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Wicked: What Modern Cinema Should Be

I will preface this post by saying that while I have always been familiar with Wicked as a popular piece of modern musical theater, I have never seen the show, nor have I read the book by Gregory Maguire. I was familiar with many of the songs, like Defying Gravity, Popular, and The Wizard and I. If I’m being totally honest, I avoided the book because, to me, it was glorified fan fiction by someone who had no connection with the original story, taking it upon himself to take a classic piece of American literature and turn it on its head. That said, I was mildly interested in seeing the feature. It wasn’t anything that I was going to go out of my way for, but I needed to see it so I could podcast about it, and that podcast will be available on the Gen XvZ: A Movie Podcast this Tuesday, Nov. 26.

I will continue by saying that not only was I pleasantly surprised by Wicked, but I was also very nearly blown away. Wicked is one of my favorite movies of the year so far. While it’s not a perfect movie, it has all the components that a film should have. It has deep characters who grow throughout the story and have compelling outer goals and inner desires. It has an emotionally engaging story that allows the audience to root for those characters and feel engaged with what they’re experiencing. It looks amazing. I would expect to hear the names of the production designers, set designers, costume designers, and VFX artists quite a bit at this year’s Oscar ceremony.

Most of all, it’s fantastically entertaining.

There have been many entertaining movies this year, but Wicked takes its entertainment value to the next level. All the above components combine to create a spectacle for the eyes, ears, and heart.

As mentioned, it’s not perfect. I felt like the first half of the movie was a little too much Harry Potter meets a little too much High School Musical. It was hitting a lot of the same beats, and even the hat that ends up belonging to Elphaba looked an awful lot like the Sorting Hat. However, once Elphaba Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) go to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, the stronger components of the storytelling kicked in, and that was when the movie reached its full potential. Not that the first half lacked entertainment value in its own right. The musical numbers were great, and the seeds of the story were all sown in the first two hours. But for me, the story really got interesting when they got to the Emerald City.

Side note, there are also a couple of awesome cameos when they get there.

From a structural perspective, the screenplay worked very well despite its nontraditional structure. This film is two hours and forty minutes long, and it only represents the first half of the story. Presuming part two, when released next year, will have a similar runtime, it’s reasonable to presume that Wicked Part I ended at the Supreme Ordeal stage of the Hero’s Journey.

If that’s the case, this film gave Elphaba an outstanding Supreme Ordeal and also gave her a tight Hero’s Journey to this point. We see her Ordinary World before arriving at the Shiz school. She refuses the call to attend the school, but her display of magic leads her to meet her mentor in Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who convinces her to study magic which could lead to an opportunity to work with the Wizard of Oz. From there, Shiz is the Ordinary World, and Elphaba meets many allies and enemies and experiences many tests. Glinda is a terrific archetypal shapeshifter in that she starts out as an enemy to Elphaba before shifting to an ally. They cross the first threshold together when they take the train to the Special World of the Emerald City. The Approach happens as they make their way through the city to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), which leads Elphaba to her Supreme Ordeal of realizing the Wizard and Madam Morrible are not who they pretend to be, which starts her down the path to becoming the Wicked Witch of the West.

That is outstanding story development, and I’m excited to see where it goes from here. It’s also a good example of how malleable the Hero’s Journey can be. Director Jon M. Chu and screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox effectively shook up the order of The Hero’s Journey while still giving us a dramatic story that felt like it was naturally developed.

There is one other significant imperfection.

Actually, there are two, and I would be remiss for not mentioning them. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum sing made a pretty bad mistake. It’s not quite to the level of Russell Crowe’s singing performance in Les Miserable, but it’s close. The one saving grace was that both of their songs were short, so we didn’t have to listen to either of them sing for long. However, each song was long enough to see that neither of them was a trained singer in a cast that had some fantastic singers, and putting Yeoh and Goldblum in that position was not fair to them.

In the grand scheme of this film, however, that was a relatively minor transgression. Overall, this is an outstanding film that should have an incredible opening weekend and should do amazing numbers at the box office throughout its run. It should also do very well come awards season, and I can see it getting nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Actress in a Leading Role, and Actress in a Supporting Role, as well as the aforementioned artistic categories and other technical categories.

One other thing I would recommend is seeing Wicked in IMAX if you can. The art direction of this film is stunning, and the only way to truly appreciate it for all its worth is to see it on as big a screen as you possibly can. It deserves to be seen that way.

