The ScriptShadow Challenge: "Medieval"

Huzzah! The first monthly ScriptShadow Challenge!

This month's script: "Medieval."

Here is The ScriptShadow's analysis:

So I'm going to let you guys in on a secret but you can't tell anyone. I.....I might've lied a little. Well, not "lied" lied. But a tiny minuscule white lie. I actually tried to read Medieval when it was sold. Yes. Yes. If you've been following the blog, you may have picked up that I do this a lot. I start reading a script and if it's just dreadful, I can't continue. I hurl it to the floor, scream obscenities at it, curse it for disrespecting my time, pray that the next script will be better, and move on. Which is why I am writing this review at 4:30 IN THE MORNING! Because I couldn't bring myself to read it again. It was like that paper in that obscure history course you took in college that you just couldn't bring yourself to write. That's how I felt about going back to Medieval times and reading Medieval. But here I am. The city's asleep and I have a deadline. Damn you Scott Myers. Damn you for forcing a deadline on me!

Sigh...

Okay, let's try this again. The *idea* for Medieval is actually pretty cool. A monk, a knight, a samurai, a zulu, an Arab, a gypsy and a viking are all in a jail cell a la The Usual Suspects. But, like, you know, 500 years earlier. They're bitching and moaning about how they got here and how they're all going to be hanged tomorrow and whatever can they do to save themselves?

As if on cue they are visited by the "lawyer" (the writers aren't keen on names if you haven't noticed). Although this lawyer is sleazy, it turns out he's even sleazier than your average sleazy lawyer. If the 7 of them can infiltrate the King's castle and steal the crown, he says, he will let them all go free. Unbeknownest to the group, the food he's given them is poisoned and the only one who has the antidote is him. If they don't get the crown within 24 hours, they're all dead. Did I say he was sleazy or did I say he was sleazy?

So they go on this Medieval Mission Impossible to steal the King's crown, performing numerous badass slow-motion ass-kickings while evading Indiana Jones-like traps. But when they get to the throne room, there is a man in the process of assassinating the King. No! They've been set up! This man is supposed to kill the king while all of them take the rap!

This forces our group of seven to go on the run and escape the wrath of whoever's plan this is - which looks to be the King's extremely jealous twin brother (who missed out on Kingage by 40 seconds), Richard.

And there's your movie.

Now here's the thing with Medieval. The script is not all that bad but it's not all that good either. It never takes itself seriously, proudly offering visual cues like "Imagine the Cantina in Star Wars" to set the tone for a location. Kinda shameless but it works in it own way. Really the whole thing is an excuse for as many sweet fight scenes as possible.

And that's why it sold. Really cool f*cking fight scenes. And I'm not going to take that away from Medieval. It's a director's wet dream. I don't know if anyone's seen the very stylized Christopher Gans film "Brotherhood Of The Wolf", but I imagine Medieval being directed identically to that film. And if it is, it'll be one hell of a fun ride.

And here's my analysis / commentary / B.S.

When I plowed through "Medieval" -- written by Mike Finch & Alex Litvak -- last night, I had a strange sense of déjà vu. Because it felt like I had read this script before. Way back in 1990, I remember reading another spec script "The Last Boyscout" written by screenwriter Shane Black. And although the two stories have nothing much in common re their plots, they have just about everything in common re their narrative voice, tone, and style. Right there on P.2 with this example of scene description in "Medieval" -- "Yep, he's that good" -- flashed me back to Black's opus and some of his scene description from right up front -- "Yes, honey, that's your butt". And immediately, my stomach twisted into a little knot. Not the whole breaking the 4th wall thing again! Thanks to Shane Black and "The Last Boyscout," a spec script that sold for a then record $1.75M dollars, Hwood was flooded with Shane Black wannabes. That went on for way too long. But evidently with "Medieval," the ghost of Shane Black wannabes is back.

