Bad cinema writing must be exterminated without mercy.

There are many kinds of screenwriting to avoid.

Nancy Meyers and Woody Allen think that the dull lives of over-educated New Yorkers are cool.

George Lucas and James Cameron insist on writing their own stuff, even though they suck at it. Oh boy, taxation and trade routes!

Contrived scenes, like the pivotal scenes in Deer Hunter and Once Upon A Time In the West and essentially every Tarantino movie.

The notion that beautiful production design can save a weak story. Hardwicke in Twilight, von Trier in Melancholia, Terrence Malick in anything.

Also, avoid scripts that are unclear.?When David Lynch has a good story, he manages, but without one he produces gibberish like Mulholland Drive; during Mulholland Lynch had no idea where the story was going and couldn’t even tell the actors what tone he wanted.?He had two gorgeous actresses, pushed them in front of the cameras for lesbian sex and masturbation, and pretty much had no other ideas.

That French guy did exactly the same thing with “Blue Is The Warmest Color”. Like every artist in history who ran out of ideas, he said “Eureka! The answer is more tits!”

Likewise, 2001. Kubrick had one or two striking ideas, but even the homicidal computer was not a new idea. And the ending, though pretty to look at, is totally aimless: the astronaut flies through an old Pink Floyd light show and finds a dozen different versions of himself, for no reason. Co-writer Arthur Clarke initially said they wanted to raise questions rather than answer them, but later he admitted that the film was too hard to follow, and contritely explained things more fully in the novelization and sequels.

We don’t necessarily expect great writing when we go see an action movie. Which is why so many of them are lousy.

First, you need to have conflict. Star Trek created a federation in which there was no suffering, no political conflict, nothing. Bad move.

But the stakes can’t be end-of-Planet-Earth every time, or the audience will become numb to it.

The stakes must be concrete and human: don’t holler about freedom and justice, holler about food and water and unlocking cages.

Here are some tropes that need retiring.

Villainous corporations that dabble in robots, computers, genetics, weapons, communication, the human mind, environment-killing mines.

Villainous crime lords, villainous government agencies, villainous aliens that look like all the other aliens.

Doctor Who created the kill-everybody Daleks even before the Klingons, and created the assimilate-everybody Cybermen before the Borg, so, stop it.

The cop-on-the-edge who was fired, wounded, out of control.

Plucky scientist, plucky tech geek for handy plot dumps and spotting Maguffins, plucky pixie girl with unsuspected talents.

Women who show up for a fight in a bullet bra and bikini bottoms and the big boots.?And really the entire “strong female” trope, just a variation of the strong male, Ninja babes with light sabers and Glocks.

Violence as the ex-machina instant answer to everything, particularly in places like the Star Wars universe. And violence that looks nothing like a real-world barfight with bottles and chairs. Violence that goes on and on forever. Violence where one team never misses and the other team can’t hit anything.

Dystopia caused by nuclear war, by environmental disaster, by dictators.

Magic McGuffins. Plug magic thingy into magic thingy and destroy the evil server thingy!

Bomb with countdown timer, cut the blue wire, even Batman made fun of this one in 1966.

The same shocking twist over and over: it was all a dream or a hallucination or a lie.

?

It’s amazing how much bad writing Hollywood gets away with.

Pulp Fiction, a sort of lowest-common-denominator slag pile, an ever-growing mound of references to the kind of juvenile junk culture that might appeal to stoner clerks in a video store: McDonald’s, Burger King, bacon, Sprite, gourmet coffee, trashy TV pilots and reruns, personalized wallets, Dutch hash bars, Kung Fu, the Fonz, milkshakes, Pepsi, blueberry pancakes, vanilla Coke, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, French fries, theme restaurants, breakfast cereals, board games.?Mix in some faux-cool hitmen with bad haircuts, several murders, a rape, a botched robbery, a drug overdose, some naughty words, some instant-cool retro musical references, and there’s your script. It’s a stroll through a cultural junkyard, a colorful cartoon, a bare hint at the kind of movies Tarantino could be making, if only he was as interested in the art form as he is in looking cool in front of the kids in film school.

Tarantino then exploits the Holocaust for money, exploits slavery for money. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Tarantino exploits another tragedy for money, while ruminating about how hard it is for addictive, violent white men to get work in Hollywood. How zeitgeist-y.

Brian Cox from Succession is one of many who ridicule Tarantino’s flashy, gimmicky, substance-free crap. He walked out of Pulp Fiction.

Quentin says he wants to retire. Let him. Please. He’s a professional bad example.

?

Everybody seems to think Scarface is on the same level with the Godfather. OMG Oliver Stone’s story was so well-researched, so well written! No it wasn’t. There are so many elements that even a casual observer should have rolled his eyes at.