Gladiator II Makes Us Look in the Mirror

Years ago, when I first heard that there would be a sequel to Gladiator, a film that won Best Picture and is one of the greatest films of this century’s first decade, my initial thought was, “Why?” Why do they feel the need to make a sequel to a film that had a closed and satisfying ending, was fully self-contained, and had been released two decades ago? Now, here we are, 24 years after the first one came out, and finally getting a sequel. I always have a bit of trepidation when a sequel comes out a decade or two rather than a year or two after the original. Would it be able to capture that same magic? Would too much time have passed making the idea now seem stale? The answer to both of those questions is yes and no.

I found Gladiator II to be very much a mixed bag. The plot bothered me, and I felt I was only truly engaged for about twenty or thirty minutes around the transition from Act II to Act III. A lot of great character and story moments were revealed during that stretch, and I found myself feeling entertained and emotionally impacted by what was going on. But most of the rest of the movie felt like a rehashing of the first one. They were trying to do the same thing, but more. Instead of tigers chained in the arena, they had to fight baboons. Instead of one psychopathic emperor, there were two. Instead of Lucilla (Connie Nelson) being in love with the gladiator, Lucius (Paul Mescal), he was now her son.

It’s that plot component that bothered me the most. Not that Lucius was her son, but how they handled it from a storytelling standpoint. We are shown that Lucilla ushered Lucius out of the Colosseum immediately after Maximus killed Commodus and also died from his wounds. Fearing that he was now the heir to the throne, she sent him into hiding and never saw him again. I’m not going to get into all of it, but there was a whole lot of confusion over who he was, how he felt about Rome, and how he felt about his mother. He seemed to be bitter toward all of it before suddenly turning, and I just didn’t buy it.

My main critique of the story is that, until we get to the end of the second act, is that it’s disorganized and confused. There is a solid structure to the story, and it’s clear who we’re rooting for, but the motivations of Lucius and General Marcus Acasius (Pedro Pascal) seem very confused. Pascal actually did a good job of bringing Acasius’ ambiguity about expanding the empire simply to suit the egos of twin emperors Geta and Caracalla. Another thing the movie doesn’t explain is how the two of them came to power. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. Like Maximus in the first movie, we see Acasius win a glorious victory at the beginning of the film, but his glory is tempered by the real-world consequences of the blood he had a hand in spilling. He’s tired of it and believes Rome needs new leadership.

So, like in the first movie, he has his troops outside the city, ready to come in and overthrow the emperors. However, like in the first movie, they get wind of the plot before it can be consummated and bring their wrath on the conspirators.

One thing that Director Ridley Scott did differently is the brilliant addition of Denzel Washington as the slave trader Macrinus. Unlike Oliver Reed’s Proximo, Macrinus has more devious plans in mind than just making money off of the gruesome deaths of others. He has revenge on his mind, and he wants to change the entire political order of Rome. Washington played this character with terrific charm and sinister villainy and kind of stole the show. He was absolutely the most interesting character in the film.

Otherwise, I felt a lot of the acting was subpar, which was disappointing. The acting in the first Gladiator is fantastic, but outside of Washington and perhaps Pascal, the other actors didn’t bring their A-games. Or maybe they did, and it just wasn’t good enough. Mescal was particularly flat in his performance, and Nelson, reprising her role from nearly a quarter century ago, didn’t seem all that interested in being there.

After reflecting on the movie overnight, I will say that there is a lot of great stuff going on thematically. In the ultimate answer to my question of why this movie was made at all, and specifically why it was made now, I have my answer. It was made to make us look in the mirror. Rome in Gladiator was still a majestic empire. The city was clean, the population happy, and the society was prosperous despite the fact that they were living under a dictatorship. The Rome of Gladiator II exists sixteen years after the events of the first movie and is clearly a society in decline. Poverty ravages the population while the elite conduct wars and conduct games in the Colosseum. Homeless people beg for food, and society is constantly teetering on the verge of unrest and revolt.

It’s impossible to watch this movie and not consider it to be a parable for what is happening in the United States and several other democracies around the world. Our nations seem more and more to be led by people who are more concerned with maintaining their grip on power than sharing prosperity with their citizens. Gladiator II is holding a mirror in front of us, warning us that we are heading down a path to a much worse place than where we currently reside.