Now there's no real inherent problem with commenting on the action with SD like, "It's not the years, it's the mileage" or even breaking the 4th wall and addressing the reader like, "well, how would you feel if you were about to go on a suicide mission? Yeah. Kinda like that." Indeed, writing like that can make a script a more entertaining read. And when Hwood's threshhold guardians -- script readers -- their eyes bloodshot and souls savaged by reading one bad script after another, light upon something like "Medieval," which actually provides them with some laughs in SD, you can understand why they might be more inclined to say "Recommend" or at least "Consider" when they turn in their coverage.

However, here is the problem: I've started off my analysis of the script by spending the first two paragraphs talking about the script's narrative voice -- not the plot, characters, theme, dialogue or anything else which is more important to the success of the story. But then, Messrs. Finch & Litvak are doubtless laughing all the way to the bank to the tune of $800K / $1.6M on the sale of "Medieval." And Mr. Finch is writing this project for Bryan Singer, so I doubt very seriously they care what anybody thinks about their impersonation of Shane Black. For that matter, Shane Black probably doesn't care either.

So let me sum up my thoughts on the writing style in "Medieval" thusly: It fits with Finch & Litvak's iteration of this genre piece, and that's finally all that matters. Their concept is an outrageous story in that everything about it is comic book big. Or more precise, videogame big. And make no mistake: "Medieval" reads like a great videogame. The plot, the characters, the dialogue, the stakes, twists, turns, and yes, even the narrative voice are over-the-top big, that kind of hyper-reality you find in a videogame. So bottom line, the writers' choice of narrative voice fits in with their vision of the story. You may not like it, but it is an extension of what the overall mood, tone, and style they were going for -- and in that they succeeded.

The Plot

On the whole, it tracks a pretty traditional three-act route with a couple of nifty variations. There are also a series of plot twists, some of which I anticipated and a few I did not.

Act One

P. 1-16: The introduction of the seven Co-Protagonists: Gypsy, Zulu, Monk, Viking, Samurai, Arab, Knight. The fact that the story takes this long to go through each characters set-up and backstory is noteworthy because it is unusual. Even the choice of using flashbacks -- typically frowned upon by Hwood readers -- adds to the psychological impact I got when reading the first several pages: "These writers are going to go balls-out in this story." Of course, most of the backstory incidents do that right there in the action, but their choice as writers to take 16 pages and use flashbacks to intro their core characters underscores the writers' 'outrageous' slant on the material.

P. 17-29: When the herald character (Lawyer) arrives, that marks the beginning of what I call The Hook, a plot point that spins the story in a direction that gives us a sense of where the plot is going. In this case, Lawyer makes the 7 an offer they -- literally -- can not refuse. Then comes the first sustained action sequence, which the writers note with "Chapter II: The Heist" (following Chapter I: The Gathering). In general, I found the action writing to be quite good. The writers make a conscious choice not to use SHOTS / SECONDARY SLUGS which would have made the action more readable, but I suspect they didn't do that in order to keep the page count down (that might also explain why most of their parentheticals were placed within sides of dialogue, not on their own separate line).

P. 29 - 36: Realizing they have been set up and stuck with the Pageboy character, the 7 determine that "together we might have a chance," seven against an army. And at that point, we have the end of the first act, what I call The Lock - because now the plot is locked down: It's the 7 plus Pageboy against the Nemesis (Edward) and his enormous mix of bad guys in his armed forces.

Act Two

P. 36 - 47: This is the first of five extended sequences which comprise the second act. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Finch & Litvak used the sequence methodology in cracking the story's plot. Here the 7 and Pageboy visit the Gypsy's nephew (Frederick) in a local tavern. This is essentially 'down' time, a change of pace from all the preceding action, and an opportunity to lay out some exposition and provide some additional beats in subplots, such as Arab and Knight. I should point out that the writers make good use of callbacks throughout the script including one between Gypsy and Frederick, as when Gypsy forces his uncle to drink poison, killing him: "You'd think you were the one who fucked my mother."

