Write Your Screenplay Podcast

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Guardians of The Galaxy: It’s a Metaphor!

By Jacob Krueger

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Hello, I’m Jacob Krueger and this is my Write Your Screenplay podcast. On this podcast we look at all kinds of movies, not just great movies but also flawed movies. And rather than looking at them in terms of what’s good or what’s bad, two thumbs up or two thumbs down, we look at them in terms of what can you learn from these movies as a screenwriter.

Today, we’re going to be looking at James Gunn’s shockingly successful script for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Most of us go into superhero movies with low expectations.

It’s not that we don’t expect to have a good time. It’s just that we don’t expect to have a lot more than a good time. It’s not that we don’t expect to be shocked and dazzled by incredible action sequences and made to laugh with funny one-liners. It’s that we’re not used to seeing the kind of psychological underpinning, the kind of emotional underpinning, the kind of truthful writing that we see in Guardians of the Galaxy.

And, for this reason, James Gunn’s script actually redefines our expectations for what a superhero movie can be.

The difference between what James Gunn is doing in his script and what a lesser writer would be doing in their script is actually very small. It all comes down to theme.

There’s a very funny line late in the movie when Star Lord (played by Chris Pratt of “Parks & Rec”) is trying to motivate his band of misfit bandits to risk their lives to save the world.  He says, “I look around and I see losers. We’re all losers. Well… I mean, we’ve all lost something.”

And although this line is played for humor, it actually points us directly towards the thematic glue that holds this entire screenplay together.

Because, even though it’s a ridiculous, over-the-top, hilarious, action-paced, completely unrealistic, silly movie, Guardians of the Galaxy is actually about loss.

There’s another scene between Rocket Raccoon and Drax the Destroyer (the Dave Bautista character) in which Drax has pretty much destroyed the entire plan by summoning the great evil character, Ronan, directly to them.  And he’s done it because he wants revenge for his dead wife and his dead kids, who Ronan killed.

Rocket Raccoon (played by Bradley Cooper) confronts Drax about doing stupid things because of loss by saying, “we’ve all got dead people.”

And you can see in these lines that Guardians of the Galaxy is not a movie about capturing some crazy crystal, defeating some evil lord, or saving the galaxy. Guardians of the Galaxy is about coming to grips with the loss of the people you love and somehow holding onto your spirit of adventure, to your ability to connect to people, and to your ability to have family.

 

Guardians of the Galaxy is just a giant metaphor for loss. And it’s fun to watch James Gunn as he plays with this idea through the Dave Bautista character, Drax, who has absolutely no understanding of metaphor.

In a way, Drax is a stand-in for the audience. You see, the audience of your movie also doesn’t think about your metaphor. The audience doesn’t think about your theme. Your audience feels you theme.

So, while very few people are leaving Guardians of the Galaxy saying, “hmmm…what an interesting meditation on loss” (and god forbid if they did leav...

This week, Jake discusses James Gunn's script for "Guardians of the Galaxy." Jake calls the script "shockingly successful" and argues that the film "actually redefines our expectations for what a superhero movie can be... "Guardians of the Galaxy" is not a movie about capturing some crazy crystal, defeating some evil lord, or saving the galaxy. "Guardians of the Galaxy" is about coming to grips with the loss of the people you love and somehow holding onto your spirit of adventure, to your ability to connect to people, and to your ability to have family. "Guardians of the Galaxy" is just a giant metaphor for loss.

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What’s The Worst Thing That Can Happen?: Blue Ruin, The Bourne Ultimatum & Alien

By Jacob Krueger

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TRANSCRIPT OF PODCAST

Hello, I’m Jacob Krueger and this is my Write Your Screenplay podcast. On this podcast each installment we’re going to be looking at a movie, and exploring what you can learn from it as a screenwriter.

Rather than looking at movies like critics, we’re going to be looking at them as screenwriters, avoiding the urge to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down response, and instead focusing on how screenwriters can benefit from studying these films, no matter how perfect or how flawed. We are going to look at good movies, we’re going to look at bad movies, we’re going to look at movies that are a mess, we’re going to look at movies that are perfectly executed.

We’re going to look at big genre movies and we’re going to look at the tiniest little indie films. We’re going to look at what makes them work and what makes them not work, how they’re built and what you can learn from them as a writer.