I tried like hell to watch this movie with an open mind. Gladiator is a film that I love, and I knew this one would have a hard time measuring up to it. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to enjoy Gladiator II as much as I could have if I had been able to get the first movie out of my head. But that’s what sequels do. For better or worse, they invite comparison to their predecessors. I do believe that the strong thematic components come close to saving Gladiator II and making it a better film than it had a right to be, but I will always defer to the first one. I could see myself watching it again many more times. I do not see myself revisiting Gladiator II any time soon.

Own the Future: Why Screenwriters Should Embrace AI

To say the movie industry is in a transitional stage would be an understatement. Studios are still behind their pre-strike production output. Despite the outcome of the strikes, AI is still seen as an existential threat to professional screenwriters and the screenwriting community at large. The trend of studios staking all their output on tentpole franchises hasn’t seemed to lose momentum inside Hollywood studios, despite the fact that audiences speaking with their wallets want to see something new.

It is the last point I would like to focus on. Justine Bateman recently wrote an OpEd for The Hollywood Reporter in which she declared that Hollywood is dead and a new model will rise from its ashes. Naturally, this is her opinion, and you can say what you want about the career she has had, but the fact remains that she has spent her entire life and career in the entertainment industry, and she knows as much as anyone about how it worked then and how it works now. It’s reasonable to believe that her ideas on how it will work in the future are more than plausible.

In her article, Bateman opined that the phoenix that rises from the ashes of old Hollywood will be one of unbridled creativity. It will be a leaner system where artists and other creatives will be able to work unencumbered by the traditional Hollywood executives who have dominated the business for the past thirty years. Smaller, more independent studios will grow in this new garden of creativity, blossoming fresh, innovative story ideas that would never see the light of day in the current system.

While such a utopia seems unlikely at this point, there is reason for optimism. No one ever made money betting against technology, and now that the Pandora’s Box of AI has been opened, it will never be closed. The future of the industry will likely be split between AI’s masters and those who are left in its wake. It’s time for all of us to take a cue from Walt Disney. When television first became a thing, all of the Hollywood studio heads were terrified of it. Seeing it as the wave of the future, Disney embraced it and made it a significant part of the work they produced. In so doing, the Disney studio was in a position to take advantage of a burgeoning market and technology, which helped the studio grow. Disney the studio was at the forefront of showing their library of content on television because Disney the man had the foresight to recognize television as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Screenwriters must have the same foresight that Disney had. There’s no reason to allow executive producers and studios to dictate the terms of AI’s use and expansion. AI must be seen as a tool. Yes, it is going to change the industry in a profound way. It’s already doing that in fact, but it doesn’t have to be a death knell for screenwriters. The future is open-ended. As Yoda told Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, “Always in motion is the future.”

This is a similar transition that happened in the animation industry a quarter century ago.

Animation was the first form of filmmaking, dating back to Windsor McKay’s Gerti the Dinosaur cartoons that first mesmerized audiences in 1914. From that point on, animation was drawn and painted by hand. Disney developed the CAPS system, which turned ink and paint into a digital process in the late 80s and early 90s, and Tron showed the first glimpses of what computer animation could do in the mid-80s. By 1996, PIXAR released Toy Story, the first feature-length CGI film, and a decade later, hand-drawn animation seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be dead.

I was working at Disney in the early 2000s. I worked on three of Disney’s last hand-drawn movies before the switch to CGI, and I worked on Disney’s first all-CGI film. To say the transition was clunky would be an understatement. A lot of talented people who had worked at Disney for decades lost their jobs. But an interesting thing also happened. Those who were willing to either embrace or accept the fact that CGI was the way Disney animation was going to make movies moving forward, for the most part, held on. Animators who made a living working in graphite made the transition to pixels. They realized the computer, as different as it is from a pencil, was simply nothing more than another tool they could use to create their art. Many of those artists are still working today, whether it’s at Disney, DreamWorks, or any other studio around town.

The animation industry has been one thing for eight decades.

There had been one way to make an animated film, and many people felt it would be the only way to make one moving into the future. But the future has a funny way of changing. It also has a funny way of being feared by the very people who should embrace it.

The same thing can be said about screenwriting. The art of writing a screenplay has been relatively unchanged from the time sound was introduced into filmmaking. Certainly, there have been variations on the craft. There have also been movies that have been made without traditional screenplays, but those movies are few and far between. Ninety-five percent of the movies you have ever seen started with a man or woman in front of a typewriter or computer pounding away on a keyboard. Just like Disney made The Princess and the Frog after the CGI revolution happened and several other international studios continue to produce animated films in the traditional way, there will always be a place for the traditional screenwriter in the production pipeline.