This “well-researched story” tells of drug dealers who were so careless they would be dead or in jail very quickly. Talking drug business in a room with a hundred strangers. Letting your girlfriend know all about who you do business with. The ceaseless abuse of drugs and drinking heavily right when you’re scrutinizing new employees and drug deals. Negotiating a massive cocaine deal with someone you’ve never met before. Agreeing to go to Latin America with the guy who just sent you to be killed by the chainsaw guy. The Florida narc who had evidence to arrest two drug dealers taking bribes instead.

This “well-researched story” tells of drug dealers who know nothing about how real gang murders work, an area they would know well.??To start the carnage, we kill with a chain saw in a crowded neighborhood in broad daylight. Literally the only guy who doesn’t notice the murder is the bodyguard, because he’s chatting up a girl in the middle of the murder attempt, and afterward he is still trusted to do his job.

We proceed to the helicopter killing, where literally everyone in the country could look up and see the registration number of the chopper that was used. Killing a cop, and doing it with witnesses around. Killing a mobster so you can take his girl. Two different hit men arguing about whether to kill a man’s kids. Killing a mobster because a murder attempt had to be aborted at the last minute.

And the finale. Plotting to kill a boss at his fortress, instead of when he’s on the move and more vulnerable. Having dozens of guys involved in a murder. Lighting up a grenade launcher in your own house. Owning a grenade launcher in the first place.

The famed master of violence managing to make all the violence boring and just plain stupid.

The women. The notion that Mama suddenly realizes he’s a gangster, as though she didn’t know what was going on. The woman who leaves one boring rich guy for an even more boring rich guy, knowing he’s going to destroy himself. The overprotective brother who lets his baby sister hang out with every scumbag in Miami.

The racism. The comedian making Cuban jokes in a roomful of armed, macho, angry Cubans. The sloppy accents. The Jewish Italian guy named Lopez.

The absurd, lame disco party and lame synthesizer, lit and shot like the worst senior prom ever.

The lousy execution of the whole thing. The laughable conceit that they were updating the classic by Ben Hecht and Howard Hawks. The shitty, boring dialogue. The dull characters. The stupefying length and the poor editing. A film so horrific that originally they managed to score an X rating without getting either Michelle Pfeiffer or Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio naked: the ratings people gave it an X essentially to ensure that fewer people would waste their time with this crap.

?

The show Firefly achieved a superfecta of unbelievable characters and bad plotting.

All they had to do was create SOME characters who were at least believable, if not always likable, and send them off on interesting adventures. Because they thought they were there to create an old-fashioned western in space – they even rode horses at one point – they felt compelled to build the series around toxic alpha males and the women who enable them.

The characters. You’ve got Mal, the guy who lost a pointless war and therefore is allowed to act like an out-of-control alpha-male bully who can’t go two minutes without insulting or threatening somebody. He is such a jerk, threatening at various times to kill at least half the members of his beloved “family”, that the network forced the writers to rewrite him.

Next, the Doctor, dedicates his life to protecting his sister and then sends her along on an insane robbery; lets Mal punch him and of course he agrees to work for Mal.

River’s mental illness gives her Ninja fighting skills and other superpowers, because that’s a thing that happens. Because she is psychotic and delusional, Mal of course promotes her to co-pilot.

Inara, who is totally okay with Mal calling her a whore because that’s true love.

Zoe and Wash who are okay with Mal acting like a jerk about their relationship.

Jayne, another macho jerk, because Mal wasn’t bad enough; makes fun of everyone’s romances right in front of them.

Kaylee, the impossibly cute Mary Sue who can magically fix anything with no training, and magically loves all these unlikable people no matter how awful they are.

Derrial Book is the only character who is actually credible, so of course they kill him off.

They achieved the superfecta: they created exactly zero credible characters, and the interpersonal dynamics among the characters are toxic. It’s like the writers have never actually seen humans behave, but only read about us in books.

And the stories. Wide open sci-fi concept, they could have created any kind of villain. What they created is a dull European Union-like thing called the Alliance, mainly known for unifying the galaxy, making peace and providing medical assistance to those who need it. Those bastards.???

In the first half of the season, Mal smuggles the wrong people, steals the wrong cargo, boards the wrong ship, attacks Inara’s date and almost gets killed, decides which of his crew members to kill, marries the wrong girl, and has an absurd plan to lay low that goes totally sideways.

In the second half, Mal concocts two absurd robbery schemes, dopes off and lets the ship be seized three different times, threatens to kill a member of his “family” in a rage, and botches a job for a crime lord. For the grand finale he jumps into a local brouhaha involving a pregnant prostitute and takes the obvious step of sleeping with the prostitute.

A universe full of stories they could have told, and they chose to show Mal stepping on his crank week after week, abusing and threatening everyone in his path, like a demented Wile E. Coyote with roid rage.

This is the show people are clamoring to bring back, so they can revel in more horrible characters and absurd storytelling.

?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Love Actually. But the writers throw ten stories at you all at once, hoping you won’t notice that each story is weaker than the last one.

