Tag: Screenplay

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Bond in a Bind

NB: This entry explores plot points from the end of the James Bond film No Time to Die. If you'd rather not know, it's best to skip this entry.

As authors, I’m sure we’ve all written ourselves into a corner at some point.

I faced this problem a few years ago after I published what was intended be a one-part story on a writers’ website. There was an enthusiastic reaction from readers, so I felt compelled to write more chapters, but the characters were all scheduled to leave school and I couldn’t realistically take them all to the same college.

Fortunately, it was an ensemble cast, allowing me to pick a few main characters and introduce others, and the story went on to comprise 25 chapters altogether.

But what if you know millions of people are waiting for you to solve a plot problem? It’s been reported over the last few weeks that the writers of the James Bond franchise have a hit just such a stumbling block.

In all the stories from Dr. No to Spectre, our hero has been forced into some difficult corners, then has ultimately escaped in one piece. But at the end of No Time to Die from 2021, Bond is killed in a missile strike, so the question is how to bring his character into a new screenplay.

If there had been any ambiguity surrounding his death, this problem might already be solved, fudged, or even circumvented altogether. Fans, by contrast, clearly saw what happened in that film and won’t accept being told otherwise.

It’s worth noting here that most of the Bond films from the last 60 years were made by Eon Productions Limited before creative control passed to Amazon MGM Studios in February 2025. I’m conjecturing, but perhaps the former owners knew a sale was in the pipeline and deliberately deployed the fatal storyline with the intention of delaying or stopping future development. This would effectively end the James Bond series on a natural break.

And yet there’s a definite thirst from filmgoers to keep the franchise alive. While it might be difficult to see a way forward at the moment, there are a few options the new writers might consider. Here are a few, starting with the one I believe is least likely.

Write off the previous film as a dream

Because it’s been discussed and parodied so much, it’s not a spoiler to mention that in 1986, the 10th season of Dallas effectively wrote off the ninth season as a dream. While that show was a little over-the-top, as is the Bond franchise in its own way, I’m confident the new writers won’t lower themselves to this ridiculous premise.

Ignore the plot point

Many sitcoms and dramas reset the story each episode, knowing that TV channels sometimes air them out of order. There may be plot points that develop over the season, but these are unlikely to be necessary for understanding the plot of individual episodes.

The key here is that each new conflict tends to be resolved by the time the final credits roll, leaving the characters are in much the same position as where they started.

As such, the death of a main character may be too large of an issue to ignore, so I find it unlikely this will be the approach taken.

Reboot the series

Over the last two to three decades, there has been a trend to give series a reboot, borrowing a term from computing jargon.

We know another actor – yet to be announced – will take over from Daniel Craig. Also, rebooting isn’t unknown to the Bond franchise, with GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006) forming fresh starts.

Perhaps this is the perfect time for a third such reboot, ushering in a much younger main character and having him go through the process of learning the ropes.

Show the succession of the identity

Since Bond works for MI6, audiences expect secrets to surface. To my mind, writers can use that to their advantage.

Supposing the code ‘007’ and the name ‘James Bond’ aren’t personal identities at all, but titles passed to each new agent. When one agent is lost, another steps into the role. The concept could easily conveyed through dialogue in an early scene. Besides, fans are already used to actors changing over time, so this wouldn’t feel too jarring.

In my view, the final resolution will be along these lines, while keeping within the established universe and canon.

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When You Simply Can’t Enjoy It

Some advance warning that this entry is likely to give away major plot points for the film All of Us Strangers and the Michael Palin TV series Around the World in 80 Days.

A couple of weeks ago, my pal wanted to see All of Us Strangers at the cinema. I looked at the blurb on the website and it didn’t appeal to me, but I said I would take a chance on it. I’m rarely disappointed by a film, so the odds were in my favour.

I can’t fault the cinematography nor the soundtrack, but there were parts of the plot that didn’t make much sense to me.

Let’s start with the times Adam jumps on the train to see his parents. What is he actually doing while hallucinating? It’s revealed he can’t actually access the house, so is he sitting in the garden? And if so, why did nobody call the police on him?

The ending includes a twist where we also find out Harry has been dead all along. Yet if they’ve only met once, why did Adam think it was all right just to let himself into Harry’s flat. And when he discovered Harry was dead, why leave him there without reporting the incident?

