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The Screenwriters' Thread

Gaith said:
Time to resurrect a ridiculously old thread! That's a specialty of mine, dontcha know. :p



I had an idea for a movie the other day, the first time in a long time that that's happened. It goes something like this: right as they're about to graduate/immediately after they graduate from the Navy's Boot Camp, fifteen or so brand-new sailors are mysteriously teleported to a deserted tropical island. Apart from their clothes, the only thing that arrived with them is a large box, which turns out to be filled with 9mm pistols and clips. (Boot Camp features one day of simulated 9mm fire training, and one brief afternoon of live fire.) So it's a sort of Lord of the Flies situation, with a bunch of young men in a weird middle - they're not really all that military, particularly since there aren't any superiors around, but they're not quite civilians, either. They have enlisted in the Navy, but then, they just as tellingly didn't join the Army or the Marine Corps - they're not really aspiring warriors themselves. However, of course, unlike the kids in Lord of the Flies, these guys wouldn't have any logistical difficulty at all in killing each other should they feel compelled to.
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You should definitely see Battle Royale if you haven't.
 
I've heard of it, but haven't seen it. In my story, the Sailors would definitely band together to fight... er, something or other...
 
Which reminds me of another idea I once had: a man and woman who've contacted each other via a dating site meet up at a cafe... and aliens show up, start blowing the world up, and without cell service, and the world around them falling apart, the pair decides that for safety's sake, they should stick together for the next few hours, until the woman can meet up with her friends/family. And, of course, they fall in love over the course of that zany, crazy afternoon and evening. Sort of like Before Sunrise crossed with Battle: LA, in other words.
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Sounds like the film Monsters. Which I liked, but was very slow.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RhoiX9HEM...8Y_eQ_ss/s1600/monsters-trailer-2-550x313.jpg
 
Another one I've heard of but haven't seen. Reading the plot summary on Wiki, it seems that the monsters are a known quantity when the story begins, which isn't quite what I had in mind... ;)
 
You should take a look at it just to see what to avoid, really. Personally I liked it because it was kind of artsy and didn't try to show "too much" (cough: Signs :cough) and to me, felt like it could have been a nice straight-to-dvd companion piece to District 9 (a superior film by far). It isn't a well-liked film, however. Its border-crossing metaphors are in-your-face the whole time and the leads are not very likable. District 9's racial allegories were also in-your-face, but it had a ton of action along with the introspection.

My advice, make your characters smart, keep your action grounded and clever, and get the pacing right, know when to cool down and when to amp it up!
 
^ Speaking of which, I see that a similarly-themed movie is upcoming, with Steve Carrell and da Knightley:

Looks promising!

Edit: it wasn't. :oops:
 
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