Day 23

Why 'The Dark Knight Rises' wasn’t as good as 'The Dark Knight'.

Now, I don’t want anyone to assume I didn’t like The Dark Knight Rises. I really enjoyed it. Like many people, I just had extremely high expectations after The Dark Knight. This article is merely a suggestion as to why such an excellent film left many people slightly disappointed.

TOO MANY CHARACTERS: Christopher Nolan prides himself on his ability to manage a large cast of complex characters, with conflicting goals and desires. However, in The Dark Knight Rises, many of the supporting characters contribute nothing to the plot. In a 164 page script, the first things to loose are the insignificant characters. A substantial portion of the film’s running time was dedicated to John Blake, who was extremely likeable, yet insignificant to the story. He only seemed to exist for that final twist. NOTE: A twist should not function to make an uninteresting character more interesting with hindsight. The most complex, interesting, engaging and charismatic character in TDKR was Catwoman, yet the story would remain essentially the same if she was removed. Like John Blake, she contributes nothing towards the plot.

COMMISSIONER GORDON SPENT HALF THE FILM IN BED: Gary Oldman is a phenomenal actor, but in The Dark Knight Rises he is severely underused. Commissioner Gordon was arguably the best character in The Dark Knight, yet, in TDKR, he spends months in a hospital bed, while Bruce Wayne recovers from a broken back in weeks.

THE TIME SCALE WAS TOO LONG: After Bane activated the nuclear bomb, he ordered Gotham to restructure society without law. The problem was, nobody was aware that they only have five months before the bomb killed them anyway. Bruce Wayne was the only character aware of Bane’s plan, so he was the only character with any sense of urgency, yet Nolan dedicated a large portion of running time to Commissioner Gordon, John Blake, Lucius Fox and Catwoman, who were all trapped within Gotham, even though their actions had no influence on the plot. In The Dark Knight, The Joker threatened to blow up a hospital unless someone killed Coleman Reese, forcing Commissioner Gordon and Batman into action. The Joker’s threats created a sense of urgency that forced the characters into action, whereas, in The Dark Knight Rises, the characters had nearly five months before a sense of urgency was even established.

BANE WAS NOT AS GOOD AS THE JOKER: I’m sad to say it, but it’s true. As much as I admire Tom Hardy, Bane failed to meet my expectations established by one of the best villains in cinematic history. If a psychopathic villain acts without a goal, then the audience will feel cheated and manipulated when he acts unexpectedly. This is the reason why Bane was a less compelling villain than The Joker. The Joker had his own warped sense of morality. He would do whatever it took to prove that humanity is inherently bad. He followed his own set of rules. Bane, however, acted like a tsunami; causing destructing, then sitting back to admire the carnage. He wanted to torture humanity by giving them a false sense of hope, before destroying them anyway. As soon as he activates the nuclear bomb, he becomes an inactive villain, watching society deteriorate around him. NOTE: An inactive villain is an uninteresting villain.

Page Count: 25

Day 4

Goals. Stakes. Urgency.

Those are the three elements that script reader, Carson Reeves, highlights as the foundations of a good screenplay. His blog has provided me constant source of screenwriting advice since I stumbled across it in 2009. In fact, it was probably the reason I started taking screenwriting seriously. I cannot recommend it enough. It is a must-read for any aspiring screenwriter.

Goal - "The character goal is the heart of your story. A character must be going after something or else that character is doing nothing."

Stakes - "Once you have a character goal, you can establish your stakes. You do this by asking two very simple questions: "What does my character gain if he achieves his goal?" And "What does my character lose if he fails to achieve his goal?" The bigger the gains and losses, the higher the stakes."

Urgency - "One of the biggest problems I see in amateur screenplays is glacial pacing. The writers don't understand how to infuse urgency into their story. The most common way to do this is via a ticking time bomb, that point of no return by when your character needs to achieve his goal. You can throw ticking time bombs all over your screenplay so that the pace is always quick."

Here's a link to Carson's post about GSU.

Another quick tip: kill your babies.

"If something isn't working, if you have a story that you've built and it’s blocked and you can’t figure it out, take your favourite scene, or your very best idea or set-piece, and cut it. It’s brutal, but sometimes inevitable. That thing may find its way back in, but cutting it is usually an enormously freeing exercise." Joss Whedon

Yesterday, I removed three scenes and two characters. It was difficult, but it worked.

Page Count: 6