Charles Martin

As scripts go, Nightwave was rather odd for me. The writing was good, descriptive and easy to read. The pacing was good as well- with a good balance of dialog and description. But beyond that, the script really lost points with me.

The writer chose a tried-and-true movie cliche for his subject: we pathetic humans needing big, strong alien defenders to protect us. That has worked successfully in many a movie; and I think the foundation is there for Nightwave to work as well- but it needs a LOT of work.

So here's the gist of it:

Earth is protected by "The Guardians" aliens in human form, who can magically cover themselves in super, impenetrable armor, and who have all sorts of amazing powers: super strength, flight, hearing, etc. In a clever twist the hero(es) uses water to heal wounds.

The Guardians as they call themselves, live amongst us, masquerading as humans, ready to protect us from the Big Bads. Alas, iturns out there is something that can penetrate their armor: The Spear of Light. See, it's not just the spear the Romans used on Jesus, it's a magical thingey that can penetrate the Guardians' armor.

That made me want to quit reading. It's one thing to ignore the religious beliefs of any group, but to out and out imply that Jesus is a fable is going to be very offensive to Christians, who are easily offended. But since Christians don't call for fatwas or behead anyone, a lot of writers seem to think it's okay to knock their beliefs.

My suggestion is to keep the Christian origins of the Spear, and its alleged supernatural abilities, but make aliens be after it to help their invasion. We haven't seen that before. Lots of PEOPLE and demons have tried to secure the spear in film, to assume world power, but to my recollection we've never had aliens looking for it.

Anyways, lets cut to the Big Bads. "They" send these cyborgs to earth, that are very Terminator-like, to kill the Guardians. To do so, they need the Spear because it can pierce the Guardians' armor. That's awfully cheesy. I'd drop that and again just have them after the spear to achieve world domination.

Our story starts with a brief bit in WWII where we see a Guardian fight one of these cyborgs that was posing as a nazi. That does make sense- the nazis were trying find the Spear so it would be a perfect place for a cyborg to blend in.

Our Guardian defeats the cyborg but is mortally wounded. He takes the spear and flies up north, planting it in the ground before he dies. In modern times, some explorers stumble along and find the spear. That won't work at all.

See, items left on the surface of the arctic are buried, over time, by snow and ice. In 1942, a P-38 Lightning, the Glacier Girl, set down on the ice in Greenland and was abandoned. It was found again in 1992, under 268 feet of ice. That makes it really, really hard for me to suspend disbelief and accept that the Spear, put on the ice in 1942, would still be just sitting there in 2012 with a light dusting of snow, begging to be found.

A better alternative would be to have some people digging for ice cores find it.

But back to the story....

In modern times, we go to "Vader City", where police officer Logan Ryder has just transferred to the local police department. I'm surprised his name wasn't George or Lucas Ryder. Vader City? Really?

Logan has this pal, Ray, who is a reporter. The Spear is moved to Vader city's museum. Cause Vader City is important- so important four Guradians happen to live there. Or maybe there's one in every major city on earth? I'm not sure.

A new cyborg comes to Earth. He sets out to get the spear- which is easy to do since it's in the local museum. I guess the Big Bads read the paper off world or something. I mean, if they could detect it in a museum in Vader City, why didn't they detect it in the arctic? Or did they and it just took this long to get to Earth?

Oh, and I should mention that the Guardians know where the Spear is, and they know the cyborg has come for it, but they wisely leave the Spear in the museum. They don't even keep an eye on it. The cyborg literally just walks in and takes it.

Meanwhile, our hero Logan is having lunch one day and sees a truck almost go over the side of a bridge. Despite having been a cop for years, and keeping his Guardian status a secret, he springs to action, donning his armor and flying to the rescue. The rescue makes the papers and the flying metal man is dubbed "Nightwave". Even though this happened during the day. I do not get the name.

Why would anyone call him "Nightwave"? I would suggest that as he is flying or hovering or something a picture is taken and there is a billboard in the background advertising NIGHTWAVE soda, or shoes or something. And that the newspaper relies on that company's ads for revenue, so the editor decides to dub the new hero NIGHTWAVE in a brilliant marketing deal that infuriates our erstwhile reporter.

And speaking of the paper- why is Nightwave classed a vigilante when he saves the truck? What crime was he fighting? Is gravity illegal in Vader City, cause that was his only opponent...

And then there's the whole unnecessary subplot of the local town psycho that Nightwave goes on to fight, the Reaper. We get all this unneeded sequences of Reaper being bad. It's very Batman derivative and draws away from the main story. It belongs in a sequel. Two Major Villains in one film is a bit confusing.

Anyways, after Logan defeats the Reaper, he's off to fight the cyborg in a long battle sequence that ends when Logan flies the cyborg up into space, then rams him back down to Vader City. Why didn't he fly him out into the desert, where there were no innocent bystanders that could be hurt? I didn't get that. Or better yet, fly him into space and leave him there. Or maybe drop him in a volcano.

Basically, the author took a proven concept, but didn't put much original spin on it. More plotting of events should have been done before it was written out. But with some hard work, and rethinking, I'd wager this could be turned around.

While I personally did not like this script, I think it was well done and would be a successful low budget movie that many others would enjoy.

