heroes – The Red Pen of Doom

GUNS AKIMBO tests the Five Unwritten Laws of Action Movies

July 28, 2020August 3, 2021Posted in 3 Tinseltown TuesdayTagged action movies, commando, daniel ratcliffe, guns akimbo, heroes, in order of disappearance, storytelling, unwritten laws of action movies, villainsLeave a comment

Unless you are allergic to 007, Jason Statham, and Jackie Chan–and somehow managed to dodge all 5,392 Marvel films–you’ve seen plenty of action movies.

GUNS AKIMBO is on the interwebs now, and it stars Daniel Radcliffe, so that automatically makes people like me perk up. Can a grown-up Potter carry an action movie, with zero wands and magic, and no Hermione to save him from hubris and idiocy? Will there be any sarcastic jokes or easter eggs referencing a villain who looks like a methed-up cousin of Voldemort? And does the movie work as entertainment?

Here’s the trailer, then let’s talk smack not just about this movie, but about how this film illustrates–for good and bad–the Five Unwritten Laws of Action Movies.

Interesting, right? The premise is good. You have an Average Joe sucked into an action movie in a plausible way, and he doesn’t have an easy out.

Those elements are the first three Unwritten Laws.

The First Unwritten Law of Action Movies: The Hero Cannot Be Superman

I don’t literally mean the Man of Steel, though talking about Supes can illustrate the extreme limits of how action movies go bad.

The more amazing and unbeatable you make the hero in the beginning, the less thrilling any action movie becomes. Superman is invincible, so it’s kinda impossible to worry about him getting hurt or killed, which absolutely murders any tension in the movie.

James Bond and other action movies keep breaking this law. They’re super tough, ice cold, and irresistible to the opposite sex from the first minute of the film, which not only kills tension–you know they’re gonna win–but it also destroys character growth, as in THERE IS NONE.

The acid test for a movie smashing the first law into itty bitty pieces is this: Is there a scene near the climax where our Ultracool Hero beats up and mows down a faceless army of bad guys before he gets to the Final Boss? You know the scene, because you see it all the time. Like this one.

Daniel Ratcliffe in this movie is definitely an Average Joe, completely unskilled compared to those he’s matched up against, so that ratchets up the tension. The question isn’t “how many bad guys will he mow down?” It’s, “How many minutes will Harry Potter With Guns survive?”

The Second Unwritten Law of Action Movies: Is This Plausible?

A lot of movies get the first law right, then immediately commit a Class B Storytelling Felony by having their Average Joe, an accountant from the suburbs, involved in a crazy plot involving Russian spies, the mafia, and a suitcase containing an alien artifact.

Whether the hero is a professional or amateur, the premise needs to be exciting, yet reasonable. If a gangster with his own private army kills your kung fu mentor, are you really going to take on and kill 300 armed criminals with your bare hands, on a rooftop in the rain? No. Not plausible. A movie that did this right was IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE. The hero is an average man who takes out the drug dealers who murdered his son, but he does it step-by-step in clever ways.

The Third Unwritten Law of Action Movies: Is There No Way Out?

It’s not just a cool Kevin Costner movie. IT’S A LAW.

Horror movies are notorious for this, but action movies aren’t far behind. If the hero could solve this easily, say by calling 911 or renting a car and driving the hell away, then it’s lazy storytelling.

GUNS AKIMBO does this right in a clever way by bolting guns on Harry Potter’s hands. He can’t get them off, can’t open doors, can’t put on pants. It’s terrifying and funny and works beautifully.

The Fourth Unwritten Law of Action Movies: The Villain Must Be Bigger, Badder, and Better

It’s an achy break big mistake to make the hero smarter, tougher, stronger, taller, or generally better than the villain. The villain needs to be (a) scary, and (b) the most deadly thing in the movie. Period.

You can see action movies that shatter this law all the time, with savage, scary henchmen who the hero struggles to beat. Then when he finally gets to the villain pulling the strings, that fight feels anti-climactic.

This is the opposite of the Superman problem. Go ahead and make your villain super. Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, the shark in Jaws, Thanos–all of those bad guys are great because they’re scary and tough one-on-one. They don’t need a bunch of minions to back them up.

