'Black Widow' - Script Review

Based on the script by David Hayter (2004) 

Summary:
Uninspiring and bland describe the Black Widow Script best. It is a by-the-numbers superhero story without deviating from the formula.

What's it about:
An orphan girl becomes unwillingly part of a sovjet military program and gains special powers. She can flee, but has to return to Russia to take out her former captors. 

Plot:

After losing her parents to a fire, Natasha is cared for by Ivan. He is an soldier at at the Red Room, a secret military project of the Sovjet Union, run by Sergei. On page 14 she is forced to undergo a procedure called "Ligature Tensility Augmentation", making her faster and stronger than a normal person. When the Sovjet Union crumbles down and the program has to be ended, Sergei goes rogue and kills everyone, who is not on his side, including Ivan. Natasha can flee to New York, but still russian spies follow her every steo, trying to kill her. After 5 years of hiding in New York she finds out, that there is a $10,000,000 bounty on her head and she decides to return to Russia to take out Sergei. After a lot hof hassle, she arrives at the Red Room, finding out Ivan has survived only to be killed 7 pages later. Inside the facility she discovers a group if young girls all trained to be 'Little Widows', Natasha frees them and together they destroy the whole complex. Safely back in New York the CIA ask Natasha to work for them. 

The Project:

In 2004 Hayter wrote 'Black Widow', but Marvel shelved it after many action-movies with female leads started and bombed ('Tomb Raider 2', 'Aeon Flux', 'Ultraviolet').

Recently talks started to revive the project, apparently due to Scarlett Johannson's appearance as Black Widow in 'Iron Man 2' and the upcoming 'The Avengers'.

Stealing from other superheroes?

While reading the script I was surprised by the amount of things adapted from other, better known Superheroes:
-Natasha is an orphan: I know it is a staple of the comic book hero. But could we at least try something new?
- The secret military project: Just like ProjectX turning Logan into Wolverine, an evil military project transforms an unwilling Natasha into the Black Widow.
- Belt with exploding disk: The Black Widow suit sports a belt equipped with exploding golden disks, which feels totally out of this world. Batman had a similar belt with such gimmicks (before 'Batman Begins')
- Shooting filaments from her wrists: Another feature of her suit is the capability to shoot filament from her writst, yeah, exactly like Spiderman. Just like the spider she uses it to swing down buildings or fighting enemies.

- This is more than a simple homage anymore, this lazy and blatant uncreative script writing!
 

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! - Movie Category: Superhero
(1) a power the hero is imbued with - Check!
(2) a "Nemesis", an equally powerful bad guy - hm, Sergei is not as strong her, making the match-up not as tense.
(3) a "curse" or Achilles heel -she lost her parents and her is now is hunted by ruthless killers, unable to live a normal live.
(4) The mascot or sidekick - Nada! Nothing! So the script uses Voice Over the whole movie to relay Natashas feelings and give explanation to the viewer. Not so elegant.

As always: the comment section below works without registration, just choose "Comment as Anonymous" - I am looking forward to your discussion.
And if you like my blog be sure to become my follower - Thanks!

- Tristan

'Oldboy' Remake - Script Review

Based on the 'Oldboy' - Remake script by Ernesto M. Foronda & Fabian Marquez from April 21, 2005.

Summary: The script has nothing new to say and doesn't add anything to the original movie. Apparently there is no cultural gap to close in bringing this story into the american theaters, so why bother in writing and making a new film? It is justified that this project is dead!

What's it about?

Gus, a father and husband never home, gets kidnapped and caged for twenty years without anyone telling him why. When he is released Gus is out for revenge and finding out, why he was imprisoned.

The Original:
Released in 2003, the revenge thriller OldBoy is directed by Chan-wook Park and quickly hailed as one of the best movies of the year. The film goes on to win the Grand Prize of the Jury in Cannes

Only cosmetic changes:

- We see Gus by the angel wings;

- He wakes up on a church; other locations altered;

- The suicidal man at the beginning, doesn't kill himself;

- Fried dumplings are changed to Taquitos;

- The female lead is not a kitchen chef, but a delivery girl...

