Philip Boast (Barnstaple)

Looking for a good old-fashioned historical epic of ripping bodices and riproaring battles, political and personal intrigue at the highest levels, the rise from royal bastardy of the headstrong war leader who will be the greatest war commander of his time and with a cast of thousands fight one of the greatest sea battles ever against a cruel and brutal foe?

Look no farther. The Royal Knight is here.

Don John, bastard brother of King Philip of Spain, is a rampaging fighter of battles and seducer of women, whether the raunchy one-eyed Princess Eboli or the hauntingly beautiful Diana. He bounds from bedroom to battlefield with singleminded energy and faith in his destiny, and meanwhile makes best friends with Cervantes, the greatest writer of his time, who advises him on military psychology and gives John’s character a little dimension and warmth.

The story falls into two parts, first developing John’s friendships and alliances in the historical context. This is interesting and is at times almost a road-trip buddy movie reminiscent of The Three Musketeers, with various assassinations and seductions along the way, as John rises to power.

The second part is the battle itself, where John comes into his epic El Cid role, though not against Moors but Turks. Hundreds of rowed galleys, including super-galleys, fight independently of the wind. This allows fleet formations similar to the movement of armies on land, and permits John to shine as a commander as well as fighter. These scenes would be vivid and visual on the largest scale.

This presentation in two parts gives the air of a TV series in the style of, for example, HBO’s The Borgias, or Rome (which featured the battle of Actium, Lepanto’s competitor for the largest sea battle of all time). A film would concentrate on the battle, a two-part TV series be similar to this script, and a full series would concentrate more on the palace and bedroom intrigues. This would allow John’s character to develop warmth and empathy rather than be so singlemindedly one-dimensional. And also allow a more measured and informative development of the intrigues and more minor characters. Of whom there are hundreds. Overwhelmingly many for a movie. Fewer would be less confusing and focus us more on the interesting story.

I did think Cervantes could be usefully developed as a humanist observer and commentator. Great events need a ‘common man’ to give them scale and for this Cervantes is perfect. He also needs to show us by his insights that he is a great writer, rather than us being told by other characters that ‘Cervantes is so imaginative’ and ‘One day he’ll be the greatest writer Spain has ever seen’. This is the past informing rather than creating the future.

Just as important, the story at the moment lacks a baddie in a black hat. John needs an enemy. Of course, he has lots of enemies, but they are mostly people he thinks of as friends or allies. We need a really bad guy to get us emotionally committed to John’s quest and identifying with his star quality. Mustafa Pasha is suitably nasty and skins people alive, which is a good start, but he is also distant, not present very much, and rather liberally described as someone fighting for his God just as the Spanish fight for theirs. This equivalence, though wise and true, detracts from him in drama terms. It would be good to find a way to put John under such threat in the early part of the story that the personal conflict can be resolved amid the great events at the end in a wow climax amid the blood and slaughter, the screams, the sinking ships. Perhaps Uluj Ali, the ‘frightening Italian converted to Islam’ could be introduced as an implacable foe of John, maybe dating from an incident and vendetta very early on in John’s youthful European travels. Ali’s age and nationality would suit him for this, and his conversion to Islam be part of his revenge on John. An implacable, fanatical opponent of John will strengthen the story enormously in my opinion.

I enjoyed the script. It has some of the epic feel of El Cid. To my mind it successfully combines European history with Hollywood storytelling values. The characters are accessible and clearly delineated. The politics is precise and the battles well scaled between personal character combat and mass action. I liked the political-power-emotional interaction between John-Cervantes-Eboli-Escobar-Philip and the major secondary players. It would be good to get rid of some of the many, many minor characters and to decide whether this story, as mentioned earlier, is a movie or TV. At the moment I fear it is in danger of falling between two galloping horses.

I admire the hard work that has gone into this idea so far and wish it all the best. Good luck!

To review AS is of course irresistible. Can they truly live up to our phenomenally high expectations of their professionalism and creative acumen?

One organisation. Two scripts. The first is Draft 4, the other Draft 9. So good so far.

One’s 5 pages, the other 6. Do they provide a strong enough foundation to support a full-length script?

