2
out of
3
people found the following review helpful:
very entertaining
0
out of
0
people found the following review helpful:
Heavy on political intrigue and dialogue, light on action
First of all, I gotta be honest; I didn't read the entire script. And frankly, I didn't need to. I got a good 30 to 40 pages in, and that alone was enough to formulate some thoughts.
We can ALL see the GREAT potential this concept has: 300 meets 28 DAYS LATER/DAWN OF THE DEAD/take your pick of recent fun zombie movies. There's a tremendous central question at the heart of this story: how would the Romans have dealt with a zombie outbreak? Sword and sandal epics mixed with undead apocalypse. Brilliant. I wish I had thought of it myself.
Now...you've got to take into account the audience for this movie. Fanboys who want to see swords and spears hacking at zombie flesh. THAT is the draw for this movie, so the script has GOT to deliver the goods in this regard. Let there be NO delays in the drawing of blood.
300 doesn't waste any time getting to the violence. Nor does Zack Snyder's previous offering, the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD. 5 minutes in, we've got corpses, we've got bloodshed, we've got all kinds of hell breaking loose in both films pretty much.
How does THIS script compare? Well, within the first 5 pages, we've got a catalyst/inciting incident in the form of a Celtic priestess who "infects" a Roman centurion, Mundus, with the zombie plague. Not the most exciting scene, but it gets the job done. Check.
10 pages in, Mundus arrives at port, full zombie mode. Check.
In between those two scenes, we meet our protagonists, Hector and Marcus, and most of the major characters. Check. These are all things that SHOULD happen in the first 10-15 pages. But...
What's missing here?
Tension. The overarching sense that something tumultuous is going to happen. Yes, there's some blood spilled by Hector in a scene of character introduction that clarifies just how tough he is...but it ain't ZOMBIE blood.
What happens in the next 20 to 30 pages? I can give you a hint; it doesn't feature anything in the way of the zombie plague worsening, zombies chowing down on humans, or humans slaughtering zombies. Instead, we get a whole lot of political intrigue...and a lot of that involves TALK. Not action...talk.
Maybe all of this political intrigue is going to pay off later on in the script. I wouldn't be surprised if it does. But it doesn't matter, because beyond page 10, the writer has already lost me. In fact, the writer didn't really hook me from the start. ADEQUATE does not equal COMPELLING when it comes to plot.
Talk is the death of many scripts..and there's entirely too much of it going on in this one. The more characters talk, the less they do, physically. I couldn't care less about all the hype surrounding the upcoming battle between Hector and Marcus, or Gallus' scheming ways. I want to see the poop hit the fan, and I want it in the first 5 minutes, or shortly thereafter.
Here's one quick idea off the top of my head: instead of following up Mundus' departure from Hibernia with Hector's scene of introduction, how about we stick with Mundus' ship? Night has fallen. The crew is mostly asleep, except for Mundus' manservant. He goes to check on his master. The manservant opens the door to Mundus' quarters, finds everything in disarray...as though some wild animal had been turned loose inside the quarters. Suddenly, Mundus emerges from the shadows, fully zombified. He chows down on his manservant. Next, Optio, Mundus' second in command, awakens to the sounds of melee. He emerges from his quarters and finds ALL HELL has broken loose onboard. Mundus has bitten his manservant, who in turn has bitten other Roman soldiers...it's a bloody free-for-all. It doesn't take but a second or two for a free zombie to spot his next meal...Optio. Optio, being the well-trained soldier that he is, manages to repel or even kill his first attacker. He might even manage to hack and stab his way onto the main deck, where he discovers that the zombies quickly outnumber the survivors. From there, he could decide to do any number of things: 1)find a way to contain the zombies somehow 2)jump off ship 3)succumb to the zombie plague.
Whether you take the above suggested scene seriously or not, you've got to admit that it's a lot more exciting than listening to a bunch of Romans TALKING about the things they're going to do instead of actually DOING them.
Don't hold back on unleashing the zombie plague; it should be largely uncontrollable from the get-go. We want to see it spread exponentially. We want to see some stupid, unprepared victims succumb quickly before they've had a chance to figure out what's going on, while others--the heroes of our story, the kind of men with lightning quick reflexes whose instincts are to ACT FIRST and THINK LATER--fend off the plague, regroup, and decide on their next course of action.
Let's get to the body count, pronto.
We can ALL see the GREAT potential this concept has: 300 meets 28 DAYS LATER/DAWN OF THE DEAD/take your pick of recent fun zombie movies. There's a tremendous central question at the heart of this story: how would the Romans have dealt with a zombie outbreak? Sword and sandal epics mixed with undead apocalypse. Brilliant. I wish I had thought of it myself.
Now...you've got to take into account the audience for this movie. Fanboys who want to see swords and spears hacking at zombie flesh. THAT is the draw for this movie, so the script has GOT to deliver the goods in this regard. Let there be NO delays in the drawing of blood.
