The New Indiana Jones Movie Re-Considered As a Submission To a Semi-Pro Writer's Group [SPOILERS]
Critique by Dave
George:
You know I like these stories, and I was excited to read this. I've been hard on your last few submissions, but I was hoping this would be a return to form. I do think there's some good stuff in here--the action scenes, for the most part, are really well done--but in the end I had a lot of problems with it.
I hate to say it, it but you lost me right at the beginning. First of all, we have these drag-racing kids, which have no significance at all to the plot. I can only figure that they're there to tell us what the time period is, much like the references to McCarthy, the nuclear bomb sequence (more on that in a second), and the by-the-numbers greaser/frat boy rumble that comes later. None of this is doing you any favors. For one thing, all this work to describe the context becomes irrelevant once we move out of the United States, which is pretty quickly and should be even quicker. I mean, this isn't a political story, and let's face it: even if it were, taking potshots at HUAC and the Red Scare is about as unsophisticated as it gets. The nuclear testing scene is frankly ridiculous, and threw me entirely out of the story. That'd be my Red Line of Death, right there. I mean, you know it's ludicrous, and yet you put it in there why? I can't figure out if you're trying to be funny with it or what, but hyperbole is one thing, and Wile E. Coyote is another.
You need to drop the scene with the FBI agents; it makes no sense, and gives us a lot of background we don't need. I'm not convinced we need to know what Jones was up to during the war, and if we do there's a better way to fill us in on it. I understand that you're setting up for Jones to be forced out of his job, but I think you'd be better off saving the heavy-handedness for your ending. Isn't the kid enough of a kick-start for your story? I mean, I have problems with the kid, but if you're worried about getting things going, that should work fine.
Back to the beginning, though. This Mac character, the double- (later triple- and quadruple-) crosser? Needs to go. For me, as someone who really liked the other stories you've done with Jones, it's him I'm looking forward to seeing. Not him and his trusty sidekick--oh, wait, he's a traitor--oh, wait, he's just really greedy and sneaky--oh, who gives a fuck? Besides which, by the third act (actually, I'm not sure I can find the second and third acts here, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt) you have so many characters that one more greedy-bastard-who's-gonna-get-it-in-the-end is way too much. Your opening would be a lot stronger if Jones were alone. The odds would seem more desperate, and his eventual escape more satisfying. I couldn't tell if you were just trying to throw so much information at me that I wouldn't realize that gunpowder isn't magnetic, or what. My point is that, for the story to work for me, the entire opening needs reworking.
The kid. Honestly, I don't know that there's a way you could make the kid work for me. But it doesn't help that you give him this Mickey-Rooney-as-Brando-in-the-Wild-One vibe. I don't believe for a second that this kid is a Bad Boy. Obviously, you're trying to show us a parallel to the way that Jones's academic persona clashes with his whip-crackin' archaeologist activities, only instead of a fedora the kid has a comb and a motorcycle. It really doesn't work, though. He starts out silly, becomes annoying, and then settles back into plain boring. In the scene where he's sword-fighting the Russian on the back of the jeeps, I was rooting for her. Oh! I almost forgot about the Tarzan-Lord-of-the-Monkeys bit. Red. Line. Of. My. Own. Blood.
Speaking of the Russian, she and Jones seem pretty cozy for being deadly enemies. I know you've done this before, the hunger for knowledge uniting rivals across borders and political philosophies, yada yada yada. That's not really what I'm getting here, though. It feels more like they're just a couple of wacky kids who both want the same thing, but darned if it isn't entertaining to watch them fight it out. Except it isn't, not really. And there's zero sexual tension there. I'm assuming you were saving that for Jones and Marion, and then forgot to put it in.
Marion. I mean, this is the big reveal, right? Except that we're so distracted by all those other big reveals--the kid, the Weeble-Wobbly Mac, the occasional concessions to plot--that we hardly get anything of her. There's that big action scene in the jungle where she disappears for like four pages while the kid swings through the trees, then shows up in time to drive them all into the river. You can't have her be a plot device, George, and not just for her own sake. Jones is larger than life, by this point. The only way to make him vulnerable is through Marion, and if Marion isn't fully formed then she can't be that means. I know you like the spectacle, and hell, so do I. Doesn't everyone? But if there aren't any people, it's just a special effects reel.
Which brings me to the ending. Where, on top of everything else, you switch genres on us. Maybe it shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but the fact that the ancient builders are aliens made me groan out loud when I figured it out a third of the way in. Granted, some of this may be my issue, because I am annoyed by the tendency of modern peoples of a certain flaky bent to withdraw credit from lost and murdered civilizations by saying "Well OBVIOUSLY no human could build something like that." It's so parochial and ethnocentric and it fetishizes our technology to an offensive degree. So that's part of it. But the other part is that, while you've gone the mystical route before, hinting at gods and spirits, this is a complete 180. You've taken away mystery in favor of a crystalline truth that rings false. I might be OK with that if the rest of it hung together, but it doesn't.
I know this sounds really harsh. There were things I liked. The action, except where mentioned, was fun. And this may sound like a weird thing to compliment you on, but some of the exposition was really great. Jones's voice comes through really well, and when he's talking about legends and myths I'm paying attention. That's the mystery; that's the enticement that made the other stories work. In this one, it kind of feels like you've given up on mystery, and that's a shame.