Undoubtedly yes. They differ in detail and tone. Script 1 is for you if you want to go for cracking storytelling, wisecracking banter, fast characterisation. This economy leaves space for the introduction of Beaker, the bearded, jailed private soldier, One Man Army and, ah, History Museum Curator. Love it. Oh yes. He’s the character I’d go for.

Script 2 is slower paced but more realistic. You get the feeling the writer knows something of Army, and at least has looked up words like ‘perimeter’ and that you have to fill out a lot of forms. The dialogue remains reasonably snappy, but doesn’t have the serial wit of Script 1.

Interestingly both in the second paragraph misspell soldier, Script 1 as soldier’s, Script 2 as Soldier’s, rather than the intended plural. I love this sort of detail. It doesn’t affect the story at all but it does humanise the writer’s intentions, and no one’s immune to getting mangled by apostrophes, me especially.

It’s the words in dialogue that matter. In the first dialogue line ‘Don’t touch my mints, kid’ in Script 1 becomes ‘Don’t touch my stuff, kid’ in the other. Personally I don’t like ‘stuff’ as much, it isn’t as visual, but of course ‘mints’ in English English sounds like Mince, which is ground beef. Nice to know the writer has an ear for emerging markets. ‘Don’t touch my Ground Beef’ – or even ‘Gund Beef’. Be careful of ‘spunk’ though (even if it’s not in dialogue, Script 2.)

Names, no probs there. Gund sounds Army (as in ‘out-Gunned’), Anu a nice goddess name which is easy to type, Beaker sounds primitive which he is (as in ‘Beaker People’) and perhaps because it sounds similar to ‘Biker’, which he is in spirit I suppose, being bearded and a rebel. I thought ‘May’ for the martinet officer (both captain and sergeant in 1) was a little indecisive – maybe ‘Tenet’ or something prissy and precise. Depending how much we’re not going to like him.

What’s the difference between the samples? Apart from the points raised above, Script 1 has Beaker, and Script 2 has the Sphere, the enemy military’s wonder-weapon more visually described. Might need something a bit better than a sphere, but it’s a good god-image for something you don’t understand (or haven’t thought of yet). More probably the droids simply died of rust, it being Seattle.

The key point, I think, is What happened before events in the control room … and What happens after?

Well, that’s what I’m looking forward to finding out.

Ah, but first there’s those review stars, even if it’s only for 6 pages. No stars might consign me to eternal damnation, as well as being unfair. 5 stars might look like snivelingly currying favor. So I’ll just tick three stars all the way down. Perfection.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first great story ever told. It underpins the first pages of the Old Testament. It probably has a true basis in ancient Sumer and the city-state of Ur, Abraham’s birthplace, and incorporates the story of Noah and many other mythical-historical legends based on the Flood of the Black Sea and the felling of the Cedar Forest which once covered Lebanon and the Holy Land.

So, six thousand years later … is there an interesting movie in it?

Undoubtedly yes. Gilgamesh’s life is a great story, one of the greatest ever told. That’s its attraction. But audiences change in six thousand years (though everyone loves a good story just as much now as then). Will modern audiences pay to see this story?

Yes, if it’s done right. It’s a superhero yarn. That’s its genius. Never mind the great modern superheroes, it can work on the Prince of Persia level too.

So … does it?

It could. I am awed by Tommy Meyers’ bravery in writing this story. He has stuck close to all the main elements of the original, and they are not easy. The ingratitude of the people for victory after victory under Gilgamesh’s leadership, for example. In the meantime, as he knows, culture has changed. We no longer have this big thing about gateposts, and we tend to favour forest demons trying to protect their trees. Even so, he still tells the story. This demands respect. Truly.

The test is, does he pull a movie out of it?

Yes. Impressively. But there are problems along the way. Perhaps in particular the complexity of the story in movie terms. There is a lot of dialogue and exposition – perhaps it could be simplified a little bit. Some of the language veers between excessively opaque and excessively modern – I’ll give examples.

There are many very good things in this script, but I do have some questions.

