. . .
Now we get back to some action and the anticipated showdown between the two secondary leads, one on the good side, one on the bad. And it seems they know each other? Another good reason for a little getting-to-know-you time with the "bulldog", Westgrave, earlier. Nevertheless the scene is nicely done, like all your other action scenes. Fast, fluid, and it unfolds clearly. Although I do have to say that the misfire/out-of-bullets scenario always makes me say to myself, "He really should be dead". Being that the hero didn't
actively do anything to not get shot, it isn't to heroic at all. Like the difference between the hero diving out of the way of a speeding car versus the care exploding before it reaches him.
But it's great scene, and I'm starting to hope you do a pure action movie next. One annoying thing- why wouldn't Reece kill Westgrave? I mean, he's already racked up quite a body count on lesser thugs, so why not eliminate someone who, when he awakes, will no doubt still be a major threat? This is akin to the hero not picking up a fallen enemy's weapon even if it's superior to his own. Just one of those movie-isms I would try to avoid. Much like . . .
The villain who speaks to much. Simmons lays it all out for us while admonishing Catherine. This is a tried and tested cliche, though, oftentimes because there's simply no other way to give us so much information so late in the film. So, it's fine, writers do it all the time, and no one is going to criticize you for it, except maybe Roger Ebert. But producers out there reading your treatment will know and understand and the audiences watching your film won't know and won't care. It's a cliche, but an acceptable and very effective one. Although, in this case, the villian makes a good point and it kind of makes me want to change teams suddenly, even if it's going to be a losing battle.
And now the bad guys(?) take off in the shuttle, leaving our heroes stranded. Not to worry, a heretofore unknown last-ditch transport exists. (Bennings wouldn't have mentioned this huge, very important detail until the last possible moment? That's a definite movie-ism and could easly be remedied by having Bennings tell the group that there's another chance and having Langford ask if she's referring to that "hail mary" Bennings mentioned earlier? Or something like that. Even better, while on the jet and getting Reece's backstory somebody could ask Bennings what if they miss the shuttle and she responds that there is another chance . . . Then we move to the next scene without hearing what it is, getting some anticipation going.
Back to Cape Canaveral the Gryphon takes off and we get a great scene with Reece and Bennings, and their acceptance of their fate. This could have easily come of as cheesy, melodramatic, unintentionally funny, or worse yet, flat and boring. But it's really nice, a great goodbye to our two favorite characters. I might ditch having the clouds part and the sun coming through, though, as it straddles a fine line with "overdone" on the other side.
" . . .
[T]hey'll simply blast them into a whole new dimension." Well, that's a great line.
The docking sequence goes surprisingly smoothly. (Also, is Stevie a lesbian? That seems to be alluded to when she notices the attractive spacewalking girl.) I'm torn on whether or not you're missing out on a nice, quick, and very tense scene of a mini-crisis during the docking attempt (Walter dies? Or sacrifices himself?) I would go for it, it's too good an opportunity to pass up. Especially since you probably should make the most out of the Gryphon, it being the the film's Batmobile-type very cool/unattainable/high-tech machine. I'm sure the trailer and commercials will hype it up when this film is eventually produced, why not make the most of it by writing a killer action sequence for it? Then blow it up-
(I'm still unclear as to why the ships can only be navigated by one person with nano-myte infused DNA as opposed to, say, a steering wheel or plain old computer, but perhaps I missed that earlier.)