But now is the time to explore other options. This is a curve you want to be in front of. This is a wave you want to be on top of rather than getting swept underneath. Now is the time to own the future because, as Jimmy Buffett said, “I can’t see the future, but I know it’s coming fast.”

The Real Purpose of Story Structure

I have been reading a lot of scripts lately that have a lot of depth but not the kind of depth you want in a screenplay.  They have depths of problems that are all interrelated. They have decent plots, but the stories lack structure. They have likable characters but haven’t given them clear goals. These problems are interrelated because you can’t have a strong story structure in your screenplay, or any structure at all for that matter if your protagonist doesn’t have a clear goal.

Screenplay structure marks the protagonist’s progress toward achieving her goal.

Story structure is not just some arbitrary guideline that some guy in a big studio office demanded. It is not a random rule for screenwriters to follow, only to give executives a reason to pass on a script if it doesn’t. The structure of a screenplay has a significant and important purpose in the telling of a story. It marks the protagonist’s progress toward achieving her goal.

Thank you for Story Structure’s Plot Points.

The first main plot point is the inciting incident that calls the hero to action. The next plot point is the transition from Act I to Act II when the hero Crosses the First Threshold, leaving behind the Ordinary World of her past life and committing to the Special World of the adventure where she will attempt to accomplish whatever goal she has been called to accomplish. The next plot point is the twist in the middle of Act II that divides Act II in half and forces the hero to recommit to the adventure in a way she hadn’t been previously prepared for. The next plot point transitions us from Act II to Act III and is often referred to as the “all is lost” moment. This is when the hero, usually because she hasn’t overcome some internal flaw or wound or has some inner need that hasn’t been addressed, loses everything and appears to have lost out on the chance to accomplish her goal. The final plot point is the climax, the final challenge for the here in which she finally does (or doesn’t) accomplish the goal she was called to accomplish at the beginning of the story.

These are not arbitrary requirements. These are integral components to the telling of an effective, dramatic story.  Without these moments, you might have a plot, but you don’t have a story. I often tell screenwriters after reading their screenplays that the plot is what happens, but the story is why we care. If you have a plot that no one cares about, then you don’t have a story.

Your Protagonist Must Have a Clear Outer Goal.

This might come across as Screenwriting 101, but you would be surprised how many screenplays I’ve read recently in which the protagonist has no clear outer goal. What should also be mentioned is that there should be an inner need that conflicts with that outer goal. That is how you get character depth, and that is another great way to build drama.

The point is, however, that without that outer goal, it’s impossible to track the hero’s progress toward it. If the hero has no goal, there can be no story structure. The two of them go hand in hand. You have both, or you have neither.

So, if you feel like you’re banging your head on the wall because you can’t get the screenplay structure as tight as you want it, double-check your protagonist. Does she have a clear and well-defined goal, and has the story been built to demonstrate her progress toward achieving it? That is how the story should flow. It gives you good pacing, and it helps you build drama. Most importantly, when a story is structured properly, it allows the screenwriter to tap the maximum amount of creativity to create the best story possible.

Two Movies I Saw This Weekend

I saw a couple of movies this weekend that I liked but didn’t love. Woman of the Hour is the directorial debut of Anna Kendrick, who also starred in the film. It’s airing on Netflix, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about Netflix movies in general. I don’t generally go out of my way to see them, and when I do see them, they’re generally just kind of meh. The other movie I saw was Here, which reunites director Robert Zemeckis with stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright for the first time since Forrest Gump.

Woman of the Hour is fine but not outstanding.

I enjoyed Woman of the Hour, but I didn’t love it. That said, I think it was an impressive first effort for Kendrick’s directorial debut. The storyline was a bit scattered and was kind of about something else other than what it was advertised as. It was advertised as a movie about a struggling actress who appears on The Dating Game in the late seventies, and the man she chooses has a dark past. What it was really about was that man, who was a real-life serial killer who potentially killed dozens of women. The bit about being on The Dating Game, while a major subplot, was just that, a subplot.

I did appreciate the acting performances in the film.  Kendirck’s role as the struggling actress Sheryl Bradshaw showed her perkiness and her willingness to be subversive. Daniel Zovatto’s performance as the serial killer, Rodney Alcala, was subtle and sinister, often teetering on the edge of a cliff before finally jumping off. The main issue with the movie was that the storyline was disjointed. It went back and forth in time, making it difficult to keep up with, and there were too many characters who were only peripherally involved in the narrative and whose deals in the story weren’t sufficiently paid off, making their time in the story wasted.