Gilgamesh is a superhero, the first, absolutely. His strength is legendary. He’s a good guy. Why are his people, counsellors, commanders so ungrateful for his victories and plunder?

What super-weapons does he have? The super-flail and flocks of flame-spewing dragons are used near the beginning but not so much later, when they’d be climactically useful. Normally the dramatic arc goes from smaller to larger, not the other way round.

Go for modern political and social sensibility or not? Gilgamesh wants to kick ass and so do we, your popcorn-chewing movie audience. The people moaning about his success are annoying – however authentic. Perhaps Gilgamesh’s success has to be shown to be so great it’s pointless, counterproductive (this goes somewhat against human nature). But this is Batman’s dilemma in Gotham, after all. Superheroes can’t be too public (which, as a king, Gilgamesh unavoidably is). But when Etana offers to surrender his army for a bit of peace it doesn’t feel realistic or movie-like. Gilgamesh would butcher the lot. Anyway, these guys chose to be buried with their armies interred with them, along with their families, servants, slaves, dogs and possessions. They didn’t care about them like us. Which brings us to the next point.

Modern sensibility. Page 5, Gilgamesh’s comment ‘I’ll sit this one out’ seems very modern. Decide which audience you’re writing for, either modern, or ancient. If modern, simplify the story and bring on the dragons and sassy ladies and true love story. If ancient, get rid of the modern language and twenty-first century political sentiment.

16 – all these people and Ekron seem very ungrateful to Gilgamesh for winning battles. “Gilgamesh has invaded lands that have had no quarrel with us and has robbed our money supply by doing so.” Money supply? Is Belial (origin of Old Testament Baal, Moses’/Miriam’s B’El) an IMF economist? Plunder was how ancient war economies survived. What does peace have to offer? How does winning battles lose money? I think the movie would need to show us this in a way we can empathise.

21 – intro of Enkidu and Gamaliel. Unclear why shepherds should fear a man who kills lions preying on sheep. “Once the ordeal was over, I knew my village was under threat and my father recommended that I come here and seek your aid.” Don’t understand. The key problem is that you’re making superheroes accessible and attractive to modern audiences with modern speech, powers and victories (everyone loves a winner) but this isn’t working with ancient Mesopotamia’s shepherd culture – incredibly.

32 - Sometimes language meaning is obscure, for example “a small CHILD lying in the street DEAD. Flies scattering about him. Enkidu’s fist is clinched until” – I don’t know what this means.

32 Droit de seigneur. Authentic, good touch, and good reading. But then p34, Enkidu beats Gilgamesh, says “Freedom belongs to the people, not slavery.” – where does he get this from? He’d be strung up for saying it two hundred years ago, never mind six thousand.

I guess the basic problem of Belial, Etana, Ekron etc: how to live with superheroes. Maybe make more of this theme – and maybe less seriously? (Without going too Hancock).

40 - Obscure meaning example, Ekron, “What if Gilgamesh catches wind of what we’re doing? What if all our plans become known? Our deaths will be dealt with swiftly.” Does Tom Cruise talk like this?

42 – Enkidu, “ All I know is that I feel a great conviction for the people of this earth.” What is he saying? Just relax into the language and say what you mean, too much of it is over-wordy and grammatical.

44 – Etana accuses Gilgamesh of being gay for Enkidu the pretty boy, his ‘brother’. If you mean this, fine. People are going to think this anyway – and did at the time.

49 - Ninsun to Gilgamesh: “You are straying from the path beset to you.” Beset? Preset? Planned? Does she mean Gilgamesh has no free will, the gods have planned his life? Or is this Enkidu’s role, to be the original innocent Adam, instinctive child of nature?

56 – Etana’s attack, “(mad as hell) Let us go and smite the bastard!” – this works! More of this please!

56 - Gilgamesh, with “his enchanted flail and long sword, makes little effort of the Kish soldiers. In just a few seconds, Gilgamesh has taken out nearly twenty soldiers by himself in a vengeful manner.” Don’t understand.

58 – “We need a new gate”. Nice touch. As in Jaws “We need a bigger boat”. Careful of cliché though as earlier in this page you have “All I I have to do is squeeze (scream)” – iconic cliché pastiche from Indiana Jones and Last Crusade.

