The Gruesome Death Throes of the Screenplay Writer
by Michael Gallant

If you are anything like me, you greet each upcoming fantasy or Science fiction film with a mixture of eagerness and dread. It's not your imagination, they are getting worse. It seem as if the more incredible, eye catching special effects they can find, the less they feel they need the little, inconsequential trimmings, such as a plot, character development or motivation, or dialogue that wouldn't embarrass an apprentice copy boy at Marvel Comics.

The truly insulting thing is that these films have no excuse to suck. They have everything going for them. Everything but a writer. And we all know how cheap we writers are. I mean, we get good stories for coffee mugs and t-shirts. With one tenth of what Lucas paid to computer generate filmdom's most annoying entity, Jar-Jar Binks, he could have had a dozen gifted writers produce a screenplay, paint his house, fix him lunch and probably satisfy his carnal urges.

It seems to me that Hollywood wants just enough written that will look cool in a trailer, and to hell with the subtleties of plot, we won't miss those until after we've coughed up for the ticket. This is the worst kind of cynical manipulation by the studios. There is no art, no joy of creation in these works, just careful, cold, most bang for the buck commercialism.

Not that money making is a bad thing. It just shouldn't be the only thing.
Still unconvinced? Let me haul out some examples. Be warned, the grill is heating up and a few sacred cows are eyeing me with trepidation.

Let's begin with Wild Wild West, possibly the worst film with the best raw materials of the year. Will Smith is a fine actor, a likeable hero, well chosen for the role. Kevin Kline is a brilliant comedic actor, perfect as a sidekick. Kenneth freaking Brannagh took a week off from Shakespeare to appear in this dog, and Selma Hayek isn't too tough on the eyes. But the movie stank on ice. Not since Cleopatra has a movie been this bad with this much star power. The characters had no motivation, no chemistry, and they all just seem to run into one another exactly when they need to so we can have all the scenes from the trailer. Why the showdown in a tiny town with about six houses? Why is the President of the United States there with an escort of like three soldiers? Why couldn't anyone see the huge fifty foot tall steam driven mechanical spider coming across the flat, featureless plains before it arrived? How did our heros get out of the trapped magnetic collars and meet the villain at that tiny insignificant town?

The answer: Who cares? Wasn't the big mechanical spider cool?

Contrast this with two other Western adventure movies based on old TV shows, Zorro and Maverick. Both were entertaining, fun, memorable movies. Neither had any real special effects, but they had a coherent plot, well conceived dialogue, and a clear resolution of all the complications the characters get into, instead of magically transporting them to where they need to be. In short, they had a script.

Next, let's examine The Matrix. Possibly the most visually stunning movie to date. There was a plot, a potentially interesting world, and a reasonable cast, despite the anchor of Keanu Reeves hauling them down. The writing was atrocious. The one memorable line was "Dodge this!" which, while amusing, was no better than anything Dirty Harry ever said. Nothing was done with Neo's motive for becoming a hacker, or Trinity's attraction to him, or anything. It was just some director who desperately wanted to be John Woo, and replaced talented Hong Kong stuntmen with ill trained Americans in Eurotrash leather outfits and masked lousy martial arts with computer generated images. In ten years, The Matrix will be what Tron is today.

There are directors and producers who should know better. Let's look at two sequels that disgraced their much better written but less effect-heavy forebears. Jurassic Park was a decent movie. It had enough story to carry it through, and the effects were terrific. Of course, they had an actual book to base the screenplay on, but they still did a reasonable job. Jurassic Park II had ten times the effects, but was the stupidest movie I have ever had the tragic misfortune of seeing.

Just to give some perspective, when I was in Marine boot camp in 1986, some fellow recruits and I snuck in to a movie just because it wasn't drill. It was Pretty in Pink, which no Marine would admit to seeing, but it was better than marching on a scorching parade deck in South Carolina in August.Well, during Jurassic Park II, I was trying to sneak out of the theater and join a chain gang as the lesser evil.

There is a scene where a ship known to be carrying a dangerous dinosaur is about to dock and it won't respond to the radio calls from the port. Gee, wonder why? None of the characters seemed concerned, though. Then, the ship crashes into the dock, obviously nobody at the helm. Again, no real concern. The characters run up to the boat, no doubt stopping along the way to smear themselves with ketchup, and board the abandoned ship known to contain a man eating dinosaur.

But wait! That's not all. Somebody finds a hydraulic switch clutched in a severed hand. A severed hand! So what does he do? He presses the "Open" button and lets the beast out of the hold. Characters that stupid don't exist outside of talk shows. Dan Quayle wouldn't have pushed the "Open" button. If a writer submitted a story to QM where a character did something that stupid for no better reason than to advance the story, not only would we reject him, we'd send Pat over to break his typing finger to spare the world further anguish.

Now, last but not least, I must take my life in my hands and attack Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace. The menace was so phantasmic I missed it. Was it the aliens with Japanese accents? Or maybe the guy who speaks two lines but is painted like the devil? He must be the villain; just look at him. Lucas made no effort at all to make us fear the evil in this film. Darth Vader had more menace in his little finger than all the ducklike battle droids, Japanese-sounding merchant aliens and two line speaking painted stuntmen in the known universe. Ray Parks can swing a mean lightsabre, but he didn't project evil. James Earl Jones has more doom in his voice in his Bell Atlantic commercials than anyone in Episode I. Lastly, Jar-Jar is an unforgivable sin.

Science Fiction and fantasy films have come a long way since Jason and the Argonauts in appearance, but not in substance. Hell, I don't think they've come far from Krull in substance. If you read this ezine, chances are you like decent fiction, maybe even write some. Next time you see the big SF or Fantasy movie come out, demand better with the only weapon the studios understand. Your ticket money.

Viva la Revolucion!

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