Now we're back on earth again with Reece and Bennings (side note, always address your characters with just one name, first or last doesn't matter. You started with all last names and then switched to first for some, but not others. It's unnecessarily confusing, that's all. As for the scenes on earth, they are good, but unnecessary. Your dialogue "cheating" is really obvious here, with a few lines of dialogue spun into half a page of prose given the inability to actually write dialogue. You do it well, though (much, much better than most) but here it's a little excessive, especially for a "weekend" scene. ("Weekend" scene = just for fun/no story advancement.) I was wondering if we would revisit the unlikely couple and perhaps witness the destruction of the earth. On the plus side I like the fact that both people stay true to their characters- Reece doesn't suddenly fall in love and propose to Bennings, for example. However, you kind of copped-out with regards to showing the gamma blast. Either do it, or don't. I wouldn't show it at all, ending the scene with Reece sitting there, Bennings dead beside him, no indication of the blast. Nothing you can come up with will be able to match the audience's imagination as to what an extinction-level gamma blast would look like, and this isn't a disaster movie anyway, so why bother, since that's not why we're here. On the flip side, if you want to show it at all I would go whole hog and show us some cities getting leveled, forests getting incinerated, the oceans boiling, etc. But I wouldn't recommend that at all. After all, our focus is now on the ships, that's where our heroes are (Reece doesn't count anymore having taken himself out of the "hero" game) and that's where the action is. At the absolute most I would center us on Reece and his expression as the blast approaches, then cut to the ships. But in any event, the whole thing is over half a page- too long, especially at this point in the film. It's like hitting the brakes on the momentum that you spent so long building. Honestly, if it were me, we'd cut to Reece and Bennings on the beach, no dialogue, no action. Two quick lines in the treatment and that's it. Keep us guessing, too. Did Reece and Bennings fall for each other? Is she dead next to him or sleeping after hours of lovemaking? You get the idea-
Holy hell- what an ending! I did NOT see that coming. I was banking on Simmons being sent to some Event Horizon-esque "hell" universe or something to that effect. But what you did was very nice indeed. A few problems, though:
There is no falling action. Falling action, as you may know, is the stuff that happens after the climax. It could be grouped in with "epilogue". Remember Avatar? When the Na'vi people were leading the humans off the planet at gunpoint? You don't have that at all. But, I'm thinking it's okay. Because, barring a full reveal of the "new" Earth, there's not much you could do. Although an ending like this will likely be criticized as anticlimactic this is partly your fault for the stellar action sequences earlier on that made your viewer/reader expect the biggest and best one for last. Personally, I like it-
The villain doesn't get his comeuppance. This is more of a serious problem. All that work, all the struggle to stop him were for nothing. He got his ship, his population, and his planet. We have no reason to assume he didn't set up a colony and rule it as king, just living it up. And that's not good. He needs to suffer, needs to pay. Somehow, someway. I would highly recommend you do something to rectify that. It gives us zero closure for that particular (large and important) plot thread, and that's almost never good. Whereas, with Stevie and the gang we get a kind of open-ended closure ("They made it! But what's down there . . . ?") this gives us none at all. The antagonist has to die, or something equivalent (go insane, get castrated, I don't know) or the audience is not going to like it. This is the first thing a screenwriter would change when writing the screenplay, and the when it actually gets made I'm sure the studio will shoot a few different endings anyway to swap out for the focus-testers. So- get rid of the bad guy. Somehow, someway. I'm thinking navigational error (being that he wasn't "balanced" or "good" maybe when he jacked in and was at one with the universe it decided he was a bad guy and sent him into the middle of nowhere.)
Kill him.
And we're done-
I hope my criticism has been helpful to you. Again, sorry it took so long. If you want some more help or have any questions then please respond here in the forum for all to see and learn from. If you're shy, though, you can always PM me.
I honestly like this treatment very much. I really kept reading not because I had to, but because I wanted to find out what was going to happen. It's very "hook-y" like that. One general complaint is that Langford is kind of dull for a protagonist. He gets overshadowed by most of the other characters and seems to have a minimal role in many of the film's key scenes.
And grammar, got to fix that, it's essential. Enough typos and your hard work goes right into the trash can. There's no excuse for having grammatical errors and typos in a final draft.
And thanks for sharing it with us here. It's a much-appreciated addition to the growing library of treatments on this site. And this one goes to show that, at least since I've been here, they're only getting better. Now get to work on your next one and post it here.
Oh, one last thing. What's Exordium?