The villain in this movie does sort resemble a methed-up and tattooed cousin of Voldemort, though I’m not sure that’s intentional. But he’s plenty scary, and definitely bigger, badder, and more deadly than Daniel Radcliffe’s character, so they do it right.

The Fifth Unwritten Law of Action Movies: The Best Scenes Go Last

There’s a great fight scene with Nix, the blonde killer, early in the movie. Then she sacrifices herself (yeah, spoiler alert) so Harry Potter can make it to the final boss battle.

Except her final scene is nothing compared to that earlier scene. It’s meh. Switch those around in the editing room and IT WOULD BE MAGIC.

The same is true for chases, witty dialogue, suspenseful moments–put the best last. Escalate up to the end.

VERDICT

Listen, it’s the year 2020, which the prophecy apparently foretold was the Apocalypse, except nobody warned us, so I know that you know that we’re all plumbing the depths of Netflix and Amazon Prime for decent things to watch.

GUNS AKIMBO commits a few misdemeanors, but it gets the big things right and is definitely worth watching.

THE OLD GUARD is good–and here’s what could make the sequel even better

July 14, 2020August 3, 2021Posted in 3 Tinseltown TuesdayTagged Christian Bale, equilibrium, furiosa, heroes, highlander, immortal, Movie, storytelling, Superman, the boys, the old guard, vampires, villainsLeave a comment

Yes, there will be a sequel to THE OLD GUARD, which is crushing the competition on Netflix right now. Click with your mousity mouse thing to watch the trailer.

Cool, right? Furiousa is back and she’s kicking butt.

If you haven’t watched the movie, spoilers ahead. If you have watched it, let’s talk about what worked, what didn’t, and how they could amp this thing up in the sequel.

The general feel of this movie worked well. It’s a fun time, and the acting is great for an action movie.

I like the premise–immortals who may randomly lose the ability to heal–though if you called this HIGHLANDER WITH GUNS, that feels pretty accurate, too.

The trouble with any type of immortal hero is you run into The Superman Trap, which is the fact the audience never worries about the hero being in danger because they basically can’t die. What’s good about HIGHLANDER and vampire movies is there are clear rules of how this all works. Vampires are vulnerable to sunlight, garlic, and such. Highlander and his fellow immortals die when they lose their heads, gaining the power of whoever they vanquish, except it’s not clear what power they really get. Are they faster or tougher after the light show? Can’t tell. Can they fly or do card tricks? Dunno. We’re just told they get more power, which is defined as the ability to do work, except we never see Highlander and his fellow immortal sword fetishists do anything other than swing blades at each other.

It is a nice twist for the hero, Furiosa (okay, her name in this movie is Andy, but does it really matter?) to lose her immortality toward the end. Because it raises the stakes and makes us worry.

What I didn’t like was the villain, who’s a dweeby pharma bro CEO, and yes, he’s despicable, but not scary. And certainly not a match for Furiosa and her fellow immortals.

The ending if an action movie should always have the main character, not a sidekick, take out the villain. That villain had better be just as skilled, powerful, and scary as the hero. Otherwise, snooze city. Check out the ending fight of HIGHLANDER, which featured a great bad guy, totally imposing and scary. Loved him.

There are two real villains in these Furiosa with Guns movies, which is plural on purpose because there will be more. First up is the bearded dude immortal frenemy who betrays his friends, then helps beat the bad guys only to get banished for 100 years as punishment for the original betrayal that you should have figured out ten minutes into the story. Who set up the first job that went wrong? Oh, that guy. Yeah, he’s it.

THE OLD GUARD neatly sets up the top villain in the next film, the woman who Furiosa hung out with for centuries but couldn’t save when they drowned her in an iron coffin at sea, thinking she was a witch. Then she spend hundreds of years drowning, dying, and coming back only to die again. Dreadful, right?

