A look at what's right (and what's wrong) with today's screenplays

Never mind the stomach-turning minstrel stereotype of Ziro the Hutt, which was so bad that it snapped Harry Knowles out of a “shit-accepting stupor” and pissed him off enough to write a really scathing review of the movie.

Forget about the odiously false and superficial girl-empowerment caricature which is Anakin’s sidekick. Nowadays, that sort of thing is unfortunately just par for the course.

And heck, let’s just ignore the fact that making a buddy movie featuring Anakin Skywalker and his cute^* female sidekick is sort of like doing a remake of Bringing Up Baby in which all the light banter takes place between Adolf Hitler and pretty little Eva Braun shortly before Hitler went on to became, well, Hitler.

Though seriously, what’s with George Lucas’ Anakin obsession? How about focusing on some genuinely interesting and sympathetic characters for a change, like, oh, say, Han Solo? Or do we keep getting L’il Orphan Ani shoved down our throats because somewhere deep in his subconscious, George Lucas recognizes that he himself has become Darth Vader, and part of him wishes he could turn back the clock to a time before he started squirting out endless rivers of shit once he learned that that’s all that’s required to part suckers like me^** from their money?

No… no… must stop… I promised myself that today, I’m just going to point out that Clone Wars is an object lesson in how not to write a great buddy movie.

First, a little effectively spoiler-free background info to make sure we’re all on the same page. Clone Wars takes place between Episode II, Attack of the Clones and Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, so Anakin and Princess Amidala are married, but he hasn’t yet begun his final descent towards the dark side. He and Obi-Wan are still busy fighting against the separatists and their droid army, but when Count Dooku arranges the abduction of Jabba the Hutt’s only son in a plot to turn the Hutt clan against the Republic, they get sent halfway across the galaxy to rescue the Huttlet (yes, seriously, he’s really called the Huttlet in the credits) and avert a crisis. And yet in spite all this chaos, Yoda decides to give an outraged and protesting Anakin an apprentice, a young Padawan named Ahsoka, and much of the movie involves Anakin and Ahsoka getting into and out of various scrapes while quarreling and sniping at each other in a way that’s no doubt supposed to be spunky and endearing.

In theory, there’s nothing all that horribly wrong with this setup. Contrast and conflict bring out character, and giving the protagonist a buddy or sidekick and creating a lot of friction between them is a great way to ensure a steady supply of both. The problem, however, is that there’s no contrast between Anakin and Ahsoka; he’s always been reckless and impulsive, and surprise surprise, so is she.

As written, Ahsoka might conceivably have worked if Anakin had been repeatedly forced to rescue his feckless apprentice from messes of her own making. He could have finally recognized himself in her and gained a new appreciation for what his former master, Obi-Wan, had gone through in teaching him. The writers didn’t go there, however, and in a larger sense that’s probably just as well, because developing the virtues of caution and restraint wouldn’t exactly make sense in context of Anakin’s larger arc towards Vaderhood.

Instead, the writers should’ve stuck with Anakin’s entirely believable and consistent objection to being given a Padawan instead of effectively dropping it within moments of bringing it up. Anakin’s ultimate downfall, after all, comes in part from selfishness, and what’s more selfish than not being willing to teach and share knowledge? They could’ve had had Ahsoka take more and more extreme and foolhardy chances (and get into more and more awful trouble) in repeated attempts to win Anakin’s respect and approval, and he could have rescued her more and more grudgingly and pushed her away more and more vehemently each time.

Furthermore, the writers should have taken better advantage of preexisting Star Wars mythology. Jedi knights aren’t supposed to develop any personal ties of any kind which might distract them from their service to the Republic or corrupt their devotion to its ideals. That’s why Anakin’s marriage to Padme in Attack of the Clones had to be kept a secret, and that’s why many in the Jedi Council were opposed to inducting Anakin into the order in the first place, because he’d already grown old enough to form a deep attachment to his mother. Anakin’s return to his homeworld of Tatooine to bring back Jabba’s son should have stirred up all the old wounds caused by his mother’s death, and the writers could have used that by making Anakin finally realize that he actually cares a great deal about his apprentice — that he’s formed a sort of familial bond with her, in fact — and that he desperately needs to save her from Count Dooku’s ambush and embrace her as his apprentice. In one sense, this would have been positive growth and development for Anakin as a person, and in another it would have been one more mile of blacktop on the road towards his future role as a betrayer of the Republic and a lord of the Sith, which would’ve made for some tremendous and affecting dramatic irony.