I would like to see Kendrick direct more films. She has a voice that needs to be heard, and with more experience, she could become a fine director. This is a decent debut, but hopefully, she can improve on this effort next time. If you have Netflix, it’s worth checking out, but don’t change any plans to watch it.

I Liked Here More Than I Thought I Would…

…but that was a low bar. About five or ten minutes into the movie, I thought to myself, “Oh, I am not going to like this.” But as the movie went on and we got to know the characters, I got pretty engaged. The movie largely takes place in the living room of one house or in the forest that it would later occupy. The camera doesn’t move until the very end of the film, making it a lot like watching a play. It made for an interesting watch and one that could potentially be off-putting to some people.

Thematically, it was very strong. There were a lot of things going on in this film that I was able to relate to. I believe this is a film for older viewers. Gen X-ers and Baby Boomers will be able to relate to this film a lot more intimately than Millennials or Gen Z-ers. This is a film about loss and losing time and what we give up over the course of a lifetime to simply get from one day to the next. This film was also disjointed and was more like watching a lot of vignettes, but I thought they were effective, and I was emotionally moved by the story and the characters.

Overall, it wasn’t a strong weekend of viewing, but I’m glad I saw each film. We’re in that weird period before Thanksgiving where you might watch something that is clearly Oscar bait, or you might get stuck with something that’s just being dumped by the end of the year. While I didn’t get that feeling from either of these films, I wasn’t blown away by either of them either… either.

For more in-depth thoughts on both these films, check out the Gen X v Z: A Movie Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Conclave – Kicking Off Oscar Season

Yes, we are early in Oscar season, but IMHO, we already have a front-runner. Conclave might be everything you look for in Oscar bait, but it is an exceptional piece of cinema. There is not a weak link in this film. The story is riveting. The characters are engaging. The cinematography is stunning. The overall work is entertaining and thought-provoking. Oh, and there is a twist at the end that, if you’ll forgive the hyperbole, might restore your faith in humanity.

Let’s start with the screenplay.

Screenwriter Peter Straughan gave us a magnificent adaptation of Robert Harris’s novel. The screenplay is nothing less than a parable for today, not only with our own government but with governments around the world. Reactionary politicians are on the march in ways that jeopardize our freedom for some perceived security against the “other,” whatever those “others” happen to be. Along the way, Americans, in particular, are losing sight of what once made us great. The same could be said about the conference of cardinals in Conclave, as a small group of men seek power for themselves over what should be better for all. They look longingly at the past instead of boldly into the future. But a few men, idealists though they may be, see a better future with leadership that is more sensitive and empathetic. Straughan drew a clear line in the sand over which way would be the best way for the Church and, parabolically, the best way for the United States.

The acting is sublime.

Three decades ago, Ralph Fiennes’ acting performance carried The English Patient to a Best Picture win, but he did not win Best Actor, even though the only reason that film won Best Picture was because of his magnificent performance. Without seeing other Oscar contenders yet to come, I hope the Academy gives Fiennes a make-up call and bestows that award on him for this film. While Fiennes had plenty of great supporting help in The English Patient (Best Supporting Actress winner Juliette Binoche, Best Actress winner Kirsten Scott-Thomas, Willem Defoe, Colin Firth, and a host of several others), he has another amazing supporting cast in this film with Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini, just to name a few. The acting from top to bottom in this film is wonderful and makes the film much more enjoyable.

This film is beautiful.

Director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) and director of photography Stephane Fontaine crafted a beautiful film that helps tell the story and set the mood through the visuals just as much as through the dialogue. There are scenes that are framed and lit to accomplish specific moods and points of view. There are shots where the characters are framed around borders that make them feel restricted. There are times when there is no color anywhere in the shot, portraying a mood of cool calculation. There are shots focusing on the pain of Lawrence (Fiennes) as he wrestles with his faith in God while simultaneously attempting to uphold the sanctity of the Church’s traditions. This is a truly beautiful movie.

This is a movie about resurrection—not the literal resurrection of Christ, per se, but the resurrection of faith. It is a political thriller with an ending that is hopeful and optimistic about the future. It takes a lot to get there. The film is loaded with drama and intrigue, but the ending is satisfying and hopeful.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

For more thoughts on this film, check out my podcast, the Gen X v Z: A Movie Podcast, which is available wherever you get your podcasts.