George:
You know I like these stories, and I was excited to read this. I've been hard on your last few submissions, but I was hoping this would be a return to form. I do think there's some good stuff in here--the action scenes, for the most part, are really well done--but in the end I had a lot of problems with it.
I hate to say it, it but you lost me right at the beginning. First of all, we have these drag-racing kids, which have no significance at all to the plot. I can only figure that they're there to tell us what the time period is, much like the references to McCarthy, the nuclear bomb sequence (more on that in a second), and the by-the-numbers greaser/frat boy rumble that comes later. None of this is doing you any favors. For one thing, all this work to describe the context becomes irrelevant once we move out of the United States, which is pretty quickly and should be even quicker. I mean, this isn't a political story, and let's face it: even if it were, taking potshots at HUAC and the Red Scare is about as unsophisticated as it gets. The nuclear testing scene is frankly ridiculous, and threw me entirely out of the story. That'd be my Red Line of Death, right there. I mean, you know it's ludicrous, and yet you put it in there why? I can't figure out if you're trying to be funny with it or what, but hyperbole is one thing, and Wile E. Coyote is another.
You need to drop the scene with the FBI agents; it makes no sense, and gives us a lot of background we don't need. I'm not convinced we need to know what Jones was up to during the war, and if we do there's a better way to fill us in on it. I understand that you're setting up for Jones to be forced out of his job, but I think you'd be better off saving the heavy-handedness for your ending. Isn't the kid enough of a kick-start for your story? I mean, I have problems with the kid, but if you're worried about getting things going, that should work fine.
Back to the beginning, though. This Mac character, the double- (later triple- and quadruple-) crosser? Needs to go. For me, as someone who really liked the other stories you've done with Jones, it's him I'm looking forward to seeing. Not him and his trusty sidekick--oh, wait, he's a traitor--oh, wait, he's just really greedy and sneaky--oh, who gives a fuck? Besides which, by the third act (actually, I'm not sure I can find the second and third acts here, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt) you have so many characters that one more greedy-bastard-who's-gonna-get-it-in-the-end is way too much. Your opening would be a lot stronger if Jones were alone. The odds would seem more desperate, and his eventual escape more satisfying. I couldn't tell if you were just trying to throw so much information at me that I wouldn't realize that gunpowder isn't magnetic, or what. My point is that, for the story to work for me, the entire opening needs reworking.
The kid. Honestly, I don't know that there's a way you could make the kid work for me. But it doesn't help that you give him this Mickey-Rooney-as-Brando-in-the-Wild-One vibe. I don't believe for a second that this kid is a Bad Boy. Obviously, you're trying to show us a parallel to the way that Jones's academic persona clashes with his whip-crackin' archaeologist activities, only instead of a fedora the kid has a comb and a motorcycle. It really doesn't work, though. He starts out silly, becomes annoying, and then settles back into plain boring. In the scene where he's sword-fighting the Russian on the back of the jeeps, I was rooting for her. Oh! I almost forgot about the Tarzan-Lord-of-the-Monkeys bit. Red. Line. Of. My. Own. Blood.
Speaking of the Russian, she and Jones seem pretty cozy for being deadly enemies. I know you've done this before, the hunger for knowledge uniting rivals across borders and political philosophies, yada yada yada. That's not really what I'm getting here, though. It feels more like they're just a couple of wacky kids who both want the same thing, but darned if it isn't entertaining to watch them fight it out. Except it isn't, not really. And there's zero sexual tension there. I'm assuming you were saving that for Jones and Marion, and then forgot to put it in.
Marion. I mean, this is the big reveal, right? Except that we're so distracted by all those other big reveals--the kid, the Weeble-Wobbly Mac, the occasional concessions to plot--that we hardly get anything of her. There's that big action scene in the jungle where she disappears for like four pages while the kid swings through the trees, then shows up in time to drive them all into the river. You can't have her be a plot device, George, and not just for her own sake. Jones is larger than life, by this point. The only way to make him vulnerable is through Marion, and if Marion isn't fully formed then she can't be that means. I know you like the spectacle, and hell, so do I. Doesn't everyone? But if there aren't any people, it's just a special effects reel.
Which brings me to the ending. Where, on top of everything else, you switch genres on us. Maybe it shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but the fact that the ancient builders are aliens made me groan out loud when I figured it out a third of the way in. Granted, some of this may be my issue, because I am annoyed by the tendency of modern peoples of a certain flaky bent to withdraw credit from lost and murdered civilizations by saying "Well OBVIOUSLY no human could build something like that." It's so parochial and ethnocentric and it fetishizes our technology to an offensive degree. So that's part of it. But the other part is that, while you've gone the mystical route before, hinting at gods and spirits, this is a complete 180. You've taken away mystery in favor of a crystalline truth that rings false. I might be OK with that if the rest of it hung together, but it doesn't.
I know this sounds really harsh. There were things I liked. The action, except where mentioned, was fun. And this may sound like a weird thing to compliment you on, but some of the exposition was really great. Jones's voice comes through really well, and when he's talking about legends and myths I'm paying attention. That's the mystery; that's the enticement that made the other stories work. In this one, it kind of feels like you've given up on mystery, and that's a shame.