception stage. Nobody ever asked the question, “What makes this character special?” You then coupled that with an aggressive campaign to exclude a group of people. So should you really be surprised that no one showed up to your movie? Maybe there are a few lessons to learn from this if the people involved are willing to have honest conversations with themselves.

If you’re looking to watch a good female-driven movie this week, go to Netflix instead and watch Horse Girl. It’s weird and trippy and unique and it doesn’t try to paint any one demographic as bad.

Finally, props to the two screenwriting Oscar winners this year. The Academy got it right! JoJo Rabbit and Parasite were my top two favorite screenplays of the year!

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

What I learned: Make sure your title and your movie line up. I know this seems obvious. But it’s a mistake I encounter fairly often. And it happened with today’s film. This movie is titled “Birds of Prey,” but it’s not about this “group” known as the Birds of Prey at all. They’re barely in the movie. This movie is 98% Harley Quinn doing Harley Quinn stuff. Have the title reflect that.