300 doesn't waste any time getting to the violence. Nor does Zack Snyder's previous offering, the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD. 5 minutes in, we've got corpses, we've got bloodshed, we've got all kinds of hell breaking loose in both films pretty much.
How does THIS script compare? Well, within the first 5 pages, we've got a catalyst/inciting incident in the form of a Celtic priestess who "infects" a Roman centurion, Mundus, with the zombie plague. Not the most exciting scene, but it gets the job done. Check.
10 pages in, Mundus arrives at port, full zombie mode. Check.
In between those two scenes, we meet our protagonists, Hector and Marcus, and most of the major characters. Check. These are all things that SHOULD happen in the first 10-15 pages. But...
What's missing here?
Tension. The overarching sense that something tumultuous is going to happen. Yes, there's some blood spilled by Hector in a scene of character introduction that clarifies just how tough he is...but it ain't ZOMBIE blood.
What happens in the next 20 to 30 pages? I can give you a hint; it doesn't feature anything in the way of the zombie plague worsening, zombies chowing down on humans, or humans slaughtering zombies. Instead, we get a whole lot of political intrigue...and a lot of that involves TALK. Not action...talk.
Maybe all of this political intrigue is going to pay off later on in the script. I wouldn't be surprised if it does. But it doesn't matter, because beyond page 10, the writer has already lost me. In fact, the writer didn't really hook me from the start. ADEQUATE does not equal COMPELLING when it comes to plot.
Talk is the death of many scripts..and there's entirely too much of it going on in this one. The more characters talk, the less they do, physically. I couldn't care less about all the hype surrounding the upcoming battle between Hector and Marcus, or Gallus' scheming ways. I want to see the poop hit the fan, and I want it in the first 5 minutes, or shortly thereafter.
Here's one quick idea off the top of my head: instead of following up Mundus' departure from Hibernia with Hector's scene of introduction, how about we stick with Mundus' ship? Night has fallen. The crew is mostly asleep, except for Mundus' manservant. He goes to check on his master. The manservant opens the door to Mundus' quarters, finds everything in disarray...as though some wild animal had been turned loose inside the quarters. Suddenly, Mundus emerges from the shadows, fully zombified. He chows down on his manservant. Next, Optio, Mundus' second in command, awakens to the sounds of melee. He emerges from his quarters and finds ALL HELL has broken loose onboard. Mundus has bitten his manservant, who in turn has bitten other Roman soldiers...it's a bloody free-for-all. It doesn't take but a second or two for a free zombie to spot his next meal...Optio. Optio, being the well-trained soldier that he is, manages to repel or even kill his first attacker. He might even manage to hack and stab his way onto the main deck, where he discovers that the zombies quickly outnumber the survivors. From there, he could decide to do any number of things: 1)find a way to contain the zombies somehow 2)jump off ship 3)succumb to the zombie plague.
Whether you take the above suggested scene seriously or not, you've got to admit that it's a lot more exciting than listening to a bunch of Romans TALKING about the things they're going to do instead of actually DOING them.
Don't hold back on unleashing the zombie plague; it should be largely uncontrollable from the get-go. We want to see it spread exponentially. We want to see some stupid, unprepared victims succumb quickly before they've had a chance to figure out what's going on, while others--the heroes of our story, the kind of men with lightning quick reflexes whose instincts are to ACT FIRST and THINK LATER--fend off the plague, regroup, and decide on their next course of action.
Let's get to the body count, pronto.
0
out of
1
people found the following review helpful:
ok
0
out of
1
people found the following review helpful:
I love this story, I think it would make an excellent movie
Its a good story and with some improvements it could be a great story and fantastic film. Some of the characters names need to be changed to suit the time period of Ancient Rome, and some of the details could be changed but other than those two issues its good.
1
out of
4
people found the following review helpful:
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In looking at the good and bad in this script, I’ll use this analogy: if a woman’s pretty but a little fat all she’s got to do is lose a little weight; if a woman’s tore up looking she can lose all the weight she wants and it won’t make any difference. This is how I feel about this script. I read it with the goal of tearing it up. Its technical flaws are numerous. But, honestly, I can’t say anything bad about this story. To assist the writer, I’ve made a list of recommendations:
• Insert page numbers
• Trim it to around 105 pages
• Proofread for grammar errors and typos
• Cut down adjectives
• Stay in present tense
• The first battle scene is pretty cool but the crowd cheering for 3 gladiators against a single gladiator doesn’t feel right. It’s human nature to sympathize with the underdog, not the bully.
• When you say, “the man has disgusting hygiene…” you should reflect this fact by someone reacting to it instead of describing it yourself
This is a very good script with likable and believable characters. I liked the chemistry and humor between the characters especially Hector and Marcus whom I found very funny at times. The action sequences are simple, brutal, and well described. The zombie descriptions are very very nasty. Like I said earlier, I didn’t want to like this script but it (at least this version) won me over despite the issues I listed. The quality is in the story. This review is for J.H. Levy’s version of this project.