Script Review! (SPOILERS) Options

[Mel]

The boys at Latino Review got their hands on a copy of the Doomsday script and and wrote up a review. WARNING: SPOILERS!

Exclusive: Doomsday Script Review
Date: August 21, 2007

By: El Mayimbe
Source: CAXE

EL MAYIMBE AQUI!

The fiercest gatekeepers in all Hollywood are the STUDIO READERS. No script gets through to an agent, producer, or studio without going through these guys first. It’s a thankless job but a necessary evil. With the number of scripts submitted to Hollywood in a given time, the coverage of scripts usually makes or breaks a writer’s career. If the coverage is good, the script gets to the next level wherever that may be. Studio readers are trained pros who either become writers in their own right or story editors. They know what to look for in a script and how to critique it.

For all you aspiring writers out there, win over the studio reader – you win over the town. We got one such professional reader – CAXE - to give us a PROFESSIONAL OPINION and tell us what he thinks about Neil Marhsall’s DOOMSDAY! I am really excited to see this film. Have you seen the artwork online and what they gave out at Comicon?! It looks really good. I can’t wait to see the finished film. Check it out at www.doomsdayiscoming.com In the meantime, let’s see what CAXE had to say about the script…

We open in present day Glasgow, Scotland. Everyone is wearing their kilts and eating their haggis in peace when suddenly this rather nasty disease called “THE REAPER VIRUS” strikes. We focus on a kid in a club named BRADLEY who starts spewing blood out of every orifice on his body until his lungs liquefy and he explodes (okay maybe not the last part, but that would be cool, no?).

A series of ominous voice overs alerts us that within a week, the virus has killed thousands, Scotland has the shit quarantined out of it, and, despite being told to remain calm, people go crazy and try to escape.

We next travel to the now heavily guarded and tightly secured border between Scotland and England where we meet KATHARINE SINCLAIR, a young mother trying to get her daughter, EDEN, out of the country. At the roadblock, chaos breaks out and Eden gets some glass in the EYE.

After bandaging her daughter’s face, Katharine spies a military chopper and pleads for rescue. The SARGEANT in charge, NELSON, says they’re too full, but when a soldier volunteers to get off, they allow Eden on board. Before they take off, Katharine hands her daughter her driver’s license, a sole reminder of where she came from.

The helicopter takes off as concrete is poured behind the only gate between Scotland and England – a hint that this border is permanently closed.

The voice over proceeds to describe the newly built border wall: a massive eighty-mile structure with barbed wire and automatic guns that kill anything near it. Escape is impossible, and those in the quarantine zone are left to die.

Flash forward thirty years to 2037. London, a dystopia at its finest: overpopulated, high crime-rate, and a police-state backed curfew system. We focus on a drug den where a group of DEALERS, led by PINSTRIPE, put together their stock and watch a holographic 3-D movie. In the hallway outside the apartment, a WHITE SPHERE rolls into view – it’s AN EYE.

It belongs to EDEN SINCLAIR, now a badass, thirty-something, one-eyed member of the Department of Domestic Security military police, who uses the eye, dubbed her “EYE POD” (GROAN) to scan the area.

After seeing it’s clear, Sinclair and her partner, MICHAELSON, burst in and have a big shootout while the 3-D movie is playing, causing all sorts of confusion. Eventually they kill all the dealers and capture PINSTRIPE, who laughs since he knows he’ll get off with the crappy legal system they have. Sinclair ponders killing him there but Michaelson insists he’ll get what’s coming to him.

As they leave, a THUG WITH A SHOTGUN ambushes them and blows Michaelson’s head off. Sinclair kills the thug and chases down Pinstripe, opting to kill him when he surrenders.

At the clean up, we see NELSON, the guy from the chopper, now a COMMANDER and Sinclair’s boss. As Nelson talks to Sinclair about what happened, Sinclair offers him her “EYE-POD” (GROAN) to see for himself, as she recorded the entire incident. They both lament how the system is corrupt and Sinclair mentions she’d be happy to burn the system to the ground.

Later, at a hospital, a VAGRANT GIRL comes in and bleeds everywhere. After she dies, a load of military police check out her place of residence - and find dozens of rotting, infected corpses.

At White Hall, the PRIME MINISTER, JOHN HATCHER, is being briefed by his NATIONAL SECUITY ADVISOR, MICHAEL CANARIS when Canaris informs him that THE REAPER VIRUS IS BACK. At a big meeting that includes everyone important, HATCHER is told the only reasonable course of action is to lock everyone inside the city. Despite not liking the plan, HATCHER agrees to it, but only after he is promised 48 hours to try a plan of his own: finding a cure.