While acknowledging I’m in the minority, I think the four- and five-star reviews are way off the mark here.

This brings me to the second production: Around the World in 80 Days, originally broadcast by the BBC in 1989. In this challenge, Michael Palin attempts to follow the steps of Phileas Fogg in the book of the same name. As the source novel was published before the advent of powered flight, he wasn’t allowed to use aircraft.

I was quite young when this was first shown – I might even have watched a repeat – but I do remember enjoying the sight of all the different lands he visited, plus a scene in the final episode where a vendor wouldn’t sell him a newspaper because he didn’t want to be filmed. As such, I recently took the notion to watch the first episode and see how it actually compared to my memory.

I lasted until halfway through it before switching off. While acknowledging the programme was supposed to be aspirational, I felt as though I was watching a posh boys’ club rather than a travelogue, as he dined with his fellow Monty Python members before leaving and then in the first-class area of the Orient Express.

The final straw came when the train stopped in Italy because of a rail strike so a replacement bus service was arranged for the next leg, and Palin threw down his magazine in disgust.

Perhaps this is merely the set-up for a redemption arc to be explored in later episodes, and I am willing to give the rest of the series a shot in the near future. At the moment, though, I agree with Alan Whicker’s terse assessment that the programme was a ‘seven-hour ego trip.’

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Writing Yourself Out of a Corner

If you were a fan of Friends back in 1998, you’ll remember the hype and speculation around what would happen during Ross and Emily’s wedding.

Coming at the end of Season 4, this had to be a climactic scene. These days, it’s hardly a spoiler to mention that Ross accidentally says Rachel’s name, which feeds into the entirety of Season 5. However, I’ve only learnt in the last week that the writers struggled to think of a proper ending until the actor who played Ross – David Schwimmer – accidentally switched the names during another scene.

This serves as a good example of how even professional writers are rarely bestowed with fully-formed ideas. A story often needs to be written out and figured out along the way, and that process can take years.

Larry Cohen pitched the idea for the film Phone Booth to Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s, but neither of them could think of a reason to keep the main character in the booth. By the late 1990s, the public was becoming increasingly vigilant to the threat of terrorism, and Cohen played into that as he realised a sniper with a weapon could be a good reason. It was even a plot point that the main character was one of the few people still using a payphone by that point.

I even have a few examples of my own. One particular example was a three-line fragment of poetry I wrote at school before I ever routinely wrote poetry. In 2013, more than ten years after I left school, I finally found a way to work it into a fuller piece. It gained a sequel in 2018, taking a very different tone from the original, chiefly in recognition of how I’d changed in those five years.

But even professional writers miss the mark sometimes. The final episode of The Prisoner was broadcast in 1968. Although its writer Patrick McGoohan was pleased with the result, he was under pressure to deliver it quickly and many viewers were unhappy that it raised more questions than it answered.

And we must mention the ninth season of Dallas, which was entirely written off as a dream to bring back the character of Bobby Ewing.

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Converting Formats

Of all the factors plaguing Dungeons & Dragons players, arranging a convenient time for everyone to gather is probably the most difficult. This meant my group ended up seeing the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves at different times in different cinemas.

Making this film was a real gamble. Not only is it taking a largely open-world game and telling a linear story, but it also sits in the shadow of the last Dungeons & Dragons film made 23 years ago. That one has a score of just 3.6 on IMDB compared to 7.9 for the current one, and Ginny D from Critical Role has analysed what makes it so terrible.

Computer games in particular have a track record of being made into badly-received films, and there are plenty of top-ten lists online purporting to show the worst. Conversely, there is also a history of movies being made into great games. More than 25 years after its release, for example, GoldenEye 007 for the N64 is still highly regarded.

For me and two of my group, though, the gamble seems to have paid off, with all of us enjoying what Chris Pine and the cast brought to the table. It’s also no secret that a solid structure plays a large part in the success of any motion picture. In a blog post, the writer Michael Hague explains the key turning points of most major scripts, and the writers nailed this one near-perfectly.

With all this in mind, it remains to be seen how The Super Mario Bros. Movie fares at the box office this weekend.