This episode, we’re going to be looking at Blue Ruin.

Blue Ruin‘s a nice little indie film by Jeremy Saulnier. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the main character, Dwight, is a deeply troubled man who became homeless after the brutal murder of his parents.

At the beginning of the film, a police officer informs Dwight that his parents’ murderer is being released from prison, and he decides to go get revenge, to murder the person who’s murdered his parents, and in that way to get the justice that was denied to him. Now this murderer’s actually part of a big ol’ nasty white trash family, and they’re all criminals and they’re all violent and they’re all terrible. And no sooner has Dwight killed this man than he realizes that he has started a war, that these people are now going to come after his remaining family, his sister, her children, and that they’re not going to stop.

He also learns a shocking surprise, and if you haven’t seen the movie this is a little bit of a spoiler: the person he killed is not actually the man who killed his father. It was actually that man’s father (we’ll call him Grandpa) who committed the murder for which his son took the blame. Grandpa has since died from old age. Which means that our protagonist not only exacted his revenge on the wrong man, but also can never have the justice he seeks. So now Dwight has set off this horrible escalating war that he cannot get out of, by killing a person who had nothing to do with his father’s murder.

What’s interesting about this movie from a screenwriting perspective is that Dwight does not arc in the traditional way that screenplay characters arc. He doesn’t change in the way that traditionally screenplay characters change. In fact, primarily this movie is built around plot, and not around what we would generally consider structure. And yet, it is a quite enjoyable movie and it works.

Now would it have been stronger if he had gone through a change? Probably. Would there have been more of a feeling of journey and compassion and empathy? Absolutely. But this is a great example of a very important principle in writing:

When in doubt, make it hard.

Join Jake as he breaks down a new film each podcast, looking at movies from a unique and clever screenwriting perspective to find strengths and weaknesses that you can use in your own writing process. This week, Jake helps drive your story forward by filling necessary conflicts and character motivation with the following piece of advice: When in doubt, make it hard. To look at this, he analyzes the film "Blue Ruin" in the context of "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Alien."

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/category/sc…g-articles/

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

Writing the Action Movie: How “Amazing” is Spiderman 2?

An Interview with Jacob Krueger and George Strayton

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Setting aside whether you loved or hated The Amazing Spiderman 2, discover what you can learn from the script. Note: includes spoilers!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

 

Jacob Krueger: I’m Jacob Krueger and this is the Write Your Screenplay podcast. I’m here with a special guest today this is George Strayton. George teaches our Action Movie Writing class here at the studio and really has a tremendous background in the action movie world. He’s worked with Sam Raimi, he’s worked with Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers on Spiderman. And he has a Sundance Award Winning Film coming out: Alive Inside. That’s pretty exciting.

George Strayton: Yeah, I’m excited. I was shocked and surprised to win the award, as much as I believed in the film. You never know what’s going to happen. It opens on July 18th in 40 Theaters across the country.

Jacob Krueger: So let’s talk about The Amazing Spiderman 2. As you know the purpose of this podcast is to look at all kinds of movies. Movies that work, movies that don’t work. And rather than discussing them in a thumbs up, thumbs down way, we talk about what writers can learn from these movies no matter how wonderful or how flawed. Setting aside whether you love or hate the new Spiderman film, let’s just talk a moment about what you believe writers can learn from this movie.

George Strayton: These movies are just really hard to make, and that’s why it’s so important to get that draft correct. Because from the point you turn in that script, there are 400 people involved in making the movie. And you need everyone– the studio execs, the actors, the director, the visual effects people, the stunt people, the choreographers, the editors, whoever’s doing the score– everyone has to be on the same page about the movie you’re making. As opposed to a small independent film where there are 4 people and you can just sit in a room and talk about things and make changes really quickly in post, as a writer of these films, trying to get that script as close to the movie you’re trying to make as possible is the only thing you can do.

Usually you’re not involved in much after that. It’s changing a little bit over time as more people start to criss-cross between television and film, like Alex and Bob, JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Joss Wheden, people who made a name for themselves in both arenas. But really it’s the directors who are in charge. Once you go into production or even pre-production the director is taking over.