Even more importantly, what little superficial conflict there is between Anakin and Ahsoka has nothing to do with the theme or plot of the story. It has absolutely no influence on the outcome. In my fantasy better version of the movie, Count Dooku would have defeated Anakin and Ahsoka individually; they would have had to work together to win out in the end, and because he would have had to learn to accept her as his apprentice and she would have had to learn to accept him as her master in order for them to work together, their relationship would have been organically tied into the larger framework of the story — in my version, everything that they went through would have mattered.

Sadly, though, Darth Lucas didn’t bother with any of that, and for a change, it appears he’s being punished for it at the box office. Clone Wars is only going to make about $15M on its opening weekend, well below expectations, and I’m willing to bet it won’t have that much in the way of legs either. Too bad for everyone concerned they didn’t make a better film.

 

 

 

 

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^*If by “cute” you mean “obnoxious”.

 

 

 

 

**In my defense, I saw Clone Wars with a friend for his birthday, so I didn’t have any choice in the matter. In my anti-defense, I had a more or less OK time with it despite all the problems I mentioned above — and the many other ones I didn’t get into here. I more or less agree with Cinematical that large parts of the movie are good, brainless, action-oriented fun… as long as you hold your nose at times and completely turn off your brain all the way through. So shoot me. Or slice off my head with a light sabre. At least it was no Brown Bunny

Tags: Anakin, Anakin Skywalker, Attack of the Clones, Box Office, Bringing Up Baby, Character Arc, Clone Wars, Consequences, Contrast, Cornering, George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars, Sympathy

There’s been a lot of buzz for at least a year now on The Foot Fist Way, a very low budget indie comedy about Fred Simmons, a supposed Tae Kwon Do expert and “master of the demo” who pretty clearly isn’t all he cracks himself up to be.  It’s been bouncing around and seeking theatrical distribution since premiering in 2006 at the Los Angeles Film Festival and screening at Sundance later that year, and word has generally ranged from positive to ecstatic.  So needless to say, I rushed right out to catch a Friday showing as soon as it finally hit my local theater, and, well… all I can say is I shoulda seen that coming.

Don’t get me wrong — parts of the movie are quite funny.  It’s not at all a complete failure.  But Fred Simmons is just so unlikeable, so utterly devoid of any detectable redeeming characteristics whatsoever, that by the time some even worse characters come along and show what a true punkass amateur bitch he is at being a dickhead (which could’ve created some rooting interest in Fred just by making him look better by contrast) it was too late.  I hated this guy.  He’s stupid and mean, he’s a braggart and a blowhard, he treats kids poorly, and you could even argue that he’s a con man, since he makes his living convincing people to pay him for instruction he doesn’t seem even remotely capable of giving.

That’s why The Foot Fist Way will always be a cult film with a tiny following.  If the writers had given Simmons some trace of decency and imbued his character with a detectable hint of inner conflict between the better and worse angels of his nature, then more people would have found a way into the story, a way to invest their emotions in the struggles and obstacles facing him, particularly if one of those struggles was to be a genuinely better man.  As it stands, though, the movie works only if you look down on the main character — way, way down — and that’s not the sort of comedy I’m especially comfortable with, and it’s not the sort that most audience members will pay for, either, so it’s no surprise that the film took so long to find theatrical distribution and never went wider than a couple dozen theaters or so when it did.

Tags: Box Office, Contrast, Danny R. McBride, Inner Conflict, Jody Hill, Sympathy, The Foot Fist Way

It’s a bold move to make a movie with an unsympathetic protagonist. We in the audience are expected to see the world through the eyes of the main character — and to feel it through his (or her) heart. But would you like to become Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh or Ken Lay, even just for a couple hours? Most people might not be able to experience the emotions that drive characters like those at all… and if they could, they’d probably rather not find out. That’s why something like three out of every two phrases you’ll hear in Hollywood are “likable protagonist,” “sympathetic lead role” or “relatable main character.” After all, nobody ever went broke underestimating the bravery of the American public.

