Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

I really, really wanted to love this film. After all, the first and third Indiana Jones movies are among my all-time favorites, and the producers did a great job of approximating the style of the earlier films. Harrison Ford handles his gently aging role with aplomb, as does Karen Allen. But this installment stumbles badly, and I think the ways in which it stumbles have something to teach writers.

Warning: If you haven’t seen the movie, some of my remarks might be considered spoilers. But there’s nothing here I didn’t see coming a mile away. Which leads me to fault #1:

Predictability. You might say this is an inevitable product of the genre, but I don’t think so. Remember those great reversal moments in THE LAST CRUSADE, when Sean Connery uses his umbrella to send up the seagulls and crash the plane? When we learn that Dr. Elsa Schneider is working for the Nazis? That she slept with the senior Dr. Jones? Or in THE LOST ARC, when the evil Gestapo agent holds up his palm to say “Heil Hitler,” and we see that the imprint of Marion’s medallion was burned into his hand? The fourth installment has none of those moments.

Stereotypical characters. CRYSTAL SKULLS has a character who is sort of a compilation of Sallah, Belloq, and Schneider. Needless to say, he doesn’t work, and I had to look up his name before I could even remember what it was (Mac). I have read raves of Cate Blanchett’s depiction of her character, Irina Spalko. Perhaps she did the best she could with what she had to work with, but in my opinion, her character hit one evil note and held it through the entire movie. She wasn’t interesting, she wasn’t fun, she was just…a stereotype. Yawn. The interaction between Indie and the boy, Mutt, had some good moments, but I kept thinking they could have done so much more with it, while the bits with Marion were so hackneyed and clichéd they made me squirm.

Plot development. Nothing much happens in this movie. It felt like half of the screen time was taken up by one long chase through the jungle. And while it was fun at first, it eventually just felt…long. Plus, while it may be a Hollywood convention to have the bad guys shooting endlessly at the good guys and still missing, this scene was by far—BY FAR—the worst I have ever scene. It went beyond improbable or silly, and just became hopelessly contrived. And boring. Because if they’re that bad of shots, there’s no danger, right?

Plot holes. Where does one start? Like, why did the American government need an archaeologist to help them deal with an alien? Or, why were those conquistadores buried in a tomb with all their loot? I could go on and on and on, but I won’t because it would give too much away. All I’ve got to say is, They take twenty years to write a script, with the “best” people in Hollywood working on it, and they can’t do better than this?

But the most damning flaw in the entire movie was this: Lack of a powerful forward thrust. It could have been there—it should have been there—but it wasn’t. At one point—I believe it was when they were crawling around in the cemetery—I actually found myself thinking, “Now, what are they here for again? What’s the whole point of this movie?”

Ouch.

Tricks from the Screenwriting Trade: Understanding and Using the Concept of the Premise, Part One

Like all successful screenplays, successful commercial fiction is based around a powerful premise. So, what’s a premise?

A premise is, essentially, the kind sound bite you read in a TV guide or Pub Lunch’s weekly list of hot deals (all you prospective writers out there are signed up for this free email from Publishers Weekly, aren’t you?). A premise immediately and provocatively answers several important questions: Who is the hero or heroine of this story? What does he want? What is standing in his way? The catchier your premise—the sharper its hook—the more successful your book will be at snagging both editors and readers.

Of course, a book can have a wonderful premise without the writer ever having heard of a premise. It’s one of those things many writers do instinctively. But if your book is floundering, it’s a good idea to take a look at your premise and make sure it’s solid. In fact, Alex Sokoloff thinks a writer should BEGIN with her premise, and work from there. Listening to her, I thought, What a concept!

There is a formula I’ve seen so many different places I can’t say who originally came up with it. It works because it forces the writer to reduce his story to its most basic components: protagonist, goal, motivation, conflict (and no, the originator wasn’t Deb Dixon, because I was using this handy little formula long before her book came out). Any and every piece of successful commercial fiction can be plugged into it. So what’s the formula?

This is a story about a __________________ who wants __________________ because ____________. But can he succeed when ____________________?

The first blank, obviously, is for your protagonist—your hero or heroine. The best way to describe your protagonist is with an adjective-noun combination. Why? Because you want to make sure you’ve developed a profoundly intriguing character. If you say, “This is a story about a girl….” you’ve already got people yawing. But if you say, “This is a story about a psychic orphan…” or “a wounded Iraq vet…” you’ve already intrigued a lot of people who will go, “Oooh, I’d like to read about that kind of person.” (You’ll also turn off a lot of people who’ll go, “Eeew, I don’t want to read about that.” Accept it.)

Since this is supposed to be a post about Premise, I’m not going to go into the whole goal, need/want, conflict thing. We all know our hero needs to want something, right? We know he needs to want it for a powerful reason, and we know there needs to be something or someone (i.e., the villain) standing in his way. When you formulate your premise, you lay it all out there in black and white. If your setting is intriguing, work that in. If the stakes are high, that’s part of your “because” and belongs in there, too. When you’re all done, look at your premise—really look at it—and think, is this as strong as it can be? What would make it bigger? What is the hook, the X-factor that makes this story different?

When my agent ran the premise for THE ARCHANGEL PROJECT in the Pub Lunch, she had over a dozen production companies call her in one week—that’s the power of a good premise. That’s what you want: a high concept so intriguing it has both editors and readers instantly wanting to know how it turns out.

Next time I’ll take a look at some examples of premises, and what we can learn from them.