So you really have to do the best possible job in getting across exactly what you want in a clear but readable way. You can’t take a page to explain what the OsCorp building looks like, and you can’t just say “it’s a cool looking building.” You have to come up with some one line description that gives whoever the designer or storyboard artist or director is going to be exactly what you’re seeing–you need to try to get that in there so everyone can build off of that. Because the less you give them, the more chaotic it’s going to turn out.

For example, I did a film for Paramount called Dragonlance. It was an animated film, I was a writer. Kiefer Southerland and Lucy Lawless were the stars, and I got to be there for the recording of the actors and obviously that happens before the animation is done. And I noticed when I saw the final film—everything the actors did was great. They were fantastic, they had ideas, they worked with the script in the way it was written, if they had questions they asked them,

Jacob Krueger sits down with action movie screenwriter, George Strayton to discuss "The Amazing Spiderman 2" and what all writers can learn from these types of action movies.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

ACTION MOVIE WORKSHOP: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/action

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/category/sc…g-articles/

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

Frozen: Do You Want To Build A Screenplay?

By Jacob Krueger

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Listen to the podcast of this article

The structure for Disney’s Frozen begins with a piece of terrible advice. Confronted with a child with an extraordinary talent, the Grand Pabbie of the trolls tells her that until she learns to control her gift, she must hide it from the world.

If you’re a screenwriter, you probably know what that feels like.

You know what it’s like to feel like you can’t control your own gifts.  And you know what it’s like to fear how people would react if they read your raw voice in its purist form. Ultimately, our job as writers—like the job of any ruler of a fairy kingdom—is to capture that wild talent of our natural voice, and shape it into a form that other people can understand. And like most producers, screenwriting gurus, coverage readers and other experts, the goal of the Grand Pabbie’s advice is a positive one.

It’s just his execution that’s so darn problematic. 

He’s trying to get her to the end point, without ever allowing her to experience the beginning. And the results are like a shot of ice right into the heart, turning the one thing that makes Elsa truly special into a source of shame and fear, that cuts her off from everything that truly mattered to her. You can imagine that Elsa’s journey is probably similar in many ways to that of Frozen’s writer, Jennifer Lee, a writer of unique gifts, thrust into the gig of a lifetime, and a seemingly impossible challenge: to hold onto that unique voice that made her debut feature Wreck It Ralph, while adapting a nearly impossible short story (Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen), into the most formulaic model of all: a Disney Princess musical.  A form that had to please not only a bevy of powerful executives, but also a very specific audience with very specific expectations. Disney had been trying to adapt The Snow Queen into an acceptable form since 1943.  And until Jennifer Lee came around, every attempt had failed. So how did she succeed where so many writers before her had failed?  Not by playing by the rules, but by breaking them. That’s because Jennifer Lee knows a secret she shares with her character Elsa. The way you learn to control your gift is not by hiding it away.

You learn to control your gift by letting it go.

If you think of that early scene in Frozen, where Anna and Elsa are playing together, it probably reminds you of the games you used to play as a child. Most of us probably couldn’t turn air into snow, but we could imagine things that were fantastical and magical and unique to us. And playing felt free and easy. We didn’t worry about whether we had the perfect structure, whether we were playing right, whether all of our playful decisions made sense. Instead, we were dancing with our characters, we were exploring.   And yes, every once and a while we did fall and get hurt. But that was part of growing up and learning who we were as people. Unfortunately, as we get older, it gets harder and harder to play in this way.   Our ambition becomes our enemy.  And for so many of us, the well-meaning advice about how to control our gift that we’re given by our own “Grand Pabbies,” – whether they’re friends, family, teachers, coverage readers or producers – is like a shot of ice right into the heart.

We’re told to focus so strongly on all the elements of control, following the formulas and playing by the rules, that we end up dulling down all the elements that could truly allow our stories to stand out from the pack:  the unique way that we see the world, the things that are in our screenplay that are weird, that are socially unacceptable, that don’t make sense, that we might be judged for. And we end up losing that wonderful, playful experience that we have when we’re children ...

How does a screenplay that seems to ditch all the formulas that Disney has relied on for generations turn into the highest grossing animated film of all time? Listen to Jacob Krueger discuss Jennifer Lee's screenplay for Disney's Frozen.

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