There’s a great stinger ending scene where the Bearded Frenemy, spending his 100 years in exile drinking all the alcohols in Europe, is surprised by the Big Bad Frenemy of Furiosa who somehow escaped the iron coffin at the bottom of the ocean. She’s certainly set up to be scary, with a totally understandable motivation for revenge and a license from the French government to do wacky psycho villain things, seeing how spending all that time drowning and coming back to life, endlessly, would warp any of our minds.

What bugged me is compared to the Big Bad Immortal Frenemy, all the little villains who died in the previous two hours feel insignificant. Especially the dweeby pharma bro.

So I hope and pray the sequel sticks with a villain who is as powerful, or more powerful, than Furiosa and her immortal friends. Because this should be the First Law of Storytelling: a movie or novel is only as strong as the villain.

Is the hero so skilled and amazing that it requires an entire division of bad guys to slow him down? Is the villain equal to that or even more skilled? You see far too many movies and novels where the villain is no match at all for the hero. And it makes it boring.

A series that completely tilts the playing field in favor of the villains, and does it incredibly well? THE BOYS on Amazon Prime (I swear this sounds like a planet in the Degobah System or whatever). The superheroes everybody worships are actually villains, and the small band of people trying to take them down are–with one exception–average people with zero powers. They’re total underdogs and it makes every victory they have so worth it.

VERDICT

Yes, it’s accurate to say THE OLD GUARD is sorta HIGHLANDER with guns, but it’s a fun time, and well worth watching.

On a related note: EQUILIBRIUM is pretty much THE MATRIX crossed with FAHRENHEIT 451 and 1984, and you’d think that mix wouldn’t work, but it does. They overdo the gun-kata nonsense a bit, sure, yet there’s a lot of great action scenes in this Christian Bale movie.

Deep story goodness for writers via The Mother of All Cheat Sheets

November 25, 2016August 3, 2021Posted in 4 Writing Secrets WednesdayTagged antagonists, Blake Snyder, blueprints, casablance, chinatown, heroes, Hollywood, Khan, Kirk, nanowrimo, nanowrimo tips, novels, protagonists, robert mckee, save the cat, Spock, structure, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, treatments, villains, Writers Resources, Writing5 Comments

If you’re attempting NaNoWriMo and are on track to finish the Great American Novel, congratulations. Carry on.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo and there’s no way you’ll give birth to a full novel by Dec. 1 without quitting your job, getting divorced and downing pots of coffee along with stimulants sold by a sketchy long-haul truck driver—then congratulations, this post is for you.

Click with your mousity mouse to read Part1—Why NaNoWriMo is noble nuttiness–and 8 steps to make it easier (big thanks to WordPress for featuring this post on their front page)

Click here to read Part 2— Why first drafts are always flawed and how to fix them

Hear me now and believe me later in the week: given the choice of holding in my hands (1) an absolutely finished hot mess of 100,000 words or (2) a single page blueprint of a brilliant story, I’d pick B.

Every time.

And you should, too.

Blueprints and structure are also the way you FIX a hot mess of a novel.

You sure don’t fix a train wreck with spell check and diligent proofing.
Continue reading “Deep story goodness for writers via The Mother of All Cheat Sheets” →

French filmmaker’s epic tribute to BREAKING BAD

April 29, 2014August 3, 2021Posted in 3 Tinseltown TuesdayTagged Alexandre Gasulla, breaking bad, fonz, heroes, jump the shark, lost, tribute3 Comments

This video by Alexandre Gasulla contains everything I love about BREAKING BAD: the beautifully framed images, the music, the menace, characters who actually suffer and change and die.

Most television series are packed full of cardboard stereotypes and cliches that never change from episode to episode, unless the actor breaks out and bails for Tinseltown paychecks.

Even the best shows either jump the shark (Fonz actually did this on a motorcycle), forgets that when you turn a great villain into a pseudo-hero you have no villain at all (HEROES), gets seven times weirder than necessary (LOST) or simply limps on too long past its expiration date until the network cancels the thing and the showrunners throw together a Giant Flashback Episode, because otherwise, all the actors who bailed to become movie stars won’t be in the finale at all (every TV show ever).

BREAKING BAD ended on its own terms, the story complete. Thank you, Alexandre, for making this work of art celebrating a work of art.