60 – Gilgamesh calls Belial headmaster? Is this a school?

61 - Cedar Forest. Like the way you incorporate original epic.

62 Ninsun to Enkidu – NINSUN “Rise, Enkidu. You needn’t bow to me and no apology is necessary.” – acknowledges him as her equal? She’s a goddess!

70 – tree demon unphased – unfazed?

70 – bit sad about the tree demon / Watchman. Only doing his job.

79 – Ekron comment - Maybe the gods have truly abandoned their creations.” I thought this a good and powerful line that explains much of Gilgamesh’s abandonment to indulgent self-will.

91 – GILGAMESH “Justice’s duty has led to nothing but corruption.” – Gilgamesh was right all along wasn’t he? He could put it more pithily, ‘Justice has led to nothing but corruption’.

107 – of Utnapishtim (Noah) - His face is struck still with solemn. ?

I enjoyed this script. Perhaps you’d consider doing it as an outright action-adventure with love interest (rather than just his domineering mother), more monsters, and less thinking and talking about thinking. Decide between ancient and modern, then go for it.

I hope you find these comments helpful, they’re meant to be. You’ve taken on a very difficult project and done so with style. I look forward to the revision. Oh yeah, Zack Snyder. Definitely.

This is an interesting script with a very simple central idea – take an intelligent privileged urban girl of 15, strand her in a wilderness, add survival, and see how she changes. It’s a rite-of-passage movie. Jane must learn to think of herself, not those who have ruled her life until now, and think for herself – or she won’t make it. Sometimes this and other morals are too clearly expressed to my mind and get in the way of the story. Yet the simplicity and a very attractive energy remain.

Formatting is good and precise. Personally I don’t know (probably my own ignorance) what the occasional stars down the right margin mean. Spelling is sometimes wrong or hasty (‘site’ for sight, for example) and some unintended images (‘everyone’s eyes dart to her’) detract from the writer’s authority.

The key judgment in a castaway movie is what percentage of the movie should the castaway be cast away. In Stranded it’s from pp15 – 59 of 95, less than half. I’d prefer much more, ideally more than 80%, as to me Jane in the wilderness is by far the most interesting part, and yet least is made of it. It becomes no more than a hook for the rest of the story, which is to my mind much less interesting and less successful.

The setup of Jane’s overachieving character and parents is good, with good voiceover of her awards. We dislike her already. Her mother Lisa is vile and corrupt, using her wealth to boost Jane’s chances. Her father comes across as weak, and his mid-life conversion happened only two weeks ago after a heart problem made him re-evaluate his life – and thus Jane’s. He doesn’t want her to change into her mother, no one would. Yet this takes a long time to set up – more than the movie’s most important first ten minutes, and a large chunk of its total dialogue – in fact almost all the first half’s. Getting us to the plane quicker would be good. Jane needs to find something better to talk about than small plane crash statistics. We see what’s coming. And for a very wealthy man with mechanical skills, Mark seems to know very little about planes.

The crash happens very suddenly (after a long rather boring parental advice conversation) and personally I found the parachutes unconvincing. Jane’s experience hanging in the tree is good and visually narrative, strong stuff. The long, long night hanging in the tree could have much more made of it. For example establish the alienness of the wilderness to Jane’s previous experience of life with animal noises, maybe her father’s screams, his dying calls for her. That he simply dies unseen, unheard, is a lost opportunity for drama and for striking sparks from Jane and the audience.

Wandering in the forest, Jane’s response to most problems is obscenities, as anyone’s would be, but it makes for repetitive drama. Finding Dad’s body is good narrative, but again more could be made of it. He seems to have developed flies and rot pretty quickly for cold conditions. Jane flinging boulders at the buzzards feeding on her father gives her excessive strength. Pebbles would suffice. Her failure to bury him is psychologically creative – then she uses a boulder to sink him, one of those she was chucking at the buzzards I guess.

