Great Movie Writing

[Mojochi]

One of my favorite written concepts from a movie is in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Will Munny builds a future for his children on money that cost the life of the only remaining friend of his past, & that the kid will end up spending the money for spectacles, so he can finally have 20/20 vision. He'll spend every day of his life that he wears those glasses reflecting on the fact that he only has the ability to see properly, because two men paid for it with their lives. A chilling thought that. I could imagine that thought driving a man so insane as to gouge his own eyes out.

Have you ever had a movie's writing grip you like that?

 

[Tom Hendricks]

For me, something like that happens in Terminator 2. When they go to blow up Cyberdyne and take the security guard hostage. When the other security guard comes to the front and finds the guard missing he isn't concerned, in fact he's pissed. Because he must have pulled this before, abandoning his post to goto the bathroom or get coffee. So that security guard is already known to be a screwup. It's a little thing that mostly goes unnoticed in a big blockbuster like this.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Casablanca has some amazing writing in it.

"I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED to find there is gambling going on here!"

Dr Strangelove also has some amazing writing.

 

[BigJake]

Screenplays that quietly move the characters into place for a payoff you don't necessarily see coming the first time around are some of my favourite. Chris Nolan's early efforts (Following and Memento) were very skilful examples, and Inception was structurally cool in the same way. Hitchcock was of course great at it (cf. Rear Window). Children of Men kept me guessing until the end, as did Moon; both the original Solaris and Soderbergh's underrated remake are excellent.

Then there's the kind of screenplay that's just straight up about the exuberance of language, of giving actors great material to spit out (sometimes originating as plays). The Lion in Winter, Glengarry, Glen Ross, The Apartment, that sort of thing.

The kind of screenplay that delivers on both axes is best of all, cf. Pulp Fiction or (far less well-known, but it should be) Doubt.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Some examples:

While Tolkien might have spent a whole chapter of his epic describing the Palantir and it's history, Peter Jackson insinuates all of it and let's the audience consider it's history and it's power with the simple line "We don't know who else may be watching." (Fellowship of the Ring)

The film might be divisive, but Cloud Atlas has some of the most elegant bits of writing I've ever seen played out on screen. I really like how Forbisher character really did believe that reincarnation occurred. I also like how the time periods depicted in the film don't really reflect the actual time periods as they were in history: they represent how we perceive them through fiction. This is particularly evident in the 70's story. This isn't the 70's: it's the movie version of the 70's.

 

[BigJake]

Cloud Atlas really was a brilliant adaptation of a brilliant book.

 

[Starkers]

One of my favourite things is in the Terminator. Kyle Reese in the future falls in love with Sarah Connor via a single photo, and when he recounts this story to Sarah he says he always wondered what she was thinking about when the photo was taken. At the end of the film we’re there when the photo is taken and Sarah has just been dictating to her unborn son about how much she loved his father. In my opinion one of the most perfect, not to mention romantic moments in a film ever and why, when asked what my favourite romantic film is, I always cite Terminator

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

One of my favourite things is in the Terminator. Kyle Reese in the future falls in love with Sarah Connor via a single photo, and when he recounts this story to Sarah he says he always wondered what she was thinking about when the photo was taken. At the end of the film we’re there when the photo is taken and Sarah has just been dictating to her unborn son about how much she loved his father. In my opinion one of the most perfect, not to mention romantic moments in a film ever and why, when asked what my favourite romantic film is, I always cite Terminator

I agree 100% with everything you wrote. You are so right.

Time travel stories are difficult to pull off, as it's easy for the viewer to spot potential paradoxes or impossibilities. That's not avoided in The Terminator, at least not entirely, but for all intents and purposes, the simple yet beautiful elegance of the romance between Kyle and Sarah.. the photo, and the fact that she was thinking about him at the end, makes it easy to overlook any potential plot-holes and paradoxes. Modern sci fi movie writers think such problems can be solved with convoluted scriptwriting that they hope will solve the already-convoluted problems their scripts began with, but The Terminator proves that a stroke of elegance and poetry, coupled with actual emotion, is the real solution.

On a similar note, Back to the Future avoided such heavy skepticism from most of the public for many years because it was so easy to care about the protagonists and their friendship.

 

[Mojochi]

Screenplays that quietly move the characters into place for a payoff you don't necessarily see coming the first time around are some of my favourite. Chris Nolan's early efforts (Following and Memento)

I absolutely love Memento. The idea that the only way for the audience to truly identify with a man who's absent short term memory is to put the movie's events in reverse so you don't know anyone or anything. You're as clueless as him throughout. Then you can have a reveal that is truly unexpected. It's a wholly brilliant concept IMHO. Who'd have even thought that could work?

 

[gblews]

For me, "Flight" was one of the more moving movies I've seen in the last few years. The movie at first appears to be about whether a commecial pilot's drinking may have caused an in-flight near disaster. Then it appears we are being set up to see the pilot's guilt or innocense decided in a tense courtroom showdown at the end of the movie, the kind we have all seen many times.

But then we are told well before the end that the pilot's condition was definitly not the real issue or what the movie was actually about. It was really about this man's personal integrity. All he had to do to completely clear his name was to sully the name of a friend who had died in the flight by blaming her for something he (the pilot) had done.

But as screwed up as the pilot appeared to be throughout the movie, when push came to shove, his personal integrity wouldn't allow him to stoop as low as he would have had to, in order to free himself. He admitted the truth in court, thereby admitting to a federal crime and ending his career as a pilot.

We see at the very end, a man who had fallen but had managed to get back up and was doing the best thing he could have at the moment, telling his story to fellow inmates, tying to help others.

Actually, when I first saw the trailer I thought this was going to be a "disaster" movie. Then I thought it was a movie about substance abuse. The movie turns out to be a great adult drama about personal integrity. Cudos to the screenwriters and director for having the guts to present a movie about something so "mundane".

 

[auntiehill]

Syriana--small but meaningful glimpses into the complex, seemingly hopelessly corrupt world of Arab/American politics.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd_pdecilC0[/yt]

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Speaking of films with amazing payoff, The Usual Suspects.

Jackie Brown, maybe not Tarantino's best film but probably his best script.

 

[Mojochi]

The trailer made it look like a ''innocent man clearing his name'' plot, but it didn't lie...just defied our expectations. If the film's good, it's not deception. David Cronenberg's DEAD RINGERS was trailered horror-movie style, but once again it didn't lie, sio I was pleasantly surprised it was a secret drama. Get them in any way you can.

I felt the same way about Interstellar, that's trailer was every single moment of action from the entire film, stung together like they were advertising Starship Troopers or something.

 

[ToddPence]

Stirling Silliphant was the greatest screenwriter of the twentieth century, but his most brilliant work was done in the medium of television as opposed to film. IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT is arguably his best movie script.