The premise is simple- a girl is cursed with lycanthropy. She goes through life trying to find a cure for being a werewolf.

That premise sounds cliched, but promising. Most werewolf movies seem to follow that same thread: the accursed doesn't like being a werewolf, they do tragic things as a werewolf, and desperately seek a cure.

Where "Cursed" loses me is the friggin' romance subplot. Girl meets boy, girl almost eats boy, boy falls in love with girl. Boring. To me. But I'm sure lots of chicks will dig this hairy tale.

The writing seems okay, albeit chock full of typos and odd terminology choices. For example, I think a character's buttocks should not be referred to as their "ass" in the script, unless it's a character calling it that.

There are several action sequences in the script that seem good. But for me the whole visit to the nude beach by the lycan and her new beau was a compete waste of time. She doesn't turn into a werewolf and chomp the nudists. She just hangs out and talks. I suppose one might consider this a clever way to get the main character nekkid for all the 13 year olds that might be sneaking into the theater to see the film, but I'm worried it means there'd also be dudes schwinging around on screen. Blagh.

I also disliked how little attention to detail there is for the "Hunter" who pursues the main character, Annabelle. The poor guy doesn't even get a name. And all he has to fight the werewolves is a handgun. Why not a sniper rifle? Or some silver knives?

The one thing this script does have that is original (as best I can recall) is the use of silver body piercings to stay the transformation into a werewolf. Annabelle savagely pierces herself in multiple locations (surprisingly, we don't see her pierce her own nipples, even though we see them pierced later). I was waiting for her to turn into a werewolf and start screaming from all the piercings and rip them out- but it works and she is able to keep her problem at bay.

I also felt that her love interest, Triston, becomes attached to her a little too quickly.

With the whole Italian setting, the nude beach, and the lovestory, this becomes far too much of a chick flick for my tastes. But there is a market for that. If you're going to embrace the man-shewolf lovin', I'd say write more of it in, downplaying Annabelle being "forced" to strip down at the nude beach, and put her more in control of the actual down and dirty bedroom stuff. Lycanthropic empowerment.

If you want to go the horror-action route, lose the nude beach. Lose the shewolf-in-a-nighty scene, and extend the werewolf on werewolf combat scenes. And the tied down werewolf breaks out of her bonds way too easily. Triston is a sailor, he should be better with knots and so forth.

Great writing job, with well-written dialogue. I totally see this as a finished project.

What a great premise for a movie... three kids going off on a big adventure to find Bigfoot. From there on there were so many ways to go with this: slasher horror, scifi, family, comedy... or straight drama.

Ordinarily I hate drama. All that talking, and emotions and what not. I prefer to laugh or enjoy some explosions or ass-kicking. Sawtooth didn't have any explosions, Or ass-kicking, really. There were a few laughs. But it held my attention and I actually finished it because I wanted to see what happened next. That's pretty amazing, as I normally HATE dram-ma.

The dialogue was very good, with the exception of some out of place stuff. Like a camera "rolling" or the character learning to shoot from duck hunt. I'm 43, so I got those references. But if these were regular high school students of today, I doubt they'd know what Duck Hunt was, and have probably never seen a film or video tape camera unless their parents are avid video geeks.

The script did get a little predictable in spots. Like the dope growers' field they stumble on- right out of the comedy "Up the Creek". Or the bigfeets surrounding the survivor(s) at the end- right out of Abominable.

I also thought there were some missed opportunities for events in the script- but I'll PM those later.

If this doesn't get made, I'd be surprised. While Bigfoot may be a genre subject, this movie could easily be made to appeal to a wider audience. With some tweaking. It either needs to go more scarey. Or more funny. Or more family. As it is, it's great, but I worry a general audience may not be able to get past the whole bigfoot thing.

I love survival shows. Especially "Dual Survival" with it's staged situations and hilarious hosts. So when I read your premise, I thought it was a fantastic idea- I'd definitely queue this up on Netflix.

However, as I read, I saw the project go in directions I didn't like.

First off, when Cat is trying to make fire, he makes a comment about Haesphestus. Is the average viewer going to get he made a mistake and it was actually Prometheus that gave man fire in mythology?

Secondly, I think the whole alcoholic Australian thing is way too cheesy.

I would rather see characters that are bumbling morons- like Will Ferrell's Dr. Marshall in "Land of the Lost". Have him get fired simply because he's an imbecile. A lucky imbecile.

Other great examples of this lucky bumbler would be Martin Short in "Pure Luck" or David Spade in "Joe Dirt". Yahoo Serious in "Young Einstein". Jerry OConnell in "Kangaroo Jack"- which this reminded me a little too much of with the female third wheel.

All in all, I think you've done a good job- I just want more moron to laugh at. And I would hope you boned up on "Survivorman" and Bear Grylls before writing this- to get ideas for jokes and methods that Cat can screw up.

I love B Movies- especially the cheese on the Syfy Channel. When I read the synopsis for this i was hooked. This is just what I'd set the DVR for. Then, when it aired, I'd fast forward through most of the talking. Talking, talking, talking. No offense, the dialogue I did read was just what I'd expect out of a movie.

For a speed/read skim I'd devote more time to this.

meaning I liked this. I would definitely pay to see this.