So I have to give major props to the creative forces behind Mr. Brooks and Ratatouille for defying convention. (And yes, I really am drawing a parallel between Mr. Brooks and Ratatouille. Just bear with me; it’ll all make sense in a minute.) Unfortunately, I also have to take a lot of the points I give them with one hand away with the other, because in the end, they both chickened out. Mr. Brooks, as you probably know, is about a serial killer played by Kevin Costner, and Ratatouille not only stars a rat, it stars a French rat named Remy who desperately wants to become a chef at a five-star restaurant. Talk about unrelatable! In each case, though, very possibly because someone with power over the purse strings was afraid audiences couldn’t or wouldn’t relate, we also get another, more overtly likable character as an emergency backup target for our sympathies. In Brooks it’s the cop played by Demi Moore, and in Ratatouille, it’s the hapless human Linguini, who also dreams of being a chef, but who doesn’t have even a fraction of Remy’s talent.

The problem is that these extra quasi-protagonists have the exact opposite of their intended effect. As I explained in another blog entry a week or two ago, the contrast between Earl Brooks and Detective Atwood makes Brooks seem less sympathetic than he would have been without her. The likable shmo Linguini does the same thing to Remy the rat, but Ratatouille has another problem on top of that: Linguini actually takes over the story for awhile, leaving Remy in limbo. In fact, at one point it’s not completely clear whose story Ratatouille is telling — and that’s extra-deadly when one of your leads has glowing red eyes, sharp teeth and jagged, spiky fur. Linguini is made even more relatable (and more damaging to audience investment in Remy) by the addition of the Colette subplot. (Colette is the assistant chef Linguini falls for.) Romantic longing is one of the most appealing and sympathetic traits a character can have… and it goes to Linguini rather than to Remy. I’m not saying Linguini should’ve been cut entirely; being a rat, Remy needed someone to help him in the kitchen. But Ratatouille wasn’t Linguini’s story, and it shouldn’t have ever seemed like it was.

For those of you who still think that Atwood and Linguini were necessary as full third-wheel protagonists because Brooks and Remy just weren’t sympathetic enough, rent As Good As It Gets. Melvil Udall (played by Jack Nicholson) is one of the most obnoxious and detestable protagonists to come down the pike in a long time, and yet the movie made almost $150M domestic and won a couple Oscars for its leads. That’s because Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks took care to balance Melvin’s unappealing characteristics with plenty of ones that we could understand and relate to. To be fair, Brad Bird et al did much the same with Remy — he has a dream he’s determined to fulfill, he feels unappreciated by his family and painfully out of place with his own kind, he’s very good at something he cares a lot about, and so on — but they didn’t quite have the courage of their convictions. Or, as I suggested earlier, someone else took their courage away from them. And that’s too bad, because both films would’ve been a lot stronger and more successful if they’d stood foursquare behind their protagonists instead of trying to be all things to all people.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong; Brad Bird is one of my favorite filmmakers, and for for all its flaws, Ratatouille is great stuff, easily my third-favorite Pixar film behind The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc. Unfortunately, it’s also my third favorite Brad Bird film, and he’s made only three.

Tags: As Good as it Gets, Brad Bird, Bruce A. Evans, Contrast, Demi Moore, Inc., Inner Conflict, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Costner, Monsters, Mr. Brooks, Pixar, Ratatouille, Sympathy, The Incredibles, Villain's Plan

The Kevin Costner vehicle Mr. Brooks offers an interesting new take on the serial killer genre — something we should all be grateful for after years of being assaulted by the same tired old knockoffs that seem to stagger out into theaters by the dozen — but it’s also a case study in contrast, or rather, in the unfortunate lack thereof.

Perception is a funny thing. People like to think in absolutes (saved or damned, black or white, good or evil, etc.) but in fact the way we see things is largely relative. Here’s a classic art school exercise to illustrate the principle: put a light grey square of paper next to a deep black one and it’ll look white, but place it next to a genuinely white square and it’ll appear to be dark grey, closer to black than white. The same is true of characters. Put a chubby guy by a morbidly obese man and he’ll look thin, but move him over so he’s next to a skinny beanpole type and suddenly he’ll seem like he’s seriously overweight. Nor is this phenomenon limited to appearances; it also applies to deep character. Consider Die Hard. Alan Rickman’s character, Hans Gruber, is everything John McClane is not: refined, well-dressed, European, materialistic, pseudo-intellectual, and convinced of his own essential superiority to everyone else in the human race. McClane is a regular-joe blue-collar cop with marital problems and garden-variety fears (he’s a white-knuckle flyer, for example) and the profound contrasts between him and Gruber underline his everyman qualities and make it easier to relate to him and emotionally invest in his character. For a great illustration, check out this exchange:

Hans: But who are you? (scornfully) Just another American who saw too many movies as a child. Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne… Rambo… Marshal Dillion.