T

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Gaining Traction

When the independent film Donnie Darko was released in 2001, it recouped less than an eighth of its $4.5 million budget at the box office.

Looking back, it’s not hard to see why. The film centres around a jet engine falling off an aircraft, and the picture was released a month-and-a-half after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Yet, when it was released on DVD, it began to develop a cult following despite flopping at the cinema and despite the format still being in the early-adopter stage. To date, the film has recouped all its costs, plus about half as much again.

It should have been the case that Donnie Darko was forgotten about. Just like those comedies that never make it past series 2, or the countless Top-10 singles heard everywhere for six weeks then never played again.

But there are other examples of where entertainment has taken a while to gain traction.

A recent example is the BBC drama series Line of Duty, with the first episodes broadcast in 2012 to a reasonable 3.8 million people, but seven years later, that figure has more than tripled. The audience of Love Island also turned an audience of barely 600,000 into nearly ten times that figure between 2015 and 2019.

Of course there isn’t a formula for this, or the examples quoted above wouldn’t be such rarities, but there is good advice. A phrase often attributed to PT Barnum is, ‘Always leave the crowd wanting more.’ It’s advice that often works.

Indeed, in a case of art imitating life, The Greatest Showman – based upon his life story – never rose higher than fourth place in the chart, but had a cinema run spanning several months.

Just don’t leave the crowd wanting too much without delivering it. Fans of the sci-fi TV show Firefly were left hanging when original run was abruptly cancelled after its debut in 2002. It took until 2005 to complete the narrative.

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Using Retrospective Continuity

This blog does not normally include spoilers. However, don’t read this if you intend to watch Dallas (seasons 9 and 10), Star Wars (1977), and/or Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016).

Last week, we touched upon the concept of retrospective continuity, where facts established in the plot of a fictional work are adjusted, ignored or contradicted by what comes later.

The term only appeared in the 1970s, and its common abbreviation ‘retcon’ is only 30 years old. Yet the actual device has been used for as long as there have been stories. Arthur Conan Doyle used it with Sherlock Holmes, as have major publishers like DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

In my experience, retconning works best when the change in question:

  • is small rather than sweeping
  • adds to existing canon rather than negates it

Let’s look at when it was done well in mainstream culture, and when it was handled badly.

Season 9 of Dallas was broadcast in 1986, and a major plot point was the aftermath of the death of Bobby Ewing, who had been killed by a car. At the end of the season, however, he appeared again, and the entire season was written off as the vivid dream of Pam Ewing.

This instance was a big change rather than a small one, and took away existing canon instead of adding to it, so many viewers were unhappy with how it was handled. That said, the show continued until 1991.

Now let’s look at Star Wars, the original from 1977. It had been a point of contention among fans that the Death Star had a weak point, namely an exhaust port, that could destroy the whole behemoth.

In Rogue One, however, that weakness is revealed to have been deliberately placed by Galen Erso, so anyone who knew about it could easily destroy the behemoth. Vulture.com explains it in much more detail than I do. Here, it was a lelatively small detail that became important later in the story, and it added to what was shown in Star Wars rather than negating it.

Unlike the Dallas retconning, this move went down well with fans, even impressing the folks at ScreenRant.

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The Thrice-Over Movie Club

At the end of last week’s entry, I mentioned I’d watched the Fifty Shades of Grey screenplay from 2015. I enjoyed it marginally better than the book, but I would not seek out either the novel or the film again.

Some people find enjoyment in reading the same novel multiple times over several years, or watching the same film on a regular basis. I know of one colleague who revisits The Wasp Factory annually, and another who views Casablanca every month.

By contrast, I’m not normally inclined to go back to a book or a screenplay, even if I’ve enjoyed it. I can think of only two novels I’ve read more than once: Starter for Ten by David Nicholls, and the Chris Brookmyre book All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye. I’m not even certain I finished the second of these for a second time.

Yet on the film front, there are more contenders, and some belong to an elite called the Thrice-Over Movie Club. It’s also great to air the word ‘thrice’ from time to time.

Inductees of the Club include It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Home Alone (1990), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Being John Malkovich (1999), The Matrix (1999), The Phantom Menace (1999) and most recently The Greatest Showman (2017).