After the meeting, Hatcher calls Nelson into his office where he and Canaris inform him that three years ago, survivors showed up in satellite images of the city of Glasgow. Nelson is then given the task of putting together a team that has 48 hours to find these survivors, and the cure.

Despite Nelson’s warnings, Sinclair volunteers to go. They both agree they’re pissed about the truth about the survivors being concealed. Sinclair again says she’d love to burn the system to the ground by exposing the truth. Nelson admits that Canaris, the one he believes is pulling the strings, wouldn’t allow that to happen. The two say their goodbyes and Nelson tells Sinclair to come back alive.

On the way to the wall, Canaris briefs Sinclair on the details of the mission: they are to locate DR. MARCUS KANE, a Scottish researcher who was close to finding the cure, only to be locked in the quarantine area.

Sinclair arrives at the wall and meets her team: SARGEANT MCNAUGHTON, a tough as nails trooper, CHANDLER, an engineer and armored tank driver, READ, a female mechanic, CARPETNER and MILLER, riflemen, and STIRLING and TALBOT, two civilian scientists.

After the crew becomes acquainted and loads up, the concrete behind the gate is removed and very slowly, the doors open up into blackness. With the headlights of the two military vehicles piercing the darkness, the team takes off into the Scottish night, unsure what lay ahead.

At this point, I was uncertain what lay ahead, but I was damned excited to find out. Was it zombies? Aliens? Pirates? I honestly can’t say I was expecting spiky-haired biker gangs straight out of The Warriors or Mad Max. Oh, and also some knights and archers, straight out of your local Renaissance Faire.

The first time I read this, I was forgiving of some of the less believable elements of the plot and the shitty dialogue because the action scenes were pretty damn cool. A shoot out during a 3-D movie shoot out? A gang of bikers ambushing our military heroes? Sinclair in an arena fighting gladiators? Three climatic chase scenes? All of them were kick ass.

But reading it again, I realized that there are certain things that kind of pissed me off. The “Eye-Pod???” What the hell? Every time I read that, I groaned out loud. The device itself is kind of a clever idea, but that damn name is so cheesy and unnecessary, it just made me angry. The ending kind of annoyed me too. I won’t spoil it, but it ends rather abruptly, also with a somewhat hokey off-into-the-sunset feel. One thing I liked about the script was that Marshall made it clear that anything could happen to anyone at any time. This kind of uncompromising take on things led me to believe it would end on an awesome note, but no, not so much.

Now I like Neil Marshall. From what I’ve read, he’s a pretty cool guy, and I never saw Combat or Dog Soldiers, but I really liked The Descent. I thought it was a unique take on a classic people versus monsters story and I liked how Marshall incorporated elements from different films and genres. Doomsday definitely has the sense of being a patchwork quilt of different films. In an interview about the film, Marshall said that it borrows pretty heavily from The Warriors and Escape from New York and I definitely agree. I also think it treads some of the same ground as the 28 Days/Weeks series, Planet Terror, Cabin Fever, Mad Max, Timeline, Gladiator, any film about a dystopian future society’s police state, and even The Village.

I have nothing against merging genres or creating a pastiche, but the way Marshall has linked things together seems a little clunky. On paper, I don’t really understand how a society that survives a horrible disease can devolve into a giant cannibalistic biker gang or even an armor-wearing, Malcolm McDowell-led, medieval style society that solves conflict through gladiatorial combat. This is not to say that it won’t be cool to watch, so long as the visual elements of Doomsday are made unique and distinct enough from the slew of films and genres from which it so heavily borrows.

Marshall was able to do this in The Descent, and based on the concept art I’ve seen, it looks like he’ll be able to do it again – this has definite potential. I honestly hope he polishes up some of that dialogue, removes the fucking “EYE-POD” name entirely, fixes that damn ending, and makes the action sequences as much fun to watch as they were to read. If he does, then it’ll be entertaining – not an award winner or a critical darling, but entertaining none-the-less. If he doesn’t, then I think I’d rather take my chances locked in a post-apocalyptic Glasgow then sit through it.

B-

There ya have it.

HASTA EL PROXIMO CAPITULO…

[POTHOS]

BBC2 just ran an interesting piece on British horror movies and ended with a tiny interview from Neil Marshall which also contained a couple of clips from his two hit movies (Dog Soldiers and The Descent) and even though I am usually pretty OK with many of the classic horror genre I have to admit that I seriously might not be able to stomach this entire movie.

I am now convinced I could pass out watching Doomsday.


All advice welcome

Yours feeling a complete wuss

Jude

[cookie]

After reading this review I am even more inclined to see this film. I do like a horror film with blood and guts every now and again! Although anything to do with injury to the eyes grosses me out , I might have to shield my eyes for that scene.