CM Houghton Reviews: Comic Con

Logline: To save their beloved neighborhood comic shop, a justice league of comic geeks must plan and execute a daring heist at Comic-Con.

Background: The script’s writers met while both attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Despite making the Black List, a list of ‘hot’ screenplays (not necessarily a best-of list), this film doesn’t look to be in any imminent danger of being produced. Although this project doesn’t have any recent news on it, the script was hot and the buzz had gotten the scribes work over at Warner Brothers. In August the scribes had been signed to pen an updated version of “Brewster’s Millions”, the 1902 novel had been last on screen in Richard Pryor’s 1985 take on it.

Script Review: Seriously? This script is a Black List script?

I guess it was more or less well written in terms of progression of action with fairly good character arcs and the inclusion of San Diego Comic Con would probably make this script hot in-and-of-itself, it’s a very clever the way that Comic Con fit into the story in this script, but for the most part this screenplay doesn’t really do it for me.

While I thought the tension was maintained and the stakes constantly rose for the lead character, Parker, I found myself bored at times during the long script and then I actually got offended at times with the extremely vulgar humor. There were also a ton of typos and grammatical errors to boot. So, I’m perplexed at this making the Black List.

I suppose it’s a bold script that probably would have some appeal if you’re a guy, which I’m not. I don’t know what audience the writers were writing for, but it doesn’t seem that I’m in it. Yes, I am a comic book fan and I love a good exciting story, and there were parts of this script that were very exciting. Both heists were well written and very suspenseful and I did love the comic-centric parts of the story. Although I’m not sure how a real comic fanboy would feel about this story.

It makes the comic book loving characters’ lives to be sad and pathetic. Parker, for example, spends a great deal of time thinking about (and talking crudely about) women and the fact that he’s yet to lose his virginity.

A good example of that type of conversation in this script is when Parker discusses his continuing virginity with his friend Larry, whom he just picked up from the airport. Larry went off to college and managed to get laid, which becomes a bit of a sore point for Parker:

I think that snippet speaks for itself about the level of humor in this script.

But this scene brings up one thing I had a problem with: a character’s quest to lose his virginity, along with the comic book based storyline, is probably the kind of story that teen boys would find appealing. Yet the extremely course language and sexual content would guarantee this movie an R rating, if filmed as is, so only 17 year old boys and older could see it. (Although, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film with so much crude language…) It’s a confusing mix, to be honest.

The story sort of wanders around a bit, going off on different tangents, which is probably one reason it’s so long. I think most of the tangents were supposed to be for comedic effect since they have little point otherwise.

For example, the scene with Parker’s mother and sister seems to be only important because it is where we learn Parker’s college money had been spent on his skanky sister’s boob job. While I suppose it gives Parker’s character some context, why he hates living at home, why he never went to college like Larry, but it is useless information in terms of the main story and probably should be completely cut. It has no point, especially since we never see either Parker’s sister or mother again.

The joke is sort of funny, I guess. His sister is so trashy, and her mother so enabling of it at Parker’s expense, but it just wastes time. The first act is far too long anyway and that scene just delayed reaching the turning point, Parker’s decision to steal the first Superman comic, Action Comics #1, to try and bail his boss out of his financial problems.

Also the jokes dealing with Bosley’s fascination with the size of other men’s genitalia got a bit tired. I suppose it’s funny, especially the shock that the more virginal characters display…

For example, in this scene Parker comes back into his hotel room, where the others men are consuming the contents of the mini bar, to tell them that Lauren has decided to join them in his crazy plan to steal Action Comics Issue #1:

That’s funny, I laughed despite myself, but Bosley’s fascination with the size of other guy’s equipment isn’t exactly what I want to see happen in a film. It just seemed to come up too often and several scenes that dealt with this plot point were too long.

Then there is a problem with the length, probably a contributing factor is that a lot of the scenes with Parker’s nemesis, Terrance Watanabi, the head of the conglomerate that plans on tearing down the comic shop and putting up a condo complex, go on for far too long. I’m not sure they’re extraneous and should be cut entirely, but getting those scenes tightened and shortened would help keep the script from lagging. It’s many of those scenes that tended to bore me.

Though, I do like Terrance as the villain. He’s a despicable, money grubbing opportunist who only trades comics because they hold their value. He doesn’t prize them the way Parker and the other characters do. He’s a good foil for Parker who loves comics so much he wants to write for them.

Yet, there is a problem with that character: the other characters call Terrance ‘T-Wat’, a lame joke that is goes beyond being tasteless like some of the other jokes and goes into the realm of being offensive. That probably should be cut, although from how it’s spelled it might be intended to be pronounced like ‘Tee-Watt’, but still… Like a lot of the other humor, it’s not exactly PC and would be offensive to a great many people.

There is a lot of very crude humor, in scene after scene, the characters talk about women in terms of their genitalia or talk rather graphically about their own. I’m no prude, I like a good sexy movie as much as the next red-blooded American, but the way they had the characters talk about genitalia almost in every scene was just too much. It’s crude and just too over-the-top. It was a huge turnoff for me in terms of the writing. A little bit of stuff like this would have gone a long way, it’s just used too often.

Okay, again it’s probably funny to a comic geek, but would anyone else think so? Is it even necessary? I don’t think so. Would it turn off more people than it appealed to? Probably.

Added to all this, as a comic book fan, I can see some problems with the script in regards to the comic references in the script. Warner Brothers owns the feature film rights for DC Comics characters, like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. DC Comics is actually a unit of Time Warner, so the depiction of Superman and Wonder Woman images would be problematic (if not impossible) for any other studio. As a spec script, that is very limiting to the writers’ potential market.

That would also mean that editing needs to be done to remove any reference to Marvel properties (Wolverine, Spider-Man) since the feature film rights to those franchises belong to Disney (thanks to their recent acquisition of Marvel Entertainment). There are a lot of references to Wolverine (Duke has that Wolverine tattoo and at one point even wields a pair of Wolverine’s claws to fend off Terrance’s thugs. Later, at Comic Con, a character holds a Spider-Man comic.)
Marvel and DC Comics companies don’t currently have a business relationship. They’ve also rarely worked together, so I doubt their corporate parents cooperating in a joint project like this would be likely. This no “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”.

Bottom Line: Without a good sense of potential audience, both in terms of who would want to see this and who would be willing to buy it, I think it’s far clearer why this Black List script is in no imminent danger of being produced. It’s like the scribes didn’t know who they were writing for. Is this a coming-of-age story with a strong comic book (a kid friendly) storyline? Or is this a far more adult coming-of-age R-rated comedy with raunchy jokes and heavy sexual content?
I’m not sure I’d say pass on this, the crude R-rated humor might be appealing to some demos, but the script is messy rights-wise. The typos and length are probably minor problems in comparison to that.
The idea is a solid one, if not completely well-implemented. I am a Superman fan and I have been to a couple of conventions, although not to Comic Con, so I like those aspects of the story immensely. The heists, both of them, were well written and exciting. This would have been a page turner if I hadn’t dreaded reading more vulgarity. If the language was cleaned up, the story was tightened up with a more comedy-friendly length (90 pages instead of 120), and the romance between Parker and Lauren was beefed up some, I think this could probably end up being a pretty good movie.

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