P. 47 - 59: A big action sequence tagged by the writers as "Chapter IV: The Getaway." Again quite good SD in general and a nice plot twist (which I guessed): That Pageboy is actually a female, the Queen-in-waiting Amelia. But I must say where the Shane Black approach in the first act didn't bother me that much, there were several times in this sequence where the specific modern cultural references -- "Bruce Lee vs. Odd Job" / "'Black Hawk Down' time" -- and directing lingo -- "CAMERA slingshots" / "We CRANE UP" -- really lurched me out of the story. As compared to the very first pages where the writers used 'modern' lingo in dialogue -- "Hey! I'm innocent! Hey! Hey! I was judge-fucked!" / Are you going to whine all night?! / Any time, gyppo" -- to tell the reader, "Hey, this isn't going to be one of those frumpy medieval language jobs, we're taking poetic license and having some fun here," I began to grow weary of the contemporary references in action description.

Now let me point out that it's the midway point in the script, and I don't care about any of these characters all that much. Oh, I get what's going on, what the stakes are, and I'm mildly amused by Gypsy, generally sympathetic to Viking, and somewhat curious about Monk, but none of these characters has approached anywhere remotely near three-dimensionality. But again, I think this is a conscious choice on the part of the writers because their inspiration for the story is the world of videogames. And per the type of videogame, the writer is responsible to give characters just enough to generate empathy and understanding toward them, as well as distinguish between them.

P. 59-67: The first scene in this sequence is actually my favorite in the script. There's some good dialogue between Gypsy and Amelia that actually opens up these two characters, allowing a bit of their humanity to show through. Plus, befitting a scene in the middle of the script, what I call a Transition, we see a transition with Amelia: Where Knight begins to instruct her in the way of using a sword. This scene is followed by others to take advantage of another 'down' time: Viking and Samurai swap talk and ideas, as do Monk and Arab. These are all beats in subplots that we can expect to play out in the script ahead.

P. 67 - 81: Apart from the introductory pages, this is the longest sequence in the script, and it's virtually all action. It also includes the worst (best?) Shane Black-ism in the script with this SD: "Remember the place we first met Zulu back on pg. 6? Deja vu." If I'm not mistaken, Black did the exact same thing in "The Last Boyscout." Amidst all the action -- again well-written and visual -- the writers drop in a critical bit of exposition: Monk's confession of the truth about his background (P. 78: "I am a monster. I am a plague. I am the Devil").

P. 81 - 90: The final sequence of the second act. It begins with Edward all pissed off. I should note the cuts back to Edward are a traditional device to (a) check in with the Nemesis to remind the reader they're still around and (b) to provide a break by cutting away from the Protagonist 'team.' Two interesting things in this sequence. First, how Monk gives himself up to save the others. I wasn't so much surprised by him doing that -- his character's arc would be to do something self-sacrificial -- but I was by the specific circumstances involved: Poor people who only want one of the seven so they can get a reward in order to have food to eat. I thought that was a rather novel idea. The other thing is the suddenly budding romance between Gypsy and Amelia. Yes, they had their rather philosophical discussion back around P. 60 and a few other bits of business, but apart from them being forced to have their bodies clamped together in this action sequence, I didn't really buy the chemistry.

Act Three

P. 90 - 98: What I call On the Defensive. And true to form, the group loses Knight. Beyond that, Edward confronts his would-be challengers and uses a bit of Gordon Gecko 'greed' logic to spin their initial estimation of what to do, eventually (and quickly) choosing to support him as King. But what really distinguishes this sequence is after what's left of the 7 reaches safety, Amelia demands to go back -- a nice twist. There's her appeal to the remaining Co-Protagonists on P. 97, which you either buy or don't. These type of speeches are tough to handle and after Blutarski's broadside in Animal House ("Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor"), really what can you have a character say that can convince a cynical jaded script reader that those words would energize the other characters. But at least they had Gypsy hold out at the end: That was a measure of respect for the character's inner conniving self and at least the writers let one soul not be immediately swayed by Amelia's call to arms.