In my opinion the discovery of her father’s rosary does not help. I don’t recall it mentioned before. It becomes a device for her talking to God, which limits the movie’s market somewhat – unless hunting for God in the wilderness is what the movie’s about. As for self-discovery, Tom Hanks talked to Wilson, an aspect of himself, which was much more creative I feel. I think Jane needs to talk to someone, but it should be an aspect of herself, which would be much more powerful (unless it really is a movie about religion). Later she says things like ‘holy shit’ which all seems contradictory.

I like Jan’s learning to survive in this new environment, the fortuitous piece of broken glass to make fire for example. It would be good if she could do this from using her own resources and native intelligence rather than by finding a symbol of civilisation’s rubbish in a wilderness.

23 – Eating tadpoles – love it.

24 – ditto airplane sinking. But not as dramatic as in a crash setting, for example as in The Edge, with which Stranded will be compared. Only one survivor is limiting the story here and makes character development difficult, although the writing is good and visual. It takes a lot of courage not to write dialogue, but that’s what’s required here. Jane’s expletives don’t help – they retard our perception that she is changing. Even after a couple of weeks she’s still just a spoilt kid rather than showing development.

29 – Bear – good. We could do with more of bear. In The Edge the bear becomes the focus of attempts to survive and drives narrative. Not so here. Bear in, bear out. Narrative force gone.

30 – Jane sings The Beatles. Hmm… Perhaps her subsequent chat with the Beetle is the way to go as it’s quite good. Could it not be a spider?

34 – Jane rejects God. Her situation improves ... but then she starts talking to her father. This is morally confusing. Her father takes a few pages telling her not to give up. I like the psychology but I wonder if it quite fits. Perhaps this should have happened earlier. Almost immediately, she discovers Matthew.

41 – Again, this with Matthew is visually good but his character seems wilfully difficult and enigmatic. He scares the hell out of me. If I was Jane I’d run, snow or not. I think he needs a lot more narrative attention and attraction. How much (apart from shelter) is he really, as he is, contributing to the story? I did wonder if he was a figment of her imagination.

44 – How much flesh are we going to chop off the actress, or is this CGI? But I like your angle (I think) that she has gone beyond vanity. Yet she has sustained deforming injuries that only very expensive plastic surgery (of the sort requiring her mother’s wealth) can repair. Nice touch.

48 – The conversation with Matthew about God – does this carry the story forward? I kept thinking Yoda. Then Matthew foretells his own death. Oh-oh. Then he talks about the plane crash being part of the Plan for Jane. Oh-oh!

55 – Matthew’s foretold death comes to pass. This really isn’t helping.

58 – Jane’s fight with the mountain lion is good. But very short. And like the bear, the lion is come and gone within a page or so. It’s not embedded in the spine, the neurology of the story.

60 – Jane leaves the wilderness. This is bound to remind us of the similar scene in The Descent (forest road) or Castaway (tanker) or Uma Thurman’s second resurrection in Kill Bill 2 (diner) but I don’t get much force of drama from this.

In my opinion from here to p95 has problems. Personally I don’t think The Return of Changed Jane gels … it’s kind of like the end of Castaway but it’s not powerful or elegaic or touching, and I don’t get Lisa’s character at all. Jane’s survival is ‘a miracle’ … Mom’s found another man … Jane’s going to be a big sister … selling Jane’s story … the permission for surgery … response of her friends … personally I found this part of the story unengaging and confused after the strength of the wilderness.

PROS
- The simple energy of the writing and the visual descriptions are excellent.

- I loved the wilderness writing – the story was well told, as was the crash. Develop the wilderness narrative more! More bear! More lion! Choose one and make it a major driving-force character.

- Jane’s character arc is good but you can make it even better!

CONS
- Most peripheral characters either need to be developed or got rid of. I don’t find Mark, Lisa or Matthew credible interesting people. The small parts even more so. The Waittress … seems like a code for something.

- Opportunities for drama – and for developing Jane’s character through drama – are often missed in my opinion.

- Change Jane’s name to something less soft in sound, more angular? Of course her name might hardly be heard anyway ex-script …

I think the story does need a Matthew – just not this Matthew.

I hope you find these comments helpful – they’re meant to be. All in all, congratulations on an entertaining read, best where simplest.