The list goes on like this, but there are no major differences. The script follows the original movie beat for beat. Don''t get me wrong: This is a good script, but nobody needs it. It adopts all motifs throughtout the movie like the heavy use of Voice Over or the ants as a symbol for Gus' Isolation, which leads to:

The twist and resolution at the end are the same:

I thought they would tone down the ending, as it is rather shocking and explicit, but the script follows the original movie even there. Also the fights leading up to the finale weren't toned down at all. The ending was also the big chance for the scriptwriters to come up with something new, but they decided to adapt one to one.

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! - Movie Category: Whydunit
This category is defined by an investigation into the dark side of humanity and a shocking revelation. 
(I started reading "the last book on screenwriting that you'll ever need" and in future posts I want to find out, if the categories Blake Synder proposes in his book Save the Cat! are a useful method for analysing scripts or not. Perhaps they are helpful for you, my readers, too.)

As always: the comment section below works without registration, just choose "Comment as Anonymous" - I am looking forward to your discussion.
And if you like my blog be sure to become my follower - Thanks!

- Tristan

References: IMDb Oldboy (2003); IMDb Oldboy (2012); Article about the death of the project; Wiki;

The Decline of Glee - Appendix

Hi there,

thanks for your interest in my two posts about 'The Decline of Glee'! After watching the last two episodes of 'Glee', I decided had to write a follow-up. Many of the aspects I wrote about, were adressed and - in my humble opinion - solved. I started enjoying 'Glee' again!

1. In addition to the first part, in which I accused Glee of focusing to much on the homosexual relationsships a friend of mine argued that Ryan Murphy himself is gay. I did not know that, but it could explain why he has such a good eye for the emotional drama of Kurt's, Santana's and Dave's situations. I repeat, that it was overdue that a prime time concerned itself with the problems of gay teens, but the heterosexual teens were a little bit lost.

How they solved it: More Balance. 

The last two episodes saw a welcome change: Almost all storylines were balanced, every relationship was adressed (except Tina and Mike). I can not list every scene, but it was great to see Artie and Brittany for a change. The scenes with Dave and Kurt were all very emotional and dramatic. The bit between Mercedes and Sam was touching and sweet.

To be honest: the scenes after the announcement of the Prom Queen were the best and emotional material 'Glee' had to offer for a long time. 

2. Part Two described the unemotional music-video like songs in 'Glee'. One of my friends pointed out that Glee got it's second and third season at once, which is very uncommon. So the creators knew they had 50+ episodes to fill, when they sat down to write the show after the first season. Perhaps one idea was to strech the character evolution over more episodes and fill the rest with music. I do not know, but it felt like this for me.

How they solved it: The Return of the Musical

The music numbers were approached differently, to a great effect. In Rumors, episode 19 of season 2, Artie and Brittany get into a fight. When she storms away, Artie starts singing right in the hall were she left him. Puck, Sam and Finn appear out of thin air and accompany him on the guitar. They all go through the school singing and dancing and end up on the stage of the auditorium. I welcome the return of these musical-style elements, as they are a oppprtunity to bring back the emotions and drama of each character into the songs.

And the choice of songs has improved. More songs were directly linked to the situation of the character(s) singing it, Santana's 'Songbird' or Rachel's and Jesse St. Jame's 'Rolling in the Deep' come to mind.

As always: the comment section below works without registration, just choose "Comment as Anonymous" - I am looking forward to your discussion.
And if you like my blog be sure to become my follower - Thanks!

- Tristan

The Decline of Glee - Poker Face (2/2)

Today the second part of my Glee piece. I already touched today's subject in my last part about the Decline of Glee. Right now the show is headed to become a 40 minutes music video, with our characters stumbling through it. 