Andrew Lincoln stalks Keira Knightley at her own wedding and she thinks it’s sweet.

Colin Firth proposes to a girl he’s never even had a conversation with.

Alan Rickman cheats on Emma Thompson for no sane reason.

Bill Nighy, musician, gets drunk with his manager.

Hugh Grant makes creepy comments about a staffer’s body, fires her, uses the government to track her down.

Liam Neeson stumbles into a hot available supermodel, because that’s a thing that happens.

His son chases his dream girl by running through Heathrow security without getting shot.

Laura Linney’s romance gets stalled by her brother, because all schizophrenics are violent, but at least we got the girl naked.?

Kris Marshall goes to America and every girl in the country wants to have sex with him.

Two porn stars have the only normal romance in the movie.

Tarantino used the same strategy in Pulp Fiction and he fooled audiences too.

?

David Fincher’s Mank, which took a snapshot of the Citizen Kane creative process, just didn’t work the way Kane had. In Kane we saw Welles cleverly catalog many innovations from other sources the 1920s and 1930s; Fincher has catalogued the inability of modern directors to understand what makes movie storytelling work.

The blah dialogue in Mank cried out for a rewrite. Fincher failed to string the political bits into a coherent narrative that could have properly explained Mank’s growing disgust with Hearst and his need to take him down. Fincher’s longer scenes, the duet between Mank and Marion Davies, the meltdown at San Simeon, the clash with Orson Welles, are loaded with missed opportunities. The talented cast was mostly wasted, and shooting as many as 200 takes for a scene didn’t improve the acting. Fincher incorrectly attributes most of the Kane script to Mank, not Welles. Welles’ Rashomon-like storytelling structure, in the hands of Fincher, becomes a jarring ping-pong between the Mank-Hearst relationship and Mank’s struggle to write the script: like Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, Mank’s jumbled timeline makes for a jumbled story.

The directing frankly was no better. Many of Fincher’s attempts at homage fall flat. He flies in the face of Kane’s use of deep focus and blurs background characters; he seems to think that all the visual magic of Kane came from the aggressive use of backlighting. He tries to get the sound perfect, but then he puts 1950s music into 1930s scenes, and shows us outdoor scenes with obvious, clumsy indoor overdubs.

?

Fast And The Furious 7 had these plot points. All of them. Amnesia, blanket amnesty for criminals, multiple secret bombs, rogue assassin, car chase, rogue special ops team, the “God’s Eye” computer program, mercenary, dropping cars from planes, billionaire hunting a flash drive, the abandoned factory cliché, helicopter, stealth helicopter, drone missile destroyed by ambulance, hacker, collapsing parking garage, attacking helicopter with car, sack of grenades, super-secret prison.

And the next film: criminals and street racers forced to hunt each other, secret government agent, rogue assassin, former criminal, miracle hacker, covert ops team, criminal mastermind, cyber-terrorist, Brazilian cop who is in the US for no sensible reason, crazy plot for world domination. And a submarine.

We also need to take them to task for incessantly and flagrantly exploiting an actor’s death to sell tickets to these stupid movies.

?

They sold the Matrix as this deep philosophical contemplation of men and machines, being trapped in the cyber world, with deep dives into Gnosticism, Buddhism, Hinduism. “This thing’s all about Plato and Kant and Decartes, dude!”....and then they just said "screw it, we'll just let Keanu Reeves shoot lots of guns".

An absurd arsenal that involves seven kinds of pistols, four kinds of submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, machineguns, gas grenades. And then purpose-built guns because they didn’t have enough firepower already. All based on the notion that the battle for cyberspace will be won with a lot of guns.

Characters repeatedly wearing sunglasses for gunfights in dark rooms.

Keanu, with his tight clothes and long overcoat that no sane man would take into a gun fight, fires endlessly and never misses. His guns have no recoil, even as he shoots full-auto while doing cartwheels. Seriously. Cartwheels.?

His opponents never hit him despite firing thousands of rounds. Ancient gunfight clichés, Mexican standoffs, is-he-empty-or-not?

Unbelievable, fake-looking fist fights that look like cheerleaders slap-fighting; combat choreographers who insist on throwing every one of their tricks into a common fist fight. Total suspension of the laws of physics. Slow-mo comes and goes for no reason.

Obligatory hot babe. Tank top, black plastic pants, lots of guns, sunglasses. Who can do impossible things with a helicopter. Survives an explosion with her makeup intact.

British actor plays villain with a mid-Atlantic accent, for no reason.

Zombie-like acting.

Really, really bad writing. Fortune-cookie philosophy, magic pills, cyber-octopi, prophecies, the search for The One, silly monologues on the fate of the human race, life is all just a video game.

Sets that are grungy for no reason other than the whim of the director.

Stop the madness.?

?Jack is a writer with 29 feature screenplays and a series completed, almost all of them with female leads, three under option. Check them out on this site and let’s get one filmed! https://threewibbes.wordpress.com/