P. 98 - 109: On the Offensive. Once we realize that the group's entire goal throughout Act II -- getting to the boat to escape -- was a Maguffin of sorts, we are in new territory as they head back into the jaws of danger. The requisite ticking clock -- Edward's ordination -- then Amelia's entrance and, what I thought, was some very smart dialogue, ticking off one piece of logic after another. All ending with Amelia assuming her rightful place on the throne. Or so we think.

P. 109 - 116: This may have been the niftiest bit in the script. Where we would typically be seeing The Final Struggle taking place, followed by the Denouement, what we get instead is an elongated variation of M. Night Shyamalan did at the end of The Sixth Sense: A series of flashbacks to show how Amelia set up the good guys. Topped off with an even niftier twist: The revelation of the Lawyer being "Niccolo Machiavelli."

All in all, I thought it was an entertaining read. Moreover, I can see why the script sold:

* It's a videogame wrapped in a screenplay. That means it can be turned into a videogame. And it will appeal (in theory) to all those godzillion of young male videogamers. Assuming that they cast Amelia with a hot voluptuous actress, they even got some eye-candy who kicks ass for the gaming fans.

* It's an entertaining read. Perhaps too much of the Shane Black thing, but I suspect the writers in going balls-out decided that the script would not not sell because there was too much of that. They erred in the direction of having fun and being entertaining.

* It's definitely big enough to be a movie. Potentially a really big movie.

* Since the plot and plot twists are big enough, the studio doesn't have to hire A-talent (with gross profit participation deals), but a bevy of B-talent to fill the roles of the 7. As much bang for less bucks.

* It will make for a kick-ass trailer. Easy marketing campaign.

* Spin-off possibilities: Comic books, sequels, prequels. Clean it up substantially, you could at the end of its movie life turn it into a kid's animation series.

I'm sure there are other reasons, but I'll leave those to you.

Now let me go out on a limb here and make a prediction: This movie won't get made. Why? First off, the studio has to make a critical decision: Shoot the film like it's written, which is a definite R-rating (this would be going after hardcore teenage and up gamers, but would cut out a huge target demo of younger males), or pull out all the F-bombs and do mostly simulated violence, not the gore-fest as described in the script. If the studio goes that route, then they run the risk not only of losing the older gamer types, but also gutting the script of its edgy sensibilities.

That is the kind of fundamental choice that can drive studio execs crazy. They may hire one set of writers to de-fang it. Not like that result. Hire another set of writers to bring it back to a soft R. That may satisfy nobody. And going down this route can be the fast-track to Development Hell.

Another reason the movie may never get produced: As noted, the characters basically work for "Medieval," the videogame. But as yet, a videogame is still not a movie. Even an over-the-top action flick like this needs characters with more depth than is currently written. Now I'm not even sure I believe that. But knowing development execs, I can virtually assure you that Finch & Litvak got notes on providing depth and texture to most if not all the seven lead characters. And again, that can be a slippery slope to Development Hell, too.

But chances are I'll be proven wrong and the movie will get produced if only because New Regency is on the hook for $800K right off the bat (the purchase price). They hire one, two, or three more writers to rework the script, you're looking at $2M in development costs. At some point, a director will get involved. And they'll want their own writer on the project. Throw in a pay-or-play deal for the director and pretty soon, the studio starts getting real 'pregnant.' Plus, at any given point, their execs just need to step back for a few seconds and look at the project from the Big Picture standpoint and realize, they could probably shoot the thing as is and make back their money on B.O. and primary ancillary revenues alone.

And now it's your turn. Post your commentary / analysis here. Or go to ScriptShadow to post / re-post what you have to say. Based on the number of people who have requested the script to "Medieval," this should turn out to be quite an interesting discussion.

UPDATE: PJ has provided this link where you can download the script "Medieval." And while you're at it, visit PJ's screenwriting blog here.