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

Even though it’s set in space, Sunshine is the quintessential man-versus-nature story; the sun is fading out, and if humanity doesn’t restore it to its former brilliance, every living thing on Earth will freeze to death. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn’t seem to realize this, because they added a superfluous (and very poorly executed) psycho killer storyline to the second half of the movie. Even more absurdly, the psycho killer is the captain of the first mission to restore the sun. He went nuts and killed his entire crew, and now he’s determined the stop the second mission too. Why? Heck if I know. There’s some confusing and badly-written dialogue in which he says he’s been talking to God, and I guess the idea is that he thinks God told him to make sure the human race finishes dying, but his reasoning (if you can call it that) is never adequately explained.

While I watched the once-promising story fall apart, I got to wondering. Was the first mission’s captain always a nutjob, and did he sign up for the mission (and somehow slip through what must have been endless rounds of psych evaluation) specifically to sabotage it? Or did something about the long journey through space drive him mad? I guess the former scenario is kind of interesting in an abstract, intellectual sense, but it has little direct relevance to the second mission, and the second mission is what Sunshine is about. The latter possibility, though, is never explored, and while it could have added some tension by making us wonder who else might go crazy, it really wouldn’t work that well, because people have had plenty of experience with long, lonely missions — on submarines, in Antarctica, and so on.

I can just imagine the story meetings that led to the addition of the nutjob captain; somebody must have been afraid that the story didn’t have enough conflict to fuel a whole movie. After all, if the stakes are “drop a bomb into the sun and save humanity… or don’t”, well, what sane person is going to choose “don’t”? There doesn’t seem to be enough conflict inherent in the choice unless you do add a psycho killer. But that argument misses the whole point of man-vs-nature conflicts; the question isn’t so much whether the characters should do whatever they’re trying to do, it’s whether they can. Flying right up to the sun and surviving long enough to drop a bomb on precisely the right spot is the mother of all impossible tasks, so there’s plenty of conflict inherent in the story — between the crew and the sun, between the ship and the sun, between the crew and the ship, and between different crew members who disagree about how to successfully execute the mission. But here’s an idea: if the filmmakers really wanted an extra layer of conflict, why not have the first mission discover that there’s intelligent life in the sun (of a very different sort than we’re familiar with, of course) and that setting off the bomb will save the inhabitants of the Earth.. and exterminate the denizens of the sun? That would be a heck of a moral dilemma, and it would create a ton of conflict — more than enough for three whole acts.

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.