When reading a script, especially action and thriller scripts, I find myself having a really hard time getting past certain logic problems, plot holes, and improbabilities, often to the point where I wonder how in the hell the issue wasn't fixed before the script sold.
A FEW EXAMPLES (which I should preface with what should be pretty obvious--these are all impressive scripts, by extremely talented writers):
C.O.D.--A mail bomb is set off in a NYC office building which results in what the script calls a "massive EXPLOSION", an explosion which shakes the ground below, spews fire, sends glass and debris raining down everywhere, and sets off a quasi-9/11-type panic. And yet the floor of the office building where the bomb went off is still there, investigators are able to go up there just fine to look around, and the secretary in that office is still alive to talk about it. What?
BROKEN CITY--The mayor of NYC in this script is running for what seems to be his 4th term which, Bloomberg's potential circumventing of term limit laws notwithstanding, doesn't make sense in the modern age. (At the very least it begs some explanation, which isn't there.) Also, a key to the plot involves the mayor secretly making hundreds of millions of dollars on a business deal while in office. Is the script asking us to believe he's going to be able to come into a few hundred million when he leaves office and NOT be the target of countless investigations? Or does the mayor just want to accumulate the money in an offshore account and basically never touch it?
MOTORCADE--The key to the bad guys' plan is setting off a bomb underground in the city's gas/sewer tunnels, below where the President is. Which is a little strange in a script that takes such pains to realistically capture Secret Service planning and protection, because even I as a layperson know that as part of their prep work the real Secret Service...wait for it...always checks out everything underground. THOROUGHLY.
DUBAI--The main character of this script was so over-the-top well-rounded and great that I found it laughable (Economics Ph.D.? Check! NCAA Wrestling champ? Check! "Humble-as-hell"? Check! A tennis-playing farm-girl wife who's "sexier than Sharapova"? Check!), and the logic of the main conspiracy seems REALLY shaky. But my favorite part is how the wife gets away from her captors. It has to be read to be believed.
ARMORED--This script lost me on page 17 or 18 when, after considering it for a weekend, Ty agrees to be a part of the armored car heist taking place that day. There are two options here, neither of which is good: Option #1: Our main character is a certifiable idiot for not spending hours and hours with the others going over all the specifics of their fake heist story, getting it straight and in sync for when they are interrogated endlessly by the cops and the insurance company. Option #2: The writer doesn't want us to think Ty is an idiot, meaning the writer hasn't given due diligence to the logic of the heist plan in general.
FLIGHTPLAN--All of it, really...
It's important to keep in mind, of course, that a problem or hole or improbability to one reader is not necessarily going to be so for another reader. I get that. Maybe I'm too anal and nit-picky. (That sounds gross, sorry.) But good lord, some scripts like those above just LOSE me at certain points, and it makes me wonder whether I shouldn't be more lenient with myself and the logic and plot in my own writing. In other words, maybe I shouldn't sacrifice what could be good moments or plot turns just because they might not seem entirely plausible, because based on some of the scripts above plausibility and logic sure seem to be extremely relative.
Thoughts?
A FEW EXAMPLES (which I should preface with what should be pretty obvious--these are all impressive scripts, by extremely talented writers):
C.O.D.--A mail bomb is set off in a NYC office building which results in what the script calls a "massive EXPLOSION", an explosion which shakes the ground below, spews fire, sends glass and debris raining down everywhere, and sets off a quasi-9/11-type panic. And yet the floor of the office building where the bomb went off is still there, investigators are able to go up there just fine to look around, and the secretary in that office is still alive to talk about it. What?
BROKEN CITY--The mayor of NYC in this script is running for what seems to be his 4th term which, Bloomberg's potential circumventing of term limit laws notwithstanding, doesn't make sense in the modern age. (At the very least it begs some explanation, which isn't there.) Also, a key to the plot involves the mayor secretly making hundreds of millions of dollars on a business deal while in office. Is the script asking us to believe he's going to be able to come into a few hundred million when he leaves office and NOT be the target of countless investigations? Or does the mayor just want to accumulate the money in an offshore account and basically never touch it?
MOTORCADE--The key to the bad guys' plan is setting off a bomb underground in the city's gas/sewer tunnels, below where the President is. Which is a little strange in a script that takes such pains to realistically capture Secret Service planning and protection, because even I as a layperson know that as part of their prep work the real Secret Service...wait for it...always checks out everything underground. THOROUGHLY.
DUBAI--The main character of this script was so over-the-top well-rounded and great that I found it laughable (Economics Ph.D.? Check! NCAA Wrestling champ? Check! "Humble-as-hell"? Check! A tennis-playing farm-girl wife who's "sexier than Sharapova"? Check!), and the logic of the main conspiracy seems REALLY shaky. But my favorite part is how the wife gets away from her captors. It has to be read to be believed.
ARMORED--This script lost me on page 17 or 18 when, after considering it for a weekend, Ty agrees to be a part of the armored car heist taking place that day. There are two options here, neither of which is good: Option #1: Our main character is a certifiable idiot for not spending hours and hours with the others going over all the specifics of their fake heist story, getting it straight and in sync for when they are interrogated endlessly by the cops and the insurance company. Option #2: The writer doesn't want us to think Ty is an idiot, meaning the writer hasn't given due diligence to the logic of the heist plan in general.
FLIGHTPLAN--All of it, really...
It's important to keep in mind, of course, that a problem or hole or improbability to one reader is not necessarily going to be so for another reader. I get that. Maybe I'm too anal and nit-picky. (That sounds gross, sorry.) But good lord, some scripts like those above just LOSE me at certain points, and it makes me wonder whether I shouldn't be more lenient with myself and the logic and plot in my own writing. In other words, maybe I shouldn't sacrifice what could be good moments or plot turns just because they might not seem entirely plausible, because based on some of the scripts above plausibility and logic sure seem to be extremely relative.
Thoughts?
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