On Tuesday I stated that I can not care for most of the characters anymore, as they are not defined through their relationships and how they deal with them. 

In a musical the songs express the feelings of the characters and/or drive the plot forward. Glee now does neither of that, but in the first season many songs did exactly that. For example: Season 1 Episode 19: Rachel listens to the tape her biological mother made her, which leads to them singing a duet of 'I dreamed a dream' (in a dream sequence, nonetheless!). The classic Les Miserable song is about a mother losing her child - which mirrors the situation perfectly. It also shows the pain of Rachel for not having a mother and in doing so deepens her character.

In the second season of Glee big tribute episodes are overwhelming and many songs seem like they were put into the show just because they are 'in' and top hits (like the 'Justin Bieber Experience'!). Alas, the problem is two-fold: the characters and their situations have no impact on me anymore, they became bland. The songs can not mirror something that is not there and so they are not much more than nicely-choreographed dance numbers. 

The makers of Glee are so lost sometimes on how to squeeze in the songs, that they have to resort to drugging the entire Glee Club and hallucinating Madonna songs. This can not be about the story and character development anymore. This is just about putting in as many popular songs as possible.

At the moment, you can watch Glee on shuffle and you wouldn't miss much! And don't get me started on the blatant misuse of AutoTune - they all started to sound the same.

In summary, Glee's characters are missing the emotional deepth at the moment and subsequently the music numbers are just shallow renditions of popular songs. The songs should be used to reflect the situations and feelings of the characters, only that way they can start to create an emotional impact on the viewer again.

The comment section below works without registration, just choose "Comment as Anonymous" - I am looking forward to your discussion.
And if you like my blog be sure to become my follower - Thanks!

Have a nice day,

- Tristan

The Decline of Glee - Bad Romance (1/2)

This week I will publish a two-parter about my personal opinion why Glee is on a steep downhill to become a really bad TV show. 

Part 1 - Bad Romance

Blaine and Kurt finally kiss! Dave Karofsky, the bully, tries to kiss Kurt! Santana confesses her love to Brittany and gets rejected. Kurt's father does his best to educate his son on the dangers of sex. These are the scenes I remember of the top of my head from the last few episodes. I remember them, not only because they were wonderfully written and acted. But the situations were believable and that made them so much more hurtful. What made them stand out between everything else is their emotional impact! I felt for the characters in these situations and cared for them.

I do not care about Sam, Artie or Puck and their relationships - and I definitely do not care about Finn and Rachel anymore. The heterosexual relationships seem to be stuck on 'random' and they feel that way: random! Sam just jumps from Quinn to Santana; Puck had a few girls on the show; Finn can not decide and goes from Quinn to Rachel and back and forth; Can you  remember Tina and Chang having a moment of their own? 

I am not saying that Glee is heterophob, but right now it focuses extremely on the emotional aspects of the homosexual/bisexual characters and loses sight of it's heterosexual characters.

And this is part of the bigger problem Glee is facing right now! Formerly the relationships were used to define the characters with their actions and desires. For example, Will Schuster trying to forget his crazy ex-wife and fighting to win over Emma. Those actions made his character interesting and believable. But having Sam jump from girl to girl without any emotional scenes to explain that does not define his characters - he just becomes a cardboard figure. This also affects the non-romantic relationships: Puck and Finn were best friends once and now? I don't know. Kurt and Mercedes haven't shared a memorable scene in a long time, altough they were best friends. It seems like Glee does not have the time to characterize it's characters and their relationships anymore!

To put it in a nutshell: The show doesn't make me care and feel for the characters anymore. It seems that the sole purpose of most of the characters is to sing a Top 40 song on a whim (see part 2 next friday for more on this topic).  Nonetheless, the show seems to focus on the homosexual aspects of the show - which is fine - but should tend with the same care to the heterosexual relationships before it makes all the characters totally unbelievable.

The comment section below works without registration, just choose "Comment as Anonymous" - I am looking forward to your discussion!

Have a great day,

- Tristan