August 5, 2021

Yesterday, you said you'd call Sears. 

I met with the director about my script, yesterday. (I signed a shopping agreement contract with the producer on Monday.) He basically wants me to rewrite the whole thing. Nearly the whole thing. He wants me to turn it back into a mystery and add set pieces, deepen the characters. It's writing for free, which is not good (although I get to keep everything). But I'm interested in these changes, and I'm also looking at it like maybe this will help me improve as a writer. It's the kind of notes that are more about actually making a movie and not just a script, which is something I'd like to do. Write with clearer eyes about what these things are actually supposed to become. 

I'm fighting a rising panic about how much work it might be. I've got an outline to turn around in a week. (I need to finish the second draft of my current script by the end of this week.) Luckily, the characters are all in place. And also luckily, I work part time. And luckily, I've been cruising on writing for a few months now. 

Mlog Time

BLACK WIDOW

2021

Directed by: Cate Shortland

Written by: Eric Pearson

Watched: 7/31/21

Black Widow, Natasha, is on the run and goes to Norway to lay low. Her sister – but not her real sister, her pretend sister when they were living as spies in Ohio for three years as kids – is still under the thumb of the Red Room. She and the other black widows are doing stuff when the sister, Yelena, gets shot in the face with this red mist that undoes her mind control. Yelena sends the other vials of red mist to Natasha. Natasha, not knowing what the vials are, gets attacked by this scary big masked dude. Natasha and Yelena meet up. Y’s upset that Natasha never came back for her, never tried to free her. Together they have to work to stop the red room and free the other widows who are under the mind control. The women free their “father,” the Red Guardian, from prison and go to see their “mother,” the scientist who engineered the mind control drugs in the first place. The mother alerts the red room, but admits to it before they arrive. The family gets taken to the red room and uses their wiles, fighting skills, and technology to take the whole thing down. In the end, the police or whoever pick up Natasha, but the others get away. The post-credit sequence is Yelena visiting Natasha’s grave. 

There were some good parts to this. The beginning, with the backstories, was pretty great. They make Natasha a true tomboy as a kid, which I really liked. When Natasha and Yelena meet as adults, they have this huge physical fight because they don’t trust each other. I liked that a lot because the whole time I was like Nooooo. Don’t hurt each other! They also show that Natasha has a ton of nasty bruises on her back, which I also appreciated. These fights cost something. There’s also a set piece where the mother is demonstrating the mind control – she makes her pig stop breathing. She holds it for so long the pig almost dies. I don’t like animals getting hurt, but I thought it was a tense and potent way of getting the point across. 

A lot of things I didn’t like though. Rachel Weisz and David Harbour played the parents, and they were both really really silly, especially when speaking in Russian accents. It sort of came across like, Aren’t Russian accents silly?? I love those actors, but just hire some fucking Russians, please? They can still act silly, but it would be a lot funnier I think, because actors being silly Russian when they’re supposed to be actually Russian is weird. Also, Black Widow comes across as fairly sanctimonious in this movie, and that’s something that nobody takes the piss out of. I feel like in Captain America movies, he’s sanctimonious but it is poked at a little. This movie takes her righteousness 100% seriously, and yet in so many action scenes, innocent bystanders are killed, and Black Widow isn’t phased at all. The MCU seems to think that some people matter a lot (i.e. the Avengers) and other people don’t matter at all (regular people) unless all of the regular people and the Earth will be destroyed. But even that feels like just an excuse to go smashy smashy and write off the deaths of some regular people as necessary. I’m not a fan.  

Rating: ★★