So what is it about these particular films that make them stand up to repeated viewings? The short answer is that I have no idea, and I’ve redrafted this entry several times trying to find a common thread. Even the three released in the 1999 have little in common with each other:

  • With Home Alone and The Matrix, it’s because I’ve owned the video or DVD.
  • It’s a Wonderful Life has become a Christmas staple and is frequently shown around that time.
  • I’ve seen Being John Malkovich mainly by introducing it to others.

And I first saw The Phantom Menace at the cinema when I was about 15. It was with a girl I was trying to impress, and it turns out that’s the very much the wrong film to do it with.

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Improvisation and Motivation

Over the weekend, I had my first experience of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). If you’re unfamiliar with this, here’s a brief introduction.

I enjoyed my experience because players are allowed to improvise parts of the storyline beyond how the Dungeon Master has described the scene. For example, my character had a vivid dream as part of the story, but I could interpret the images any way I wanted, and that interpretation would contribute to the direction of the story.

The experience reminded me of an exercise from drama class in high school. Each participant was given an outline of a setting, plus an individual motivation kept secret from the others until we revealed it through improv.

This produced natural-sounding dialogue, even from school pupils without an acting background. Similar methods are used by some reality TV shows, such as The Only Way Is Essex, to avoid the action sounding too scripted.

The same principle can be adapted for scripted drama. Aaron Sorkin takes the approach of working out what each character wants, then writing the scene accordingly. In this way, he’s produced The West Wing and The Social Network, among many other screenplays.

Over the coming months, I’ll be taking part in more D&D sessions. I think the key to making a more interesting campaign is to work out what exactly my character wants and bringing it to the surface when interacting with the other players.

I believe improv keeps me sharp, and roleplaying seems to be a great way to exercise that metaphorical muscle.

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When It Sounds Terrible on Paper

I’m a member of the Poetizer app, where members can post their poetry for others to read. I use it only to post my own work and read what my comrades have written., but some people explicitly state in their profiles that they welcome feedback on their work,

One profile contains the following:

Currently working on changing every chapter of the Book Thief into separate found poems. I would love feedback and constructive criticism!!

My first reaction to this was No, please don’t, that’s a terrible idea, although I didn’t reply to the person.

Thinking about it, however, I realise I don’t know exactly how the poet intends to execute the project, and it might work well once it’s done. Look at the success of the 50 Shades of Grey series, which started out as Twilight fanfiction.

A few years ago, I wrote a poem called Sir Madam, featuring a character who identifies as neither female or male. I was already uncertain about whether I’d hit the right tone or conveyed the right message. Before its debut, I summarised it to a friend, who reinforced my doubts and added Check your privilege.

I performed the poem anyway at a showcase event. But I included an introduction by way of mitigation; this went on longer than the piece. I needn’t have worried; Sir Madam was rather well-received, and was the one that people remembered when they saw me next.

When a plot is reduced to nothing more than a summary, the nuances are lost and the emotion can be sucked out of it. We always hear stories about authors who had novels rejected multiple times, but it’s likely this was also a judgement on the synopsis, not just the sample chapters that agents often request

With this is mind, I plan to keep an eye on Poetizer, and find out how well – or badly – The Book Thief lends itself to poetry.

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The Secret Superpower

One of my favourite films is The Invention of Lying, starring Ricky Gervais. This is set in a parallel world where people can only tell the truth, so there’s no acting, no diplomacy and no religion. However, the main character unknowingly develops the ability to tell a lie. As a result, everyone else believes everything he says, no matter how outlandish.

It’s largely the opposite of Jim Carrey’s role in Liar, Liar, who develops the inability to tell a lie for 24 hours, making it difficult to continue his job as lawyer.

In both cases, there is a unique element about one person in the narrative universe that conflicts with the secondary characters who can’t understand what’s going on.

However, the concept needs to be done carefully so the audience can keep track of what’s going on. In The Invention of Lying, the rules of the world are explained as a voiceover at the very beginning. In Liar, Liar, the character is shown holding a blue pen while unsuccessfully trying to say it’s a different colour.

This type of secret superpower is one I’ve explored in my own novel-writing. Here, my main character can compel others to say something or to make a simple movement. He’s not the only one with the ability, but he belongs to a select band of people who do, still allowing that conflict with the rest of the world.