McClane: Actually, I was always partial to Roy Rogers. I really dug those sequined shirts.

For more examples of contrast in action, think about any of the great buddy movies or unlikely-partner pictures, like 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, Midnight Run, and of course The Odd Couple. In every case, the two lead characters are as different from each other as it’s possible to be. Hollywood calls this technique “cornering” — making sure that your characters occupy opposite corners of the continuum in every single dimension — and it’s an essential one to learn if you want to be a great screenwriter.

What does this have to do with Mr. Brooks? Everything. There’s a problematic lack of contrast between Earl Brooks and his two main antagonists, Detective Tracy Atwood, played by Demi Moore, and amateur photographer “Mr. Smith”, played by Dane Cook. Brooks is a wealthy, determined businessman who won’t let anything stand in the way of a deal; Atwood is a wealthy, determined detective who won’t let anything stop her from catching her perp. Brooks is a serial murderer; Smith wants to be one. Brooks’ essential nature as a killer makes family life difficult; Atwood’s dedication to her job helped end her marriage.

Perhaps the authors were deliberately trying to explore the similarities between antagonists. Though trickier to employ than contrast, that technique is a fascinating way to externalize internal conflict by making a protagonist battle someone who is in some ways essentially himself, and it can ultimately force the protagonist to finally acknowledge and deal with what’s really wrong with him by making him see it in someone else. For a great example of this type of character design, look no further than Raiders of the Lost Ark. The dynamic between Indiana Jones and Dr. Belloq is crystallized in a single exchange of dialogue:

Belloq: You and I are very much alike. Archeology is our religion, yet we have both fallen from the pure faith. Our methods have not differed as much as you pretend. I am but a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me. To push you out of the light.

Indy: Now you’re getting nasty.

So what’s wrong with doing this in Mr. Brooks? In Raiders (and in other movies which make successful use of similarity) there’s no danger that our sympathies will fail to rest with the protagonist, let alone that they might wander off and settle on the antagonist. Indiana Jones is a charismatic, likeable guy with a tremendously exciting job, he’s regularly thrust into mortal peril, and he has a number of appealing everyman qualities, like his fear of snakes. Moreover, there are other ways in which Belloq and Jones aren’t so similar after all. Belloq is more refined, better-dressed, he’s European, more materialistic… shades of the Gruber-McClane relationship in Die Hard, in fact! In Mr. Brooks, by contrast, Earl Brooks is a serial killer. There are very few kinds of people we’re less likely to sympathize with than those who murder for pleasure, and so it becomes very difficult to arouse and maintain audience investment in him. Considered by himself, Brooks is an extremely dark grey square of paper.

The authors do make some effective choices. They largely externalize his killer persona in the form of Marshall, played by William Hurt; they show him going to AA meetings to combat his addiction to killing; and in a brilliant twist, he figures out that his daughter may have just murdered someone, and he agonizes over the possibility that he’s passed his sickness on to her.

The single most effective thing they could have done, though, would have been to surround Brooks with even worse people, with completely black squares of paper that would have made his dark grey one seem much closer to white. They took a stab at this (ho ho ho) with the Smith character, someone who wants to kill even though he isn’t driven by any obvious mental illness or dark compulsions, but because Smith never actually does anything himself, he fails to deliver more than a fraction of his contrast-enhancing potential. And they completely dropped the ball with Atwood by trying to make her sympathetic, giving her a gold-digging ex and the sort of serious job stress that everyone can relate to.

Instead, Atwood should have gotten off on hounding people, much like predators enjoy toying with their prey. In fact, she should have been so driven by the ego trip of catching perps that she didn’t care who she hurt (or even killed!) along the way. And imagine if Smith had gotten off on torturing his would-be victims — and Brooks, who always kills quickly and painlessly, had to step in and save them! Then we would have been really invested in Earl Brooks, because his square of paper would have seemed much whiter next to the pitch-black squares of his evil antagonists. But by making Smith an ineffectual villain and Atwood an overly sympathetic cop, the authors failed to invest us in their protagonist as deeply and effectively as they should have, and though interesting, the movie wasn’t the critical and commercial hit it could have been.

Tags: Bruce A. Evans, Contrast, Cornering, Dane Cook, Demi Moore, Die Hard, Kevin Costner, Lethal Weapon, Midnight Run, Mr. Brooks, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Serial Killer, William Hurt