An excerpt from Reals’ script review for Christopher McQuarrie’s early draft of The Wolverine which will be available 07/07/24:
What Worked
Some Good Description – Even though this is too long, I like what the writer is going for in the below example.
SCHICK – Three gleaming, ten-inch blades extend from between the knuckles on both hands. In another universe, this would be inexplicable. In the world of Logan, of Wolverine, this is a day at the office.
I would recommend breaking this up – something like:
SCHICK!
Three gleaming, ten-inch blades extend from between the knuckles on both hands.
Yes, you read that right – Metal. Fucking. Claws.
Strange for us, but for Logan?
This is just another day at the office.
Not saying the above is perfect, but do you see how much easier and quicker it is to read?
I also really liked this bit from Page 9:
SQUARE JAW
Last night a fella comes up to the North Barracks. On foot. No gear. No gun. Smoking a cigar, if you can imagine. Heard we had a rogue bear on our hands. Told the dispatcher it would take us weeks to find it. Said he could track it in a day. Dispatch asks him how he figures on finding a half-crazed man-eating bear in the high country all by himself. This character with the cigar says: ‘Cuz I understand it.’
And now the Mounties wonder if something worse than a man-eating bear could be out there.
Yes, the above is dialogue-heavy, but it sets up the character of Logan, and does it in a clever way. So, as with most screenwriting rules, there are exceptions. Basically, if you can write an engaging, clever monologue for a character that adds to the story and progresses the plot in some way, you’ll be forgiven a lot of screenwriting sins that would normally be applied to your work.
One last example, from Page 14:
Logan lunges, claws extending, slashing chains like ribbons, Shotguns rack and aim. He chooses to stop.
Lines of description like this are great – they get us inside the mind of the character and draw us into the situation without exactly cheating.
With this line, we learn that Logan could easily have taken all these men and broken himself out of prison, but he decided not to harm anyone.
Fighting Description – I liked this description of Shingen and Logan’s respective fighting styles:
Shingen is a master, fighting with dignity and honor.
Logan, on the other hand, kicks, slashes, brawls and cheats. Anything to win.
It was a nice way to characterize the two, and it was easy to imagine. This is a great way to describe a fight in your spec script, just enough to give the reader the sense of how the fight will play out on screen, without bogging them down in unnecessary chunks of description.
Dialogue – There are plenty of clever lines written here, and I’m sorry we didn’t get some of this included in a Wolverine movie somewhere.
For instance, as the rangers are looking at the remains of the bear that attacked Logan:
YOUNG MOUNTIE
One man did all this?
2ND MOUNTIE
Why’d he cut the tree in half?
3RD MOUNTIE
Why’d he cut the bear in half?
The Setting – I do like setting the story in Japan, and I like that both in this script, and in the final film, that Logan has a connection to the man who brings him to Japan.
In both the film and in this script, Logan had saved the man’s life during WWII and it is interesting to see it play out here in a different fashion than what we got in the final film.
Yukio – I liked Yukio a lot – even though she is very underutilized (both in the film and in this script). I think she could have been a fun counter to Logan’s gruff attitude, and the scene below is a great way to introduce this partnership:
LOGAN
‘The hell are you doing here?
YUKIO
I am your bodyguard.
LOGAN
My what?
YUKIO
Your bodyguard. Orders of Mr. Zen.
LOGAN
Go wait in the car.Yukio doesn’t move. Logan sighs.
The End – The ending of the film is a big CGI mess that is fine, I guess. However, it really lost me and is a disappointing conclusion to a really cool story.
Here, though, the ending is much more impactful and poignant – it stays true to the characters and follows them to a natural conclusion of their arcs. I liked it much better than what we ultimately got.
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